Dead Giveaway

16

The next morning, on the one-week anniversary of Verna Mae's death, I got in my car and set out to visit Lawrence Washington's father. Though I had an address from Simpson's notes, I found no phone number despite searching the white pages, directory assistance and my on-line resources. All I could do was drive to his home and hope he was there.

By the time we'd finished with Simpson's notes last night, Kate and I had ended up cross-eyed and cranky. They did indicate that Washington continued to stonewall about the unaccounted for ninety minutes, the time gap that had helped a jury convict him in a circumstantial case, but other than that, Simpson seemed to have made a mountain of paper out of molehills. Names and dates and what might well be useless pieces of information were swimming in my head even now.

I turned onto Lyons Avenue after traveling the freeways north and east to Houston's Fifth Ward, a section of the city struggling to overcome the street crime that had at one time made it the most dangerous part of town. Renovations were ongoing and included condos and newly painted houses spotting the neighborhoods. The work wasn't finished, however. Poverty decimates culture and recovery is slow no matter what the politicians promise.

After several wrong turns, I finally found Thaddeus Washington's house and discovered he had been one of those who had benefited from neighborhood improvement projects. His one-story was small, probably no more than 1,000 square feet inside, but the siding was a fresh yellow and the porch slats gleamed with bright white paint. The swing I'd seen in the photograph swayed in the warm morning breeze.

The steps to the house had been replaced by a plywood ramp, and when Mr. Washington cracked the door open, I saw why. Even through the six-inch gap I could see he was in a wheelchair.

"Can I help you?" he asked, his voice wary.

"My name is Abby Rose and I want to talk to you about your son, Lawrence. I saw him the other day." I offered my card but he didn't take it. I already had my ticket inside.

He widened the door and said, "You saw him?"

"Yes, sir," I replied. He had nappy gray hair, but the face that I'd seen in Simpson's photo had changed little over the years.

He backed up the wheelchair and told me to come in.

That's when I saw the .357 Magnum lying across his blanketed stumps. I guess a gun helps if you can't run. I wondered when he'd lost his legs—probably from the diabetes—since in the picture both had still been attached. But that's the type of personal question preschoolers ask strangers.

He noted I was staring and said, "Don't pay this gun no mind. Probably don't need it, but word gets around for folks to leave you be when you stay protected. People don't mess with Thaddeus Washington. And I know what you're thinking—that I'm a foolish old man." He laughed then, a hearty laugh.

"I don't think you're foolish and I hope I'm not intruding," I said.

"Intruding? What the hell are you talking about? Not every day a pretty girl visits. A girl who knows Lawrence." He grinned, revealing dentures a little too big for his gums. "Come on in and have a seat on the divan. I'll get you some coffee and then you better tell me all about my son." He turned and started toward the adjoining kitchen visible beyond the passthrough bar.

"I stopped at Starbucks on the drive here," I lied. "I'm already wired on caffeine." I was still avoiding coffee like I might one of Kate's veggie "meat" loaves, but didn't want to sound impolite.

Mr. Washington wheeled to face me. "Starbucks. I own some of their stock. They keep sending me these little cards for three-dollar coffees around dividend time. Guess I can give them to you."

My turn to laugh. "You own stock in Starbucks?"

He grinned. "You probably think it takes me an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes, too."

"I certainly do not," I replied, still smiling.

He gestured for me to sit on a red chenille sofa with fringe on the bottom. Had to be fifty years old, but it was in pristine condition thanks to the plastic cover. He steered his wheelchair around so we were facing each other. "You a lawyer?"

"No. Why would you think... oh. Because I visited your son?"

"You're not police. I can tell them. So who are you? And don't hand me that card again, 'cause I couldn't read it anyway. My glasses are in the other room."

I explained who I was, how I'd talked with Mrs. Simpson and read Frank Simpson's file on his son's case.

"Frank thought Lawrence was innocent. Do you?" he asked.

"Something tells me he is," I answered quietly. Even if I wasn't totally sure, this was what Thaddeus Washington needed to hear, what I needed to hear myself say.

"I'm afraid he'll never get out of that place. All the lawyers been used up long ago. He won't let me come see him anymore. How did he look?"

"Healthy," I answered, leaving out the sadness that seemed to overpower everything about Lawrence. "You say he won't let you visit?"

Mr. Washington gestured at his lap. " 'Cause of this."

"You should know better than to try to take a gun into a prison," I said with a grin.

Washington smiled. "Good one. I think I like you. Wish Lawrence had your attitude. He says the prison is so old it's too hard to get the chair in there, but I think he don't want to see me like this—or for me to see him with a screen between us. So we talk. And write. It's okay, I guess."

I could tell it wasn't okay. "I think there's far more to what happened the night of the murder than a robbery gone bad. If I can find the truth for my client, maybe that will help Lawrence." I paused, and took a deep breath before I said, "You see, I think my client is your grandson, Mr. Washington."

His hand found the .357, tightened around the grip, but not in any threatening way. I sensed that the gun was his friend and he needed to feel its presence. "My grandson? What the hell are you talking about?"

I spilled out the whole story, my words coming fast, my mouth growing drier with each passing minute. I had to keep looking away, down at my hands, out the side window, anywhere to stay away from his intent stare. His sadness seemed just as deep and strong as what I had seen at the prison, the same expression that Frank Simpson captured in Lawrence's eyes with his 35mm camera.

Mr. Washington said, "You're saying Lawrence has a child, this Will Knight, and we never knew about him?"

"Oh, I think Lawrence knew he was about to be a father. He picked up that blanket, after all. Did he have a steady girlfriend?"

"Not that me or Clara knew about. You had to understand Lawrence. He was a shy boy. It was only when he was on the baseball field that we saw the other side of him. The aggression. The need to win. He wouldn't have told us nothing about a girlfriend."

Aggressive enough to murder? I wondered.

"You know something?" Mr. Washington went on, squinting as if looking back in time. "I do recall Clara and I thought Lawrence might have had a crush on a girl. He spent a lot of time at that church, and we thought God wasn't the only one he was visiting. She must have been a fair-weather friend, though, 'cause she never showed up to visit him in jail and never went to the trial."

"She was in his youth group, perhaps?"

Mr. Washington said, "If he had a girlfriend in that group, she was white. We found out after Lawrence's arrest that they was all white kids over there. Lawrence being a big-cheese athlete, seems they invited him. Place is north of the space place—NASA. Long drive from here, and I don't mean in miles. What bothers me to this day is that if Lawrence hadn't been in that neighborhood, maybe whoever really killed Miss Mason would have been caught. That cop Dugan got himself a scapegoat in Lawrence. Black kid in a white neighborhood? Could it get any better for the police?"

I hated to admit it, but he was right. "Officer Simpson did indicate in his notes that the church was close to where Amanda Mason was killed."

"Yup. I go that way for my diabetes checkups. Got a doctor in the Medical Center and then have to visit a lab way in the other direction. Medicare makes some sense, huh?"

"Not to me or you. Who takes you?" I asked.

"Joelle borrows her friend's van. Don't know what I'd do without that lady. Got to say, I hate driving by that prissy church. Place gets bigger and fancier every day. I see their ads in the religion section of the paper all the time. Not Baptist like Lawrence was raised, neither. Nondenominational, he said. Clara and I were troubled he wanted to abandon his church home, but he was old enough to decide. God doesn't care where you visit Him, I guess."

"You think a girlfriend might have had more to do with this desire to change his religious affiliation than any conversion?"

"Remembering how I was at that age, I would've bungee jumped off the Transco Tower for Clara—if I'd heard of such a thing as bungee jumping and if she'd asked me to." He smiled, but it was a small, sad smile, the kind memories create.

"No idea who this girlfriend was or if she even really existed?"

"Nope," he said with a shake of his head.

"Did you mention a possible romantic interest to Officer Simpson? Because if he wrote about it in his notes, I missed it. In fact, he indicated Lawrence had nothing going on with anyone as far as he could tell."

Mr. Washington hung his head, fiddled with the binding of his plaid blanket. "I mighta told the police officers there was no girlfriend. Wasn't exactly a lie. See, I was afraid if Miss Mason attended that church, if Lawrence knew her, dated her, well, that would be like pounding a nail in my own son's coffin. I told myself they could figure it out themselves." He looked up. "You get what I'm saying?"

I nodded. "I understand, but suppose he did have a relationship with someone in that youth group—not Amanda Mason, which we know for sure—but maybe another girl. Would Lawrence have confided in anyone about her?"

"Maybe today he might have, but not back then. Not if she was white. Besides, Lawrence didn't talk much, and never about that sort of thing. He went about his business... school, playing ball, planning his future. We raised a fine young man, Ms. Rose." Mr. Washington's voice cracked and his eyes grew moist. "He may have sinned and conceived this child you're talking about—and that whole idea still ain't sunk in—but he would never take a life. Not ever."

I believed him. This man may not have known anyone in that church group, but he knew his son, and about now, the scapegoat idea was sounding pretty damn good to me. "I have the church's address from Frank's notes—the Church of the Reverent Life, if I remember right. You say they're still in the same location?"

"Bought up property around them and built an even bigger complex not long ago. They're right off the freeway feeder in south Houston."

"I suppose the ministry there has turned over since Lawrence attended," I said.

"The assistant minister, the one who visited Lawrence after he went to prison, is still there. Read in the paper he took the big job—Pastor-Teacher or something like that. His name is Rankin."

"Pastor Rankin visited Lawrence in Huntsville?"

"Yup. I got to the prison early one Saturday and couldn't get in 'cause he was there. Sort of ticked me off him taking away my time with Lawrence, but those are the rules. He was the youth minister back then, and his wife ran the Bible study for the kids. 'Course I had to hear all this from Frank, not my son. God, I wish Lawrence and I woulda talked more." Mr. Washington shook his head.

The would-haves and could-haves. I knew about those, too. "I thank you so much for your help, Mr. Washington. Guess I need to find out about these friends from Lawrence's group."

I walked to the door with Thaddeus Washington wheeling behind me.

When I opened the door, his chair suddenly rammed into me and Mr. Washington shouted, "Get down!"

I fell forward onto the threshold, instant pain blasting through both knees. I squeezed my eyes shut. That's why I didn't see who was shooting at us, though I did hear glass breaking. That's all I heard, because Mr. Washington's return fire deafened me.

"Some idiot in a hotdog red car," he yelled once I was on my feet and my assaulted eardrums began to function again.

Damn. I missed getting that plate number again.