Cross Justice (13 page)

Pedelini led us out of the woods. We were all drenched in sweat, and we climbed into the detective’s air-conditioned car.

“What were y’all doing down there?” Pedelini asked.

“Due diligence,” I said. “I like to walk crime scenes if I can.”

“Find anything?”

“Some of the measurements on the diagrams are off,” I said.

The detective looked disgusted. “Measurements. That’s Frost and Carmichael’s work. Any other flaws?”

He said this with no defensiveness in his voice, as if he were merely looking for pointers from more experienced investigators.

Bree said, “Looks like someone’s been into that rock pile and scoured the slabs with a steel brush and an abrasive cleanser.”

Pedelini looked pained. “Cece Turnbull did that ’bout six weeks after Rashawn died. She’d heard that some of the local kids had been going out to see where her boy had been raped and killed. Like a fucking shrine. Can you imagine?”

Pedelini’s cheek twitched and his jaw drifted left of center before he said, “Anyway, Cece had gone back to drinking and drugging by then, and she flipped. She brought in a fifth of Jack Daniel’s and some meth and went at that slab with a barbecue brush and graffiti remover. I found the poor thing down there the next morning, stone drunk and weeping.”

PEDELINI HAD US
follow him down to the sheriff’s office to make a statement. By the time we got there, it was past three that Saturday afternoon, and the uniformed officers were changing shifts.

The detective showed us into the detectives’ bullpen and pointed us to chairs near his desk, which featured a recent picture of him in a tricked-out bass boat, grinning and fishing with two darling little girls.

“Your daughters?” Bree asked.

The detective smiled, said, “Two of the joys of my life.”

“They’re beautiful,” I said. “When did your wife pass away?”

My wife frowned at me, but Pedelini cocked his head, said, “How did you know?”

“The way you were rubbing the ring finger of your left hand just then. I used to catch myself doing it after my first wife died.”

Pedelini looked down at his hand, said, “Remind me not to
play poker with you, Dr. Cross. My Ellen died seven years ago this September. Childbirth.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Detective,” I said. “That’s rough.”

“I appreciate that,” Pedelini said. “I really do. But the girls and my job keep me going. Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea? Coca-Cola? Mr. Pibb?”

“I’ll take a coffee,” Bree said. “Cream, no sugar.”

“A Mr. Pibb,” I said. “Haven’t had one of those in years.”

“I’m partial to them myself,” Pedelini said, and he disappeared down a hallway.

“I like him,” my wife said.

“I do too,” I said. “He’s solid.”

A female deputy came into the room carrying an armful of files and mail that she distributed to the various desks. When she got to Pedelini’s, she said, “Guy here?”

“Getting us something to drink,” Bree said.

She nodded, put several dusty old files on his desk, said, “Tell him these came over from the clerk. He’s been asking after them.”

“We’ll do that,” I promised, and the deputy moved on.

I had a crick in my lower back suddenly, and I stood to stretch. When I did, I happened to look down at the files; I saw the faded labels on the tabs, and felt my head retreat by several degrees.

The label of the file on top read
Cross, Christina.

The one below it read
Cross, Jason.

I picked up the file on my mother and was about to flip it open when Bree said in alarm, “Alex, you can’t just start going—”

“Oh, Jesus,” Pedelini said.

I looked up, saw the detective balancing a coffee mug and
two cans of Mr. Pibb on a small tray. His skin had lost three shades of color.

“I am so sorry, Dr. Cross,” he said, chagrined. “I … I ran your name through our databases, and those files came up. So I … requested them.”

“My name?” I said. “What are these?”

Pedelini swallowed, set the tray down, and said, “Old investigative files.”

“On what?” Bree said, standing to look.

The detective hesitated, and then said, “Your mother’s murder, Dr. Cross.”

At first I thought I’d misheard him. I squinted and said, “You mean my mother’s death?”

“I don’t think so,” Pedelini replied. “They were filed under homicide.”

“My mother died of cancer,” I said.

The detective looked puzzled. “No, that’s not right. The database says murder by asphyxiation, case eventually closed due to the death of chief suspect, who was shot trying to escape the police and fell into the gorge.”

In total shock, I said, “Who was the chief suspect?”

“Your father, Dr. Cross. Didn’t you know?”

THREE HOURS LATER,
Bree drove us back through the streets of Birney. The pain of reading those files was still raw, still searing.

Bree put her hand on mine, said, “I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now, Alex. But I’m here for you, sugar. Any way you need me, I’m here for you.”

“Thank you. I … this just changes everything, you know?”

“I know, baby,” Bree said, and she pulled up in front of the bungalow where the files said my dad had smothered my mother with a pillow.

I got out of the car feeling like I’d just been released from the hospital after a life-threatening illness, weak and unsure of my balance. I started toward the front porch with my mind playing tricks on me, seeing flashes of shattered, disjointed memories: my boyhood self running down the train tracks in the rain; watching my father being dragged by a rope; and, finally, staring at my mother’s dead body in her bed, looking so frail, and small, and empty.

I don’t remember falling, only that I hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of me and set my world spinning.

“Alex?” Bree cried, rushing to my side.

“I’m okay.” I gasped. “Must have tripped or … Where’s Nana?”

“Probably inside,” Bree said.

“I need to talk to her,” I said.

“I know you do, but—”

“Dad!” Ali cried, pushing open the screen door and jumping off the stoop.

“I’m okay, son,” I said, getting to my feet. “Just haven’t eaten enough.”

The door slammed again. Naomi came out, looking concerned.

“He got a little dizzy,” Bree explained.

“Where’s Nana?” I asked.

“At Aunt Hattie’s,” she said. “They’re making dinner.”

“I think you need to go inside and lie down, Alex,” Bree said.

“Not now,” I said, and I fixed on my aunt’s house like it was a beacon in the night.

I took my tentative first steps still bewildered and seeking solace from my grandmother. But by the time I was on Hattie’s porch, I was moving fast, angry and seeking answers.

I stormed inside. Aunt Hattie, Aunt Connie, and Uncle Cliff were in the kitchen. My aunts were dipping tilapia fillets in flour, getting them ready to fry, when I walked in and said, “Where’s Nana?”

“Right here,” she said.

My grandmother was tucked into a chair on my left, reading a book.

I went to her, loomed over her, my hands balled into fists, and said, “Why’d you lie to me?”

Nana Mama said, “Take a step back there, young man. And what’d I lie to you about?”

“My mother!” I shouted. “My father! All of it!”

My grandmother shrank from me and raised her arm defensively, as if she thought I might hit her. The truth was I’d been on the verge of doing just that.

It rattled me. I stepped back, glanced around the room. My aunts were staring at me in fear, and Bree and Jannie and Ali and Naomi had come in and were looking at me like I had gone mad.

“None of that now,” Uncle Cliff roared, standing up with his walker and shaking his finger at me. “No mugging old ladies on my train. You sit your ass down, show me your ticket, or I will throw you off, next stop. You hear?”

Uncle Cliff trembled with force, and I was suddenly a kid again, weak and dizzy. I grabbed a chair and sat, put my head in my hands.

“Alex, what’s happened?” Nana Mama demanded.

“Just tell me why you all lied to me,” I said with a groan. “That’s all I want to know.”

“
I SWEAR TO
you, I knew nothing about this!” Nana Mama cried after Bree told her what we’d read in the files. She looked to my aunts, said, “Is this true? Did you know?”

Aunt Hattie and Aunt Connie were holding on to each other in such a way that they didn’t have to say a word.

“Why?” Bree asked.

“Because,” Aunt Hattie said, her voice shaking. “Those terrible things that went on, they were so traumatic, so horrible, that you, Alex, blocked it all out. It was like you’d never seen what happened to your father. We figured it was nature’s way of helping you deal with it and that you’d be better off believing your mom died from the cancer and your dad from the drinking and the drugs.”

“But why lie to
me?
” my grandmother demanded, as shaken as I’d been.

“You’d been through so much already and gone so far in life, Regina,” Aunt Connie said, choking. “We didn’t want to make
you suffer any more than you had to. Alcohol and drugs, you could understand. Jason had been headed for that early grave already. But his killing Christina, and then the way he died. We just couldn’t tell you. We thought it would break your heart when your heart needed to be strong for Alex and his brothers.”

Nana Mama gazed off into a distance, her lower lip quivering, then looked at me and started to weep.

I went to her, got down on my knees, and laid my head in her tiny lap, feeling her anguish as my own, feeling her tears splash on my face as I said, “I’m sorry I called you a liar.”

“I’m sorry ’bout everything, Alex,” she said, stroking my head the way she used to when I first went to live with her. “I’m sorry about every bit of it.”

There was a heaviness in the air when we finally got around to eating. No one said much the rest of the night. Or at least, I don’t remember anything specific until I went to my aunts after dessert and forgave them. They cried all over again when we hugged.

Aunt Connie said, “We didn’t mean all this to come out.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s okay.”

“You sure?” Aunt Hattie asked.

“You were trying to protect me,” I said. “I get that.”

Aunt Connie said, “But you still don’t remember anything?”

“I’ve been getting flashes,” I admitted. “But not much more than that.”

Aunt Hattie said, “Maybe that’s all God wants you to remember.”

I nodded, kissed them both, and went out the door after my family. Jannie was already heading up the porch stoop to our bungalow. Bree was walking along with Ali and Naomi. Ali saw me, turned, and ran back.

I put my arm around my boy’s shoulder, said, “See the lightning bugs?”

“Yeah,” Ali said, like he didn’t care.

“Hey,” I said. “What’s the matter?”

“Dad?” he said, not looking at me. “Can we go home?”

“What? No.”

“But I don’t like this place,” he said. “I don’t have any friends, and I don’t like how it hurts you to be here. And how it hurts Nana.”

I picked up my youngest and held him tight to me, saying, “I don’t like how it hurts either, son. But I promised I’d help Stefan. And in this life, a man is only as good as his word.”

AFTER MASS THAT
Sunday morning, Nana Mama and I dropped Bree and the kids back at the bungalow. I drove us close to the arched bridge and parked. My grandmother took my arm, and we walked slowly out onto the span above the gorge.

The Stark River was roaring down there, throwing up white haystacks, spinning into dark whirlpools, and surging against the walls as far as the eye could see downstream. I remembered my parents were always telling me and my brothers never to go near the bridge or the river.

“Dad used to say there was no worse way to die than drowning,” I told Nana Mama. “I honestly think he was scared of the gorge.”

“Because I taught him to be scared of it,” my grandmother said quietly. “My little brother, Wayne, died down there when he was six. They never found his body.”

She said nothing for a few long moments, just stared at the roiling water four stories below us like it held terrible secrets.

Then Nana Mama shook her head. “I can’t bear to think of how terrified your father must have been as he fell.”

“According to the report, he was probably dead before he hit the water.”

“And you don’t remember any of it?” she asked.

“I had a nightmare last night. It was raining and there was lightning, and I was running down the tracks and then toward the bridge. I saw flashing lights before I heard gunshots. And then there were men out on the bridge, looking over, just like we are now.”

“What a waste,” my grandmother said. “Just a wasted, tragic life.”

She started to cry again, and I hugged her until she calmed.

Wiping her eyes with a handkerchief, she said, “Do you think that’s all there is about what happened? That report?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “There’s a couple of people I’d like to talk to about it.”

“You’ll let me know?”

“If I find something, you’ll know it,” I promised.

On the ride back to the bungalow, I drove through the east end of Birney so Nana Mama could see the house she’d been living in when Wayne died. I pulled over next to the ramshackle building. It was just two blocks from the river.

“I’ll never forget that day,” she said, gesturing at the house. “I was eight and there on that porch playing with one of my friends when my mama came out the house, asked where Wayne had gotten to. I said he’d gone off down the street to see his buddy Leon.

“She went down after him to Leon’s house, which was right there on the corner of South Street across from the gorge,” she went on. “Mama saw Wayne and Leon over on the rocks above
the river. She saw him fall. You could hear her screaming all the way here. She never got over that. The fact that his body was never found just ate her up. Every spring she’d make my dad go downriver with her to where the gorge spills onto the flat so they could see if the floods had swept Wayne’s body out. They looked for twenty years.”