God'll Cut You Down (23 page)

Tim escorts me out, through the jail. A two-minute drift through gray corridors and antiseptic smells. Dozens of young men in lollipop jumpsuits roll past me. The young black men look relaxed:
Hey, this is just a part of life.
The young white men look broken.

I pluck a gum ball from the gum ball machine next to the metal detector at the jail’s entrance. I call Mike Scott and tell him I’ve been told someone
filed an affidavit against Richard in a Hinds County court for predatory behavior. Could he point me in the right direction?

Mike squeaks a very brief squeak, which tells me I’m onto something, because Mike isn’t a squeaker. He tries to tease out of me who told me. That might help him understand where to point me, he says. I fumble out, “Just someone.”

He tells me I might like to try the Hinds Justice Court office in Jackson. Third floor. All I’d need to give is Richard’s name.

I bolt to my car and head for Jackson. The only reason I can think of that Mike Scott would tell the police where evidence against Richard Barrett could be found, but not use it in defense of his client, is if Vincent refused to let him.

The clerk sealed behind the glass is one of the few white people here. As instructed by Mike Scott, I give her Richard Barrett’s name.

She pounds her keyboard and sucks in her face.

“Oh boy, he has a few!” she says. “Ten citations!”

I want to kiss her like you kiss the newsagent guy who sold you the winning ticket.

“Will you need them printed?” she twangs.

“Yes, please!”

To my ears, the hum of her dot matrix printer sounds sweeter than gospel music. She slides ten sheets of paper under the glass, and I dart to a chair in the nearby waiting area.

Okay, the first one is just a traffic offense: “Improper passing, August 13, 1990, $21 fine.”

Okay, the second one is also just a traffic offense: “Speeding, January 7, 1991, $200 fine.”

Okay, the third is just another traffic offense: “Speeding, January 18, 1995, $100 fine.”

My fingers whisk through the rest: three more speeding tickets, two more improper passings, one “No driver’s license (expired),” and one “Driving while license suspended.”

Where’s my goddamn unwanted sexual advance?

At Walmart, I’m thumbing through
Sisters of the Quilt
in the Amish romance section of the Christian book department when my phone trembles on my thigh. I press the vibrating rat to my ear. It’s Mike Scott returning my call. I tell him Hinds County just coughed up Richard Barrett’s speeding tickets. He makes the sound of a man shrugging his shoulders. The McGee case may have rolled to a stop, he says, but he’s still bound by confidentiality. He says the only way he can talk is if Vincent signs a letter of consent. And I haven’t heard back from Vincent.

After the investigators, the next subpoena the DA’s office had prepared for the trial that never happened was for Adele Lewis. She cut open Richard Barrett at the autopsy.

“I use a large ten-inch chef’s knife, that you would get from the kitchen store,” she tells me over the phone from Tennessee.

She flew in from Tennessee for the autopsy, because Mississippi has too many suspicious deaths and not enough forensic pathologists.

“There is a scale,” she continues, “like you see in a grocery store.”

These are the bits of Richard she weighed on that scale: heart, lungs, liver, spleen, intestines, adrenal gland, internal genitalia, and kidneys.

I think about Richard’s last will and testament. He requested no public or private viewing of his dead body or his remains. There has
been no shortage of people denying him that wish in the course of their jobs.
I
leered over his corpse in the investigators’ boardroom.

Adele says the official cause of Richard’s death is “multiple sharp and blunt force injuries.”

“And the investigators told me there were no defensive wounds. Is that true?”

“He did have some scrapes and bruises on his left arm and on the back of his left hand that could be consistent with defense injuries.”

“Sorry to be tacky,” I say, “but there were suggestions at the start it was a sex crime, and so did you do things like any tests on whether he’d had sex, or whether there was semen on him, or anything like that?”

“No, I wasn’t made aware of that until after the autopsy had been completed and the body had been cleaned.”

She doesn’t sound happy about this.

“Do you think that was a misjudgment by them to not clue you in on that?”

“Well, let me just say, the more information that I have going into the autopsy, the better job I can do.”

Adele says had she been made aware of a sex angle she would have examined Richard with that in mind. For instance, she would have examined his anus.

Here’s a weird thing: Investigator Wayne Humphreys took me through the autopsy process. He said he was in the room when they cut open Richard. This is what Wayne told me he said to the autopsy person, presumably Adele:

“I said, ‘I’m sorry I have to get you to do this, but could you please do a visual look at his rectum to see if there’s any foreign objects?’ Then they spread him and then made an incision—with, like, hedgers you use to prune—to cut up his anus so she could really get inside. She had a look and couldn’t see anything.”

Could one of them be misremembering, or confusing Richard with another corpse? Would you be more likely to remember accurately if you
were the one using the hedgers or the one watching? Which one is more likely to get carried away with the story?

I’m being punished for being here too long. The longer you stay, the more stories you get. What am I meant to do now? Burst into the sheriff’s office:
Wayne, did you lie about the rectum?

“He sucks in his top soup cooler!” cackles the black radio host, a man named Rip. “Ha-ha!”

Rip is sermonizing from the little clock radio on the bedside table in my apartment. The evening air whistles outside my window. Rip says he watched the Republican debate on television. He thinks black candidate Herman Cain intentionally sucks in his top lip to look less African American.

“Stop sucking in your soup cooler, Mr. Cain! We know you’re black!”

My phone buzzes. I pluck it from my pocket and press it to my ear.

“Hello,” I say.

“Murble aiiiiiii,” murbles The Murble.

“Hello?” I say. “Who’s this?”

“Murble ya murble yo lettar murble murble,” says The Murble.

“Murble,” he continues.

This last
murble
bolts into my ear, down my body, and punches my heart.

“Vincent?” I say, more a breath than a word.

“Aiiiii . . . this is Vincent.”

My eyes dart east, south, north, west. Where’s the Dictaphone? I need to tape this. I’ll need to play it back ten times to decode the murble.

“Thank you so much for ringing me,” I say.

“Aiii,” says Vincent. “Murble murble birfdate murble soshell secureety nomba.”

Social security number?

“Because. I’m. Australian . . .” I say. Enunciating. Each. Word. “I. Only. Have. A. Passport. Number.”

I skid to my suitcase like it’s home base. I make it rain with pens and shirts and socks and peel the passport from the bottom of my suitcase.

I read out my passport number.

“Ya be in penitentry?” Vincent says.

Christ! He must be filling in the visitation form.

“No,” I say. “I haven’t been in a penitentiary.”

“Murble aiiiii dat ell da infomaton a need,” he says.

“How will I know when I can visit?” I say. “Can I call you?”

“No.”

“Is this your cell phone?” I say.

“No.”

“Well, how will I know when it’ll be okay to visit?”

“Ya gave a en’vlope,” he says.

“Oh,” I say, “so you’ll send me the information in the envelope?”

“Aiiiiiiii.”

Vincent McGee hangs up.

VINCENT

I
’ve been in Mississippi so long, I can feel the difference between the white roads and the black roads. I can feel the difference vibrate up my spine. The white areas are furnished with smoother roads. The black areas are pockmarked with potholes. The whole story of how the world works could be localized to these roads. Earnest would say, “See, this is how the system works. The whites sort it out so they have better roads.” Jim Giles would say, “See, this is what happens. You leave counties in the hands of black officials and they won’t take care of their roads.” I could drive Earnest and Jim around the lumpy and smooth streets of Mississippi all day and night. There they’d be, in the backseat, screaming, using exactly the same facts to explain how the world works in two opposite ways.

Vincent just rang again. Didn’t have the Dictaphone. I was driving. Now I’ve pulled over. He rang from a different number. It was all slurry. Like, “Aaaiiiiiii.” So he asked me about getting paid for my book. And I said, “Oh, listen, I really want to tell your side of the story, but it’s against the law,” and I told him about the “Son of Sam law” that says a criminal can’t profit from his crime. And he didn’t argue over it. He just assumed it must
be the truth. Because it is. And then he was like, “Oh well, I could write the story.” And I said, “You can write some other story. You can write a novel or you can write about something else, but you won’t be able to get paid for this particular story.” So he said, “Oh, okay.” And he started talking about Walmart “Green Dot cards” or something. About whether I could put some money in that. So I just straightaway kind of cracked under the pressure. I said, “Well, you know, I don’t know about that.” Then he started talking about, well, how much could I put in a Walmart Green Dot card? So I said to him, “Well, listen, I don’t even know if I can, but if I can . . . Listen, before, I looked into how much money family and friends can put on a prisoner’s account, and the most you can put into that is three hundred dollars.” And he said, “Well, what?” Like he’s waiting for me to tell him something. He said, “You’re going to make a lot out of this book.” And I said, “Listen, I don’t know about that, but you know that’s what it says on the MDOC page—you can only put in three hundred dollars.” So then he said, “Well, how much can you put in a Walmart Green Dot account?” So I said, “Oh, I don’t know.” He goes, “Well, how much are you willing?” And I said, “Well, I don’t know, I guess three hundred dollars.” And he said, “Well, you know . . .” And then I said, “Well, how much were you thinking?” And so then, for some reason, then he goes, “Oh, listen, put in two hundred dollars in the Walmart Green Dot card.” And then he says there’s some number on the card and then I can ring him up with that number. So I kind of don’t quite know why he haggled me down to two hundred dollars. Maybe that’s something he knows about in prison, or something like that. Maybe he made a mistake.

And then I said, “Oh yeah, what about visitation?” And then he said, “Oh listen, the form is still going through.” And he sounded pretty genuine, I guess. I mean, maybe he wasn’t.

Anyway, so then that was that. So then I hung up. Then he rang back five minutes later and said, “Oh, don’t put it all on one card. Put a hundred and fifty on one card and fifty on another.” So I was like, “Oh, okay.” And then he goes, “Oh, and I think I can get . . .” and he said something about visitation on Thursday or Friday.

It’s so delicate, this communication. Vincent has my number, I don’t have his. This is just going to happen as God and/or Fate and/or Vincent wants it to happen. Is Tina talking to him? What’s she saying to him about me? How perfect if I meet him in prison. That’s better than a trial. I’m kind of bummed that money has come into it. Not the money as such, but what it says about Vincent, about the role money has played in this crime perhaps. Wouldn’t this be better if he just wanted to tell his story and have the truth out there?

Two doors up from the address I have for the Reyeses’ home, a skinhead is bashing a nail into a post on his white veranda. The house is white, the skinhead is pink, and the sky is overblown blue. I guess I don’t actually know he’s a skinhead. He could just have a shaved head. But his T-shirt is tight and white and my race antennas are going off.

I reread the file propped up on my steering wheel:

Vincent McGee did willfully, unlawfully, and feloniously . . . take, steal, and carry away $300 in Mexican Pesos, $200 in Mexican Paper Dollars, and one silver ring with a value of $300, property of Jamie Reyes.

This was where the “white girl in there somewhere” comes into it, and, according to Vallena Greer, where Vincent got caught up in the race war.

A car pulls into the Reyeses’ driveway as I walk to the front door. I immediately regret clomping across the grass rather than sticking to the cement path. A girl—Latin American? late teens? early twenties?—steps from the car. I tell her I’m looking for a Jamie Reyes. To talk about a Vincent McGee.

“Come in,” she says warmly, like she’s been waiting for me. “I’m Daisy, Jamie’s my mom.”

There’s a lot of neon punching through in the living room. The cushions on the couch, the straws in our iced tea, Jamie’s cardigan, Daisy’s T-shirt. The Reyeses, mother and daughter, sit opposite me on the couch. Daisy’s stepfather, a relatively new addition, I gather, kicks around in the kitchen space. He’s not neon, he’s dull blue, and the dog slopping at his feet is dull brown.

I don’t yet have my bearings as to how everyone here intersects with Vincent McGee.

“I got the impression,” Jamie begins, “that the Aborigine people are kind of like the Native Americans? Just kind of tucked away?”

Good Lord! This is pretty much the first time I’ve heard a Mississippian express curiosity about something going on outside Mississippi.

“I’ve been to Australia,” she continues.

Good Lord!

“When I was in Sydney for just one day, I was walking around the harbor, wanting to do a whale-watching tour,” she says. “And there was this Aborigine man and he was sitting playing didgeridoo. And he had paint on and he was near naked, like a tribesman. And I stopped and took a picture of him and bought one of his CDs. I went on the cruise and then I came back and that Aborigine that had been sitting there now had jeans and a T-shirt on, and there was another Aborigine in his place. I guess it was shift change. And I just thought,
Oh!
You know, it was a little disappointing, just seeing him in his jeans and T-shirt.”

“Very selfish of him,” I say.

“I know—how dare you put clothes on!” she says, and we laugh like kookaburras.

Already I can’t understand how the Reyes family got mixed up with someone who stabbed someone else sixteen times. I open up my manila folder marked
Rankin County Circuit Court
.

“Something I came across in Vincent’s history was that he’d been charged for grand larceny and there was the name Jamie Reyes on the paperwork.”

“Yeah, Daisy kind of dated him,” Jamie says. Daisy looks rueful.

So there she is, sitting on the green couch: the so-called white girlfriend whose existence, according to Vallena, Earnest McBride, and Tina McGee, caused the Klan to seek revenge on Vincent.

“Leave that one out,” says Daisy’s stepfather. I think he’s having a go at me, but he’s just telling Jamie to leave the iced tea pitcher out.

I start reading aloud from my well-smudged
Jackson Advocate
: “Vincent McGee. Sent to prison at seventeen for dating a white girl.”

Jamie and Daisy laugh.

“That’s so funny,” says Jamie, “because Daisy’s not even white. Her dad’s Mexican.”

For Vallena and Tina, though—black women who grew up in Mississippi, without many in-between people—that’s still white, just like Richard’s still Klan. I continue with Tina McGee’s telling of events:
Vincent had a white girlfriend. And he and his friends had gone to her parents’ house for the weekend. I don’t know if the parents were gone or what, but some of the other people at the house said that Vincent stole some Mexican money or something. There were other people in the house, but they said Vincent took it, and they charged him with grand larceny and he got five years. They didn’t prove that he did nothin’.

This is not how Daisy and Jamie remember it.

“I have a little journal I wrote everything down in,” Daisy says.

She leaves and returns with an exercise book.

This is pretty much the exact scene in
Capote
where the friend of the dead girl retrieves the diary for Truman.

The pages are covered front and back with big-loop, schoolgirl handwriting. The journal is headed:
WEEK FROM HELL
.

Daisy’s “week from hell” really spanned two to three weeks, or six months I suppose, or continues now, if you want to look at it that way. Regardless, the time between meeting Vincent for the first time and him
landing in Rankin County Jail was under three weeks. This is three years ago, when Daisy was sixteen.

Daisy had been hanging out with a black girl from school called Jasmine. They had gone to Battlefield Park.

“A horrible part of town,” Daisy tells me. “Part of Jackson. It used to be just a big park, ball fields. But the area around it, I mean, it’s horrible. It’s just drug- and crime-ridden.” There had been several murders in that park, just in broad daylight.

“So is ‘Battlefield’ a bit of a joke name for it?”

“No, that’s what it’s really called.” A Civil War thing, apparently. (Of course.)

Vincent was with a black kid called Patrick. The two boys slid up to Daisy and Jasmine.

“Vincent had a beautiful smile,” Daisy says. “And that’s one thing that I notice about people when I first meet them, is their smile. I mean, if they keep their mouths clean. That’s the easiest thing to do.”

I gently tighten my lips lest my smile be judged.

Her
WEEK FROM HELL
catalogs other things she spotted on Vincent’s face.

Star tattoo between eyebrows

2 stars below right eye

Playboy bunny on right side of mouth

Teardrop & butterfly below left eye

Do-rag and black bandanna tied in back

“We are two young girls in a little white car, you know, with chrome rims,” Daisy says. “We just got to talking and exchanged numbers, and I think he called me later that night, and he was like, ‘I want to hang out with you.’”

“He probably thought:
Okay, this girl, she’s driving a really nice car, maybe she’s got a little money
,” Jamie says.

The next few times Daisy saw Vincent, each time he had a different vehicle. And there was always one window bumped out.

Soon, as
WEEK FROM HELL
catalogs, Daisy got to see under Vincent McGee’s T-shirt:

2 bullet scars on shoulder & back of neck

Scar on spine in middle of back, going west to east, maybe 2 inches

That’s the first I’ve heard of Vincent having been shot. I wonder if he really has?

“I guess he had a lot of women, or whatever you want to say, you know, in his life,” Daisy says. “So I think that’s what drew me to him, was the confidence just in himself. In the sense that,
I can get whoever I want to get, no matter, with no issues
.”

Just as Daisy met Vincent, her family left town for a vacation: her mum, Mexican Dad, and a cousin of Mexican Dad. Daisy had a holiday job, so it sounded normal, responsible even, when she told her parents, “Well, I’m going to stay here and work.”

Back then the Reyeses lived on the county line, down Highway 49, part of Rankin County. It was the middle of nowhere, surrounded by woods.

Hours after the Reyeses left for their vacation, Vincent, Jasmine, and Patrick moved into the house in the woods.

Maybe a week after they had started going out (if that was what was happening), Vincent called Daisy from a hotel in Jackson and said he wanted her to come over.

The hotel was run-down. Might not even get one star. Daisy pushed through the doors of the soiled lobby, where an actual flea jumped on her
leg, and then pushed through the doors of the indoor pool area. In the fog and moist air, about to splash in, were Patrick and Jasmine. Cuddling up in the corner of the pool were Vincent and some girl.

“Why did you call me out here?! What are you doing?!” Daisy’s questions echoed off the walls.

“He pulled me aside,” Daisy says. “And he was like, ‘This is my girlfriend, but she’s not really my girlfriend—she goes out and makes money for me.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean by that, I don’t understand what you mean.’ And he said, ‘Well, I send her to do things and she does them and I get money.’ And I thought that was a little strange, so we kind of argued a little bit and then I was ready to leave.”

But Vincent grabbed her phone so she couldn’t leave. The mysterious girl pulled herself out of the pool. She had scratches and scabs, like road burn, all over her elbows and knees.

Daisy realized she’d seen a picture of this girl in Vincent’s room. He had said her name was China.

“Was China her nickname because she was Chinese?” I ask.

Daisy nods.

I tell her what the investigators told me. Vincent’s first time in juvenile detention was because he’d beaten an Asian girlfriend to a pulp and threatened to cut her with a knife.

Daisy tells me that Vincent had said China had thrown herself out of a moving car in an attempt to abort a baby. Daisy didn’t ask whether it was Vincent’s baby.

“Are Asian people common in Jackson?” I ask, entertaining the possibility Vincent had two Asian girlfriends.

“Not common at all,” Daisy tells me.

Back at the pool, screams ricocheted from wall to wall: Daisy screaming at Vincent to give her phone back, Jasmine screaming at Vincent, China screaming at Jasmine to stop screaming at Vincent. Then China moved on to Daisy.

“You need to quit calling Vincent,” screamed China. “I don’t know what you’re doing!”

“He’s calling me!” yelled Daisy. “You know I’m never making a phone call. I don’t know which number to call. He calls me from a different number each time.”