God'll Cut You Down (35 page)

My face tightens. I’m flustered by Sherrie’s sharp turn into these vivid details. Is Sherrie speculating? Has Vincent talked to her?

“How do you know that?” I say.

“Because I don’t think he could be the one lickin’ anything, you know?”

I blurt an awkward laugh. Sherrie and Justin laugh at my laugh. Sherrie makes another sharp turn.

“If you notice the door on that house, they had bars on them,” Sherrie says. “If you don’t have the keys to those, you cannot get out of the house. So I think the only reason that Vincent would react that way is if everything was locked, you know, and the man had, you know, like, some kind of weapon and telling him, ‘I’m going to do this and do that,’ and Vincent had to do it in order to get out alive.”

I think about Vincent telling me what happened and the feeling that there was something missing from the story of who did what first. What was the spark—did it originate in sex, or race, or money? They’re the
three questions I had in Melbourne. But after asking them for so long, I’ve come to wonder whether they’re really three different questions at all. They
are
for the lawyers: When I asked Michael Guest whether there was a race factor to the crime, he said that would be a third explanation, after Vincent’s other explanations involving sex and money. But I don’t know that they are for Vincent, or were for Richard. For them, I think they’re all the same question. Everything I’ve found out seems to show that for both Richard and Vincent, race, sex, and money were all intertwined. They were all about power.

Tina drifts in the doorway from outside. Her eyes meet the lilies in the vase and her face washes over with delight. The flowers overrule any apprehension she has about me. She pulls out the purple envelope tied to the vase with a white ribbon.

“I thought I’d give you one of these, too,” I say. I hand her a copy of the affidavit and blabber out the Daniel Earl Cox adventure once again. “It kind of validates what you said happened. Who knows? It might come in handy one day.”

“Okay.” She smiles. “Thank you.”

I leave Tina to read the card Vincent dictated to his secretary, John Safran, while clomping around his cell in Meridian at the East Mississippi prison for the criminally insane.

Dear Mom,

I’m glad that you’ve been down with me during the good times and the bad times.

You made me a better man by letting me learn the hard way.

And I’m thankful every day that you’re still here with me.

With Undying Love,
Your son Vincent

I found my way into one more house before I left Tina’s street. I saw a man getting his mail, began chatting, and he invited me in.

The investigator Tim Lawless told me there was a black man who cried when he told him Richard Barrett had died. That black man is Moses. He’s sitting on the couch with his wife, Michelle. Why was Moses fond of him? Moses says Richard helped him with a legal matter, a civil one. That he was a nice man. And—this I almost can’t believe—Richard didn’t charge him! But there was more than that.

“Summertime,” Michelle says, “he would stop and visit with my mother.”

“Is your mother still alive?” I ask.

“Uh-huh,” Michelle says. “She’s in the nursing home. He came and sat and talked with her. He wasn’t a person in the neighborhood that you were scared of because he didn’t bother nobody.”

“Why do you think he chose your mother to speak to?”

“I don’t know. He was a peculiar person, and I guess he just decided that she was all right and didn’t hold no prejudice toward him for what people said and what he was portrayed to be.”

Richard the white supremacist sitting with the old black lady at the nursing home. That image will stick in my mind as surely as Richard’s body lying out on the lawn.

Giles Farm is up this way, and I’m not sure I’ll be here again. I creep up Jim’s dirt path one last time to say good-bye. I catch him carrying a Netflix envelope from his mailbox to his trailer. He seems happy to see me. We have a chuckle over the time Earnest accidentally endorsed him
in the
Jackson Advocate
, confusing him with a black candidate called Giles.

“Yeah, that was funny,” Jim says.

He wishes me luck with my book and tells me my next one should be about the Parkers, the white family murdered in 1990. I eye his Netflix envelope and ask him what DVD he’s rented. He tells me he can’t remember, but it’s clear to me he can. He slinks off to his trailer. One more secret. Why not?

Okay. Pulled into the dust outside the shack. Clothes hung on the barbed-wire fence stretched out front. A homemade wheelchair ramp ran up to the doorway. A brown dog yawned at me. There was a cat figure-eighting my legs as I knocked on the door. An old man opened. I said, “Hey, these are for Erma. Does Erma live here?” Behind him a young-looking woman in a black T-shirt was stretched out on a mattress without a sheet, watching a staticky TV.

“This is Erma,” said the old man.

I felt like I’d walked into someone taking a shower. I say, “Vincent wanted me to pass these on to you,” she says, “Thank you,” and I say, “Cool. Okay. No worries. See ya.”

I heard her fingers tearing the purple envelope as I pulled the door shut.

Dear Grandma,

I know I’ve made mistakes. But every day I’ve strived to be a better man.

I seek knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. And everything I do is for you.

I remember all the lessons you taught me and I love you to death.

Hopefully I’ll get back to the streets and be the upstanding man you want me to be.

I’m praying for you every day.

Love your grandson,
Vincent

“Hey, Chywanna,” I say into the phone—yes, Vincent’s mysterious woman was her. “How are you?”

“Okay,” she says.

“Hey, I just thought I’d ring you up because I dropped off something from Vincent, but you weren’t there to tell you about it.”

She says nothing.

“Hello?” I say.

“No, I got it,” she says.

“Oh, yeah, sure. But I just wanted to . . . Because I was in a bit of . . . I didn’t really . . . I was a bit uncomfortable about it because obviously Vincent’s in jail and stuff. But he asked me to do it, and I thought I’d do it as a favor or whatever. But I just . . . yeah. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t uncomfortable about it.”

“No.”

“Okay, cool. Sorry. Yeah, yeah. ’Cause I just . . . yeah, ’cause as I said on the phone last time, even though on the one hand, you know, I like Vincent and, you know, he’s fun to talk to and everything, he is, like, obviously a murderer, so that’s why I obviously . . . I felt a bit uncomfortable about just leaving the flowers there ’cause it might have seemed threatening to you or something.”

“No. I’m fine.”

“Okay, cool. I’m . . . Well, as long as you didn’t feel threatened by
getting flowers from a guy who’s in prison for killing someone, then that’s good. Yes. Okay.”

“So . . . okay.”

“Okay. No, that . . . I just . . . yeah, I just wanted to make sure that you weren’t, like, scared or anything like that.”

“Oh, no. It was fine.”

“Okay, cool. Okay, excellent. Okay, see you later.”

“All right.”

What would Janet Malcolm think?

THE RING

M
aybe because I’m leaving tomorrow, everyone in Mississippi has rolled on down the road and left me here. There are new dramas. New murders. I bumped into investigators Tim Lawless and Wayne Humphreys today at lunch. They told me they’d just driven interstate to retrieve a human head. Things have come a long way since the DA wouldn’t let me peek in his manila folder the first time I stopped by. Now he’s letting me watch Vincent’s interrogation room footage, alone, on a computer in his boardroom.

Michael Dent’s mother, Vicky, is boxed in a white cube. She sits in a chair in a pink-and-white-striped jumpsuit, a desk before her. The camera angle, high and pointing down, means only the investigator’s fingers, resting on the desk, have made the shot. It is Trip Bayles.

“My boy Michael never went down the house!” she pleads. “Vincent did!”

“Vincent did it all?” asks Trip.

“He did it all, baby!”

“Let me give you some history,” Trip says. “Has anybody told you this? You saw it on the news, right?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you learn about the dead man on the news?”

“That he was a good man and he tried to help people.”

“Is that what you saw on the news?”

“Just saw a bit,” Vicky concedes.

“He was a white supreme-ist.”

Vicky leans in. “I don’t know what that means,” she says seriously.

“That means he didn’t like black people very much.”

“Well, I like everyone.”

“Me too,” says Trip. “They one of those people that perform with the skinheads,” Trip says. “You ever heard of that?”

“No.”

“They’re really extreme racist white people.”

“Oh, well,” says Vicky, “that’s his business. Long as he doesn’t mess with me, I love him.”

“Well, he was one of them. You think Vincent killed him because of that?”

“Maybe . . .” she says doubtfully, shaking her head. “I tell you the truth.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“I say Vincent killed that man and if he would have got away with it he would have killed another man.”

“You think so?”

“Baby, look at his eyes. That tells you everything.”

“I haven’t talked to him,” Trip says. “Why do you think he killed him? To rob him or something?”

Vicky shoos that away with her hand and leans in again.

“He did it just to kill a man,” she says, then explains her reasoning. “They say when he was little he worked for the man and he gives a dollar. And they say on the news he’s mad ’cause this time he gave him twenty-six dollars. If someone gives you a dollar in the first beginning, why you go work for them again?”

Now I’ve been given another explanation. Vincent needed to get a
killing out of his system, and he knew Richard would rip him off, giving him the excuse.

Vincent is slumped in the chair in his yellow jumpsuit in the white cube. This is ten hours after Vincent tried to light up the crummy little house. Trip Bayles’s fingers tap on the desk.

“All right, man, tell me how it is,” says Trip.

“This is the story, man,” Vincent says.

“Let me hear it.”

“Ah, I went down to his house—I’m telling the truth, can you give me a plea, man?”

“We’ll see what we can do.”

“A plea, you know what I’m sayin’? Something I try and come back out murble, you know what I’m sayin’?” Vincent looks up at the camera. “Is this being recorded?”

“Everything you’re saying is recorded, audio.”

“I need a lawyer here first.”

The door of the interrogation room snaps open. Investigator Tim Lawless bursts in and sits behind the desk. This distracts Vincent from following up on his request for a lawyer. Was that on purpose?

“Me being in the situation I’m in, there ain’t no way out, whether I’m right or wrong,” he says, stressed. “Y’all know what happened, everything I’m gonna tell you is gonna be the truth. Y’all saying I killed the guy, you ain’t got no evidence.”

“Tell us what happened,” Tim Lawless says.

“I didn’t kill nobody, though.”

“Tell me what happened,” says Tim.

“When I left the house, he was still in good health.”

“That’s not according to your momma,” says Trip.

Vincent knows his mother has made a statement to the investigators.

“The whole situation is, Vince, we know what happened. Okay? We know,” says Tim.

“Is there a camera here?” says Vincent, looking up at the camera.

“It is,” says Trip.

“You’ve gotta give me one more cigarette.”

“Well, here’s the deal,” says Tim, “and I ain’t trying to bribe you, ’cause I ain’t doing it. I’ll help you, but you gotta help me. Try to close this out. Take care of something. Sit down and talk. Look, what’s weighing on your mind?”

“I can get another cigarette, though?”

“Oh yes,” says Tim, “I’ll get you another cigarette. I’ve been straight up with you. We tell you we’re going to let you do something, we’re gonna let you do it.”

“Where you gonna put me when I leave outta here?” says Vincent. “I ain’t violent, y’hear?”

“We’re just gonna put you in a cell,” says Tim.

“Like, in the back with the rest of everybody else?”

“Well, yeah,” says Tim. “I mean, you know, I can arrange it if you want me to put you in isolation. I can do that for you. I can put you in the back, back there where it’s just you back there, your own place.”

“No, I wanna be around other people,” says Vincent.

“You want to be around other people?” says Tim.

“I can’t function all by myself,” says Vincent.

“I’ll put you in with three or four folks if that’s what you want,” says Tim.

It breaks my heart that not being left on his own is the best plea bargain he can negotiate.

“Listen, here, okay,” says Vincent. “Okay, I went to the house, you know what I’m sayin’, yesterday. Yesterday. I went to the house. And I was down and I asked him, you know what I’m sayin’, ’cause I’m on Facebook. I asked him about getting on Facebook. And he said yeah. All been approved. And he was like, ‘Vincent, come in here, in the kitchen.’ So I go in the kitchen, where he asked. And he was like, ‘Oh,’ he started
talking weird. He started talking about all types of different kind of things. And I was like—because I ain’t feeling this, because you know what I’m sayin’, he had, like, some type of cord, I don’t know if it was an extension cord or something. He’s trying, he was trying, you know what I’m sayin’—”

“Right,” says Trip.

“He was trying to get me to do sexual favors for him. You know what I’m sayin’? And so I’m, like, I don’t get down like that. I’m like, you know what I’m sayin’, I snap. I ain’t gonna lie to you. I snap. I’m like, ‘You need to get out of my face, y’hear?’ Murble. And so he kind of forced himself upon me. He was taking his pants off. So, he took his clothes off, and he still had his underwear on. And I was like, you know what I’m sayin’, ‘Wha’ murble? Hey, man, get off murble.’ All I’m sayin’, you know what I’m sayin’, he tried, he reached out and grabbed me. He grabbed me and I murble the nearest weapon.”

“What kind of weapon was it?” says Trip.

“A knife.”

“Where was the knife at?” says Trip.

“It was in the kitchen.”

“Where is it now?” says Trip.

“Don’t know.”

“You don’t know what you did with it?” asks Trip.

“Oh, it was so messed up in my mind. I don’t even remember, I was so scared, terrified.”

“I’d be scared, too, man,” says Tim.

“I been so terrified, I didn’t know how to control the situation. I want to go tell, you know what I’m sayin’, the police. I couldn’t, ’cause I know I’d been wrong. Even though in the circumstances I did it, I know I did wrong. I just couldn’t come out and call the police.”

“How many times did you stab him with the knife? Do you remember?” says Trip.

“I just blanked out, it could have been numerous times, could have been one, I don’t even know.”

“Wha-wha-what happened after that?” says Trip.

In a tangle of murbles, Vincent tells Tim and Trip that he didn’t want to get caught up in anything because he was just out of prison and he knew this would get him back in.

“Why did you burn the house down?” says Trip.

“Because I knew what I did was wrong. Even though I did . . . in my mind . . . in my mind I knew I was protecting myself, I knew I was doing wrong.”

“Did this man ever try to do this before to you?” says Trip. “When you were a young boy, when you worked for him years ago when you were seventeen? Did he molest you then?”

“He used to touch on me.”

“He ever make you perform sex on him?” says Trip. “Said he was going to kill you? Hurt you? What’s the deal with that?”

“You know what I’m sayin’, he used to tell me about some guy that died, he was the only black person he knew, he used to work for him, he used to help him out. And I used to think he was just talking about work. Until one day he just rubbed on my inner thigh, he tried to grab my manhood, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“When did he start doing this type of stuff to you?” says Trip. “How many years ago?”

“I was young. I was, ah, about, ah, when it first happened about seventeen, eighteen.”

“How much money would he give you when he’d try to touch you, so you wouldn’t go and tell folks? Did he ever pay you money to keep you quiet?”

“One time he give me two, three hundred.”

“Who’d do that type of stuff?” Tim says, disgusted at Richard.

“He’d be asking me about neighbors and how they’d be acting,” Vincent says. “And I’d tell him they seemed like nice people, but not the kind of people I hang out with, and then I told him I’d been to the penitentiary. He started asking about ‘Is it rough in there?’ He was like, ‘Are there homosexuals?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And he was like, ‘Where do
they keep them there?’ And I was like, ‘You know, most of them murble discreet, people don’t like them in the population.’ I knew then that he was trying to make sexual advances again. You know what I’m sayin’, he used to always try to get me to do him.”

“Man,” says Tim. “Well, tried to make him do you from behind? That kind of crap?”

“I ain’t like that, though,” Vincent says, not really answering the question.

“I—I know, I’m with you,” says Tim. “Something wrong with that man, I’m with you, brother. That man, doing those type of things, that ain’t
right
. I want you to know, that that wasn’t right, what that man was doing to you, what that man was trying to do to you, was
wrong
.”

“I know I did wrong. I know, I know I did wrong, but I was trying to protect myself. He was trying to—I don’t know how far he would have went. He grabbed me around my neck. I got scratches, he scratched me, he tried to force me, you know what I’m sayin’, do sexual favors with him. I was provoked—I’m not a bad person, I was provoked. Minding my business, I got on Facebook. I’d shown him some of my pictures. He wanted to see my pictures on Facebook. And if you look on there, I got a lot of pictures with my shirt off. And I’m like, he was looking at my pictures and stuff, and I don’t know if they could have turned him on or whatever, know what I’m sayin’? That’s when he called me up to the kitchen. And he wanted to know . . . murble.”

“That’s messed up,” says Trip.

“Sure is,” says Tim. “Let’s have a cigarette, let’s smoke.”

The tape cuts to four days later.

A shaky camera follows Tim, Trip, and shackled Vincent, stamping across Richard Barrett’s lawn. There’s something there that had been removed by the time I snooped months later. Thick Greek columns frame the front door and the back door. More of these columns are placed around the house to give the impression they are holding up the roof. Richard’s apparent attempt to turn his crummy little house into a Southern mansion. They arrive at the back door.

“Did you knock on the door, Vincent?” asks Tim. “Or did . . . How did you get in? I mean, did you know or was it unlocked?”

“He let me in. Yeah.”

“He know you were comin’ or didya knock?”

“He knew I was comin’.”

I’m inside the house for the first time. Sunlight cuts through the window shades, but it’s dark overall. A flashlight beam rolls onto Vincent. He stands in a tiny kitchen area.

“This is where we got, right here, that’s where I had . . .”

“Is this where you were sitting on top of his back?” Trip asks.

The camera pans down to a red blotch on the floor the size of a Richard Barrett.

“Murble,” Vincent says. “Remember he had a knife,” he adds, “he was tryin’ to use a knife on me.”

“Where’d he get his knife from?” Trip says.

“I guess it been here.” He motions. “I think it was over on the counter at first. When he had the knife, I grab his arm and bend his arm, and the knife drop. And then, you know what I’m sayin’, I tried to restrain him.”

Vincent pokes his tongue when he says that.

“So I grabbed his belt. And he was on the ground, his pants were already off when he was on the ground. I grabbed his belt and I tried to tie his arm up. And know what I’m sayin’, he kept struggling. All he kept sayin’ was, ‘Let me get to the room.’ And I’m thinking,
If he gets to the room he gonna shoot me or kill me or somethin’.
Well, that’s when, know what I’m sayin’, I blanked out. Just started usin’ the knife I had.”

“Now, you brought a knife down here with you?”

“Yo.” Vincent tries to pull the “yo” back into his mouth. “No. It was already there.”

Trip turns and grins to the camera.

The three shuffle down the kitchen area, a corridor more than a kitchen. The flashlight rolls over this, then that, then that. Clay pot on top of the fridge. Cane stool on its side. Metal bin tipped over.

Vincent guides us through the dark to Richard Barrett’s master
bedroom. Vincent lifts his cuffed hands and flicks on the light. A four-poster bed appears. It’s gorgeous and looks antique. The cloth canopy over it is frilled around the edges, with a golden tassel hanging at each corner. It doesn’t belong in such a small room.

“I see this didn’t burn so good,” Vincent says.