LOVING HER SOUL MATE (41 page)

“That’s my girl,” John said, as
lines of age appeared on the side of his eyes.
 
And once again that feeling of inadequacy, of not being good enough for
her, began to overtake him.
 
He squeezed
her arms.
 
“Take care of
yourself
out there,” he said, kissed her hard on the mouth,
and then pressed the button.

SIXTEEN

Over the next three months Shay
did take care of herself, working stories for the Brady Beast that quickly
moved her to the top of the heap of Beast reporters.
 
Not that it was much competition.
 
Most of the reporters who worked there
weren’t very good to begin with, and those who did have it in them were already
burned out shells of what they used to be.
 

But Shay was soaring.
 
Almost every story she wrote ended up with
the choice byline at the head of the page.
 
Paige began to rely on her more and more, giving her only the best
stories to cover to begin with, which only added to her meteoric rise to the
top.
 
John was pleased with her success,
but he also continued to caution her about the Beast.
 
It had a way, he once said, of eating its
own.
 
Don’t get caught up in the
drama.
 
One false move and they’d kick
her to the curb faster than she could blink.

Shay smiled when he said that, and
kept working hard.
 

And she was also constantly
working the Glazer story, attempting to find a new angle, a new wrinkle,
something new.
 
She interviewed his
parents, his respectable friends, his drug addicted friends.
 
But everywhere she looked, every lead she
followed, turned out to be a dead end.
  
And his trial date was fast approaching.
  

Her relationship with John was
also a major part of her existence.
 
They
both were working their brains out, sometimes fourteen hour days for each of
them.
  
But they always made time to have
dinner together at least a few times every week.
 
No matter what.
 
Either at Shay’s home or
John’s, or sometimes at a fancy restaurant.
 
They’d always enjoy a meal and talk about
anything, everything, except their work.
 
They didn’t want to bring the work into it.
 
And it was a wonderful idea.
 
Until, two days before the Glazer trial was
set to begin, Shay received two phone calls that instantly changed their
calculations.

She was working at her desk in the
newsroom of the Brady Beast.
 
It was a
story about a septic tank leak over on the south side that had many residents
smelling the stink for days on end.
 
Shay
was dramatizing their plight.
 
Her story,
which she was already told would be the lead for tomorrow’s paper, had to have
a lot of human drama enfolded into it.
 
So she was working feverishly on that end of the story, when her desk
phone rang.
 
She quickly
answered,
her eyes still on her computer screen.

“Turner,” she said quickly.

“It’s me, babe, hi,” John replied.

She smiled, and leaned back.
 
“Well, hello there, stranger.”
 
They hadn’t been able to see each other for
nearly a week.
 
She understood: the
Glazer trial was coming up in two days and he and his men had been working
overtime to prepare for any community unrest that might occur.
 
“What’s up?”

“A dinner party, at Mayor Fletchette’s,
tonight.”

“Okay,” Shay said slowly.
 
Surely this bit of news had nothing to do
with her.

“I’ve been told, by none other
than the mayor himself, that my attendance is mandatory.”

“Really?
 
That’s kind of high
school.”

“And if that phrase doesn’t fit
our beloved mayor,” John said, “I don’t know what does.”

Shay laughed.

“Anyway, I want you with me.”

Shay’s heart dropped.
 
It would be the first time they would be
stepping out on the Brady social scene.
 
And to let their first
time occur
at such a
high-profile event.
 
“You sure, John?”
she asked him.

“I’m positive.
 
I want you with me.”
 
He exhaled.
 
“I know you wanted to keep a low profile, babe, I know.
 
But I don’t want to hide the best thing about
me under the radar.
 
I want you with
me.
 
Out in public.
 
On my arm.”

Shay smiled.
 
He was certain.
 
“Then I shall be with you.”

She could tell that he smiled
too.
 
“That’s my girl,” he said the way
he always said it, they talked a little small talk, and then hung up.

Shay hadn’t hung up the phone five
minutes when it rang again.
 
And once
again it was a police chief.
 
But it
wasn’t John.

“Chief Cobber, did you say?” she
asked as the man on the other end of the phone had a deep-southern voice.

“Cobbler,” he said, “with an L.”

“And you’re the police chief in
Hurley, Mississippi?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Shay had never heard of Hurley,
Mississippi.
 
Why in the world would its’
chief of police be calling her?
 
“How may
I help you?”

“It’s about that fellow you have
in your jail there, that Willie Glazer fellow.”

Shay hesitated.
 
“What about him?”

“Well, it’s kind of embarrassing
really.
 
But here goes anyway.
 
I’m calling because I had him in my jail for
two whole weeks.”

“And?”

“And then I let him go.
 
He wasn’t the car thief we were looking for.”

Car thief?
 
Now Shay was
confused.
 
“I don’t understand.”

“What I’m saying is that he
couldn’t have killed three of those thirteen girls y’all saying he killed.
 
He was in my custody when three of those
girls were killed.”

Shay’s heart began to pound.
 
“He was in your jail---”

“For two straight weeks, that’s
right, the same two weeks y’all saying three of those girls were killed.
 
There’s no way he could have killed
them.
 
At least not
them
three.”

Shay could hardly believe it.
 
“And you have proof of all of this?”

“I’m looking at my records right
now.”

Shay’s heart began to pound with
excitement.
 
But then she remembered
John’s words of caution.
 
Don’t get
caught up in the drama, he’d told her.
 
So she exhaled, and slowed this train down.
 

“Now wait a minute,” she
said.
 
“We’ve had Glazer incarcerated for
nearly a year now.
 
There’s been article
after article, news story after news story about him and his alleged
crimes.
 
Yet you wait two days before his
trial to come forward with this rather startling information?”

“I know.
 
That’s why I’m embarrassed.
 
I never put two and two together.
 
We don’t follow the story closely here in
Mississippi, mind, like y’all following it in Alabama.
 
But we do follow it.
 
And I was following it.
 
But I never put two and two together until I
saw this channel 9
broadcast
here that said his full
name.
 
It was the first time I learned
his full name.
 
And that’s when I
remembered.
 
I didn’t remember his face,
but I remembered that name.
 
I remembered
how strung out on drugs he was.
 
He was
like a drifter and was hitch-hiking around with some other druggies, but
apparently the others had moved on.
 
He
was too high to keep going and that’s when I found him, high as a kite on the
street. I thought he was the guy who had stolen a car from this car lot earlier
that night.
 
That’s why I arrested
him.
 
When I caught the real thief, I let
him go.
 
I never thought about that guy
again, until I heard his full name on Channel 9.
 
And I checked it out.”

The man had said a mouthful.
 
Shay didn’t even know where to begin.
 
She didn’t even know Glazer’s full name. “I’m
a little confused, sir.”

“Okay, let me make myself
clearer.
 
Glazer’s full name is William
Cletis Glazer.
 
It’s the Cletis that I
remembered.”

“Why would you remember Cletis?”

“Because that’s my name, too,” the
chief said and Shay’s heart began to pound again.
 
Because it made perfect
sense.
 
Although
his name, Cletis Cobbler, didn’t.
 

“So you heard his middle name,
remembered you had a guy locked up once with that middle name, and you checked
your records?”

“That’s right.
 
That’s when I saw it.
 
It was William Cletis Glazer.
 
I remembered talking to him about his middle
name.
 
He was too strung out on drugs to
talk to me, though.
 
But it’s not that
common a name, not even here in Mississippi.
 
And it was spelled the same way mine was spelled.”

It sounded too good to be
true.
 
But if it was, Shay couldn’t help
but thinking, she could win a Pulitzer for something this big.

“Why didn’t you go to the Brady
police, sir, if you have this evidence?”

“Because I’m a cop myself,
miss.
 
Yeah, Hurley is small, I’ll grant
you that.
 
We’re a predominately black
town with only three hundred residents.
 
We’re small as small can get.
 
But
I’m a cop and I know how cops can be.
 
I
don’t want my evidence disappearing before you have a chance to see it.
 
And I know it sounds far-fetched, but believe
me, I’m a cop.
 
It happens.”

Shay nodded.
 
She believed him.
 
“Can I drive over now, sir, and see your
records for myself?”

“You can drive over, but not
now.
 
I’m closing shop for today.
 
But drive over tomorrow morning.
 
I’ll be here.”

Shay got the address from the
chief, hung up the phone, and then contacted Glazer’s attorney to get some info
on one sticking point.
 
Then she hurried
to Paige’s office.
 
When she
laid
out what she had, Paige sat down.

“Do you believe him?” she asked
Shay.

“I don’t know.
 
Glazer did confess to those killings.”

“A confession,” Paige reminded
Shay, “he now says he was forced into making.”

“I know.
 
I plan to check the story out, at any
rate.
 
But I have my doubts.”

“So do
I
,”
Paige said, “which is a good thing.
 
And
there’s still the question of why Glazer didn’t mention this arrest if it
occurred when this chief says it occurred.”

“Glazer did mention it,” Shay
said.
 
“That’s the intriguing part.
 
I just got off of the phone with his
attorney, because I had that same question in my mind too.
 
But according to the attorney, Glazer did
tell him about being arrested.
 
Only Glazer
believed he was locked up in a jail in Georgia at the time of some of those
killings.
 
He didn’t remember the town or
anything
else,
just that he believed it was
Georgia.
 
And he was so high and then so
sick from being forced to detox back then that he didn’t remember much of any
of it.
 
But his attorney tried to get
info anyway.
 
He contacted every Georgia
jail they could find.
 
And he found out
that Glazer had been in a Georgia jail all right, but he had been there over
five years ago.
  
Long
 
before
any of those girls were
killed.
 
So that was that.”