“I know,” Lena said, because it sounded like what Charlotte needed to hear.
“I’ve been with other men, Lee. It’s not like I just haven’t met the right one.”
“I’m sorry,” Lena apologized. “I wasn’t saying that.”
Charlotte looked at her hands. Her wedding ring was a rock, glittering in the crappy trailer. A man didn’t buy a woman a ring like that unless he was head over heels in love. She told Lena, “When Larry and I first started dating, he knew that I was getting over someone. He just didn’t know it was a woman.”
Lena had been the sighted one, but she’d ended up being more blind than her sister. Sitting in Hank’s shack of an office, reading Charlotte’s deepest feelings, Lena had remembered all the times Sibyl had shut the door to their room, asking Lena to leave her and Charlotte alone so that they could study. Lena had never guessed exactly what they had been studying.
For years, Lena had blamed Sibyl’s lesbianism on Nan Thomas, the woman she had been living with when she died. It had taken a long time for Lena to accept that her sister’s sexuality was not going to change. Lena had even developed a kind of friendship with Nan. Somewhere in the back of her mind, though, Lena had still thought of Sibyl as some innocent who had unwittingly been plucked from the straight world. If it had started as far back as Charlotte Warren, then her whole notion of why Sibyl had changed was thrown out the window.
The truth was that Sibyl hadn’t changed at all. She had always been that way, only Lena had been too stupid to see it.
Lena asked, “Does your husband know that you’re in AA?”
“It’s kind of hard to hide when you get suspended from your job for being drunk.” She laughed, though there was nothing funny about what she was saying. “This was back when I was in the building instead of stuck out here in the trailer park. I fell flat on my face in full view of the newspaper staff. If it wasn’t for Swallowin’ Sue I would’ve lost my job.” She smiled. “I guess you could argue that it was the middle of the year and it’s nearly impossible to find anyone who’s willing to teach anymore, but I like to think she let me continue teaching because she believes in me.”
“You’re acting like this is all some kind of joke.”
“Oh, Lee. If I didn’t laugh about it, I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning.”
“Why did you start drinking?”
“Because it was a slower, more socially acceptable way to kill myself.” She added, “And it helped anesthetize me. I didn’t want to feel anything.”
“That’s the same thing you just said about Hank.”
“Yes. It is.” Charlotte’s throat worked. Now that she was looking at Lena, she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of her. “You’re so much like Sibby, you know?”
Lena shook her head. “I don’t look like her anymore.”
“It’s inside,” Charlotte insisted, holding her hand to her chest. “Y’all were always the same inside, too.”
Lena had to laugh. “Sibyl was nothing like me. I was in trouble all the time. They probably have a chair outside the principal’s office named after me.”
“She was just better at getting away with it,” Charlotte countered. “Remember how she used to mouth off to Coach Hanson in biology class?”
Lena felt herself smiling. “She ran circles around him. He hated her guts.”
“Remember that awful music she used to listen to? God, she had such a crush on Joan Jett.”
“Was it Sibyl who—I mean, was she the one who—” Lena felt her face turning beet red. “Christ. Never mind.”
“It was mutual,” Charlotte supplied. “We were both studying on the bed. We had the window open and it started raining outside and I reached over to close it and one thing led to another and it just…happened.”
Lena felt her stomach drop. Sibyl’s bed was by the wall. They had made out on Lena’s bed.
“Are you okay?”
Lena nodded, trying to block the image that came to her mind.
Charlotte took Lena’s reaction the wrong way. “She never thought you would accept her.”
“I didn’t,” Lena admitted, feeling a familiar sadness. “I do now, but I didn’t when it mattered.”
“She knew you loved her, Lee. She never doubted that.” Charlotte stood and walked over to the window. “What’s Nan like?”
“Nan?” Lena echoed. “How do you know about Nan?”
“She called me when Sibyl died.”
“Oh.” Lena felt ashamed for not making the call herself.
Charlotte seemed to pick up on this. “You had a lot going on, Lee. Don’t worry.”
“I should have let you know. You were…” Lena didn’t know how to characterize Sibyl’s relationship with Charlotte. “I should have called you.”
“She sounds kind of snooty on the phone.”
“Nan?” Lena shrugged. “Not really. Sometimes she gets prickly, but she’s okay most of the time. I lived with her for a while.”
“Hank told me,” Charlotte said. “We had a good laugh over that one.”
Lena felt her stomach drop. “What else did Hank tell you about me?”
“That he was worried about you. That there was this guy you were seeing who was really bad, and he was worried you wouldn’t get away from him.” She paused, hesitating before adding, “That he went to Atlanta with you.”
A lump came to Lena’s throat. “Is that why he started using again? Because I…” Lena couldn’t say the word, couldn’t talk about what had happened at the women’s clinic.
“Listen to me,” Charlotte ordered, her tone sharp. She waited until Lena looked up. “You cannot make someone use drugs, just like you can’t make them stop. You don’t have that much power over Hank or anybody else. Hank started using again for his own reasons.”
She sounded just like one of his AA pamphlets. “Did he tell you his reasons?”
Charlotte shook her head again. “Mostly, he just listened to me. I was so wrapped up in myself that I didn’t see what was going on with him until it was too late.”
“When did he start back?”
“I’d guess three months ago, maybe four or five if he started slow.”
“Did he say anything in your meetings?”
“I can’t tell you what he said in meetings, Lena. You know that.” She held up her hands, as if to stop the next question. “I can tell you that two months ago he told me that he couldn’t be my sponsor anymore. I was hurt, I didn’t really question him like I should have because I was too busy feeling angry and rejected. Part of me was glad when he didn’t show up at the next meeting or any of the ones after that. Sometimes, he’d drive over to the ones in Carterson and I just assumed he was going to those.”
Carterson was about fifty miles away, not a long drive for someone like Hank, who liked to be on the open road.
Lena asked, “When did you realize he had stopped going to meetings?”
“A few weeks ago. I got over myself and asked a friend in Carterson to tell Hank I said hi and she told me she hadn’t seen him in forever.”
“Did you ever see a white SUV outside his house?”
“No.” She added, “Larry and I go for walks after supper. We pass by Hank’s almost every night. I’ve never seen anyone there. As a matter of fact, I wondered if you had come to get him. His car was in the driveway, but there were never any lights on except the usual one in the kitchen.”
Hank always left the kitchen light on as a deterrent to thieves; not a good strategy if the entire neighborhood knew the trick.
Lena asked, “When did you last see him?”
“Four days ago—that’s why I called you. He was outside trying to fix his mailbox. Somebody put a cherry bomb in it, probably one of those kids from a couple of streets over getting a head start on Halloween. Larry offered to help but Hank cursed at him, told us both to go away, so we did.”
Lena mulled this over. “He’s been holed up in his house for how many months and the only
thing that got him outside was a broken mailbox?”
“He was so high, Lee. I’m surprised he could stand up on his own, let alone walk the twenty feet to his mailbox. His skin was awful. He obviously hadn’t bathed in a while. A fool could see what he’s doing.”
“Which is?”
“Trying to end it.”
Lena felt her voice catch. “End his life?”
Charlotte shrugged. “End his misery, maybe.”
“What’s changed? What happened that set him off?”
“I have no idea. That’s the truth. My focus every day when I get up is not taking another drink. I’m an alcoholic. We’re not known for our altruism.”
Lena doubted that was the case with Charlotte. She pressed, “But you saw he was having problems two, maybe three months ago?”
“I don’t know,” Charlotte admitted. “Maybe I saw that he was depressed or preoccupied or acting differently, but all I cared about was me. School had started back and I was in this hellhole with kids snickering behind my back and teachers snickering in front of it. I was struggling to stay sober. My focus was on what would keep me on the right path.” She held out her hands as if she were helpless. “By the time I realized something was wrong with him, it was too late. He wouldn’t talk to me, he wouldn’t return my phone calls, he wouldn’t answer the door. He just kept telling me to leave him alone and let him do what he wanted to do.”
Lena was familiar with the refrain. “That’s when you started writing him the letters?”
“Yes.” She paused, lost in her own thoughts. “It was awkward at first, but then when he didn’t write back it was almost freeing. I just wrote whatever I wanted. I’ve never done that before, just said what was on my mind.”
“You talk a lot about Sibyl, what it was like when you were together.” Some of the passages had been so hard to read that Lena had found herself staring out the window, lost in another time. Charlotte had managed to capture the essence of Sibyl: her good nature, her loving kindness. Even after Lena had finished reading the letters, the feelings had stuck with her, so that it was almost like Sibyl was alive again.
Charlotte said, “Hank is the only one who knew about her. Us. What we felt for each other, that it was love and not something grotesque.” She leaned her back against the window, arms crossed low over her waist. “But you know what? A long time ago, he asked me what would’ve happened if Sibyl and I had made it work. I could have transferred to Georgia Tech, you know. They wouldn’t have offered me a full ride like they did with Sibby but I was already in college, doing pretty well, making the honor roll. I was miserable living with my folks and having to drive back and forth to Milledgeville. I could’ve transferred and gotten a job in Atlanta or got student loans or something to make it happen, but I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I guess it scared me. Everything scared me back then. Atlanta’s so big, so anonymous. I felt safe here. And it would’ve killed my parents.”
“It was easier for us to leave home than it was for you,” Lena tried. “Your folks were—”
“My folks would’ve never talked to me again if I’d followed her to Atlanta. They caught us together once. Did you know that?” Lena shook her head, shocked that Sibyl had never told her. “It was fall break of my sophomore year and Sibby was about to go off to Tech. My parents were supposed to be visiting my aunt Jeannie for the day but they got into a fight. They were always fighting back then. This was around the time Mother found out he’d been screwing Mrs. Ford from the church for about the last five years.” She laughed at the irony. “So, they came back early and found us…Well, you can imagine how they found us. They called Hank at the bar and made him come over right then to confront us. He was furious—but at them, not Sibyl. He said we were both adults and that it was none of their damn business.”
“‘Let he who is without sin…’” Lena quoted. It was one of Hank’s favorite verses. He was always throwing it out right before he told you that what you were doing was wrong.
Charlotte said, “Y’all were so lucky to have him.”
Lena laughed. “Are you kidding me? I would’ve killed for your parents when I was growing up.”
“You can have them.”
“Okay,” Lena allowed. “What they did then was bad, but they never accidentally locked you out of the house all night or forgot to feed you or left you alone with strangers and they sure as hell never got so drunk they ran over you with their car and—”
“What?”
“You know what Hank did.”
Charlotte looked confused. “What did he do?”
“He blinded her. He took away Sibyl’s sight. How can you—”
“Lena, that wasn’t Hank.”
Lena felt her heart stop mid-beat. “What are you talking about?”
Charlotte stood in front of her, still confused by Lena’s reaction. “I was there that day.”
“No you weren’t.”
“You and me and Sibby were playing in the front yard with an old tennis ball I’d stolen from my brother. You threw the ball over Sibyl’s head and she ran into the driveway and—”
“No,” Lena insisted. “You weren’t there.” Even as she said the words, she could picture the day: throwing the ball over Sibyl’s head, making her chase after it. And there was Charlotte Warren on the other side of the driveway, scooping up the ball and tossing it back to Lena. “No.” Lena shook her head as if she could clear the memory. “You weren’t there.”
“I was, Lee. I saw the car backing up. I yelled, but she didn’t stop. The bumper hit Sibyl’s head. I saw her collapse in the driveway.” As she spoke, Lena saw it happening again. Sibyl running into the driveway, Charlotte screaming. “There was just this thin line of blood.” Charlotte traced her finger along her own temple, down her jaw, exactly where the blood had been on Sibyl. “You started sobbing, you were hysterical, and Hank came running out of the house and your mother just—”
“My mother?” Lena felt light-headed. She leaned back against the desk. “What are you talking about? My mother was there? She was there when Sibyl…?”
“Lee,” Charlotte began, putting her hand on Lena’s shoulder. “It wasn’t Hank. Your mother was driving the car. She’s the one who blinded Sibyl.”
WEDNESDAY EVENING
CHAPTER 11
SARA LAY IN BED, trying not to think about what was living in the mattress underneath her body. The autopsy had taken ten brutal hours, and when they had finally gotten back to the motel, she had nearly cried at the sight of the filthy room. Sara knew there was a maid around here somewhere. Earlier this morning, she had seen the woman pushing around a large cart with all sorts of cleaners and a vacuum. Except for the bed being made, nothing else in the room had been touched. Sara hadn’t exactly been expecting a thank-you note for scrubbing the bathroom, but the woman could have at least vacuumed the rug. The green M&M she had seen under the table yesterday morning was still nestled in the shag carpet.
Sara closed her eyes and listened to Jeffrey humming in the shower, the water slapping against the plastic tub. She had cleaned the cut on his hand using some disinfectant they’d found in the morgue, but he would have to bandage it on his own when he got out of the shower. She was too tired to do it herself, and frankly, part of her could not let go of her anger from yesterday afternoon. They had spent the entire day together, yet neither one of them had been willing to break the ice and talk about what had happened.
Jeffrey seemed fine with this, which only served to annoy Sara more. The situation made her feel like the prototypical bitchy sit-com wife who was always harping on her poor, misunderstood husband. She had always supported Jeffrey, even when she’d thought he was wrong, and it was unfair of him to let her be cast in the role of shrew.
On top of that, Sara still had a bad feeling about Elawah and whatever Lena had drawn them into. The autopsy she had performed that day only served to heighten that sense of dread. Over the years, Grant County had seen its sh
are of violent deaths but Sara was hard-pressed to think of a more awful way to die than being burned alive. She was usually adept at separating the victim from the crime. If you were going to cut into a dead body, you couldn’t think of it as a person anymore. You had to look at it as parts of a whole: circulatory, respiratory, tissue, organs, skeleton.
Still, as Sara worked on the woman, she’d found herself wondering about her life, the method of her death, the family she was leaving behind. Then, she began to wonder about the perpetrator. What kind of person could do this to another human being? Certainly not the kind of person she wanted Jeffrey talking to.
They had not waited for Fred Bart to come before starting the autopsy, which was a good thing considering the dentist had never showed. Removing the remains from the car had proven to be the easy part. Once the corpse was on the table, Sara found that the woman’s body had been so ravaged by fire that the usual procedures could not be followed. There was no need for the Stryker saw since the back of the skull had fractured off in Sara’s hand, allowing the brain to slip out like the pit of a ripe peach. There was no need for a Y-incision to open the torso when there was hardly any skin left to cut.
All but two of the ribs were fractured by the heat. The larynx and trachea were seared, the tongue cooked into the neck organs. The pleural surfaces of both lungs were charred, the air spaces consolidated with soot. Most of the skeletal musculature had a well-done appearance. The bone marrow was black.
The soot in the lungs proved the woman had lived long enough to inhale the smoke. Sara was certainly not an arson specialist, but she assumed that the gas tank explosion had been the result of a fire that started inside the car. The blast from the tank had gone up and out, mostly damaging the very rear of the SUV. The woman, even sitting in the backseat, would have been able to remove her seat belt, get out of the car, before the real damage started.