The Whole Truth

“Yes, it’s very mysterious.”

  “Well,” she says, awkwardly.

  “Are you going to look for Donor Miller, Robyn?”

  “Yeah, I guess we’d better do that.”

  After some reflection on the protocol of the thing, I put in a call to the state attorney’s office, too.

  “Where are you?” he wants to know, and the mere sound of his voice sends a tingling through me. “I hear roaring.”

  “I’m about thirty thousand feet above Missouri.”

  I have plucked a telephone from the back of the middle front seat. I am in the window seat, and now I turn my face, my body, and the telephone toward the sky, creating a little private, intimate space in which to converse with Franklin.

  “You’re calling me from the plane?” He sounds tickled to hear it. “Is this an emergency, or a compliment?”

  When I tell him what I’ve been doing, Franklin’s viewpoint turns out to be very different from the cop’s. “I don’t give a damn if Ray was sold into white slavery as a baby. He killed somebody else’s baby, and that’s all I need to know.”

  It sounds like a quote from his closing argument to the jury.

  “You’ll still seek the death penalty then?”

  “You bet, I will.”

  There appears to be no question in his prosecutorial mind, but there sure is in my own mind now. Of course, he hasn’t met Katherine.

  “If you’re calling from a plane, you must be coming home?”

  “Getting closer every second.”

  “I miss you. Your place, or mine tonight?”

  I hesitate, start to say “yours,” but then say, “I wish I could, Franklin, but I just can’t tonight.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s been an exhausting trip.”

  He’s understanding and says we’ll get together tomorrow, instead.

  I’m not so sure. It jars me, after being with Ray’s mother, to think of sleeping with a man who wants to put her son to death. Wouldn’t life in prison be enough to punish a human being whose life has already been one long punishment? I think of the McCullens, and feel nothing but sympathy, and yet . . .

  By the time the plane dips a wing over Bahia Beach, I am admitting to myself that Franklin and I seem to have developed a conflict of interest, after all. I spot Bahia Bridge far below, and from that I can follow the line of sparkling water to my six towering cypress trees. And there it is, a dot of apricot: home again, home again. I feel a twinge of sudden loneliness at the sight of it, where usually I would feel only relief and happiness.

  Among the messages I find at home are five to which I pay particular attention, starting with one from Franklin: “Hey, cutie. Thanks for calling me, but that wasn’t enough. I’ll be at the office until late tonight, so call me if you change your mind, okay? Don’t you think a tired woman deserves a back rub?”

  It’s tempting enough to make me smile at the phone.

  But I erase it anyway, and go on to the next one:

  “Marie? This is Kim Kepler? Mom and I have got airline reservations to come to Florida tomorrow, is that okay? She says you said we could stay with you, but we don’t want to impose. We could sure stay in a motel. Could you call me back, please?”

  I stop the other messages, to take care of this one.

  “Does your mom want publicity?” I ask Kim.

  “We want anything that might bring Johnnie home.”

  “It’s likely to be a madhouse,” I warn her.

  “It already is,” she tells me. “Mom got calls from your police down there today. They were very nice, she said, although they asked a lot of questions. And we also got some calls from some newspapers and TV stations, but Mom just wasn’t up to talking to them yet.”

  “Will she be by tomorrow?”

  I don’t want to push her, and yet I know that I should.

  “She’ll do what she has to do,” Kim says, simply.

  By the time I get off the phone with Kimmie, it is arranged that I will pick them up at the airport tomorrow, and they will stay with me. I promise to help them navigate the shoals of publicity. When we get off the phone, I don’t even feel hypocritical: It isn’t only that I’m a greedy writer who wants them around to hear what they say, but also that motels and hotels are expensive in Bahia. My home is the cheapest place they can stay, and I’ll be a driver for them, too.

  I call the detectives and the prosecutor, to tell them the Kepler women are coming to Florida. Everybody wants to meet them.

  “Bring them to my office,” Franklin urges me, and then pauses as if he’s waiting for me to invite him over, after all. When I don’t, we exchange awkward good-byes.

  And then I return to my messages.

  “Hi, Marie,” says a sweet voice I recognize as my editor calling from New York City. Immediately, guilt sets in. “How are you? How’s the book? This is not pressure. Do not interpret this call as pressuring you in any way, okay? I’m just so excited to see it, that’s all. Haven’t heard from you since before the trial, and the art director just showed me your new cover proofs, so I want you to know I think the revised cover looks great. I’ll overnight a copy to you, so you can see what you think of it. Let me know tomorrow, okay? Presales are fabulous, by the way. All we need now is the book, but don’t think I’m putting any pressure on you, at all. I know we don’t have anything to worry about in that regard. Sorry I missed you! Can’t wait to hear how things are going. Let me know about the cover!”

  I love my editor, but that was exceedingly clever of her.

  Now I have to call her back tomorrow with my opinion of the cover, and what am I going to tell her? “I’ve got the beginning and the end, but no middle. Now I know about the first six years of Ray’s life, and the last couple, so I’m only missing about nineteen in between. And I still don’t know why he killed her, or where he did it, and how can we publish a book about him when we don’t know if he’s going to live or die, and oh, by the way, Natalie’s parents want out of the book.”

  I feel as if my career is careening out of my control.

  If the cops could find Donor Miller . . . if they could catch Ray . . .

  Going back to my messages, I get one that makes my scalp tingle:

  “I’m looking for a woman named Marie Folletino. I knew her parents, and I really need to talk to her. I’ll call back.”

  “When?” I demand of the anonymous female voice. “When will you call me back?”

  No name, no number, just that ambiguous message.

  And caller ID doesn’t provide any clues, either. It says OUT OF AREA, with no phone number. I just love modern communications devices—they give me so many new ways to feel frustrated! At this moment, I want to scream, and stamp my feet like a kid in a tantrum. Between my book, and this . . .

  She “knew” my parents, so I can’t take that to mean they’re still alive and she knows them now. Well, a lot of people “knew” my parents, and that hasn’t helped me find out where they went after they abandoned me. But there’s an urgency to this woman’s voice that gives me a nervous feeling. I hate this, this waiting to find out. Why couldn’t she just give her name and number like a normal person, so I could call her back?

  You know why, a little voice whispers to me.

  But I don’t, exactly. I know that all my life people have acted loath to discuss my mother and father in any detail. A lot of what they won’t say, I have picked up from old newspaper articles. But there’s so much that remains unsaid and untold about them, and most of what I’ve heard or read conflicts with other things I read or hear. They were this. No, they were that. They went there, no they were never there. They said this. No way, they never said that. And everybody always speaks with such authority. Like they know. Nobody knows, is what I suspect. Nobody still living knows the truth about them, and I’ll never find out either.

  But now this damned phone call from this woman.

  It’s weird, it’s as if by bringing their names to the surface in my con
versation with Jack Lawrence, I have stirred up something new.

  Well, there’s nothing I can do about it unless she calls back.

  But how am I going to concentrate on anything else until she does?

  The fifth important message focuses my attention beautifully:

  “Hey, Marie! It’s Robyn. Listen, when we put our minds to something, it happens. Guess who we found already? Donor Miller! You might say he’s been waiting for us. Give me a call, I’ll tell you all about it.”

  The Little Mermaid

  By Marie Lightfoot

  CHAPTER NINE

  Deep in the Everglades, the earth belched up a secret: the body of a human being. The remains surfaced, literally, in a particularly isolated section of the Everglades, fifty-six miles to the southwest of Bahia Beach. The unlucky fishermen who made the discovery reported seeing part of a human torso snagged in the dried saw grass, reeds, and mud at the edge of a ’gator hole.

  Under natural conditions, the water level in the Everglades is not constant; it periodically rises and falls. In the wet seasons, all manner of creatures thrive in it: otters, turtles, ’gators, snakes, and a cornucopia of fish and bird life. But when the water dries up, sometimes the only fauna that survive are the ones that get trapped in alligator nesting holes. That supplies a feast for the alligator, but it also insures there will be some animals left to repopulate the swamps when the waters rise again. Biologists recognize it as an evolutionary safeguard.

  Fishermen recognize it as easy pickin’s.

  That evening, two good ol’ boys were out in their tinpot rowboat in water so shallow they were practically walking their boat across the swamp on its oars. They were looking for exactly what they found: a high round hummock surrounded by water, with alligator tracks leading to and from it.

  It was hard damned work.

  If either of them could have afforded an airboat, they would have scuttled that old rowboat in an instant and skimmed across the shallow water, “like a swamp chicken with a fan up its ass,” as one of them said later. But even together, they hardly had two fishhooks to rub together, much less enough money to purchase any flying power. They were hunting the hard way, rowing when they could, pushing and pulling when they had to, with rifles at their feet and their eyes on the skies as well as the ’glades.

  They were also on the lookout for the owner of the nest.

  Although alligators have a popular image as man-eaters, the truth is they are a species that doesn’t have much of a taste for people. This is not a theory any fisherman wants to test on himself. Alligators can crush their own teeth with the force of their powerful jaws, and their respiratory system allows them to hold a struggling victim under water until the battle is over.

  The two fishermen moved warily closer to the hummock.

  If the ’gator was absent, and they could get near enough with their nets and their spears, they might snatch themselves a jubilee of good eating, and plenty more to sell. It wasn’t legal, taking that much for themselves, but the ’glades are a huge area, and the wildlife officers can’t patrol everywhere at once.

  From a distance, they spied something large and bloated, appearing to be beached on the slope of the nest. If it was a large fish, they wouldn’t want it in that condition. As they floated closer, the fishy, decaying stench from the nest grew overwhelming in the swampy heat, even though the men wore bandanas over their noses.

  It was the huge dead fish, they decided, that was raising the stink.

  And then, getting closer, they saw it was no fish.

  “Goddammit,” exclaimed one of the men, “it’s a dead man.”

  “What are we gonna do now?” asked the other one.

  Furious at the “Joe” who’d ruined their catch by dying there, the two friends struggled to turn their boat around. They gave it all up for a bad trip, and rowed back on home. They debated whether or not to report what they’d seen to the cops, and finally decided to do it, because they could both use some brownie points with the local law.

  They weren’t sure, and neither were the police they reported it to, that the remains would still be there when the cops went out in their motorboats, airboat, and helicopter to look for it.

  But amazingly, it was still there.

  Perhaps the neighborhood ’gator had turned up its snout at it, and the other local predators had already eaten that morning. The two good citizens subsequently declined to give their names when interviewed about their unfortunate discovery.

  Fairly early on in the autopsy, it was determined that the remains were that of a Caucasian male, overweight, probably late middle-aged. But even with so substantial a portion of the corpse to work on, it would be a while before that county’s medical examiner could make a positive identification of the victim, still longer before he would determine whether this death had been a natural one, an accident, suicide, or homicide, and a bit longer than that before any connection was made between the Everglades victim and a missing marina owner in Bahia Beach.

  When they finally did make that connection, it would be a wallet and scorpion necklace that did it for them. The two fishermen plucked those treasures in their net, but failed to turn them over to the authorities at first. When the wallet, with Donor Miller’s driver’s license and credit cards, was handed to the police, strangely, it had no money in it.

  One of the fishermen buddies had a helpful suggestion for what might have happened to any cash: “Musta dissolved,” he said.

  10

  Raymond

  “I have to tell you some news,” I say almost the minute Katherine and her daughter step off the airplane and we quickly embrace. I feel such a desire to protect these women, and yet I blunder right off the bat. When I draw them over to a secluded corner of the terminal, I see to my dismay that Katherine thinks I’m going to tell her something else.

  “They found Johnnie?” she asks, with a hand to her mouth.

  “No, no, I’m sorry, they found Donor.” I feel terrible about getting her hopes—or her dread—up. Now I pause, to look at her and try to evaluate her state of mind. “Katherine, he’s dead. They found his body in the Everglades, and they say he’s been dead for several weeks already. They don’t know yet how he died, but it may have been something like a boating accident.”

  “He’s dead?” Katherine’s blue eyes have widened, and I see that it’s difficult for her to take in this news. She shakes her head, as if to clear it. “He can’t be dead, Marie. He has to be arrested and tried for what he did to us, he has to be punished and put in prison. I thought he could be executed. I thought—”

  Kim and I exchange looks, and an unspoken agreement to get her mother out of here.

  “I’ll get my car,” I tell them.

  “And I’ll stay with Mom and get the luggage.”

  I tell Kim what kind of car to look for, and within twenty minutes we’re driving away from the airport together.

  “I’m so angry about this!” Katherine tells us.

  That’s not hard for me to imagine.

  “At least he’s gone, Mom,” Kim says, trying to give solace. “He can’t hurt us anymore. He can’t hurt Johnnie, or Cal. He can’t hurt any other children. This is a good thing, Mom.”

  But she will not be distracted from a rage that is visibly building inside her, a rage that only yesterday found its focus in Donor Miller, and now can’t even be spent in the normal way.

  “I wanted to sit at his trial in a courtroom,” she says, fiercely. “I wanted to testify against him. I wanted to hear a jury pronounce him guilty, and I wanted to hear a judge sentence him, and I wanted all of us to get a chance to get up and tell the world what a horrible person he is! I feel so cheated! It isn’t fair.”

  She makes me think of Natty’s parents.

  I called Susan and Tony McCullen this morning, to warn them what was coming: Ray’s mom and sister on television, pleading for his surrender and his life. They seemed stunned by the story, not quite able to take in all at once what I wa
s telling them. From their responses, I couldn’t really judge how they felt about it.

  I could tell Katherine what I’ve learned from the families of other victims: That the “satisfactions” of a trial and punishment don’t last long, and that they don’t dispel the fury and sorrow. I don’t say that, however, because it would be presumptuous.

  I just drive, and listen, and try to answer her questions.

  “I don’t understand, Marie,” she says, “how the police down here can find the dead body of my son’s abductor, but they can’t find my son. It’s almost two weeks since Johnnie got away! Why can’t they find him?”

  “Escapees often remain at large for a long time, Katherine, especially in states where there are vast, wild areas, like here in Florida. He could be in the Everglades. He could have gone down into the caverns of central Florida. He could be hiding in someplace like Ocala National Park.” I don’t tell her that Ocala is a huge forest where black bears and panthers still roam to this day. “There was an escapee in your area who stayed loose for three months in the Ozarks, and there’s a man who’s been hiding in mine shafts in North Carolina for years.”

  This is true. Until he was shot and killed, the Missouri fugitive survived by breaking into empty cabins and stealing supplies. The North Carolina fugitive, wanted for bombing abortion clinics, eluded two hundred state and federal agents for three years, and he’s still on the loose.

  “Ray could stay out for a long time,” I warn the women.

  “Well, maybe he’s safer that way,” Katherine says, and then an anguished expression crosses her face, as if she has only that moment recalled the reason he is fleeing. “Oh, but I think of that little girl, and of her parents, and I feel so guilty. I know what they’re going through. If only we could have gotten Johnnie back, then their daughter wouldn’t have died. This is a terrible thing.”

  I have nothing but agreement for that.

  “It’s beautiful here,” Kim says, from the backseat, and I sense that she’s trying to do what she has tried to do for twenty-two years: make her mother feel better. Her voice sounds brittle, as if she’s forcing herself to be cheerful as she says, “Are we very far from the ocean? Is there any chance we could drive by the beach?”