Crescent City Connection (4 page)

She greeted Skip this time in a lavender windsuit with gray trim. It was meant for walking, but Aunt Alice was heavy and moved slowly, as if what walking she did was done under duress. Her gray hair was short, upswept in front, curled on the sides, and rigid with spray—she’d just been to the hairdresser.

She held both of Skip’s hands and looked at her like a long-lost relative. “Hey, precious. You look so pretty.” Instantly, Skip recalled the way she had taken to Alice the first time they met, partly because of the woman’s warmth but also because of her intelligence—and the sense that Alice, because of her deafness, was much underestimated by her relatives.

Skip came and sat down. She was presented with a writing pad—Aunt Alice could talk to you, but you had to write to her.

“Did you get my letter?”

Skip nodded. She wrote, “Thank you. That was sweet of you.”

Skip’s encounter with Jacomine was national news. Aunt Alice had written to say she knew Skip was just doing her job even though Earl Jackson was a blood relative, and she, for one, not only applauded, she was real sorry the bastard got away.

“It’s good to see you again, honey. What can I do for you this time?”

“I know it’s stupid to ask,” Skip wrote, “but has Jacomine been in touch with anyone in the family?”

“Now, honey, you know I would have let you know.”

“Just thought I’d ask,” she wrote, and pulled out a list of the things she’d already done to trace Jacomine: looked for his wife, looked for his son, badgered the Christian Community. “Can you think of anything else I could do?”

Aunt Alice’s index finger, under a layer of ladylike pink nail polish, flicked at the list. “Didn’t even know he’d married again.”

Skip’s stomach flipped over. Blood pounded in her ears: this was something. She wrote, “Again? You mean this wasn’t his first marriage?”

“Oh, lordy, lordy. How
would
you know? Yes, ma’am, he was married, and thereby hangs a tale. Now where’d I put that thing?” She got up and left the room. Skip wanted to chase her, grabbing at the flapping folds of her purple windsuit.

But there was nothing to do but wait, drumming her fingers, swinging her leg, all but biting her nails.

“Here it is.” Aunt Alice handed her a clipping from People magazine, about a Texas millionaire who’d just married a nineteen-year-old fashion model who looked like she’d probably suck her thumb if she got to feeling insecure.

Skip stared at it. “I don’t understand.”

“See that other picture? That was Earl Jackson’s first wife.” She nodded, caught up in the utter satisfaction of having a good story to tell. “Course, she was Mary Rose then.”

The inset at the bottom was a head shot of the woman scorned—Rosemarie Owens, a hard-looking blonde with helmet hair, very much in the Ivana Trump mode. She’d gotten an eight-million-dollar settlement, and was suing for more.

Skip was flabbergasted. But then everything about Jacomine flabbergasted her—to her, he was a weedy-looking, slightly ferrety, crepey-skinned, slimy little salamander, hardly capable of inspiring mother love, much less the devotion of hundreds of followers.

“How on Earth … ?” she wrote, and then she added a series of exclamations and question marks.

Aunt Alice chuckled, thoroughly enjoying herself. “Well, she was too young to know better. ’Bout fourteen, I think—maybe a little more. She and Earl ran away together.”

“She’s from Savannah as well?”

“Oh, yes. Oh, it was quite a story. They ran away and then later he came back by himself. And then way, way after that, she came back and brought him a baby.”

Skip wrote, “A little late for that, wasn’t it?”

“It wasn’t a baby exactly, it was a seven-year-old.”

The Christian Community records had indicated only one son—Skip wondered if there were two children instead. “What was its name?”

“You know, I can’t really recall.” Aunt Alice nodded again. “Haven’t heard of Rosie since. Can’t imagine how shocked I was when I picked up this magazine and there she was staring up at me.”

“You’re sure that’s her?”

“Course I’m sure. Mary Rose Markey always did look like some little animal likely as not to bite you. Look at her picture—you ever seen a nose like that one? It’s not the kind of thing you forget. Besides, her age is right, her name’s right, and the article flat out says she’s from Savannah. Now I may not be a detective, but I can add two and two as well as you can.” She chuckled. “Besides, after this ran, the local papers picked it up. No mention of Earl, though. That probably goes back too far for ’em.”

“What happened to the boy?”

“Oh, Earl raised him, I reckon. Or—I guess—got him another wife who did. He moved out of town shortly after Rosie came back. Begged her to stay with him, I heard.” Alice shook her head. “Guess she was already off to catch her a Texas millionaire.”

“He begged her? You mean he didn’t dump her when he came back without her?”

“Oh, I b’lieve she had quite enough of Mr. Earl Jackson right quick. But Earl now—he was crazy about that girl. Always made me suspicious of her. They say like attracts like—you know?”

Skip wrote, “I thought opposites did.”

“I’ll tell you somethin’, precious. Earl Jackson acted like he was the spawn of the devil himself—I never in my life seen a mean child but that one. Bad, yes; up to no good; mischievous. All that stuff. But mean? Only once. And I just got a feelin’ Miss Rosie ain’t no angel, either.”

Skip left feeling elated—it was her first lead in six months.

She just had time to catch her plane—or so she thought. In fact, it was half an hour late, so that she was late making her connection in Atlanta. As she trotted through the airport, she saw a tangled knot of people crowded into a bar—apparently staring at a television. For a moment, she was confused—was it football season? Definitely not. It was getting longer every year, but didn’t yet extend into spring.

Her seatmate on the plane seemed nervous—finger-drumming, knee-swinging nervous, the way Skip had been at Aunt Alice’s. Finally, he turned to her. “Hear any more about Billy Hutchison?” The football player who’d just been acquitted of killing his wife.

“Billy Hutchison? I don’t know what you mean.”

“Somebody shot the son of a bitch. What goes around comes around, don’t it?” He had a red face and a country accent. He probably opposed abortion and kept an arsenal handy in case any blacks wandered into his neighborhood. She didn’t need a psychic to tell her he’d revel in something like this—something with the potential to set off race riots. (That is, assuming a white man had shot Hutchison.)

But there was something about what he said—“what goes around comes around”—that had a certain fearful symmetry.

LOVELACE JACOMINE WAS about to hit her snooze alarm for the fourth time when the clock was wrenched from her.

“Hey, L. Not okay.” Her roommate, Michelle, was standing over her, in T-shirt and Calvin Klein briefs, hair sticking straight up, bossy as always.

“I’m not going to class.”

“Fine. Dandy. Just quit hitting the alarm, okay? I can sleep another hour.”

“Oh, hell.” Lovelace got up and grabbed the shirt she’d worn the day before, pulling it over her head on the way to the bathroom. She splashed water, ran a comb through, pulled on jeans. She’d be late to class, but not that late.

Philosophy. It didn’t make sense. How could you think deep thoughts before nine
A.M.
? She didn’t like doing anything before ten, but she’d wanted to take the damn class, God knew why.

She shrugged into her jacket—these early spring days were still cool, especially this time of day—and grabbed her backpack. As she walked out of the building, she noticed the coffee stain on the front of her Henley shirt.

Damn.

But there was no time to change. She glanced at her watch and started to run. By now, just about everyone who was going to class was already there. She felt suddenly panicked. What was the point of going to college if you couldn’t be more conscientious than this?

She had such a long way to go she slowed for a while to get her breath. She heard something behind her, not footsteps but something.

And that was all. A hand went over her mouth, another around her waist. She never resisted, never had a chance.

She figured later that he must have done some carotid-artery knockout thing, or maybe she was so deeply in shock that she lost her memory. Whatever it was, the next thing she knew, she was in a car, gagged, lying down on the seat, hands and feet bound.

The last time she had felt so helpless she’d been eleven, at her dad’s cabin in some forest in the middle of nowhere. He had shot a deer and wanted to show her how to clean it. Horrified, finding no words to describe how dreadful she found it—the dead animal, the prospect of defiling it—she ran away.

He chased and caught her, and made her sit and watch. He hadn’t needed bonds, but she might as well have been tied tight as a calf, so much a prisoner was she.

The place was awful. Her dad was awful, with his damn lifetime supplies of everything (including ammunition), his tobacco-chewing friends with their camo fatigues and their doomsday scenarios. So far as she could tell, they pretty much thought everybody was stupid except them, and the world was probably going to crack apart any minute, causing black people to storm these pathetic cabins in the woods.

She chided them for being racists, and they said if she had any sense she would be, too. In fact they made fun of her, called her Little Miss Yankee Liberal, and she shrank further and further into herself. That was the summer she made it through about half of Dickens and a little of Dostoyevsky.

She would get a Coke and some Oreos and retreat to her closet-sized room with one of the books she’d brought. Then she’d dunk the cookies in the Coke, lose herself in stories of people—some of them kids—who were worse off than she was, and she’d feel almost happy. She gained weight just when she was supposed to be having an active outdoor life, and her dad was cruel about it. He called her names she couldn’t remember without feeling the heat and shame of tears, even now, and so she never thought about it.

The little room—she thought it really had been a closet—had been okay, though. All it had in it were two things—a narrow built-in platform fitted with a mattress and, perpendicular to that, a sort of wide shelf with a mirror over it that served as a dressing table. That left about enough room to stand up and undress, and no place to put anything other than a couple of stacks of jeans and T-shirts, which was how she kept her clothes—in stacks on the floor. Her books she tucked under the shelf, and she put her panties on top of them, decently out of sight.

Her dad had built the bed and shelf just for her, so she could come visit. Much as she wished he hadn’t bothered, she did love the room. It was her only refuge from her opinionated, nasty, gun-toting dad—and from the place itself, with its dead animal heads, off-putting noises, and primitive appointments.

There was indoor plumbing, but everything leaked. There was a gas stove, but it was about fifty years old and didn’t always light. There were naked bulbs for light.

The only bedding was worn sheets and army blankets. The sheets were soft and nice, but she couldn’t hack the sandpaper wool of the blankets—indeed, had pitched a tantrum until she was allowed to bring her own twin-sized duvet, which her father had ridiculed and called her “sissy cover.”

Pretty soon, he was calling her Sissy, and so were all his friends. Of course it beat Blubberface, but that came later and didn’t last. Sissy stuck.

She was so unhappy that summer, she actually missed her mother. God, her mother! Jacqueline the Queen. If her father was a minimalist, Jacqueline was his antithesis. Her apartment was so full of frills and pillows and fuss you had to struggle for breath. Jacqueline had more clothes than Macy’s and more makeup than Maybelline. She loved to go partying with her boyfriends, and she stank of gin on weekends.

Her dad hated to party, hated almost everything, Lovelace included, and Jacqueline was way at the top of the list. But he did love to drink. Her mother said she worried about it and even asked Lovelace if he’d ever “touched” her.

She’d answered, “Of course, Mom—what do you think? How’s he going to hit me if he doesn’t touch me?” and her mother had laughed. Lovelace hadn’t figured out why until years later.

Actually, Lovelace liked it when he drank—he tended to get woozier and woozier until finally he’d just fall asleep, which left Lovelace more time with the Cokes, Oreos, and books.

The feeling she had now was similar to the one she’d harbored that whole summer—trapped, but not hopeless. She’d get out, that much was certain, but she had to bide her time. She had to wait, and get through. Just get through.

“You have to pee or anything?”

She didn’t know how to answer, but she was damned if she was just going to lie there. She made some sort of hum through her gag.

“Baby, I hate having you tied up like that. You want me to take the tape off?”

She hummed again, as loudly as she could.

“Well, let’s stop up here. You can go behind some bushes.”

He stopped the car and cut the tapes, even rubbed her wrists.

“Now you go pee, but don’t try to mess with me. I’ll just catch you.”

She knew he would. Besides, it was better to gain his trust a little, hope he’d let down his guard. Maybe next time she could talk him into a gas station bathroom, and that would be it—she’d be free.

When she came back, he was holding out a Coke to her, its top already popped. It was cold, and she needed it.

“Can I sit in the front—with you?”

“You know I’m different now, Lovelace.”

She made her eyes go wide. “Really?”

He opened the door for her—she’d won a concession.

“I’m not conservative anymore—I’m a liberal.”

She didn’t know what she’d been expecting to hear, but it wasn’t that. Even in her confused state of mind, she recognized that it was an extremely odd thing for a kidnapper to say.

What the fuck do I care?
she wanted to shout.
You’re a sickie and a weirdo and I hope you rot in hell. Why the fuck do I
care what your damn politics are?