Not in the Heart (14 page)

C
HAPTER
21

20 DAYS BEFORE EXECUTION

Abby drove me to Oleta's home early on Wednesday morning and I phoned Aiden on the way. I felt guilty for not going to the hospital to see him, and hearing his hoarse voice didn't help.

“How's the writing going?”

“Good. Plowing through. How's the heart?”

“I'm taking it one beat at a time.”

I could see the smile on his sallow face and skin hanging on bones.

“I hear you have an intern. How's she working out?”

“She's intern, chauffeur, barista, and research assistant.”

Abby bristled a little, or maybe she liked it. I couldn't tell.

“You should see your sister track down information. She's a natural.”

“Can't wait to read what you two come up with.”

“You should write the foreword,” I said. “Or the epilogue. If everything goes as planned.”

“Yeah. That would be cool, wouldn't it?”

His voice was getting weaker. I told him we were at Oleta's and he said to say hello to Murrow for him.

“Love you, Dad.”

“Love you, too, Son.”

Murrow was on the windowsill of Oleta's daughter's room, looking out at the world with casual indifference. The cat glanced at me when I walked into the room, blinked twice, stretched, and went back to sleep.

“Good to see you, too.”

Oleta cooked two omelets and set out a plastic container of banana nut muffins with a Sam's Club sticker on the side. She and Abby hit it off and while they talked about Aiden's condition, I moved about the house searching for pictures of Terrelle. There were a couple on the mantel—their wedding and a shot of Terrelle in his prison uniform. I found an old photo album by the spinet and blew away dust. It was like finding a treasure box with images from his life.

Even in the earliest pictures, the ones of him in a bib, drooling over a plastic dish, face covered with oatmeal, he looked angry. The chip on his shoulder was apparent in his high school football picture. He posed in a blocking position, his shoulder pads bulking up his wiry frame. From his number and build I guessed he played in the secondary.

One picture showed him in a military uniform, another in a graduation cap and gown, and various faded snapshots at backyard parties. I walked back to the kitchen clutching my find and passed Oleta's bedroom. There was a rickety, prefab desk someone had thrown together, and above it was a corkboard covered in three-by-five cards with people's names and various maladies. At the center I saw Aiden's name surrounded by notations and dates. A yellow sticky note said
Ellen
at the top and underneath was written,
Abigail—salvation, Truman—salvation and reconciliation
. There were also cards with verses written out in longhand. Beside the desk was a little bench with a severely worn place on the carpet. This woman was serious.

“I see you found my prayer room,” she said.

Her voice startled me. I turned and held out the album. “I wasn't snooping, just looking for pictures.”

She nodded. “Your wife says you get in your own world when you're working. You can take it with you if it will help.”

I pointed to the board. “Is this your hit list?”

She gave the Oleta chuckle and I thought that was a nice sound to have in a house. I hadn't heard that sound in a while.

“I guess you could look at it that way. Only this is a ‘love hit list.' You don't make it to my wall until I really care or you're desperate.”

I pointed to my name.

“Some people are both,” she said.

“How much time do you spend in here?”

“Praying? It depends on how long I stay in bed. But I find the successes or failures I have begin right here.” She laid a hand over her heart. “This is where the biggest battle is fought.” She looked inside me—at least it felt like that, like she knew my faults and failures, my losing her money, and she didn't care. Not surprisingly, I took off for the kitchen because it was getting a little uncomfortable in her prayer room.

The omelet was waiting and Abby had buttered some toast. I plied Oleta with questions about Terrelle's early life, how they met, what attracted them. She answered the questions but also took the conversation in spiritual directions as often as possible. Just when we got on the expressway to the story, she'd take the off-ramp to the Bible. Without prompting, Abby veered the conversation to the on-ramp again.

“I've been reading the clippings and I know he claims innocence. But if your husband didn't do this, who killed Diana Wright?”

Oleta cradled her coffee with a far-off stare. Her eyes were a little bloodshot. “To think there's a killer loose is more than I can bear, especially because my Terrelle was locked up for it. But I take heart in the fact that God knows. The Word says, ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.' And ‘everything that is hidden will eventually be brought into the open, and every secret will be brought to light.'”

So much for trying to keep her off the spiritual stuff. Oleta was an evangelical bloodhound that always came back to the Bible trail.

“Can't you ask God to show you who did it?” Abby said. “If he knows the truth and he loves you, why wouldn't he want you to know that information?”

Instead of being offended, Oleta seemed to welcome her question. “Exactly my feelings. And I've been pleading with the Lord to show me the truth, to bring it to light. Bring the killer to my real estate office, show me his picture in the paper, give me some kind of sign. But so far I haven't found any wet fleeces.”

“Wet what?” Abby said.

Oleta explained something about a guy in the Bible who put out a blanket at night and it got wet or didn't get wet. I didn't follow it, but it seemed to make her happy to tell it. Sounded like a lame excuse to me. From her standpoint, it doesn't matter what God does to us because he uses everything for his purposes. Oleta said God had used Terrelle's imprisonment for good in his life, and if she had the choice, she'd let him get convicted of the crime again because his life had been changed. If it were me in prison for something I didn't do, I would be ticked off at God for not having a better plan.

“. . . and then I thought that maybe God has brought your father into the picture for just this purpose,” Oleta said.

“What purpose is that?” I said.

“To find out the truth. To reveal what's been hidden.”

“What do you think of that, Dad? You might be an answer to prayer.”

I've always felt pretty much like I was the
reason
people prayed, not the answer, so I let that slide.

It was Oleta's turn to bring up something. “After reading through all of the court material and articles, do you have any ideas, Truman?”

I took the last bite of omelet and chewed on my left side, which still ached from the injury, but not as bad. “Abby has some questions about the salon owner. And the junkyard owner. Don't know much about him. It wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility for a police officer to plant evidence, somebody who needed a quick conviction, but I don't see any officers with a motive. In fact, motive in this entire case is missing.”

“What do you mean?” Oleta said.

“As inept as the defense was, even he keyed in on the fact that the prosecution's theory about Terrelle being motivated by revenge never added up. They contended your husband tracked Diana down and made her pay for spurning him.”

Abby jumped in. “They said he planned to do something sexual, but she resisted and he just killed her and tried to hide her body.”

“Who would kidnap and kill a hairdresser who brings you cookies?” Oleta said.

“Maybe she knew something about someone,” Abby said. “Something she wasn't supposed to know. Something about the salon business.”

“I've always thought that Tompkins guy was shady.”

“There's another possibility, of course,” I said. “Maybe your husband, who can't remember much about anything from those days, really did kill her. Maybe the reason the gun was in the trailer and the evidence was in his car was because he's responsible. He killed her, buried her, and he's guilty.”

I thought Oleta would jump up and tell me to get out of her home, that I was from Satan, but instead she just studied the tablecloth patterns.

“I've thought of that too,” she said. “Believe me, I have. But you don't know the man. I was with him when he was wrapped up tight in the drink, like one of those boats in a bottle. There was no way he was going to escape. He was like the Gadarene demoniac.”

Another biblical reference that went over our heads. Oleta saw the looks on our faces and she hurried to her room and came back with her Bible, heavy enough to be declared a lethal weapon in forty states.

She read verses from one of the Gospels about a man who lived in the tombs and wore chains on his hands and feet. No matter what the people did, he broke his chains and cut himself with stones and cried out at night.

“This man was possessed by demons,” Oleta explained. “His life was miserable and he had no hope until Jesus stepped out of his boat. That sent the demons scurrying because they knew who he was.”

She could tell my eyes were glazing over, so she skipped to the end, where the man was dressed and sitting in his right mind.

“Nobody could help this man. Nobody could deliver him from all the voices inside. But when he met Jesus, they didn't need chains. The demons left. That's what Jesus did in Terrelle's life. He took away even the desire for alcohol. He put him in his right mind.”

“Your point is . . . ?” I said.

“If he had killed that girl, he would be the first to admit it. He wouldn't drag us through all of this. He's confessed everything he's done. Things I didn't even suspect. But God set him free, even from the need to be proven innocent.”

I got up to refill my coffee mug. “Which reminds me: I need to talk with the defense team. You have some lawyers from Florida State working on this?”

Oleta was silent for a moment, recovering from my rebuff of her Bible lesson, I guess. I needed to ask a few questions about the spiritual side of his story, but as pushy as she was being, I didn't dare bring it up or she'd think I was showing interest.

She wrote down the name and number of the lead law professor at Florida State on one of her three-by-five prayer cards. “They've taken an interest in the case since nobody else did. I spent a lot of money on a lawyer but it was like flushing it down the toilet. But now that the transplant is really an option, these people are backing off.”

When she handed the card over, she looked hard at me. “He can do the same for you, Truman.”

I looked at the card. “The law professor?”

She shook her head. “Jesus can free you from what's binding you.”

I took the card and glanced at Abby, who seemed to be enjoying the church service. Or maybe she was enjoying watching me squirm.

“Don't turn away from him,” Oleta said.

Sunlight sparkled through a stained-glass wind chime on the front porch and Murrow chased the light across the living room floor, pawing at it. She couldn't catch the light. It was always just out of reach.

C
HAPTER
22

19 DAYS BEFORE EXECUTION

Ellen was surprised when her husband showed up in the hospital waiting room. At first she thought his fear of the place had subsided and he was there for a visit with Aiden. Then she noticed the stack of pages and the red pencil.

“You've always been a better editor than me,” Truman said. “Would you mind taking a look?”

“What is it?” A little cold, a little distant and put off. She regretted her tone as soon as the words were out.

Truman sighed. “Don't take this as interest in spiritual stuff, because it's not. I've just gone through a long, rambling recording of Conley's ‘testimony'—” he said it with quotation marks in the air—“and I want to see if this makes sense. I don't want to offend the faithful.”

While Truman went for coffee, Ellen spread the pages on her lap and took the red pencil in her hand. It was written in first person, from Terrelle's perspective. Truman had captured the voice of the man behind bars without sacrificing the English language.

I had been in prison for about six months, feeling empty and hopeless, just going from one day to the next. I had the guilt of years wasted hanging over me. I had been separated from my wife and children without any hope of ever being a free man again. I didn't want to live.

There was a chaplain at the prison who would meet with people, but I wasn't having any of it. I've heard about jailhouse conversions and inmates who talk about God just to get favors from people on the outside. But several of the guys who went to the chapel services seemed like they had something I didn't. I went one Sunday and listened to the singing and the message. It didn't do much to me because I felt God hated me. I always believed there was a God; that wasn't my problem. I just didn't think he cared.

I don't remember the songs or what the preacher said that day, but one thing stuck out to me. There was this little pamphlet—they call it a tract. It had fallen on the floor under my chair and I picked it up. It quoted John 10:10: “The thief's purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.”

That's when I realized my life had been stolen. Actually, I had given it away to booze and other women. My life was anything but satisfying and rich. And when I looked around at these guys, it was clear that nothing had changed for them. They were still in prison. None of their circumstances had changed. But they were singing to God and thanking him.

I prayed,
God, is this for me? Can you give me a life here in Starke?

When the service was over, I stood up and took that piece of paper with me, holding it like it was a ticket to the outside. And the chaplain met me at the back of the room. He asked if I had enjoyed the service and I told him I had. He saw I was holding the little piece of paper and asked if I wanted a Bible.

“Sure,” I said, “I'll take one.”

He handed me a New Testament and just before I walked away, I pointed to the verse on the page and asked him where I could find that verse.

He opened to the Gospel of John, the tenth chapter, and stuck the piece of paper in there. “This is a good place to start reading. Just go through all of John and look at how much Jesus cares.”

I went back to my cell and started reading. I swear, for a whole week it was like opening a window to my soul. I had heard about Jesus before, heard his name used a lot on the street, heard about him from my wife, but I had never encountered him the way I did that week.

When I got back to the chapel that next week, I was ready. I didn't care what people thought, whether they believed me or not; I wanted to pray and ask God to change me. The truth was, he already had. He was doing something inside of me with just me being open enough to read the Bible.

When Ellen finished reading the section, Truman was there with his coffee, looking over her shoulder. She had heard Terrelle's story from Oleta and couldn't help but hope and pray this would one day be her own husband's story. Not the prison part, of course, but the longing for life represented in what Terrelle wrote.

“I wouldn't change anything,” she said. “But are you going to include his completion of the Bible studies he did, the correspondence school?”

“I'll probably mention it later, but in this chapter I just wanted to give people the feel of the freedom he felt. Even inside the prison.”

The obvious question was why Truman wouldn't want that same freedom. It was lost on her. But she held back.

“It's good. You did a good job with that one verse. I wonder if you could include anything else. Does he mention any other Scripture?”

“He talks about John 3:16 and putting his name in there, but it felt kind of clichéd.”

“No, don't cut that. That will hit home with a lot of readers, especially the ones who feel like God couldn't care less about their lives.”

Truman sipped his coffee and nodded. “Yeah, I can work it back in. I just don't want to stall the story. This section can get people bogged down.”

“But you can't understand why he would give his heart to Aiden if you don't get a glimpse of this.”

“Sure you can. You don't have to have a religious conversion in order to do something good. Who wouldn't want to help somebody else if your life is being taken from you?”

John 15 flashed through her mind.
“There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends.”
That was what Terrelle was doing and Truman couldn't see it. But Ellen couldn't
make
him see it.

She handed the pages back. “This is going to be a great book. I'm glad you're doing it.”