Revenant (8 page)

“I wish I knew.” I picked up my empty glass. “I think I'll have another.”

“If you eat something first,” she said in a tone that was more sister than friend.

Arguing with Garnett was like punching a tree. “Okay, a vegetable plate.”

She took my order to the kitchen and returned with a heaping plate and a glass of iced tea. “You can have the drink after you eat.”

“Yes, Mother,” I said, taking a bite of the field peas and stewed okra. I was suddenly starving.

M
y plans to interview the families of the other dead girls had effectively been annihilated by Mary Sparks. I couldn't do it. I didn't have the grit to wade into more grief. That the girls had been killed twenty-four years before wouldn't lessen the horror of it. It just meant that four families had been living with hope for a quarter of a century, and that hope had been ripped from them.

I went back to the paper and realized I'd not been there for Mitch Rayburn's visit when I saw his note on my desk. I'd forgotten. I called him and agreed to see him at four. I'd just put the phone down when Brandon appeared in my doorway. I wanted to challenge him about having a key to my office, but he was the publisher. I supposed he had keys to everyone else's desk, too. He probably got his jollies with surveillance cameras in the restrooms.

“Carson! Did the Sparkses give you anything juicy?”

While I stared at him my brain played a film. In it I slapped him so hard that his fat earlobes jangled against his fat cheeks. Reality check. This was the only place that would give me a job. My reputation as a big-shot reporter had quickly given way to my reputation as a drunk. I was a walking liability, and I knew it. “Juicy?” I put as much scathing into the two syllables as I could.

“You know, was the girl wild or not?”

“The family is grief stricken. Their daughter seemed to be getting her life in order.”

“She had an illegitimate child! There's bound to be something newsworthy in that.”

“Brandon, she got pregnant. It's not like she took an Uzi into a classroom of children and killed them. She made a mistake.”

“It can be played—”

I stood up. “You are not going to malign that dead girl.”

He grew very still, staring at me. “I realize you've got some issues, Carson, but I'm the publisher.”

“If you don't want to be the laughingstock of every news organization in the nation, you need to listen to me.” It cost me to tone it down, but I did. What was at stake wasn't my pathetic career; it was Mary Sparks and her husband, Bob.

“This is the biggest story we've had in years and I intend to maximize it. I got a call from
Newsweek
this morning. They're interested in our coverage.”

“Really.
Our
coverage?” I didn't have to say anything else. My reputation was shot to the point no one would hire me, but it didn't mean they wouldn't buy my work when it was good—and it was better than good. The
Morning Sun
could share in that glory,
if
I wrote the story.

Brandon and I stared each other down. Outside my office, the newsroom had grown uncharacteristically quiet. Brandon had left the door wide open when he came in.

I spoke first, and in a carefully neutral voice. “I thought we could play this as a real community newspaper, one that's concerned for the citizens. One of our daughters has been murdered. We want to catch the killer, and solve five other murders in the process. We can be a leader, Brandon, and one that comes out on top. We can be the good guys.”

He was an ambitious man, but he wasn't stupid. “Okay. We'll do it your way. For now.” He leaned closer so he could whisper. “Watch yourself, Carson. I dragged you out of the gutter and if I let go, you'll slide right back.”

I started to tell him to shove it, but I didn't. If I was fired, I couldn't finish the story. And I wanted to. Badly.

He left my office and I walked over and closed my door, but not before I made eye contact with Hank, the city editor. His blue eyes behind his thick glasses were sparkling, and over the top of his computer screen he gave me a thumbs-up. I sat down and started writing, oblivious to everything except the story.

I'd just finished writing up the interview with Mary Sparks when Mitch tapped at my door. The fluorescent lighting of the building made everyone look either sallow or ruddy, but Mitch was blanched. His eyes were circled in darkness, and even his mustache seemed to droop.

“I'm worried, Carson.” He took the chair Avery had occupied that morning.

“About?”

“How this thing is going to play. If we have the entire Gulf Coast convinced that a psycho killer is on the loose, we're going to start a panic. I got a call from the mayor, who's leaning hard on Chief Nelson, who's leaning hard on Riley and all the officers. There's talk of canceling the junior-senior proms that start next month. People are terrified already.”

“Okay.”

His eyes narrowed. “Okay?”

“I think I convinced Brandon to be a civic good guy, at least for Tuesday's edition.”

He sighed and relaxed. “That's one worry down. Brandon can be reasonable, and I think he wants what's best for the community.”

“I hope you're right.”

Mitch smiled, and I wondered again why he wasn't married or at least in a permanent relationship. Fire had scarred both of us in terrible ways, but Mitch seemed to have recovered better than I had. Still, it was sometimes hard to see beneath the facade.

“Avery told me that Bob Sparks is going to conduct his own manhunt,” he continued. “We can't have that.”

I shrugged. There was little I could do to stop Bob Sparks. “He said that in anger and pain. He'll probably change his mind. His wife seems like a reasonable woman.”

“I looked up his burglary conviction.” He rubbed his eyebrows between his forefinger and thumb. “I think he got railroaded.”

I sat forward. “Is this for print?”

“Yes. I want to go public with this. I'm going to ask that the police reopen the case. No conclusion, only that we'll be looking at Mr. Sparks's conviction with a fresh eye. If he was wrongly charged and convicted, I'll do my best to make it up to him. Personally and professionally.”

A lot of things ran through my mind. First and foremost was that reopening that case would leave the police department wide open for a possible lawsuit. Mitch was eating Pamela Sparks's brutal murder for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The case was working him, and vindicating Pamela's father of a bum charge was obviously part of his view of justice. Some men would have been only too happy to let the past rest. That said a lot about Mitch's character.

“This'll make a great sidebar to the story I wrote on the Sparks family. Let me make a few notes.” I asked him the routine questions—when was Bob Sparks convicted, who was D.A. at the time, who defended Sparks, what physical evidence did they have, who investigated, how much time did Sparks serve? The former D.A. had retired, and the investigating officer had quit the department under a cloud of suspicion. “Thanks, Mitch.” I still had some facts to check. I started jotting a few notes.

“There's something else,” he said.

I looked up. “What?”

“Have dinner with me tonight?”

Avery's words came back to me with a strange force. I hadn't even given it a thought that he might be right. “Why are you asking me to dinner?”

His smile only heightened his tiredness. “I haven't slept but a couple of hours in the last five days. I haven't eaten a decent meal in that same amount of time. I haven't jogged or worked out, and I feel myself slipping into the abyss.”

“And you think I know my way around there,” I said.

He smiled. “No, but you just gave the perfect example of why I'd like to have dinner with you. You make me laugh, and I need that right now.”

The things I knew about Mitch were that he'd lost his entire family. He'd come up through the ranks of lawyer, assistant D.A., and finally D.A. in an election two years ago. By all accounts, he was as clean as any elected official could be. He'd never been married, but he wasn't a man who played the field a lot. He worked, and he jogged. He coached a Little League baseball team, and he sometimes went to his uncle's cattle farm in Stone County for a long weekend.

“Okay,” I said.

“I'll pick you up at seven. How about the White House?”

“How about the Brown Raisin?” It was a soul-food joint way north of I-10 in the middle of pine forests. They served barbecued everything and raisin bread pudding to die for. They also had acoustic entertainment every night of the week. That would lessen the pressure on both of us to be so damn entertaining.

“It's a date.”

 

There were other reasons I'd chosen the Brown Raisin, and I was aware of all of them as Mitch escorted me through the door. It was dark and located in neighboring Hancock County, away from the glitz and glamour of the casinos. Mitch was D.A. in Harrison County. At the Brown Raisin, folks minded their own business. We were given only a cursory glance as we walked in and were led to a table in the back.

We placed our drink orders—a vodka martini for me and a Jack Daniel's on the rocks for him. Mitch ordered an appetizer of marinated crab claws. When the drinks and appetizer were in front of him, his shoulders visibly relaxed.

“Good choice,” he said, indicating the restaurant. “I've never eaten here.”

“Used to serve a largely black clientele. Now that the race war is at a truce, folks of all color who like good barbecue come here. I went to school with Junior Robicheaux, the cook. His daughter was friends with mine.” I stared into my drink. I hadn't meant to call up the ghosts.

Mitch's hand touched my fingers. “I'm so sorry about your daughter.”

I forced my gaze up to meet his. “And I'm sorry about your losses, Mitch.”

“How old would your daughter be?”

“Annabelle would've been eleven this year.”

“I can't imagine losing a child,” Mitch said. “When I lost my brother, I thought I'd give up. The instinct to survive must be the strongest of all.”

I didn't want to talk about Annabelle, but I wondered if Mitch needed to talk about Jeffrey. “How did you survive?” I asked, motioning the waiter for another drink.

“I buried myself in the law. I held on to the thought that if I got good enough, I could be what Jeffrey had once been to me. Someone who looked out for the weak.”

It was strange that Mitch had ever considered himself to be weak, but he was the younger sibling, and from my experience with Dorry, I sometimes felt less than. He'd also explained his need to uphold justice for the underdog. “What was Jeffrey like?”

For a moment the strain left Mitch's face. “He could play baseball like nothing you've ever seen. He was stunning to watch. They have some video footage of him at the high school. I borrow it sometimes and play it on slow. It's like perfection in slow motion. He had a real talent.”

“I heard he had scouts after him, and that after the fire he turned down an athletic scholarship to State so he could stay around the coast with you.”

He gave me a curious look. “That's true. Instead of going to college, Jeffrey took a job at the docks so we could stay on the coast. My folks had adequate insurance, so some local businessmen helped us arrange to buy a house in a good neighborhood. Jeffrey wanted a family more than he wanted to be a baseball star. How'd you come to know this?”

“I did a little research. By accident. When I was looking for information on the missing girls, there were also stories about Jeffrey.”

The waiter brought my drink and Mitch asked for another. We placed orders for pulled pork, fried pickles, turnip greens, sweet-potato fritters and corn bread.

“Jeffrey was at a baseball clinic the night my parents died. A talent scout there had offered him a full scholarship not eight hours before the fire.” He spread his hands on the table. “He gave up a lot for me.”

“He must have been a wonderful brother.”

“No one could ever begin to know the things he did for me. The way he protected me.” He stopped talking, and I left him in his thoughts. At last he spoke. “You would have liked him, Carson.”

“I wish I could have known him,” I said, and meant it. Jeffrey Rayburn had obviously helped shape Mitch into the man he was.

Mitch sipped his drink, and the sadness in his eyes was clouded by pain. “He suffered a lot. When we were growing up, he took the blame for things that I did.” He finished his drink. “Let's talk about something else.”

On the stage in the other room, the band had begun to tune up. “Why are you asking to reopen the Sparks burglary conviction?”

“I examined the case, and I honestly believe Bob Sparks didn't do it. He served two years in state prison. An apology won't amount to much, but vindication may be something he can hold on to.”

“You're really one of the good guys, aren't you?” I meant it sincerely.

He shook his head. “I don't believe in the good guys. We're all…fallible, Carson. We make mistakes. No one is totally good.”

“What about the bad guys? Do you believe in them?”

“I believe we all suffer. Some more than others.”

The band swung into a rendition of “The Thrill Is Gone.” There was a small dance floor in front of the band. From our table we couldn't see, but I knew that in the darkness there were couples dancing. It was a slow, sensual song where belly and pelvis met and melded. The band moved on to some Bobby Blue Bland and more B. B. King.