The Cutting Season (29 page)

“I don’t imagine it matters no way.”

“It does, though,” Caren said. “You’re going to want the best representation you can get for Donovan. You need someone who’s going to walk your family through the whole process, not just somebody punching a clock or trying to get in good with the judge.”

“Clancy’s got it all worked out.”

“Who?”

Raymond Clancy, Betty said.

He’d sent Donovan that lawyer, right out of his firm in Baton Rouge.

Caren shook her head. She thought Betty must have gotten it confused.

“No, ma’am, it was Clancy, all right,” Betty said. “He called the house this morning, said not to worry on it. He was gon’ make sure Donovan was taken care of.”

“Raymond said that?”

Betty nodded. “And I want to thank you for that, Caren,” she said. She had assumed this was Caren’s doing, getting Clancy to go to bat for Donovan. “I know they’ve been good to your family over the years. He’s just like his daddy, that one,” she said. “The Clancys, they’ve always looked out for black folks.”

No, Caren thought.

Raymond was nothing like his father.

She wanted to tell Betty to be wary, but she didn’t want to scare the woman any more than she already was, not until Caren had more information, not until she knew just what in the hell Raymond was up to. She asked if she could look in Donovan’s bedroom, making up a story about needing his work costume and other such items returned to the plantation. Betty nodded without saying anything. In her slippers, she shuffled in the direction of the open bottle of whiskey.

T
hey were not hard to find.

Two unmarked DVDs—not
tapes
, not literally—inside a shoe box on the right side of the bed, near a stack of books on editing and camera techniques that he’d checked out from his local library, books that had Post-it notes and scraps of paper marking passages inside. Caren made a quick and easy guess as to the content of the DVDs. Stuck to the front of the clear plastic case was a taped note that bore a list of scribbled scene numbers.

Back home, she slid the first disc into the open drive on her computer, the one upstairs in her apartment. Raymond Clancy had left by the time they returned to the plantation, but she didn’t know when or if he’d be back and thought it best to view the footage here, the little part of Belle Vie over which she had sole, if temporary, domain. She was seated in front of the monitor, Eric behind her, watching as the disc loaded. The first image on-screen was a shot of the slave quarters.

Caren felt a flutter in her chest at the sight.

My God
, she whispered.

She had never seen anything like it, had never seen the quarters so alive, populated by real flesh and blood. It took her breath away. She saw at once what he was trying to do, Donovan, the history he wanted to record, to hold in his hands, to make sense of. He was trying to put it down for posterity in the only way he knew how, with video cameras and microphones, the tools of his generation. And it broke Caren’s heart, broke it wide open, in fact. She stared at the computer screen in awe. For there he was. There was Jason, her great-great-great-grandfather. And here was the schoolteacher, Miss Nadine. The scene was of a celebration, a cakewalk in the quarters, sometime in the years before Jason’s wife, Eleanor, returned—when Jason and his teacher were unwittingly falling in love. There was a feeling of felicity as the men and women fell in line for the cakewalk, a playful and flirtatious dance that got its start in slave quarters on plantations across the South. It was a tradition that had taken on a special tenderness on the other side of Emancipation, black folks holding on to some of the old ways, even as they moved forward into the still unknown world of freedom. And when Jason took Nadine’s hand for a dance, Caren, watching the scene unfold, felt her own heart skip a beat. It was just Cornelius and Shauna on-screen, playing the parts. She knew that. And those twinkling lights were not stars, but a string of ninety-nine-cent Christmas lights slung across the cabin doors and the wooden fences. That was just Ennis Mabry in a pageboy cap and Lee overalls, pretending to strum a string guitar, just Nikki Hubbard and a few of her high school friends filling out the cast of ex-slaves. But she didn’t care. She was seeing her own story, her own history reflected back to her, rounded out and in full color, and the feeling it stirred was something she would not, in this lifetime, forget.

T
hey watched for nearly an hour, scene after scene.

But it wasn’t until the last recorded scene on the second disc that she understood the full significance of the evidence she’d uncovered. They watched the final scene, the last one Donovan filmed on Wednesday night, over and over, maybe a dozen times. The whole thing was one shot, less than thirty-five seconds long—the footage taken on the main road, outside of Manette cottage, just like Morgan said. Her report of the night Inés Avalo was killed had included this fact: Donovan said he would wait around for his cast and crew, passing the time by getting some extra shots outside Manette house. And that’s exactly what was on Caren’s computer screen now.

“Take a look at that,” she said to Eric, pointing at the screen. She held a finger to the top left part of the monitor, clicking the mouse to rewind the shot from the beginning. The image was dark, almost ashy, the strained result of trying to register true black on digital video; the scene had likely been lit with nothing more than a small bulb mounted on the camera itself. Donovan, manning the camera, swept the lens from the front of the cottage—the clapboard porch, the railing made of whitewashed pine—all the way down the length of the main road, pointing south toward the quarters. It was here that Donovan’s voice cut in. “What the hell is that?” he whispered. It was nothing urgent, his tone; in no way did he sound alarmed. The shot—an image of the main road all the way to the quarters—slipped in and out of focus as Donovan zoomed in on a white light off in the distance. “Look,” Caren said to Eric. He squinted at the screen.

The closer the camera zoomed in, the greater the strain on the image. But it was clear that the light was coming from the cane fields, on the other side of Belle Vie’s fence. Eric’s eyes widened as something astonishing happened: the light, which at a distance seemed whole, split in two. And even though the digital magnification distorted the image somewhat, it was clear that the two white squares were headlights. Somebody was parked out there Wednesday night, out by the fields, twin headlights pointed toward the plantation, not even fifteen feet from where the body of Inés Avalo had been found.

24

E
ric asked her to replay it.

She asked him if he was seeing the same thing she was.

There was only one type of motor vehicle that sits that high off the ground, and Caren was convinced that those were the headlights of a pickup truck. Eric shook his head; he wasn’t nearly as certain. But it was an automobile for sure, and when she mentioned showing the disc to Detectives Lang and Bertrand, he, surprisingly, didn’t resist.

They would not mention Morgan or the bloody shirt.

The rules were the same.

But even Eric couldn’t deny the significance of Donovan’s footage.

They rode together to the sheriff’s station in Gonzales, Caren sitting beside Eric in his rental, the DVDs in her lap. At the courthouse, Detective Lang greeted them first, in the hallway outside the Criminal Investigations Division, having earlier received her call saying they were on their way. It wasn’t until the first disc was out of its case and loaded into a DVD player in one of the station’s two interrogation rooms that Lang finally understood the connection between Donovan’s “school project” and the scenes playing out on the TV screen. The three of them, Caren, Eric, and Lang, watched the film’s story in silence. When Detective Bertrand came in carrying a Styrofoam cup of black coffee, she told them both the image they needed to see was on the second disc. But Lang approached this with an investigator’s pace, wanting to see each frame of each scene lined end to end, so that he could comprehend the whole of the discs’ meaning in the context of his murder investigation—one he believed he’d already solved. And so Caren watched, for the second time, the story of Jason and Nadine and Eleanor, the mystery of his disappearance, and the black sheriff determined to find the truth. Bertrand stared at the screen and frowned, asking no one in particular, “What in God’s name is all this?”

On the television screen, the roles were reversed.

Donovan, their suspect, was the lawman.

Having cast himself in the role of Sheriff Aaron Nathan Sweats, he was wearing a wide-brim hat and Eddie Knoxville’s black knee-high boots. Bo Johnston was doing his bit as Jason’s employer and the cane farm’s manager, Mr. Tynan. The scene was shot in the old schoolhouse, which had been made over to resemble a country jailhouse. Tynan was being interrogated about the last time he’d seen Jason alive. The sheriff’s investigation seemed to turn on a cane knife, one used by Jason in the fields. It seemed odd to Sheriff Sweats that the knife had been
returned
to Tynan at the end of the workday, when Tynan swore he hadn’t seen Jason again after he walked out of the fields.

T
he television screen cut to black.

Finally, they were at the very last shot, in front of Manette house.

“Here,” Caren said to the cops.

Lang turned up the volume, as if that might help him see the fuzzy image more clearly. Bertrand, whose coffee had turned cold sitting on the tabletop, had his arms crossed tight against his chest, the shoulder seams of his sports coat so strained that Caren could see each mustard-brown thread. Eric watched from the back of the room.

It was all there: Donovan’s whisper, the white light, the camera’s long zoom.

When the light split, when it became clear that Donovan’s camera had captured twin headlights parked in the distance, in the cane fields, Caren kept her eyes on both Lang and Bertrand. Bertrand’s arms dropped to his sides. He bent at the waist, staring at the nineteen-inch screen, his thick hands on his hips. Lang hit rewind. He watched the shot two more times, in complete silence. When he finally turned away from the screen, he looked at his partner first, then Caren. “This was Wednesday night? You’re sure?” She nodded, although at present her only way of proving this fact was the word of her nine-year-old daughter. There was no time stamp on any of the scenes on the discs, and she had no way of knowing where the originals—the digital videotapes from the camera itself—were, not without talking to Donovan first.

“We’re going to need to keep these,” Lang said.

She shook her head. “You can make a copy.”

Lang nodded at Bertrand. “Jimmy, go get Tommy from across the hall.”

Bertrand backed out of the room, still staring at the headlights on the television screen, until he was all the way on the other side of the door. Lang stood. “I’m not sure I understand why this wasn’t brought to my attention earlier.” He looked at Caren first, before leveling a vexing gaze on Eric. “Especially seeing as you were in here passing yourself off as the boy’s attorney, Mr. Ellis, not to mention practicing law in the state of Louisiana without a bar card.” Eric started to speak, but Caren stopped him. She didn’t need him coming down hard with some Yankee attitude, speaking with anything less than the respect this small-town detective was sure he deserved. She would handle Lang.

“I don’t believe Donovan killed anybody, sir,” she said to the cop.

Eric jumped in impatiently. “Why in the world would she withhold anything that potentially exculpates him?”

“Is that what you think this is?” Lang said, nodding toward the grainy video.

“It raises the possibility that someone other than Donovan killed Inés Avalo. Someone else was clearly present at the scene. It’s right there on the tape.”

Lang nodded absently.

“Well, see, the problem with that is . . . Donovan has already confessed.”

“What?” Eric said.

Caren was sure she’d heard it wrong. “What do you mean he
confessed
?”

“He and his attorney are already in the process of working out a plea deal with the district attorney’s office. He’ll admit to guilt, and if he’s lucky get the charge knocked down to second-degree homicide, manslaughter even. But that’s all up to the folks in the DA’s office.”

Eric was frowning.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “A plea deal isn’t necessarily a confession.”

“It is in my book.”

“So you’re not even going to look into this?” Caren said, trying to control her anger, nearly shaking from the effort. Lang pointed to the bluish screen and the video image. Dryly, he said, “The Sheriff’s Department thanks you for bringing this in.”

And that was it.

Caren looked at Eric and said, “I don’t understand. Why would he take a deal?”

Lang was damn near smiling.

Sheer arrogance was the only thing that could explain why he said what he said next, why he laid his whole hand face up on the table. “We got the knife,” he said.

Caren didn’t believe him.

She was
at
Betty Collier’s house. The police had been through with a warrant, but Betty said they’d walked out with nothing. Lang’s whole case was bullshit, and they knew it. “I want to talk to him,” she said suddenly. “I want to talk to Donovan.”

“No, ma’am,” Lang said, shaking his head.

Eric grabbed her arm. “Come on, Caren, let’s go.”

“He’s not the boy’s lawyer, and you’re not family.” Lang was treating them as troublemakers, involving themselves in something that had nothing to do with them.

But Donovan
was
family.

He was part of the extended family of Belle Vie,
her
family.

“He can’t take a deal,” she said.

Lang smiled broadly, as if he was expecting this. “Well . . . if he doesn’t, you want to know what’s going to happen, Ms. Gray? The district attorney is going to put this evidence to a grand jury, and you, ma’am, will be among those subpoenaed. I know you’ve been lying to us from day one. You were the main one vouching for the fact that Donovan wasn’t on the plantation Wednesday night, and now you’re hand-delivering a videotape you’ve had in your possession for who knows how long, hard evidence that proves you knew where he was the whole time.”

“Caren, let’s go,” Eric said.

“You digging yourself a hole, Tulane,” Lang said. “Don’t look good, neither, you looking at plane tickets to Washington, D.C. You got some reason to be making a fast exit out of the state?” She started to say something, to ask how he knew about that. But Eric grabbed her roughly by the arm. “Don’t say another word,” he said.

“I want to talk to Donovan,” she told Lang.

Eric reached for Caren’s hand, just as Bertrand returned with a skinny kid in Levi’s and a black Eagles concert T-shirt. He had a second DVD player tucked under one arm and two slim black-and-red cables draped over his right shoulder. Eric, without being asked, held Caren’s hand while copies of the video discs were made.

S
he posed it as a last favor, asking Eric to get her inside the jail. Donovan was officially a ward of the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Department, and they could pretty much do with him as they pleased, could withhold privileges such as phone calls or visits from family or friends. So Eric placed an urgent call to a friend of his in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Dallas. And that woman, an old law school classmate of theirs, placed a call of her own, to the jailhouse in little Gonzales, Louisiana.

Less than an hour later, Caren entered the jail alone.

Her name was already waiting on somebody’s clipboard.

She left her personal effects with a female clerk, a black woman with brandy-colored braids and gold hoop earrings who eyed Caren and her expensive Patagonia jacket and muddy ropers with no small amount of curiosity. She offered no pleasantries, no friendly comments about the weather. Instead, she pointed to where Caren should sign her name and the red plastic tray where she was to leave her driver’s license and keys. Her escort was a young deputy with an ash-blond buzz cut and rolls of fat above the starched collar of his tan uniform. He led her down a hallway with cracked linoleum tiles and fluorescent lights to a plain door with a small window.

Inside, Donovan sat alone, uncuffed, in a dingy jailhouse jumpsuit, and Caren could tell from first glance that he was expecting someone else. He didn’t stand or greet her in any way. The deputy asked if she wanted him to stay, and she answered no, that she thought they’d be all right. She watched the cop disappear on the other side of the door. She heard the lock click, and then it was just the two of them. Donovan didn’t look good. His eyes were red, and his cheeks were dappled with tufts of unshaven hair. He had his elbows on the table and his head held down low.

Caren sighed and said, “What are you doing, Donovan?”

He shook his head at her. “Just go.”

“You can’t take this deal.”

Donovan clasped his hands under the table, shrugging his shoulders. “I can do two and a half,” he said. “I might have picked that up on the trespassing charge, anyway.” Then, trying to convince himself, he said again, “I can do two and a half.”

“You’re not serious, Donovan?” she said. “You don’t really think they’re going to give you two and a half years on a murder charge?”

“Manslaughter,” he said. He tapped his index finger on the white tabletop, as if he were counting out the days. “That guy, my lawyer, he’s saying it’s all worked out. I plead guilty to a lesser charge, and it’s two and a half, that’s what he said.” He kept repeating the words, as if he were hammering a nail, closing his own coffin from the inside. “He says it’s a good deal for somebody like me. The cops, the DA, they all know I got a felony record. So, yeah, I can do two and a half.”

He thrust out his chin, playing with the idea of himself as a soldier, a man who’s learned to take his licks. Caren couldn’t think of a more dangerous way to test one’s strength. She pulled out the second chair, sitting down across from him. “Listen to me,” she said. “That lawyer of yours works for Raymond Clancy, and he’s doing what he thinks is best for Clancy, not you. You need to understand that before you agree to anything.”

Donovan cocked his head to one side. “What’s Clancy got to do with this?”

“He got you that lawyer,” she said. “The man didn’t tell you he works for Raymond Clancy?”

“I thought the judge sent him. I thought he was court-appointed.”

Caren shook her head. “He’s a private attorney.”

“My grandmama know about this?”

Caren avoided mentioning her trip to Betty’s house that afternoon. She didn’t want him to know how broken the old woman was, how it seemed she’d all but given up. “You ought to know . . . that Clancy is selling the plantation,” she said instead.

Donovan shook his head in disbelief. “No way, man.”

“It’s sold, Donovan. Belle Vie, the farm, all of it. He’s selling it to the Groveland Corporation.”

Donovan didn’t say anything right away.

He wore the expression of a man who thinks he’s being lied to.

“But what’s that got to do with me?”

“Nothing,” she said. “That’s what I’m saying. This is Raymond Clancy’s deal. And he needs it to go through without any problems. He’s got big plans for his political future, plans that involve Groveland, and you taking the fall for this is something he’s willing to invest money in. It’s a setup, Donovan,” she said. He shook his head, turning to look away from her. Caren grabbed his arm. The skin felt fevered and hot. “Look at me,” she said. “Don’t you dare do this, Donovan. Don’t you dare let them put you away for this. You are not your past, understand? I don’t care what you’ve done or how many times you’ve been arrested. Don’t let them make you into something you’re not.”