Grave Sight

I'd heard pretty much the same thing from Hollis.

"Then Mr. Jay, Jay Hopkins, he beat Miss Helen up, and I heard my mom and Uncle Paul arguing about whether we should get Miss Helen back to work in the house. Uncle Paul said Miss Helen was sober and deserved a second chance, and Mom said after what she knew now, she wouldn't have Helen back in the house for love nor money. Especially love, she said."

"What do you think she meant by that?" I asked. With Mary Nell around, you wouldn't need a tape recorder.

"I have no idea," the girl answered. "I never did understand. I think my mom thought Miss Helen took something from her. But they wouldn't tell me." Familiar bitterness tinged her voice: the teenager vs. the adult world.

"Mary Nell, could you drop me back by my car?"

She sounded a little hurt when she told me she could.

I'd been too abrupt; but I had to think, and I knew Mary Nell would keep on talking as long as I was available to be her audience.

Once I was by myself, I felt both visible and vulnerable. I drove to my motel by the most direct route and shut myself in the damn room with the damn green bedspread. I had no messages. I couldn't decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. My leg was tingling, as it sometimes did, and I peeled off my jeans and rubbed the skin, with its fine tracery of purple spiderwebs. Cameron had called me Spiderwoman for a while, before we'd figured out that the branching lines weren't going away. My stepfather had been fond of ordering me to show the leg to his friends.

Hollis never mentioned it. Maybe he didn't understand it was lightning-related. Maybe he thought it was a birthmark of some kind and didn't want to hurt my feelings.

I lay down on the bed. SO MO DA NO, I thought. It might almost be the chorus to a Caribbean song. Okay. Reverse it. ON AD OM OS. NO DA MO SO. Dams, moon, soon, mad, mono, moans, nomad. Damon, doom, moods. Amos. Samoa? Nope, only one A. Why one A? Every other phrase ended with O.

Okay, what if the second letter was some... condition? What if the first letters stood for names? S could be for Sybil, D for Dell, N for... oh, Mary Nell had said her dad had called her Nelly. That could be N. But then, who was M? No one's name started with M, that I could recall. D could be for Dick Teague, if not Dell.

For the first time, I wished that I could ask questions of the dead. I could only take what they gave me. They gave me a picture of their deaths. They gave me what they'd been feeling at the moment. But they never told me why, or who, just how.

A bullet in my back... an infection in my lungs... my heart stuttered and quit pumping... I was just too old and worn out... the car hit so hard... the fall was from too high... I picked up the razor blade... I couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe, my inhaler was too far away... the meat lodged in my throat... the virus traveled through me and laid waste to my body... the knife traveled through my liver, then my stomach, then...

The dead all had stories, but they never explained or condemned. I'd heard, on odd little message boards that I visited, that some others like me - people who'd been French-kissed by electricity - could see the dead, could even communicate with them. No one else had confessed to having my truncated sort of relationship with those in their graves. There were lightning-struck people who could see the future, who now walked with a limp, who were blind in one eye. One woman had said no one in her family would help her right after she'd been hit because they were convinced she was charged with electricity. On a more private board, a board with far fewer members, a man in Colorado Springs posted that he was accompanied everywhere he went by his dead brother, who'd been killed by the same lightning bolt. No one else could see the brother, of course; his family had even had him committed for a time.

I stayed in my room all night. I ordered a delivery pizza. Hollis called to tell me he was working that night, all night, and to remind me to call him if I needed anything. I got one heavy-breathing anonymous call, a call I figured came from one of the teenage boys who'd confronted me. Paul Edwards called to tell me he was sorry about my brother's "situation," and he offered to help me in any way he could.

Since it was his cousin who had arrested my brother, I was pretty sure there would be a conflict of interest there, but I thanked him politely. He hinted that he wanted to come over and hang around with me. I turned him down, much less tactfully.

He was handsome, and he was a lawyer, and I could probably use a handsome lawyer friend, but Paul Edwards didn't offer to come hang around with a woman for no reason at all. He wanted something, and maybe it wasn't sex. He didn't seem to be a constant lover. The relationship between the lawyer and Sybil Teague wasn't clandestine, yet here he was with his ulterior motives.

I got a few hours' sleep that night, which was more than I expected. I drank coffee in the room. It wasn't good, but I didn't have to face anyone to drink it. I couldn't have eaten anything, so a restaurant was a waste of time.

I'd arranged to meet Phyllis Folliette at the courthouse. I didn't know what the lawyer would look like, but she proved to be very easy to pick out. The second I saw her I knew she wasn't from Sarne. Phyllis Folliette was a tall woman in a dark green suit and bronze silk blouse, with beautiful cordovan leather pumps that matched her bag and her briefcase... even her hair. Somewhere in her forties, Folliette exuded confidence and intelligence. That was what we needed.

I felt almost embarrassed to approach someone who was so obviously a star. I think few women would feel very well groomed or attractive when they looked at this woman, and I was no exception. I was all too aware of my messy hair and my wrinkled pantsuit. I'd made the effort to pull "meet the client" clothes out of my suitcase, but I'd lacked the energy to iron them. With Phyllis Folliette so ably making a great impression, I regretted not having stuck with jeans.

"I'm glad to meet you," she said. "You've impressed Art Barfield, and that's saying something." She shook my hand and began to tell me what she'd learned in talking to the law enforcement people in Sarne. "I've been over to the jail," she said. "Something is up. For one thing, if they were taking the story about Montana warrants seriously, Mr. Lang would be appearing before a different court. I don't know how much you know about the legal system in Arkansas." She raised her eyebrows.

"Assume I'm ignorant," I said, which was pretty much the truth.

"They would never have arrested him for a broken taillight unless he did something else, like shove a cop or try to evade arrest, something like that. What gave the patrolman the juice to arrest Tolliver was the allegation that he had open warrants in Montana." That's what Art had said, too. "Now, if they were sticking by that story, your brother would be appearing in circuit court. But he's not. He's going to appear in the Sarne District Court, which only handles misdemeanors. You'll see when we get in there. We'll have to wait our turn, so you'll listen to lots of other charges against other people." Her brown eyes summed me up while she spoke.

"Harper, honey, you're very wired up," she said after a moment or two. "You need to try to relax."

"You don't know how bogus this is!" I whispered. I was trying hard to keep my voice down, because we were in a public hallway and the people who went by were eyeing us curiously, but I was so anxious I thought my frayed nerves would snap. "Are you telling me that the Montana thing is just going to go away?"

She glanced down at her watch. "I think it just might. We have a while before they bring him in. Let's find a quiet place. I think you need to tell me the whole story."

I didn't think it would be possible to tell Phyllis Folliette everything that had happened in Sarne, but I did manage to arrange enough of it in a coherent narrative to bring it to a conclusion with Tolliver's arrest.

"It's definite that some force in this town is against you," she said, after a silence. "It's evident you're being hounded. No matter what I think of the way you make your living, Miss Connelly, what's being done to you is wrong. And your brother is apparently being held to reinforce the message that you're unwelcome here. I'll do my best to get him out. He was actually arrested in Montana last year, right?"

"Well, yes. This guy threw a rock at me. Tolliver got upset. Of course."

"Of course," she said, as if she routinely spoke to clients who'd been literally stoned. "Tolliver was upset enough to put the man in the hospital?"

"Hey, those charges were dismissed."

"Um-hm. I think you had some luck with the judge on that one."

"You have a sister?"

"Uh... yes."

"Someone throws a rock at her, you'd go after the rock-thrower, right?"

"I think I'd probably be taking care of my sister. I'd let the cops arrest the rock-thrower."

"Look at it from the guy point of view."

"Okay, I see your drift."

"You talked to Tolliver about this, right?"

"Yes, they let me see him this morning. He mentioned the incident, but didn't give any details."

I smiled. "That's Tolliver."

"You two are close," she observed. "Why the different names? You've been married?"

"No," I said. "His father married my mother when we were both in our teens." I didn't like explaining this.

She nodded, giving me a sideways look. She excused herself to go to the ladies' room, and I stared at my feet for a while. When Phyllis emerged, she did a lot of meeting and greeting on her way back to our bench, in particular with a man with graying hair, probably in his early fifties, who was wearing glasses and a nice suit.

After he went into the courtroom, Phyllis Folliette made her way back to me, giving me a brisk nod. "Time to go in or we won't get a seat," she said, and we joined a stream of people passing through massive double doors to the courtroom.

The ceiling was somewhere in the clouds over our heads. There was no telling how many words were buzzing around under that high ceiling, trapped there over the years. Phyllis and I sat quietly, and people began filing in. The jailers brought a line of prisoners in, and I got to see Tolliver.

I stood up, so he could see me right away, and he gave me a serious look. I sat down in the folding wooden seat. "He looks all right," I said to the lawyer, trying to reassure myself. "Don't you think he looks all right?"

"He does," she agreed. "I don't think orange is his color, though."

"No," I said. "No, it isn't."

As all the people in the courtroom seemed to be sorting themselves out, Phyllis said, "While we have a minute, I'm just curious. Are you any relation to the Cameron Connelly who was abducted in Texas a few years ago? I'm only asking because when Art Barfield called me, he said you had grown up in Texas and you and the girl who vanished both have what could be last names for your first name. If that makes sense."

"Yes, it makes sense," I said, though I can't say I was totally focused on the conversation. "I was named for my father's mother's family, Cameron for my mother's mother's family. She was my sister."

"I notice you use the past tense. Was she ever found? Once the media stopped covering it..."

"No. But someday I'll find her body."

"Ah... okay."

After a beat, I noticed the peculiar tone to the lawyer's voice. "You know," I said more directly, "that when people are gone that long, they're dead."

"There was that girl in Utah, Elizabeth Smart."

"Yes. There was that girl in Utah. She turned up alive. But mostly, when people have been gone for more than a couple of days, and no ransom's been asked, they're dead. Or they wanted to go. I know Cameron didn't want to leave. So she's dead."

"You hold no hope?" She sounded incredulous.

"I hold no false hope." I knew my business.

The bailiff told us the judge was coming in, and we rose. A spare gray-haired man (in a suit, instead of a robe) took his seat before us. I wasn't surprised to recognize the man with whom Phyllis had been chatting earlier. The city attorney (at least I guessed that was what he was) was already in his seat facing the judge, a huge pile of files in front of him, and the proceedings began.

I'd been in court before, for this or that, so it no longer surprised me that it wasn't like Perry Mason reruns or the more recent Judge Judy. People wandered in and out. Prisoners were removed and brought in. Between cases, there was a low buzz of conversation. There was no reverential air, and there were very few dramatics. Justice was conducted as business-as-usual.

When their name was called, people went up to the podium in front of the judge's bench. The judge read out the offense, asked if the plaintiff had anything to state, then (after discussion) told the plaintiff what his fine was.

"Isn't this more like traffic court, or something? This doesn't seem serious enough," I whispered to Phyllis. She'd been listening to the judge carefully, getting his measure.

"Those warrants were bullshit," she said, just as quietly. "He's just going up for the taillight. This is unbelievable."

It took an hour for the judge to work down the list to Tolliver. Tolliver looked tired. Every now and then he'd look toward me, and he tried to smile, but I could tell it was an effort.

Finally, the clerk called, "Tolliver Lang."

Tolliver wasn't handcuffed or shackled, thank God. He went up to the podium, with one of the jail guards accompanying him.

"Mr. Lang, I see here that you were initially charged with outstanding warrants from Montana, and that you had a problem with a rear taillight." The judge didn't seem to expect Tolliver to answer. The judge had a frown on his narrow face. "But the officer who gave you the ticket for the taillight - Officer Bledsoe? Is he here?"