The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape Read online

  She supposed, if they were to get a new trial, there would have to be new evidence. Where and how would she, or even a new attorney, find evidence after the police had been over everything, had collected and presented in court all the evidence to be found? She stood in the middle of the living room frantic with fear, her mind circling like a caged animal searching for a way to escape.

  At last she picked up her purse and headed for Mama’s, to tell Sammie what must be told. Try to explain to her nine-year-old child that the law, which was meant to protect them, had turned against them. That the grown-ups on the jury whom Sammie knew and trusted, did not believe her daddy, that the whole town had betrayed him.

  5

  IN THE VISITING room of the Rome jail, Morgan stiffened as two deputy U.S. marshals pulled him away from Becky and Sammie. It took all the resolve he had not to fight them as they jerked his arms behind him, snapped on handcuffs and forced him toward the door. The time was eight-fifteen, the morning after he was sentenced in Rome’s U.S. courthouse by the town’s one federal judge. He and Becky and Sammie had been allowed only a few moments to say good-bye, the three of them clinging together. As if they might form an unbreakable chain that could never be wrenched apart. Sammie, when she looked up at him, was so vulnerable and perplexed. He knew Becky had debated a long time whether to bring her this morning. But the pain Sammie was experiencing now was preferable to his being taken away without seeing her, to Sammie learning later that Morgan was gone for good, that he might never come home again.

  From the hall, he looked back for as long as he could see them, Sammie biting her lip, the tears streaming down. Becky stone-faced, holding the child close, trying not to cry. Then he couldn’t see them anymore, he was forced down the hall, through the jail’s back door and into the backseat of a U.S. marshal’s car. A heavy metal grid separated him from the front seat as if, despite handcuffs and a belly chain, they thought he would attack the driver from the rear.

  In the backseat of the official vehicle, handcuffed to a second deputy, he watched the driver get settled, listened to the engine of the heavy Packard start up smooth and powerful. As the black car headed through Rome in the direction of Atlanta, he imagined Becky and Sammie getting in their car, holding each other, comforting each other. Imagined them driving the few blocks to Caroline’s, and he was mighty glad for Becky’s strong and caring mother.

  Becky had been so still during the trial, sitting near him at the attorney’s table, never moving, and so very pale. After the verdict, when he was back in his cell he kept reliving that moment: “Life and twenty-five years, life and twenty-five years.” He kept seeing her face, closed and still, trying to hide the pain. Kept seeing the faces of his neighbors, members of his church, his automotive customers—the hard faces of strangers. In less than four weeks from the day Falon walked into the shop asking Morgan to come look at his car, nearly the whole town had turned against them. Their lives had been blown away as thoroughly as a landing craft sunk by a destroyer.

  During the two-hour ride to Atlanta, handcuffed to the deputy marshal, he experienced every bitter emotion, desolation, helplessness, a violent rage that he had no way to act upon. He had always viewed the U.S. legal system as carefully designed to protect honest men, to confine those who threatened ordered society. How dumb was that?

  If a federal jury could do this to an innocent man, what other destruction might the courts be capable of?

  He and Becky had made their marriage vows for life; they had joined as a team not to be parted. Now Morgan himself, in one moment of bad judgment, had wrenched their family apart. In going with Falon to look at his car, he had broken all his promises to Becky and had shattered their little girl’s life. Now, if he hadn’t been chained he would have tried to grab the deputy’s weapon, would have done his best to break away and get the hell out of there. Watching the thin, scowling deputy, he grew increasingly restive. Only when the deputy’s hand edged toward his gun did Morgan try to sit easier. These men didn’t know him, they didn’t know what he might try. He was dealing with a different world now. He had no rights anymore. He would soon be surrounded by guards like these who lived by power, and by inmates just as power hungry, and he’d sure have to watch himself.

  After the trial he had suggested to Becky that she file for divorce, that she try to make a new life for herself and Sammie. Her face had gone red with anger, her eyes blazing, then she had clung to him, weeping. Not since a mortar shell had ripped through the hull of his ship in the Pacific, the water gushing in through splintered metal, had he realized how frail and precious life was. Falon’s deliberate destruction of their lives had been as brutal as any enemy attack.

  They entered the outskirts of Atlanta, passed the Fox Theater and then the hotel where he and Becky had had dinner before he left with the navy. She’d ended up crying halfway through the meal. The future then, as he went off to war, had seemed irrevocably black and empty.

  He’d come home from that one—but maybe he’d had better odds, even in war, than he had now.

  South of Atlanta the modest little houses gave way to mottled fields and then the Federal Pen loomed, tall and gray and cold, its fortress face and guard towers challenging all comers. Parking their black limo before the front door, the deputies pulled him out, forced him up the steps and inside.

  He was booked and told to strip. His clothes were taken away, and a guard searched the cavities of his body, stirring his rage. He showered as he was told. He dressed in the prison blues he was issued, then moved into the cellblock followed by a guard. The cells stood five tiers high. He climbed the narrow metal stairs to the third level, walked ahead of the guard along the steel catwalk. He was locked into a single cell, and was grateful for that. He hoped he wouldn’t be moved later into one of the bigger cells with multiple cots and with unrestrained roommates. Sitting down on his narrow bunk, he didn’t look at the men in the cells across the way, didn’t make eye contact. Some of them watched him idly; others stared directly at him, caged predators assessing new prey.

  6

  THE NIGHT BEFORE Sammie said good-bye to Daddy she dreamed she was there in the police station. Sleeping next to Mama, Misto close in her arms, she saw their good-bye there in the jail and she hugged Misto tight, trying not to cry and wake Mama.

  “It will be all right,” Misto murmured, his whiskers tickling her ear. “It isn’t over, Sammie. Your daddy will be all right.”

  “The cowboy will come?” Sammie whispered. “He will help Daddy?”

  “You dreamed he would,” Misto said.

  She hadn’t answered, she’d hugged the big cat tight and he pressed his cool nose against her cheek. “You are my Sammie, you will endure.” He purred against her so hard she thought his rumble would wake Mama, but it didn’t, she was too tired from the courtroom trial.

  “It must have been ugly and mean,” she whispered, “if Mama wouldn’t take me.”

  “It was ugly. But your daddy will prevail, and so will you.” And Misto had leaped from her arms, raced around the night-dim room, raced up the curtains never moving them and making no sound, only delighting Sammie. He sailed from the curtain rod to the dresser with not a stir of air, then to the top of the open closet door and back to the bed, then up, up to the ceiling. His joy and wildness, his cat-madness made her want to race and fly with him, and maybe that would make the pain go away. He sailed around the room twice, then pounced down again and snuggled close, still and warm against her, purring and purring. Misto was with her all the rest of the night, snuggled in her arms. In the morning when she and Mama drove to the jail she knew he was near; sometimes she could feel his whiskers on her cheek or feel a brush of fur, and that helped her to be strong for Daddy.

  At the jail when they said good-bye she clung to Daddy and so did Mama but that cop pulled him away and forced him from the room. She could see Daddy’s anger, she knew he wanted to fight them but what good would it do? They’d hardly had time to hug each other and then he was g
one, was marched away down the hall. He glanced back once, then she and Mama were alone. Everything was empty, the whole world empty. She felt Misto’s warmth against her cheek, but now even her loving cat couldn’t help.

  “You know we’ll visit him at the prison,” Mama said. “They have visiting hours, we’ll be with him then.”

  “In a cage,” Sammie said. “We can’t be with him at home. We have to visit Daddy, like a stranger in a cage.”

  Another cop walked them out to the front door. They crossed the parking lot, got in their car and sat holding each other. Mama tried to stop crying but she couldn’t. Sammie pressed so close that when Mama started the car she could hardly drive; she drove one-handed, her arm tight around Sammie. Sammie was nine but she felt like a tiny child, pressing her face against Mama. Now, without Daddy, they weren’t a family, they needed to be together to be a real family. When Daddy went overseas, when she was little, he told her he was going to fight for freedom. Freedom for their world, he said. Freedom for their country and for every person in it. But instead of freedom for all, like the history books said, those people in the federal court and even their own neighbors had stolen her daddy’s freedom from him, and Daddy had done nothing wrong.

  Ever since the trial began, she and Mama had stayed with Grandma, and Sammie had been with Grandma every day. Mama didn’t want her in school, when Brad Falon with the narrow eyes might still be in town, might follow her. And where the kids would bully her and say her daddy was guilty.

  During the trial Grandma had gone right on running her baking business; she said the money she made was even more important now, and you couldn’t just tell longtime customers there would be no more pies and cakes until the trial was over. Grandma said that would lose all her good customers and she had already lost some of them because of what people thought Daddy had done. Grandma was up every morning at three; the smell of baking always woke Sammie. A lady came in to help her, and once the cakes and pies and bread were out and cooling they would stop long enough to make breakfast, but Sammie could never eat very much. Later when the cakes were iced and everything was boxed and ready, Sammie would ride with Grandma in the van to deliver them to the local restaurants. And every night, during the trial, Misto was with her.

  Now, after saying good-bye to Daddy they came in the house, through the closed-in porch, and straight into Grandma Caroline’s arms. They stood in the middle of the living room clinging together hugging each other, needing each other, hurting and lost.

  The whole house smelled of sausage biscuits. In the kitchen, Grandma had already poured a cup of hot tea for Mama and milk for Sammie. Grandma always wore jeans, and this morning a faded plaid shirt covered by a bright apron of patchwork, one of the aprons she liked to sew late at night when she couldn’t sleep. She must be awake a lot because she sure had a lot of aprons, all as bright as picture books.

  CAROLINE TANNER WORE no makeup, her high coloring and short, dark hair needing no enhancement. She set a tray of sausage biscuits on the table beside a strawberry shortcake. Comfort food, Becky thought, watching her mother, never ceasing to wonder at her calm strength. Becky had been seven when her father was killed in a tractor accident. Two weeks after the funeral Caroline began baking and selling her goods. She was a Rome girl, and the town had given her its support. They had lived on what she made, Becky and her two brothers helping all they could.

  Becky was ten, her brother Ron twelve and James fifteen when Caroline got a loan from the bank and extended the kitchen of their little house into a bigger and more efficient bakery and storeroom. Becky and her brothers had helped the carpenter after school and on weekends, as he built and dried in the new walls, then tore out the original walls. The children had learned how to paint properly, how to clean their tools, and her brothers had learned how to plaster. After the stainless steel counters were installed, and the two big commercial refrigerators and two sinks, they had taken the bakery van into Atlanta and brought home the new ovens, the big stovetop, and the smaller commercial appliances. The big window over the sink looked out on the side yard beneath a pair of live oak trees.

  Before the remodel, Caroline had done all her baking in their small, inadequate kitchen, her equipment and trays of baked goods spilling over into the dining room, where cookies and breads and cakes cooled on racks, along with those already boxed and ready for delivery. The two iceboxes never had enough space for the salads and casseroles for the parties that Caroline catered. Their own simple meals had been eaten in the living room, worked around the urgent business of making a living. When the new bakery was finished, they’d had a little party, just the four of them, to celebrate the new and more accommodating kitchen, to reclaim their own house.

  Within three years Caroline had paid off the van and equipment and could hire more help for the catered weddings and parties, though still, the whole family pitched in for those. All the years Becky was growing up, her mother would be out of bed and dressed by three in the morning, rolling out pie crusts, baking cakes. Becky’s brothers made breakfast until Becky was old enough to cook. Her brothers, as soon as they could drive legally, had done the bakery deliveries before school.

  Becky missed her brothers. Even after Ron was killed in the Pacific, she still felt often that he was near her. And though their older brother, James, was still in Japan he was close to them, he liked to write home of that very different part of the world. She looked forward to his return next year when his tour of duty ended.

  By the time Becky turned sixteen and got her driver’s license, her brothers had moved on with their lives. She had felt very grown-up, handling the deliveries herself, before and after school. She had helped with them after she and Morgan were married, until Sammie was born. Even during the war years Caroline made an adequate living, using special recipes that took little of the precious rationed sugar but were still delicious.

  Now, at forty-eight, Caroline was as energetic and slim as ever, a tall, strong woman whom Becky, at this time in her life, deeply envied. She wished she had half her mother’s resilience, wished she could follow better Caroline’s hardheaded approach to life. Caroline Tanner had always tackled problems head-on, stubbornly weighing each possible solution, choosing the most viable one, then plunging ahead with no holds barred. If Caroline had tears during those hard years, she cried them in private.

  They were halfway through supper when Caroline said, “The next thing is to go for an appeal. You need a better lawyer.” She looked steadily at Becky. “I plan to help with his fees. I want Falon taken down, I want to see him in prison. I want Morgan out of that place.”

  “Mama, I don’t—”

  “It’s family money. Half of it will be yours one day and you need it now. If it bothers you to take it, you can pay me back after Morgan gets out.”

  “If he gets out.”

  Caroline stared at her. “When he gets out. Morgan is in prison unjustly. We keep at it until we find a better lawyer, get an appeal and a new trial. A fair trial. But not in Rome,” she said bitterly.

  Becky laid her hand over Caroline’s. “You make it sound so simple.”

  “There’s no other way. First thing is to find an attorney.”

  “I’ve already made some inquiries,” Becky said. “There are several lawyers in Atlanta I want to see. But, Mama, we need new evidence, stronger evidence, for an appeal. I want to talk with the tellers, with Mrs. Herron and Betty Holmes, and the younger teller. I want to talk with the bank manager, and the witness who saw Morgan’s car leave the bank.” She sighed. “I mean to talk with Natalie Hooper, though I don’t look forward to facing that piece of trash.”

  Caroline gave Becky a long look. “That’s not the way to go.” She rose to cut the shortcake and lathered on whipped cream. “Let the lawyer do that. You could compromise the case.”

  Watching her mother, Becky thought about that. She watched Sammie, too. Though the child made quick work of her dessert she was too quiet, hurting so bad inside, missing her daddy.<
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  Still, though, after the good meal Sammie seemed steadier. Her color brightened; she seemed more alive, less subdued than when they’d left the jail. “Can I go outside and play?”

  Becky and Caroline looked at each other. “In the front yard,” Becky said. “Stay in front of the big window where we can see you.”

  Sammie nodded. She walked quietly through the house and out the front door, not running as she normally would. Becky and Caroline moved into the living room to sit on the couch looking out the bay window, watching her.

  “The new attorney should talk to the witnesses,” Caroline repeated. “Particularly Falon’s girlfriend, his key witness. What if Falon found out you’d questioned her? Don’t you think he’d make trouble?”

  “Mama, I . . . tried to speak to her yesterday, in the parking lot after the sentencing. He probably knows that. She was still nervous, even more upset than she showed on the witness stand. I thought if I could get her to say something incriminating . . .”

  Watching her mother, Becky wilted. “I guess that was foolish. I approached her as she was getting in her car. She scowled and turned away, said she couldn’t talk to me. But,” she said, her hand on Caroline’s, “it gave me satisfaction that she was so shaky. I . . . hoped to scare her, make her think about what she’d done.”

  “Leave her alone, Becky. That’s your attorney’s job.” Caroline was quiet for a moment, then her look softened. “When you’re the most determined, the most set on something, I see your father in you.”

  Becky grinned. “You don’t see yourself?”

  Caroline laughed.

  “I didn’t understand until I got older,” Becky said, “how hard it was for you, raising us alone.”

  “We did it together,” Caroline said, “the four of us. It was our life and it’s been a good one. It’s still a good life,” she said. “We’ll get through this hard part, this isn’t forever.”