The Forsaken

“I still can’t believe Jean won’t talk to me,” Qui

“It’s the honorable thing to do,” Ophelia said, “she understands that. She just doesn’t know why you’re taking your father.”

“But you do,” Qui

“Why’d he come to Jericho?”

“He’d met a woman,” Qui

“They seem like nice people,” Ophelia said. “When we got the dental records match, I was on the phone with his sister for nearly an hour. His parents are dead. The siblings lost touch with him for nearly two years before he wound up here. He just kind of roamed the country, I guess.”

“They invited us to the funeral.”

“Do they know about your father, his co

Qui

“Your momma said he’ll take off before the trial,” Ophelia said, squeezing Qui

“Jean and I have some strong opinions on that,” Qui

“But he could have come back,” Ophelia said. “LeDoux’s been in jail for twenty years.”

“It’s a long way to North Carolina and back. Plenty of time to hear his side.”

“So you’ll give him a chance?” Ophelia asked. She smiled at him, looking hopeful and young with no makeup, hair in a ponytail. She looked all of eighteen, not a woman who exhumed bodies and X-rayed skulls and dealt with the dead on a daily basis and really enjoyed her work.

“I appreciate you,” Qui

“You, too.”

“Does that mean I have your vote?” Qui

“How about we go back into the house and I’ll let you know.”

Qui

•   •   •

“I have to admit I’m getting a little tired of looking at pictures of killers and rapists every other day,” Diane Tull said, driving her old truck, windows down, engine knocking a little. Caddy Colson sat beside her, after making a run down to The River with five sacks of 13-13-13 fertilizer to jump-start their spring garden.

“Lillie said it might take a while,” Caddy said. “She said you’ve already looked at nearly a thousand.”

“Or more,” Diane said. “You know what it’s like to clutter up your mind with those folks?”

Caddy didn’t say anything. And just as soon as it was out of her mouth, Diane wished she hadn’t said it.

Caddy’s car had broken down, again, and she needed some help ru

“What if you never find out?”

“I’ve lived my life never letting that man take a day from me,” Diane said. “That won’t change. I think about Lori Stillwell every day. I don’t think about that man.”

Caddy pulled into the parking lot of the sheriff’s office, Lillie waiting inside the conference room. She had several thick books out on the table. They looked old and well-worn. “I have some more photos on my laptop,” she said. “But these weren’t in the database. I got these from Alabama Department of Corrections.”

Diane took a deep breath, removed her purse from her shoulder, and sat at the table. Caddy asked Lillie if Qui

“Haven’t seen him,” Lillie said. “We’re both working days, but he said he had some business needing tending to.”

Diane flipped through the book, page by page, looking at each photo, studying and dismissing them, one by one. She tried not to look at the list of convictions below each picture, as Lillie had sorted them by the most likely possibilites from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties. Similar crimes, similar assaults on young girls. My Lord, there were a lot.

“Have we exhausted Mississippi?” Diane said, brushing back that gray streak from her eyes.

“Yep,” Lillie said. “I think we flushed that toilet. And Louisiana, too. I would have thought for sure that this piece of shit would have floated upriver.”

Diane got through a dozen, two dozen, photos of many men, most of whom had been housed at Kilby Prison. Lillie brought her some coffee, Caddy sticking around, waiting for Qui

She was halfway through the book, about to quit for the day, jumping two pages ahead, but then something made her flip back. She looked at the mug shot of a man convicted and sentenced in 1980. There was something in the eyes and the self-satisfied grin. And he had those scarred marks on his face. She kept the page open, thinking back to Jericho Road and that slow-moving black Monte Carlo. The way he had snatched her hair, Lori’s weeping, being pushed to the ground. Humiliated. “Run,” the man had said. “Run.”

Lillie was standing over her shoulder. Caddy had walked off to talk to Mary Alice at the front desk.

“Look at that ugly son of a bitch,” Lillie said. “Jesus, I hate to put you through all this. That may be the ugliest one I’ve seen.”

She reached over Diane’s shoulder, Diane unable to take her eyes away from the photo, Lillie’s finger finding details of the man printed out on old-time typewriter. “Got burned up in a prison fire in ’83,” she said. “I bet it was another prisoner tossing gas on him in the cage. Damn, what a way to go.”

•   •   •

Qui