streets and sidewalks are thick with tourists arriving for sunset cruises and the restaurants and shops. Old men sell stiff yellow flowers woven of sweetgrass, the air fragrant with the vanilla scent of the long, thin leaves, and I hear the distant sentimental notes of a Native American flute.
I’m vividly aware of everything I pass. I notice every person, but I don’t look directly at anyone.
It might have been the drugs he was on, his daughter turning him into a crazed beast, and some of what he did may have been for money. What I won’t say to anyone is that Jack is better off dead and I’m grateful I won’t have to confront him and finally banish him for good. I can’t imagine what he was thinking unless he just didn’t care, but he spared both of us the vilest and most brutal showdown, and that’s exactly what it would have been. A face-off that was a lifetime in coming, and one he would lose decisively. He had to have known that when I got home I would discover every bad thing he was doing, every loathsome violation, that I would uncover every immoral and selfish act. Jack Fielding knew he was done. He knew I would not have forgiven him. I would not have taken him back or protected him this time. When Dawn Kincaid killed him, he was already dead.
And in an odd way, realizing all this has given me an unexpected satisfaction and a little more self-respect. I have changed, and it’s for the better. You really can’t love unconditionally. People can burn and beat love out of you. They really can kill it, and it’s not your fault you don’t feel it anymore, and how liberating it is to finally realize that. Love isn’t for better or for worse, through thick or thin. It damn well shouldn’t be. Were Jack still alive, I would not love him. When I examined his dead body in the cellar of his Salem house, I did not feel love for him. He was stiff and cold beneath my hands, unyielding and stubborn, holding on to his dirty secrets in death the same way he did in life, and a part of me was glad he was gone. I was relieved. I was grateful.
I wander for a while to clear him out of my head, to steel myself, to wipe my eyes and hope they aren’t red. Turning on Houston Street away from the river as the City Hall bell rings nine times, I move deeper into the historic district, taking a right on East Broughton and stopping on Abercorn in front of the Owens-Thomas House, a two- century-old mansion of limestone and Ionic columns that is a museum now. Around it are other gracious antebellum buildings and homes, and I’m reminded of the three-story old brick house I saw on the news nine years ago. I wonder where the Jordans lived and if it might be near here, and did the killer or killers target the family in advance, or were they random victims of opportunity? Most people in this area have burglar alarms, and it nags at me that the Jordans’ must not have been armed, not that everybody bothers, even wealthy people, who should know better.
But if you were planning on breaking into an expensive house during early-morning hours when the family was asleep, wouldn’t your first assumption be that there was an alarm and it was set? I noticed in articles I scanned while parked at the gun store that Clarence Jordan was out the Saturday afternoon of January 5, volunteering at a local men’s emergency shelter, and returned home around seven-thirty that evening. No mention was made of the alarm and why he didn’t bother to set it when he came in for the night, but it doesn’t appear he did. The system couldn’t have been armed when the break-in occurred at some point after midnight the following morning.
The killer — supposedly Lola Daggette — smashed the glass out of the first-story kitchen door, reached inside, flipped open the lock, and walked in. Assuming the alarm system didn’t have glass-break or motion sensors, it would have had contacts, and even if the perpetrator knew the code, the instant the door was opened, the chime would have sounded, beeping or chirping until the system was disabled. It’s hard to imagine four people would sleep through that. Maybe Jaime has the answer. Maybe Lola Daggette has told her what really happened and I’m about to find out why I’m here and what I have to do with it.
I stand on the sidewalk in darkness that is uneven in the glow of tall iron lamps, and I try my lawyer, Leonard Brazzo. He is fond of steak houses, and when he answers his cell phone he tells me he’s at the Palm and it’s mobbed.
“Let me step outside,” his voice sounds in my wireless earpiece. “Okay, better,” he adds, and I hear cars honking. “How did it go? How was she?” He means Kathleen Lawler.
“She mentioned something about letters Jack wrote to her,” I reply. “I don’t recall any letters being found, and I didn’t see such a thing when I was looking through his personal effects at his house in Salem. But it’s possible no one mentioned letters to me,” I say, as I stare at Jaime Berger’s white-brick building across the street, eight stories, with large sashed windows.
“Got no idea,” Leonard replies. “But why would Jack have letters he wrote to her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Unless she returned them to him at some point? Sorry about the wind. Hope you can hear.”
“I’m just telling you what she said.”
“The FBI,” he says. “It wouldn’t surprise me if they got a court order to search her cell or wherever she might have personal belongings stored, looking for letters or any other type of communication to or from or about Jack Fielding or Dawn Kincaid.”
“And we wouldn’t necessarily know about that,” I reply.
“No. The police, DOJ, wouldn’t be obliged to share any letters with us. Saying they exist.”
Of course they wouldn’t be obliged to share. I’m not the one on trial for murder or attempted murder, and that’s the aggravating irony. During the discovery phase, Dawn Kincaid and her legal team have a right to all evidence the prosecution has obtained, including any mocking letters Jack might have written to Kathleen Lawler about me. But I wouldn’t be told about them or learn of their content until they’re produced in court and used against me. Victims have no rights while they’re being victimized and few rights during the slow, tedious grind of the criminal justice process. The injuries don’t heal but continue to be inflicted, by lawyers, by the media, by jurors, by witnesses who testify that someone like me had it coming or caused it.
“Are you worried about what the letters might say?” Leonard is asking me.
“They don’t appear to paint me favorably, if what I’ve been told is true. That will be helpful to her.”
It will be helpful to Dawn Kincaid, I’m indicating without saying her name out loud, as I stand on a sidewalk in the dark, people and cars going by, headlights hurting my eyes. The more I’m disparaged, the less credible I become and the less sympathy jurors will have for me.
“Let’s deal with any letters if they present themselves.” Leonard says not to get worked up about something that hasn’t happened.
“I also was curious if Jaime Berger might have been in touch with you,” I get to that point.
“The prosecutor?”
“The very same.”
“No, she hasn’t been in touch. Why would she?”
“Curtis Roberts”—the lawyer Tara Grimm mentioned to me— “what can you tell me about him?”
“He’s a volunteer lawyer with the Georgia Innocence Project, works with a firm in Atlanta.”
“So he’s representing Kathleen Lawler pro bono.”
“Apparently.”
“Why would the Innocence Project be interested in her? Is there a legitimate question about her conviction for DUI manslaughter?” I ask.
“I just know he called on her behalf.”
I decide to ask nothing further as I think about Kathleen Lawler’s note and her instructions for me to find a pay phone.
