him if he took anything. Gus wasn’t a man to trifle with, especially when it came to money.
After Gus died, Ronnie asked her whether he could keep doing what he’d been doing. Erlene thought about all the money Gus had made and said, ”Sure, sugar. I’d be a fool to make you stop.” Ronnie paid Erlene every night, cash, like clockwork. Ronnie had turned out to be a real good boy, and Erlene kind of felt like she was at least partly responsible.
”Tell you what,” Erlene said. ”How about you just go ahead and do whatever you think Gus would have told you to do. I don’t even have to know about it.”
”Sounds good to me.”
”That’s wonderful,” Erlene said, ”and speaking of dealing with bad people, I have another little problem I’m going to need you to help me with.”
There was a certain girl needed tending to, and Ronnie was the right man for the job.
July 1
10:10 a.m.
The Tate woman wrote to Maynard Bush out of the blue. Maynard figured killers must get her hot. He didn’t have nothing better to do, so Maynard wrote back. He wasn’t real good at writing, but what the fuck?
He knew enough to get by. She wrote again and he wrote again and before Maynard knew it, they’re writing to each other every few days.
Maynard laid it on thick as jelly on a biscuit.
Played her like a goddamned banjo. At first he was just fucking off, but then he got a bright idea. He didn’t know if it would work, but it was sure as shit worth the try.
First thing Maynard did was talk his dumbass lawyer, Joe Dillard, into fixing it so the Tate woman could visit him. Then he started working on her. He shoveled so much shit on her she damned near turned brown. He told her he was lonesome and that he needed a friend. It was a lie. Maynard didn’t have friends and didn’t want none. They always just ended up pissing him off, and then they ended up dead. To Maynard, killing a human being wasn’t any different than killing a dog or a rabbit.
When he told Bonnie Tate he needed a friend, Maynard could see it damned near broke her heart, so he just kept pouring it on. He told Bonnie how when he was a boy his mama was a drug addict and his daddy got hauled off to prison. It was about the only thing Maynard told Bonnie that was true. He told her he went to bed hungry every night, which was bullshit. He told her he didn’t have no shoes that fit. Another lie, good enough to make her cry.
When she cried, it made Maynard think of how he used to make his baby cousin cry. When the girl’s mother turned her back, Maynard would pinch the little bitch up under her arm as hard as he could and she’d wail like an ambulance passing in the night.
Maynard never did get caught. He was too damned smart and quick.
Four days before Maynard’s trial was supposed to start, he made sure Bonnie came to visit. It was time to take his shot.
”You’re my only visitor, you know,” Maynard said as he gazed across the table at the plump, homely brunette. ”You’re the only person I trust.” He watched her close. She was eating it up.
”I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me, Bonnie,” Maynard said. ”You gave me hope when there wasn’t none left.” Maynard had to concentrate as hard as he could to keep from gagging.
He’d told a couple of his buddies at the jail that Bonnie Tate was ugly enough to make a freight train take a dirt road.
”I think about you all the time, Bonnie. I dream about you every night. I think maybe I love you.”
She looked at him and he could see tears forming in her eyes. It was working.
”Do you think maybe you love me, too, Bonnie?”
She nodded. ”I think maybe I do, Maynard.”
”If I was to ever get out of this place, would you stay with me, Bonnie? Please say you’d stay with me.
It’d mean so much to me.”
”I reckon I’d stay with you.”
”Bonnie, I need to ask you something. It’s real important, and you can’t breathe a word of it. Can I trust you?”
”You know you can trust me, Maynard.”
”If I was to tell you I know a way out of here, would you help me? Would you, Bonnie? It’s the only chance I’ve got. They’ll kill me if you don’t help me.”
It didn’t take her long to say yes.
”Okay then,” Maynard said. ”You listen real close now. You gotta do exactly what I say.”
July 2
9:05 a.m.
I walked into Judge Glass’s courtroom a little after nine and took a seat in the back behind a column where the judge couldn’t see me. Sarah and her appointed attorney had worked out an agreement with the assistant district attorney, and she was about to enter a plea. To my relief, there were no reporters in the jury box.
I’d lost a lot of sleep thinking-and worrying-
about Sarah. As time passed, I’d gotten over the anger. I still thought Sarah needed to pay for what she’d done, but I knew prison time wouldn’t do her any good. I’d never seen prison time do anyone any good.
She’d agreed to plead guilty to two counts of felony theft, to accept the minimum sentence of three years on each count, and to forgo a probation hearing. The two three-year sentences were to run concurrently. Under Tennessee law, she’d be eligible for parole after serving ten months, and I had every intention of speaking on her behalf at her first parole hearing. Because of the overcrowding in the state penitentiary system, inmates who were sentenced to less than three years served their time in the county jails. That meant Sarah wouldn’t be shipped off to the women’s prison in Nashville but would stay in the Washington County Detention Center. I’d be able to visit and try again to patch things up. I should have already gone down to see her, but I was afraid we’d just end up in the same old place.
Judge Glass was his usual cantankerous self, barking at defense attorneys and sniping at defendants.
A woman in the audience had forgotten to turn her cell phone off, and when it rang, Glass ordered her to the front and castigated her so fiercely that she was reduced to tears.
He called Sarah’s case twenty minutes after I sat down, and a bailiff brought her in. She looked small and frail in the baggy jumpsuit, and I thought the handcuffs and shackles were totally unnecessary. She shuffled to the podium and stood looking at the floor.
”She is, Your Honor.”
I hoped Glass wouldn’t use his dislike for me as a reason to reject the plea agreement and give Sarah a harsher sentence. I scooted down in my seat.
”What did she do this time?” Glass said.
”She stole Mr. Dillard’s daughter’s car and a necklace that belonged to Mr. Dillard’s wife,” Mayes said.
”She traded the necklace for cocaine and wrecked the car.”
”So she’s an indiscriminate thief,” Glass said. ”She steals from everybody in the family. How’d she get the keys to the car? She break in?”
”No, Your Honor. As I understand it, she had recently been released from jail and Mr. Dillard had taken her in. He was trying to help her. This is how she repaid him.”
I was hoping Glass would just go through the motions and not ask any questions. It was a run-of-themill plea. He took hundreds of them every year.
”This judgment form says she was charged with two Class C felonies,” Glass said. ”I read her presentence report last night. She’s been stealing and drugging for almost twenty years. Why are you agreeing to concurrent sentences?”
”We agreed at the victim’s request, Your Honor.
We do it all the time.”
