Triptych

room, turned Heart down low on the stereo and taken a handful of the little white pills his cousin had given him.

“Baby,” she said, rubbing his forearm. “Are you okay?”

His tongue was lolled back in his mouth. His chest hurt like he had been slammed in the sternum with a sledgehammer. How had he managed to breathe all this time?

“You’re going to be okay,” she said. “It’s all a mistake.”

It wasn’t though-at least as far as the police were concerned. The district attorney came in an hour or so later, Paul Finney standing behind the man, glaring at John like he was ready to jump onto the bed and throttle him right then and there. The cop must have picked up on this, too, because he was staying close to Mr. Finney, making sure nothing got out of hand.

The DA made the introductions. “I’m Lyle Anders. This is Chief Harold Waller.” The cop by Mr. Finney was holding a sheet of paper. He cleared his throat, looking down at it like he was reading from a script.

John looked at his mother. She said, “It’s all right, baby.”

“Jonathan Winston Shelley,” Waller began. “I’m arresting you for the rape and murder of Mary Alice Finney.”

John’s ears did that thing where he felt like he was underwater. Waller’s lips were moving, he was definitely saying something, but John couldn’t understand him.

Lyle Anders finally reached over and snapped his fingers in front of John’s face. “You understand what’s happening, son?”

“No,” John said. “I didn’t-”

“Don’t say anything,” his mother shushed, putting her fingers to his lips. Emily Shelley, PTA sponsor, den mother, baker of brownies and master of Halloween disguises, straightened her back and addressed the three men in the room. “If that’s all?”

They loomed over his small mother, Paul Finney especially. He was a big man to begin with, but his rage made him larger.

Anders said, “He needs to make a statement.”

“No,” she said, this woman who was his mother. “Actually, he doesn’t.”

“It’d be in his best interest.”

“My son has been through a horrible ordeal,” Emily answered. “He needs rest.”

Anders tried to speak directly to John, and even when Emily blocked his way, he still made an attempt. “Son, you need to get on top of this and tell us what happened. I’m sure there’s a reason you-”

“He has nothing to say to you,” Emily insisted, her voice firm. John had only heard her speak this way once, when Joyce was ten and she’d tried to walk on the railing to the top deck at the house.

One by one, Emily looked them all in the eye. “Please leave.”

Paul Finney lunged for John, but the cop caught him. “You son of a bitch,” Mr. Finney spat at John. “You’ll fry for this!”

Mr. Finney had been an all-state wrestler. Anders and Waller had their hands full trying to keep him off John. In the end, they had to physically pick him up and carry him out of the room. As the door closed, he screamed, “You’ll pay for this, you fucker!”

His mother’s bottom lip was trembling as she turned back to John. He thought, oddly, that she had been upset by Mr. Finney’s language.

He asked, “Where’s Dad?” Richard was the one who took care of things, cleaned up the messes. “Mom?” John asked. “Where is he?”

Her throat worked, and she reached out, taking his hand. “Listen to me,” she said, urgent. “They’re going to come back any minute and take you to jail. We only have a few seconds.”

“Mom-”

“Don’t talk,” she said, squeezing his hand. “Listen.”

He nodded.

“Don’t say anything to the police. Don’t even tell them your name. Don’t tell them where you were that night, don’t tell them what you had for dinner.”

“Mom-”

“Shush, Jonathan,” she ordered, pressing her fingers to his lips. “Don’t talk to anyone in jail. No one is your friend in there. They’re all looking out for themselves and you should, too. Don’t say anything on the phone because they tape the conversations. There are snitches everywhere.”

Snitches, John thought. Where had his mother heard that word? How did she know about any of this? She wouldn’t even watch Kojak because she thought it was too violent.

“I want you to promise me, John,” she insisted. “Promise me that you will not talk to anyone until your aunt Lydia shows up.”

Aunt Lydia. Barry’s wife. She was a lawyer.

“John?” she prompted. “Do you promise? Not a word? Don’t even talk about the weather. Do you understand me? This is the most important thing I have ever told you to do and you must obey me. Do not talk to anyone. Do you hear me?”

He started crying because she was. “Yes, Mama.”

The door opened and Waller was back. He glanced at the scene, mother and child, and John saw part of him soften. He sounded almost kind when he told Emily, “Mrs. Shelley, you’re going to have to step outside now.”

Her hand tightened around John’s. She looked down at him, tears spilling out of her eyes. For some reason, he had been expecting her to say that she loved him, but instead, she mouthed, “No one. ”

Talk to no one.

Anders let Emily leave before he reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys to the handcuffs. The moment of softness was gone as quickly as it had come.

He told John, “You listen to me, you little bastard. You’re gonna get out of that bed, get your clothes on and put your hands behind your back. If you give me a millisecond of trouble, I will come down on you like a ton of bricks. Do you understand me, you murdering piece of shit?”

“Yes,” John said, breathless with fear. “Yes, sir.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

OCTOBER 15, 2005

Coastal State Prison was located near Savannah in a town called Garden City, Georgia. The names sounded beautiful on paper, conjuring up a quaint seaside town you might find on a postcard. “Whoever selected the spot for the state correctional department must have gotten a pretty good joke out of the whole thing.

Coastal was a maximum-security facility, only a few years old by the time John got there and remodeled ten years into his sentence to accommodate the influx of violent criminals. Today, the prison consisted of seven housing units with twelve two-man cells and twenty-four four-man cells. There were forty-four segregation cells, thirty disciplinary cells and fifteen protective custody cells. The L-building housed over two hundred men, N had another two hundred and O and Q were open dorms with bunk beds laid out like general military quarters. All told, around sixteen hundred men called it home.

John didn’t think he’d ever willingly go back to Coastal, but he had taken off work and boarded the Greyhound bus at six that morning. The ticket had cost him the rest of his television money, but that was hardly the point. He tried to sleep on the bus, leaning his head against the window, but all he could do was think about that first time he had made this trip in handcuffs and shackles. He couldn’t go back in. He could not die in prison.

He had brought a book-Tess of the D’Urbervilles-and he made himself read it during the nearly five-hour journey. John kept having to backtrack in the book, his mind wandering as each mile ticked past.