“Who’s that?” I said nodding in their direction.
Gravy said, “Charlie Wilbrant, an attorney friend. I suspected Wittman might need representation. Don’t worry; it helps us.”
While the tech swabbed my hands for gun powder residue, Gravy conferred with the head EMT, police investigator, and Clark Spencer. I hadn’t noticed him earlier.
Gravy returned. “They are taking you to Sacred Heart Hospital. You need to be fully checked out. They will keep you overnight.”
“Just get me home,” I said.
“Listen. The police and state attorney’s office will leave you alone while you’re under the care of a doctor at the hospital,” said Gravy. “I’ve agreed to have you at the state attorney’s office at 10:00 a.m. on Monday.”
“It was self-defense—” I started to say.
“Stop, no more talking,” he interrupted. “Tell the doctors and nurses about your injuries, but say nothing else. You understand?”
I nodded.
“I’ll see you at the hospital,” he said as they hoisted me into the ambulance. “Don’t say a fucking word.”
The next eighteen hours were a blur of x-rays, shots, and stitches. I threatened to strangle a male nurse when he tried to insert a catheter. I won that battle.
I remember seeing a different person sitting in my room reading the same copy of People magazine every time I opened my eyes. Gravy, Mal, Summer, Jeremy, Theodore, Bree, and even Tiny took turns in the chair. The only ones from the Insider missing were Big Boy and Yoste, who had taken time off to work as deckhand on a charter boat in Destin and was oblivious to my status. Summer told me that Dare was taking care of the dog.
“She visited you once while you were sleeping but couldn’t stand to see how badly you were injured,” said Summer. “Watching over Big Boy is her contribution to your recovery.”
I dreamed Mari visited me. She sat in the chair with her legs folded under her. Her long brown hair draped over her shoulders and a red Hotty Toddy T-shirt. I could smell her. She smiled.
Oddly I wasn’t shocked that she was visiting me. Mari was never far away, always waiting to reappear and make me face my past. I tried to keep the guilt in a box in the corner of my mind, but my memory refused to be restrained.
The police never found her killer. Campus security discovered her nude body in the woods behind the Tad Smith Coliseum near fraternity row. They first questioned me, but I had plenty of witnesses that verified where I was. Later forensics found the attacker had red hair, which kept me off their suspect list permanently.
I cried and sat with the Gaudet family at her funeral. I almost dropped out of Ole Miss. Everywhere I went on campus and in Oxford reminded me of Mari. I contemplated suicide. Dare stood by me and refused to let me give up.
But I knew that Mari’s death was my fault. I should have been at the crisis center to pick her up. The damn story wasn’t more important than her. It was my dark secret, something I never said aloud or admitted to anyone—not to Dare, Mari’s parents, or my priest.
I became a journalist to prove, in some weird way, that Mari’s death wasn’t in vain. I pushed myself hard, did the dangerous, impossible investigative pieces to show her I was a great writer and could save the world, even though I couldn’t save her.
My editors speculated I had a death wish. Maybe they were right. No, that sounded nobler than it was. I had a dark secret that drove me to expose evil and corruption so I could find redemption.
I said, “Mari, I am so sorry.”
She said, “I know. Walker . . .”
A shadow blocked my view of her. She was about to say something else. A nurse stood over me to take my temperature and pulse. When she left, Mari was gone.
34
Before I checked out of the hospital early Sunday afternoon, Gravy brought me the Sunday edition of the Herald. The headline read, “Holmes Kills Hines.”
“We are going to sue the shit out of them for this,” he said. Gravy was angry.
I laughed. “Well, it’s true, sort of.”
“I’m demanding a retraction,” he said. “Dare has already threatened to pull all her advertising from them.”
“No, we will demand the same placement when I’m cleared,” I said.
“Why are you laughing?”
I said, “I don’t know. Get me out of here and to a bar so we can talk.”
At the End o’ the Alley Bar in the Seville Quarter complex, we sat in the courtyard. We found a low, black cast iron table in the shade and got the waitress to turn a fan in our direction. Gravy had vodka and soda. Though I refused any pain medication that morning because I knew I would be sitting in a bar by the end of the day, I chose to ease myself back into drinking and ordered soda water with a lime.
I wore my Dodgers cap to hide my bandaged scalp and Ray-Bans to cover my black eye. I gave Gravy most of the story but decided not to mention Julie firing the gun. If I had to tell him, I would, but not yet.
Gravy said, “Wilbrant has advised his clients not to make a statement to police. The Wittmans aren’t going to talk.”
“Shit,” I said. “I’ll be arrested for murder.”
Gravy took a sip of his drink and shook his head. “No, Charlie is doing exactly what I expected him to do. You will be free to tell your side of what happened without worrying about them contradicting you.”
“What if the state attorney doesn’t believe me?”
Gravy asked, “Have you seen yourself in a mirror? You’re lucky you can walk.”
He waved for the waitress to bring us some snack mix. Gravy continued, “The only bruises on Hines were on his fists from punching you. He had your blood on his shoes from the kicks he delivered to your ribs and back. He owned
