Chapter Nine #2
I glance at Debby. I wonder how much about that school he’s told her. “Debby, can I talk to my dad in private?” I say to her.
She looks at my dad. He nods. “I guess I’ll go get some coffee downstairs. I have my phone on if you need me,” she says to my father.
After she shuts the door behind her, I sit on the edge of his bed. I study him. His blue eyes look as clear and alert as they have since I returned.
“Okay, can we start again?” I say. “Would you be okay with me recording this?”
He coughs and clears his throat. “Record it?”
I place my phone on the tray over the bed. “That’s what I do, Dad.” I pause and meet his gaze. “Is that going to be a problem?”
I’m not sure what I’ll say if he answers Yes, it’s a problem.
“No,” he says. “Not a problem at all.”
But his voice betrays him. It’s too casual. But he’s agreed, so I press record before he changes his mind. Before I change my mind.
“What was the evidence that pointed to Heather Hadwick dying that night?” I ask.
“Oh my God,” he says, rubbing his face.
“I know, Dad. But we have to just jump in. I’m not going to be the last reporter to ask you about this.”
He inhales and coughs his exhale. I touch his arm, but he pulls it away from me.
“The blood and hair samples from the cottage,” he says. “There was a lot of blood in that cottage. And then there was Johnny Adair’s confession.”
“Did you ever think you should recuse yourself from the case?”
He clears his throat. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“They moved the case to my jurisdiction. It was my responsibility, and I ultimately believed I could preside over it without bias.”
I study my hands a moment. Sounds familiar. “Were you in any way pressured to let Johnny’s confession be admissible?” I say, looking back up.
“No. Absolutely not. And if people believe that, it’s going to open up all the other cases I’ve ruled on. My integrity could now be on trial.”
I nod. Mine could as well if I don’t handle this correctly.
“What do you think about the skull that was found?” I ask my father and marvel at the even tone in my voice.
“I want to believe it’s ancient. From an old burial ground. People have found all kinds of ancient bones out in those woods.”
“But,” I say.
“But I don’t like where it was found.”
“In a wall,” I say.
He nods.
“How could that happen? How could someone end up in a wall? This isn’t an Edgar Allan Poe poem.”
“Got a pen and a piece of paper?”
I dig through my tote and bring him a pen and a scrap of paper. His hands shake as he starts to draw on it. It’s not as technical a drawing as I saw him make when he was doing the plans for the farmhouse, but it’s good enough for me to get the picture.
“Remember what I said before about including French drains around the perimeter of the basement walls to keep water out?” I nod, and he draws a trench. “So they would dig a trench you could have looked down into from the ground. They’d then fill it with gravel.”
I remember the construction. The digging.
The cement trucks and dump trucks. It had caused such a racket the teachers complained our new wellness room was having the opposite effect.
Everyone seemed frazzled. Promises were made it would be finished over Thanksgiving break.
But if I learned anything from watching my father build the farmhouse, it was that subcontractors were suspiciously absent in November. Hunting season.
So the deep trenches were still open and exposed the week of Thanksgiving break.
My father points to the lines he’s drawn. “Someone could have been pushed in here.”
I swallow and move on before that image takes root. “I saw a reference to a place called Faces in the article I read.”
“Yeah,” he says. “They do facial recognition when DNA can’t be harvested. But they extracted a tooth and sent it to the state police. So we’ll see. State police are free. Faces is pricey.” He clears his throat. “But with a man sitting in prison, the price has been approved.”
I’d searched the acronym after receiving the article from Laura Sanders.
It’s a lab in Baton Rouge where they use anthropology and computer enhancement to create an image from a skull.
They can not only identify it, they can rebuild the head out of clay and run it through a computer to enhance it, down to the hair, eyes, and cheekbones.
“Makes sense they’d approve that,” I say, watching my father’s wild eyebrows and the way he’s swallowing.
He’s trying to be matter of fact, but I know his tells.
I grew up in a home with just him and myself.
No mother to run interference or explain his moods.
I had to figure it out on my own. If he was pacing, leave him alone.
If he was on the back porch with a cigar, approach him.
If he said he was tired, he didn’t want to talk about something we should have talked about.
Time to test him.
“Is there something you haven’t told me, Dad?”
He leans back in the hospital bed and rests his head against the pillow. “I need to rest a minute. I’m tired.”
I tuck his drawing into my tote. “Maybe we can talk more later.”
He nods, but something in his eyes tells me he’s done talking to reporters.