The Last Trial Read online

  Blinking his eyes, the deputy recovered and nodded his head. “There aren’t many of either.” He paused. “But the last three texts are all from the same number.”

  “Did he have it saved as a contact?”

  “No, but we ran the number through our cellular database and got a match.” He paused, catching his breath and taking a folded sheet of notebook paper out of his pocket. “The number is registered to a Wilma Christine Newton.”

  Lusk glanced up at Wade, but the detective wasn’t looking at him. Wade Richey was watching Powell, whose face had turned ashen. “You alright, brother?”

  Powell gazed down at the trampled grass that led down to the shore of the Black Warrior River. “What’s that name again, Officer?”

  “Wilma Christine Newton,” Lusk repeated, moving his beady eyes back and forth between the detective and the district attorney.

  Powell grunted and gave a jerk of his head. Wilma . . . Newton. He thought about the trial in Henshaw and all that had happened since. Then he raised his eyes to meet Lusk’s. “What do the texts say?”

  Lusk lowered his eyes back to the page he held in his hand. “Newton says that she’s reconsidered his proposition and wants to see him, and Willistone tells her to meet him at his attorney’s house on the Black Warrior at ten fifteen. He gives the address and says it’s in the Bent Creek subdivision and the house is at the bottom of the hill closest to the water.”

  “Who owns the dock where the phone was found?” Wade asked, his voice rising with excitement.

  “Zorn,” Powell whispered, his tone oddly detached. “Greg Zorn.”

  Lusk lowered the page to his side and cocked his head at Powell. “How did you know that?”

  Powell squatted to the ground. He snapped off a weed and placed it in his mouth, sucking on the wire grass.

  “How did he know that?” Lusk turned to Wade, who waved him off. “Never mind him. Tell me.”

  Lusk shook his head with exasperation and spoke in a high-pitched nasal whine. “The district attorney is correct. Gregory Zorn owns the property. I just got off the phone with him. He’s in the middle of a two-week trial in Birmingham. He confirmed that he was Jack Willistone’s attorney and that Willistone called yesterday evening and asked if he could stay at the house for a couple of nights. Since Zorn was out of town and was about to sell the house anyway, he agreed. Zorn refused to provide any other information, based on attorney-client privilege.”

  “His client is dead,” Wade said.

  “I advised him of that fact, but he wouldn’t budge,” Lusk fired back.

  “He will,” Wade said. “Was anyone else living in the house?”

  Lusk shook his head. “No. Zorn is divorced, and the kids live with their mother in Orange Beach.”

  Wade took several seconds to think it through and then jammed his right fist into the palm of his other hand. “Ten fifteen is consistent with Ingrid’s time of death. I think we may have just identified our primary lead. Good work, Lusk.” Wade clapped the deputy on the back. “Tell the search crew to double down by that dock. Let’s focus everything we’ve got within a quarter mile of that spot.”

  “You gonna tell Ingrid, or you want me? I’m sure she’ll want to do a comb-through after she finishes here.”

  Wade glanced at Powell, who was walking slowly back to the Charger. “You do it,” he said. “I’ll be right down.”

  Lusk remained in place, but his eyes were watching Powell. “He OK?”

  “He’s fine. You go on and I’m right behind you.” Wade placed a firm hand on Lusk’s shoulder and gave him a nudge toward the river. The deputy began to trot toward Ingrid.

  Wade strode toward the Charger, where he found Powell leaning against the driver’s side and looking down at the gravel. His hands were stuck deep in the front pockets of his khakis. “You see a ghost?”

  Powell raised his head. “Not yet.”

  “You know the lady he was meeting? Wilma”—Wade glanced at his own pocket notebook—“Newton?”

  Powell’s face was blank and even paler in the moonlight. “Not really. But I know who she is . . . or was. And . . . it makes sense.” He paused, and his eyes narrowed. “I think we could have more than a lead. We may have a prime suspect.”

  4

  In the dream she woke to every morning, the broken glass sliced her arms, legs, and face like jagged rocks. And there was blood. On her hands. In her eyes. Everywhere. And each step she took was laced with the pain of glass digging into the heels and toes of her feet. When the blood and pain were so thick that she couldn’t see and she felt the scream beginning in her chest and working its way up her throat, she would open her eyes. In the first few days after her children were taken away, the scream made its way out of her mouth at full volume.

  Now, the only noise was a low gasp, followed by a whispered, “Damnit.”

  Wilma Newton gazed across the tiny bedroom, her mind still stuck in the dream. In reality, when she had pointed the pistol at her reflection in the mirror almost two years ago and pulled the trigger, the shattered glass had mostly fallen in her hair, with a few tiny shards catching on the back of her neck. There had been no blood and no screams. But there had been pain. Unspeakable . . . unfathomable . . . pain.

  She had wanted to “off herself,” as she’d heard some of the guards in jail describe suicide. Why else had she stripped down? That was what you did, right? You made a production of it. If you were an officer, you put your uniform on, faced a mirror, and stuck a gun in your mouth.

  Wilma wasn’t an officer. She was a stripper. She had also been a prostitute. When she stood naked before the mirror at her rental home in Boone’s Hill, she was wearing her “uniform.”

  Then why hadn’t she just done it? Why?

  “Nothing for me. Everything for them,” Wilma whispered as she rolled out of bed. Those six words had become her mantra for life, and all of her actions could be summed up by them. Including what she had done last night . . .

  Wilma hung her head in shame, not wanting to look at the mess. Finally, after a few seconds, she forced her eyes open. Her clothes from the previous evening—jeans and a black blouse—lay at the foot of the bed in a pile. She sighed, knowing that the garments probably reeked of smoke. And of him, she thought, remembering the mingled scent of bourbon and A.1. Steak Sauce that she had smelled on his breath. There had also been the stale scent of incarceration that, regardless of how many times a person washed after getting out, never seemed to dissipate. Wilma knew that odor all too well. She could still smell the Giles County Jail in her pores even now, three months after being released herself.

  She slipped on a pair of sweats and a long-sleeve T-shirt and traipsed down the short hallway toward the living area of her one-bedroom apartment. She leaned against the threshold and noticed the white to-go sacks adorned with the familiar green cactus and yellow and red letters of Taco Casa littered on the kitchen table to the right. She winced when she saw the half-eaten burrito lying open next to a plastic container of dried cheese dip and an empty pint of vodka. Hell of a life I’ve carved out for myself, she thought, rubbing her temples and realizing that she would start this day, as she had begun almost every one since getting out of jail, hungover. She looked away from the wasted food before the nausea set in and began to rub her sleep-deprived eyes. For a few seconds, she wondered what time it was and where she would go searching for work today. In the three months since her release from jail and her less-than-triumphant return to Tuscaloosa, she had been unsuccessful in obtaining a job. For some reason, employers weren’t chomping at the bit to hire a convicted prostitute whose last gainful employment was dancing the pole at the Sundowners Club in Pulaski, Tennessee.

  But without a job, she had no chance to regain custody of her girls. So she would try again . . .

  As she stepped fully into the living room, Wilma almost chuckled as the bitter thoughts began their daily invasion, but her breath caught in her throat when she saw the figure kneeling by the wind
ow adjacent to the front door and peeking out through the blinds.

  “This place is a pigsty.”

  Wilma stood stock still and gazed at her eldest daughter, the experience like looking into a mirror. Laurie Ann had Wilma’s dirty-blond locks, thin, sinewy frame and, when she stood, was five feet, six inches tall—the same height as her mother. The only sign of Dewey was the color of her eyes, dark brown like her father’s as opposed to Wilma’s green. Now fourteen years old, Laurie Ann could easily have passed for seventeen but for the gray Tuscaloosa Middle School sweatshirt she was wearing.

  “Thanks,” Wilma finally managed, crossing her arms. Shock had turned to curiosity. Laurie Ann was in the eighth grade. Since the sentencing hearing, she and Jackie had been living with Wilma’s cousin Tawny and her husband, Sam, in Tuscaloosa. “What time is it?”

  “Eight thirty,” Laurie Ann said, still gazing through the blinds.

  “Shouldn’t you be at—?”

  “School? Yeah, normally I would be. But the Tuscaloosa City School system set aside some ‘snow days’”—she made the quotation symbol with the index and middle fingers of both hands and rolled her eyes—“and it didn’t even sleet this winter. So, voilà, school’s out today. You would know this kind of information if you hadn’t been in jail when the schedule came out.” Laurie Ann spoke in the same sharp, bitter tone that had inundated all their conversations since Carla Yost turned the girls over to the Lincoln County Department of Human Resources twenty-three months earlier. She glared at Wilma, brown eyes blazing with fury. “And don’t ever tell me what I should or shouldn’t be doing.”

  Wilma sighed but didn’t respond. She didn’t have the energy for another fight with her daughter. Truth be known, she was just grateful that Laurie Ann had come to see her. For the past month, her visits had become more frequent, and she had even spent the night a couple of times. Progress, Wilma thought, knowing that regaining her daughters’ trust would be a long and arduous process. She had yet to make any headway at all with her youngest, Jackie, who shied away every time Wilma came by to visit, barely saying a word.

  “So what brings me the pleasure?” she asked, plopping down on the dark-khaki couch that she had bought from the Northport Salvation Army for seventy-five dollars. The sofa carried the permanent smell of cat urine, but it was comfortable, and Wilma’s shoulders sank into the cushions.

  Laurie Ann’s gaze softened, but when she spoke again, her voice remained bitter. “Jackie had a friend over to spend the night, and I wanted to give them some space.”

  Wilma nodded. “When did Tawny drop you off?”

  Laurie Ann rolled her eyes. “She didn’t.”

  “That high school boy?” Wilma tried to keep her tone neutral, but it was no use. She could hear the disapproval in her own voice.

  “His name is Brewer.” Laurie Ann peered back through the blinds. “And yes, he drove me here last night, and he was supposed to pick me up thirty minutes ago.”

  Wilma bit her lip, trying to choose her words carefully. “So what are y’all going to do today?”

  Laurie Ann shrugged. “I don’t know. We might go to Moundville with some of his friends.”

  “And do what?”

  “Oh, you know, the usual. Throw the Frisbee around. Drink some beer. Sneak off behind one of the Indian mounds and make out.”

  “Laurie Ann, you are too young—”

  “Life lessons from my mother, the convicted prostitute,” Laurie Ann interrupted. Then she turned from the window and stomped over to the kitchen table. She snatched the empty pint of Smirnoff and glared at Wilma. “I don’t think this is the drink that comes with the burrito meal.”

  When Wilma didn’t say anything, Laurie Ann pursed her lips and slammed the bottle down on the table. “What did you do last night, Mom?”

  For several seconds, silence engulfed the apartment. The disappointment evident in her daughter’s eyes burned Wilma’s conscience like a hot iron. Finally, she sighed and looked away. She started to say something but was cut off by the wail of a siren. The sound was close and getting closer.

  “What did you do last night?” Laurie Ann repeated. The slightest hint of desperation had now leaked into her tone. “Did you go see him? Did you talk with Mr. Willistone?”

  Wilma ignored the questions and, with as much calm as she could muster, walked to the window and grabbed the string to pull the blinds open. Her heart sank when she saw the red and blue flashing lights in the parking lot below. Two SUVs with the blue and gold crest of the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office blazoned across the side had pulled to a stop right outside the building.

  Wilma trudged back toward the couch. She could feel her daughter’s eyes on her, but she could not bring herself to look. Outside the window, she heard the clang of doors slamming shut, followed by the clicking of shoes on the steps. Wilma slumped down on the couch and waited, hoping that the sinking feeling in her gut was wrong.

  “Mom—”

  Four loud knocks cut off Laurie Ann’s voice. Wilma saw at least three uniformed officers through the open blinds.

  “Open the door, baby,” Wilma said.

  “Mom—”

  “Do it.”

  Laurie Ann grabbed the knob but looked at her mother with pleading eyes before turning it. “You’re going to need a lawyer.”

  “I know,” Wilma said, trying to sound strong as the door swung open.

  PART TWO

  5

  Mayfair Park is a Little League baseball complex in Huntsville, Alabama. It is located in the southeast portion of the city in a neighborhood commonly referred to as the Medical District due to its close proximity to the hospital. Just beyond the centerfield fence of the Majors’ field, where the twelve and under boys play their games, is a concession stand with several picnic tables.

  Thomas Jackson McMurtrie stood next to the table closest to the fence, his arms folded, watching the action. At six feet, three inches tall and a shade over two hundred pounds, Tom found the bleachers behind home plate to be a little tight for his large frame. Besides, he felt that standing behind centerfield gave him a better view of the entire field.

  His grandson, Jackson, had pitched the first four innings of the game and had reached his pitch limit, so he would be taking a new position to start the top of the fifth. Tom watched the home dugout and saw Jackson emerge, glove in hand, and begin running toward the outfield. When he saw his grandfather, the boy smiled, and Tom approached the fence, waving him over.

  At twelve years old, Jackson was a barrel-chested, stocky kid with light-brown hair. “Hey, Papa. Did you see me pitch?”

  “Not bad, Forty-Nine,” Tom said, referring to Jackson’s jersey number, which the boy had worn every year since he’d started Little League. This choice was a special source of pride for Tom, as he’d worn the same number for Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant’s 1961 national championship football team. “Seven strikeouts, three walks, and only two hits. Hard to beat that.”

  “Well, one of the hits did bounce off the concession stand,” Jackson said, giving a sheepish grin.

  “Got to keep the ball low and away to that Gentry kid or he’ll hit it to Birmingham,” Tom said, grabbing his back as a stab of pain shot down his side.

  “You OK, Papa?”

  “Yeah, son,” Tom said, wincing and trying to shake it off. “Just old. You remember what I said about the outfield.”

  “First step back, find the ball, and then go to it.”

  “Bingo,” Tom said, and winked as the boy strode to his position in centerfield. While the outfielders warmed up by throwing a ball back and forth, Tom yawned and looked around the park, which had T-ball, girls’ softball, and coach pitch contests happening under the lights at four different fields. Every so often, Tom would hear a roar from one of the other games, indicating that a big hit or nice play had been made. He smiled, enjoying the unseasonably cool breeze that gusted toward him. With the wind blowing out, it was a good night for a home run, Tom thought, kn
owing that “hitting a dinger,” as Jackson called it, was his grandson’s number one goal for the season. He leaned against the fence and breathed in the scent of hot dogs and popcorn, trying to stretch his back. It had started hurting during a walk last week with Lee Roy. The damn dog had lunged at a squirrel that had scurried past, and Tom felt a twinge when he had grabbed the leash. Getting old is no bowl of cherries, he thought as he felt a hand tugging on his arm. He looked down and saw his granddaughter, Jenny, smiling up at him, her lips and teeth tinged in purple.

  “Papa, will you buy me a slow cone?” At five years old, Jenny hadn’t quite grasped all the sounds of the alphabet. She had even lighter brown hair than Jackson, but her eyes were what always made Tom’s heart catch. They were the same crystal blue of her grandmother, and, even at the age of five, Jenny had mastered that pleading look that Tom had always been incapable of refusing.

  “Looks like you’ve already had a snow cone, sweetie,” Tom said, pinching Jenny lightly on the nose, which made her laugh.

  “That was a grape one,” she said. “I want a strawberry one now.”

  “Ah,” Tom said, feeling his cell phone vibrate twice in his pocket.

  “Please, Papa,”

  “OK, Jenny girl,” he said, walking with her toward the concession window. Tom got himself a popcorn and Diet Coke and sat down next to his granddaughter, who had already stuck her entire face into the snow cone, as strawberry red began to mix with the purple on her lips. As she started to chew the ice up, she wiped her mouth and squinted up at Tom. “Did Nana ever watch one of Brother’s baseball games?”

  Jenny had called Jackson “Brother” from the time she could talk, and it appeared that the nickname, at least for her, was going to stick. Tom smiled. He’d had a teammate at Alabama that everyone called “Brother,” and he had always thought it was cool. Then as he remembered the question his granddaughter had asked, the smile faded.

  “Yes. When y’all were still living in Nashville, me and Nana came up one weekend and watched Brother’s T-ball game.”