Shana’s frown cleared, her eyes were suddenly alert with relief and excitement. “Then daddy must have known about it. He must have found out. That’s why he wouldn’t leave a message with Mrs. Cranston, to tell us where he is.”
“That’s my guess too,” Brett said. “We’ll have to wait for him to tell us how he figured it out. But he doesn’t trust those phones now any more than I do.”
She put two cups of coffee on her desk and settled down in her leather chair. Resting her chin on her hands, she looked at Shana. “Now, would you like to tell me what’s troubling you? What you want to talk about?”
Shana sighed, looked down at her hands. “I should have told you right away. I wish I had.” In a careful voice she said, “I won’t mind so much if you just think I’ve been dumb and childish and scared. Honestly I won’t. But I’d hate it if you, well, disrespected me.”
“It’s been a long day, honey.” Brett smiled at her. “Drink some coffee, you need a lift. Or maybe it would be better if we freshened up and went out for some dinner somewhere. We could talk about it then.”
“No, I’d rather explain everything now.”
“Fine, that’s what we’re here for. But drink your coffee. It could use sugar by the way. It’s very bitter.”
“I’ve already written this to my father. I sent a note to him with Sergeant Wilger.” Shana sighed. “That was easy. I could pretend it was like a composition outline and make headings and subheadings and try to make it all clear.” She drew a deep breath. “I was selfish, I know that now. I could have helped all of us, but I kept thinking too much about myself. Sometimes I can be a pain.”
Shana took a small tissue-wrapped object from the pocket of her blazer. Unwrapping it with care, she placed a shining ornament on a broken chain in front of Brett. The light glittered on the silver cross of the swastika she had torn from Earl Thomson’s neck the night he had raped her.
“It was the only proof I could trust,” she said. “Not just that it happened the way I knew it had. I had to be sure of something else, that I’d fought back, that I’d tried to stop him from doing it to me. That I... didn’t just let him. Can you understand why I kept it, Brett? Please. Can you?”
“Yes, of course.” Brett swallowed with difficulty. “Of course I can, Shana.”
“It happened at the place he took me. He untied my hands and pushed me toward the cot. I hit him and kicked him while we struggled around. The silver cross was right in front of me, flashing in my eyes. I grabbed the chain and it broke. The edge of the crosses cut the palm of my hand, but I didn’t know it then. I had nightmares about it. On the tapes Davey made I heard my voice screaming, ‘Mommy, it’s evil. I’ll kill it...’ I don’t know if I said it to him then or whether that’s part of my nightmare. Earl Thomson didn’t know I had it. I made a fist and kept my hand closed around it, even when he tied me to the bed. I wasn’t thinking about proving anything then. I wasn’t thinking at all. But when daddy took me home that night, I still had it, and I knew that no matter how long I lived I’d be sure how it was and how it happened.”
Brett picked up the swastika and examined the dates and initials engraved on the back of the right-angle arms of the rotary crosses.
“In preparing this case” — Brett’s voice trembled, she cleared her throat and took a sip of coffee — “I came across a newspaper item about this.” She nodded at the swastika. “It was in a Philadelphia paper. There was a small local scandal because Earl Thomson, with his usual delicate sensibilities, went to a Jewish jeweler, a Phil Gelb on Spruce Street, to have it made. A reporter got hold of the story. Mr. Gelb not surprisingly refused the job, but Thomson found someone else.”
Standing, Brett paced behind her desk, watching the light on the swastika, the edges still dark with traces of Shana’s blood.
“Let me tell you something,” she said. “We’re going to be in a hell of a fight in court tomorrow. No tricks, no theatrics, I’ll have to go straight at him with this evidence.”
“It isn’t too late?”
“We’re alive until the jury returns a verdict. What you told the court this afternoon about why you wanted to talk to Earl Thomson, what you said about your father and mother and your grandmother, and about yourself, by the way, was simple and honest and in a way very beautiful. But, Shana, compassion and sympathy and understanding may excuse Earl Thomson on some higher plane, but there is no way in the world it will convict him. And justice, dammit, demands that he be convicted. We need the whole truth for that. And this swastika is part of the whole truth. Does anyone else know about it?”
“No, only you and my father.”
“You realize this will mean Davic can put you back on the stand? Demand to know why you suppressed this evidence? Demand to know why you waited for months to mention it?”
“I know, and I know Earl will lie about it. He’ll say he lost it somewhere, won’t he? Or that it was stolen from him. But I know he’s been looking for it around Fairlee Road.”
“So does your father,” Brett said, and then added, “yes, indeed, it will be a fight. They’re real confident now... Davic, Thomson, all of them. Well, we’ll make that work for us, the fact that they think they’re home free, that the verdict from the jury tomorrow morning is a mere formality.”
A footstep sounded in the reception room, and Burt Wilger walked into the office.
“I played a hunch, Brett,” he said, and nodded with an awkward smile to Shana. “Called St. Anne’s a couple of more times, couldn’t get anything but doubletalk so I tried the airport.” He began polishing his glasses. “Harry Selby, I mean, your father, Shana... he left on a flight for Memphis a couple of hours ago. And then, I’d guess, he’ll be off to Summitt City.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
At dawn a yellow cab slowed and stopped on Broad Street near Market in Philadelphia. Enough light shone from cleaning crews in office buildings and the gray skies to outline the statue of Benjamin Franklin on top of the town’s massively ornate City Hall.
Selby paid and tipped the driver, an amiable black man who wanted to get into the electric garage-door business. He then walked to Chestnut Street and stopped and looked at his watch. The center of the city was quiet and empty until a garbage truck rumbled by.
A red-haired woman on the wooden bench at a bus stop wore boots and purple knickers and a tight suede jacket with fringed wrists. She smiled at Selby and moistened her lips. “How come you’re studying your watch?” Her tone was good-natured, appraising. “Only time means anything is party time. Would you care for some party time, friend?”
“No, no thanks,” Selby said.
“Don’t mention it. Thought I’d ask, that’s all. But party’s the word, big guy, not time. Wouldn’t take long. My van’s parked over on Spruce Street, just a short walk. There’s some records, a bottle of this and that.”
“Thanks again,” Selby said, “but I’m expecting someone.”
“There’s no big, bad pimp to worry about. I’m a good judge of people. Never got messed up with anyone I couldn’t handle.” She glanced at her watch. “I could drop you back here in a half hour.”
“No, it’s not our night,” Selby said, and tried to smile.
“I’m a fool to ask, I suppose,” the red-haired woman said, “but be honest. Are you fuzz, or don’t I turn you on?”
“It’s not that.” Selby looked up and down the empty streets.
“The knickers okay then?”
“They’re fine, they’re really okay,” Selby said.