When she lifted and spun her head to look at me the movement scared the hell out of me. My knees flexed and my heart jumped in my chest.
"Why, Mr. Freeman. What are you doing here?"
I don't think I exhaled until I sat down next to her. Margery Jefferson was wearing a dark shawl over her shoulders. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her face was pale. She maintained her quizzical look, as if she'd been expecting someone else.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Jefferson. You OK?" I finally asked, looking away.
"Yes, of course, sir."
"Uh, is the reverend here, ma'am?"
"My husband is at home, Mr. Freeman," she said. "Are you looking for him or for your Mr. Mayes, sir?"
It was my turn to be anxious.
"Has Mark Mayes been here?"
"He was waiting outside when I arrived," she said, turning her face back to the altar. "We spoke for some time. He was very comforting, Mr. Freeman. He told me of the things you had found out for him, the past about his family. He reminds me very much of Mr. Jefferson when he was that age. Full of questions and wonderings."
I stayed silent and scanned the polished wood floor, the open door to the back of the church, the pure white cloth covering the altar.
"I don't know whether to thank you or to despise you for bringing out these truths, Mr. Freeman. I am asking the Lord to guide me."
"Yes, ma'am," I said, standing up, not knowing how else to answer.
"I suspect you will find Mr. Mayes at our home," she said. "I gave him directions."
"Thank you, ma'am," I said.
My tires spun in the wet grass when I pulled away from the church. I drove back through town and then west on the blacktop road, thinking that my speed might alert the local law. The sun was up full by the time I pulled in between the oaks in Jefferson's front yard. When I got out I quietly closed the door. The air was still and the dust I'd raised caught up and settled around me. The reverend's car and Mayes's small sedan were parked side by side next to the house. The veranda was empty and the front door closed. I took a survey of the windows before moving to the side of the house. I hesitated before rounding the corner, then stepped out onto the two- track that led to the barn. In the distance the angle of the sun threw a shadow across the half-opened barn door. It was forty feet of open ground, and I felt naked without a weapon.
"Reverend?" I called out with no expectation of an answer. "Mark Mayes? It's Max Freeman."
The call returned nothing, and I had little choice. I walked upright and slowly toward the barn, concentrating on the shadow and any possible movement. The air held the smell of sun on grass and the odor of turned dirt. When I got to the door, I hesitated again, then scanned the back of the house, unnerved by the flash of sunlight on the panes of glass.
"Mayes?"
When I stepped into the space of the open doorway, the smell of cold dust touched my face. The windowless room was dark and I pulled on the metal handle to let in more sun. The low, waist-high swatch of light caught the shined black leather of the reverend's shoes.
He was in his dark suit. The coat unbuttoned. The black shirt wrinkled up with the twisted position of his body. The white cleric's collar stained on one side by dirt from the rope. He had fastened one end high at the top of the center beam that ran from ceiling to floor. The joists that formed the floor of the second story had provided the crosspiece, and it appeared as though the reverend had measured carefully so that his chest was positioned at the intersection. I had seen enough dead men to know that to cut him down would be fruitless.
"He didn't wait for my forgiveness, Mr. Freeman."
The words snapped my head around, and for the second time that morning my heart jumped.
Mark Mayes was sitting cross-legged on the floor behind me, exactly where the shock of the sight of a hanged clergyman had probably dropped him to his knees.
"Why would he do such a thing, Mr. Freeman. The Lord would have long ago forgiven what his grandfather had done."
I helped Mayes to his feet and backed him out of the barn and into the sunlight.
When we got back to the front of the house, I sat him down on the steps of the porch, opened my cell phone and called O. J. Wilson. Mayes didn't flinch when he heard me ask the dispatcher to send the sheriff to the Jefferson home.
"You know, after Mr. Manchester told me about my great-grandfather's watch being found, it was like everything in my head just fell together," Mayes started.
"He hadn't run out on his family. He had been true to his beliefs. Ever since I was a kid I had this ache to believe in God, and I wondered where it had come from, how it had gotten inside me. I guess I wanted to know it was him, Cyrus Mayes.
"Then, when Mr. Manchester told me about the Jefferson in the letters and what you'd found, Mr. Freeman, I couldn't get it out of my head. The grandson of Cyrus Mayes's killer chose this, the ministry? How? I looked up the address of the church and drove over. I talked with his wife and asked her if I could talk with him, to maybe, I don't know, maybe offer some kind of forgiveness."
The silver crucifix he wore around his neck was out of his shirt. He had been handling it while he sat quietly in the barn and prayed. The glow of his innocence bothered me. Maybe I was jealous.
"Yeah, maybe you did," I said.
CHAPTER
23
Wilson showed up with a squad car following him into the driveway. He greeted me coldly.
We stood in the shadow of the big oaks. Mayes deliberately avoided looking back at the open barn door, and the uniformed cops, one with sergeant stripes on his arm, seemed at a loss as to what to do with the bristle they carried into the place. The sheriff's face held a look of tight-lipped resolve.
"Hank, keep these two separated, please, until I can get their independent statements," he said, and then spun on his heel and headed for the barn. I went to sit in my truck while one of the deputies took Mayes to the squad car. The sergeant started over to me but when I looked up and met his eyes, he saw something in them that made him stop short, and he took up a position about fifteen feet away. I didn't say a word. After a time I watched Wilson step out of the barn door and head back our way. He bypassed us and went to the trunk of his Crown Victoria and popped the trunk. He came up with what I recognized as a fingerprint kit and I watched him return to the barn. He was gone several minutes more and then came out with the kit and again disappeared into the trunk of his car, concentrating on something there. When he was finished, he called me over and my guard came with me.
"I am not a man who likes to be wrong, Mr. Freeman, but my daddy taught me to at least admit it when you are." There was no question in the statement, so I did not feel compelled to say anything in return.
"I have taken enough latent print courses at the FBI to make a good guess that the fingerprints of the now-deceased Mr. Jefferson appear to match those on the.405 casing that we found at the first murder scene," he said. "We'll have to get them over to the expert in Orlando, but I'm guessing we've got some shaking out to do with all this, Mr. Freeman. So why don't you and I sit down and talk a bit."
Wilson used his cell phone to call the county medical examiner's office. When he was through he gave his deputies instructions on how he wanted the scene sealed off, and then turned to me.
"Come take a knee with me, sir."
He led me over into the shade of the oak, and when the sergeant started to follow, he waved him off.
"It's OK, Hank," the sheriff said.
"If you don't mind, Mr. Freeman, I'd like to leave your friend there in the car."
I looked over at Mayes, and when I turned back, the sheriff read the confusion in my face.