Robert Andrews - A Murder of Justice

“My partner, Mr. Kearney.”

Osmond gave Frank a minimal smile and motioned the men inside. “I fixed coffee and biscuits,” she said. “You don’t mind?… Sitting in the kitchen?”

Jose nodded again. “Kitchen’s the soul of the house.”

Frank got an impression of scrubbed… clean… neat. Smells of furniture polish, floor wax, and years of baking. The living room: two armchairs, a breakfront bookcase, and a camel-backed sofa. On a small table between the armchairs, a lamp, reading glasses, and an open Bible. The lamp was on, and the reading glasses rested atop the Bible.

A floral hall runner led back to the kitchen.

It was a kitchen from the 1940s or 1950s: old-fashioned white enamel sink, refrigerator, and gas stove. A brightly colored oval rag rug covered much of the polished dark green linoleum. Four dowel-backed wood chairs waited around a sturdy harvest table. The only jarring note: ranks of prescription drug containers filling a stainless-steel surgical tray on the countertop.

Three places had been set at the table, two on one side, one on the other. Napkins, ceramic mugs, woven-rush placemats, cream, sugar, and a butter dish.

Osmond motioned to the two chairs. “Please.”

Frank and Jose sat. Osmond brought a coffeepot from the stove and filled the three mugs. A second trip to the stove for a basket of freshly baked biscuits, wrapped in a napkin. She offered the basket to Jose.

He took it, unfolded the napkin, and offered the basket to Osmond. She mouthed a “Thank you” and picked out a biscuit. Jose took one and passed the basket to Frank.

Jose paid close attention to buttering his biscuit before he looked up and said, “Mrs. Osmond, we need to talk about Martin.”

“Your father told me.” Osmond sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap.

Frank started. “People say Skeeter Hodges was selling drugs. That he made a lot of money that way.”

Osmond nodded warily. “Yes. People knew… they knew he was selling.”

“And people say that Martin and Skeeter spent time together.”

“Yes.” The admission came out, dragged across years of pain.

Frank was about to ask Osmond if she knew of her grandson’s dealing.

Of course she knows. What will it get you if she says yes? What will you do if she says no?

So instead he asked, “It bothered you, didn’t it?… Martin spending time with Skeeter?”

Osmond gazed through him as though she hadn’t heard. Then, almost inaudibly, “It bothered me a lot.”

“Did Martin ever talk with you about Skeeter?”

She shook her head. “Only when I brought it up.”

“And then?”

“And then he’d say they were just friends.”

“Nothing about Skeeter selling drugs?”

Again Osmond shook her head.

“When was the last time Martin and Skeeter hung out together?”

“They were together the afternoon Martin died.”

Frank asked, “So Martin and Skeeter Hodges were good friends?”

Osmond shook her head vigorously. “No. No they weren’t. They weren’t good friends.”

“But they were seen a lot together. And Skeeter was there at the funeral.”

“That didn’t mean good friends. That Hodges boy was not good. Not good for Martin. Not good for anybody. He was a tempter. He beckoned to the bad that is in us all. He was a bad friend.”

“And he beckoned to Martin?”

Anguish crossed Osmond’s face.

“Yes. He beckoned. I tried to give Martin the strength to say no. I thought Martin had shed himself of Skeeter. But he went back. I failed him. I raised him from a baby. His mama died and I raised him and then I failed him.”

“ ‘Shed himself’?” Jose repeated. “When was that?”

“Almost a year,” Osmond replied. “Almost a year to the day he got killed. He said he found Jesus.” Her eyes went rheumy, and she sat so still she might have been stone.

“And he went back… when?”

“June that year,” she managed in a pained whisper. “It was June.”

Jose said gently: “You found him… that night he died.”

“Yes.”

“Tell us what you saw and heard.”

Osmond closed her eyes. Her eyelids fluttered, then she opened her eyes. “It was late… late for me… almost eleven. I was reading.” She gestured toward the living room, and Frank pictured the armchair and the lamp and the Bible.

“I hear Martin’s car pull into the driveway. I don’t hear him race the engine the way he usually does. I didn’t think anything about it for a while. But I realize I heard the door slam twice. And I didn’t hear him set his alarm… his horn always honked when he did that. So I went out, and he was in his car. He was lying down on the driver seat. He wasn’t breathing. I ran into the house and called nine-one-one and then went back to the car. He still wasn’t breathing.”

Osmond fell silent. Just as Jose was about to prompt her, she resumed. “And then I knew… Martin was gone.”

The old woman hugged herself, and rocked slowly back and forth, eyes distant, looking for something that she’d never see again.

“There was a sudden emptiness,” she whispered. “It was like something took flight from inside me… and it flew right out of my life.” Her eyes hardened. “They said Martin died of a drug overdose. They said heroin. But I knew Martin. I knew he would not do drugs.” Osmond’s hands began trembling.

Jose looked at Frank, who just looked back. There might be more. There probably was. But for now, it was time to go.

“Why now?” Osmond asked.

The question froze the two men as they pushed back from the table.

“Ma’am?” Frank was not certain he’d heard right, and if he had, what was Osmond driving at?

“Why now?” Osmond repeated. “My Martin’s been dead two years. Nobody came to talk to me when it happened. Now you back about Martin. Is it really about Martin? Would you be here if it wasn’t for that white man getting killed?”

The coldness penetrated the wall. It was something that writhed in Frank’s guts, something he wanted to pass off to Jose. And because he wanted to, he didn’t.

“No, ma’am, we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that white man getting killed.”

On Virginia Osmond’s front porch, Frank pulled deep at the morning air. He felt Jose’s hand gripping his shoulder.

“Jesus, Hoser.” He had to work to get it out.

Jose’s grip tightened. “I owe you one. You said the right thing.”

“Telling her it makes a difference who gets killed?”

“Always has,” Jose said, “always will.”

Frank looked down the street, toward where Skeeter Hodges’s Taurus had been parked.

“Truth always have to hurt?”

“No.”

“Then somebody’s gettin’ our share of the good stuff to pass out.”

“Think she’s a forgiver?” Jose asked.

Years earlier, over beers at the Tune Inn, Frank and Jose had decided there were three kinds of homicide victim’s relatives: forgetters, forgivers, and forevers. Forgetters put things behind them and moved on. Forgivers shed tears for the killer as well as for the deceased. Forevers never forgot and damn sure never forgave.

“I don’t know,” Frank said.

“Reads her Bible.”

Frank remembered walking in… the Bible and the reading glasses. “I think an Old Testament woman.” It was one of those things he’d say sometimes, not quite knowing how it came into his head or out of his mouth.

Jose nodded. “Daddy teaches the New Testament, but when he preaches, it’s the Old every time.”

Frank looked at the driveway where Martin Osmond had died. “She knows more than she’s telling us.”

“Everybody knows more,” Jose said. “Everybody always knows more.”