Ace Atkins - Wicked City

He could breathe better, without a doubt.

And, in the rearview mirror, he peered at the two faces, the tired boy and the girl who slept on his shoulder. Her face still scarred, nose broken, but no less beautiful to him. He could feel a warmth spread in his chest as she shifted herself toward him, making him feel that solid, firm weight anchoring them together.

The envelope lay unopened on the dash, fluttering in the wind.

A WEEK LATER, WORD SPREAD THAT THE GRAND JURY HAD made a decision. Outside the courtroom doors, the Russell County Courthouse became choked with reporters and attorneys and normal folks off the street who waited to hear the news. I saw Arch Ferrell in the middle of it all, dressed in a gray suit and shaking hands, smiling, knowing he was going to beat it all. He stayed for a while, but by three p.m. he drove off in his Pontiac. Not two minutes later, the courthouse doors opened, newspapermen running out to their typewriters and telephones, saying Ferrell and Fuller had been indicted for the murder of Albert L. Patterson.

There were gasps and yells. A few people clapped.

John was there, and we shook hands and hugged. Soon, Sykes moved out of the courtroom, trailed by dozens of newspapermen, and he led them all out to the courthouse steps where he confidently answered their questions. Afterward, he followed me back to my office, reached into his briefcase, and handed me three neatly typed and folded arrest warrants.

Si Garrett had been indicted as an accessory, and, under Alabama law, Sykes explained to me, that was the same as pulling the trigger.

We wasted no time. Jack Black drove, I sat in the passenger’s seat, and Quinnie in the rear, as we made our way to Bert Fuller’s garage apartment. His lawyer had finally finagled him a house arrest for the vote fraud because of an injured back from a “fall from a horse.” And he’d been there for weeks, with boys from the Guard taking turns watching him lie in bed in his pajamas, reading the Bible and watching television, only leaving the bed to relieve himself.

A shapely blonde met us at the door, chewing gum, hands on hips. And I reached into my pocket for the warrant, but she just let the door swing open and waved us in with the flat of her hand, saying, “We’ve been expecting you.”

Bert Fuller woke, as if being gently woken from a dream. He smiled up at me and Jack Black and said, “Blessings.”

“Get your fat ass up, Fuller,” Black said. “You’re hereby under arrest for the murder of Albert Patterson.”

He tilted his head, still not moving it from a pillow. “Boys, I am not fit to move from this bed. I’m under bed-rest orders from an Atlanta physician, and any move from my bed could paralyze me.”

Black nodded and looked to me.

“Quite a place you got here,” Black said. “I like those lassos and hats on the wall. Just how many pairs of boots do you have?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Well, I’ll be,” Black said. “You ready?”

“I said I can’t move.”

“Sure thing, hoss.”

Black called in four negro trusties from the jail who’d been brought over with the Guard. They took their posts on each corner of Fuller’s bed and, with the word from Black, lifted him up like a fat sultan and whisked him out the door.

“Load him in the truck,” Black said, following.

THE PARADE OF CARS CONTINUED OUT OF PHENIX CITY AND down along the curving country road to Seale and Arch Ferrell’s big ranch house. His wife, Madeline, met us in the front drive, holding her newborn daughter, and she shielded her eyes in the bright sunshine, looking out at the hordes crawling out of their automobiles. I asked her to please get Arch.

She said he wasn’t there. She said she thought he was at the courthouse.

So we all waited about an hour, leaning against the cars, the deputies and prosecutors and photographers and newspapermen, until we saw Arch’s familiar Pontiac drive slow, a funeral pace, down the long road to his brand-new house, and kill the engine.

He climbed out of the car with a smile on his face and removed his hat. “Madeline, you mind waiting inside for me?”

The baby had started to cry, and Madeline mounted the steps and path to the house, closing the door behind her.

“Did you hear?” Arch asked.

I waited.

“Governor Persons has just suffered a massive heart attack. They’ve rushed him to the hospital.”

I shook my head.

“This town is killing everyone,” Arch said.

I didn’t say anything.

“Now, just what is this about?” he asked.

I looked at him, giving a slight shake of my head, and told him he was under arrest for the killing of Mr. Patterson.

He nodded and asked if we had a warrant, and I slipped a piece of paper from my new gray suit jacket and handed it to him. He stood there, a bit shorter than me, and read through the simple document as if judging its legal validity, showing he was still very much a man of the court.

And then he nodded again and looked up.

Black was at my elbow, his hand on the butt of a.45, waiting for Arch to take off or explode. Quinnie waited at the black Chevy with a 12-gauge in his little arms.

“Can I talk to my wife?” he asked. “I’d like to be the one to tell her.”

I looked to Jack and then over at Quinnie. There were twenty-odd cars parked out at crazy angles, maybe forty newspapermen and photographers circling us.

“Sure thing, Arch.”

As he walked up the steps and to the front door, everyone fell silent. He met Madeline there and he leaned in to kiss her but missed her cheek, whispering something. She put her hand to her mouth and began to cry as he leaned in to kiss his newborn on the forehead. His older daughter, Anne’s friend, held back in the black void of the open door with a dull expression on her face, numb to it all.

THE NEXT DAY, JOHN PATTERSON AND I FLEW OUT OF Montgomery to Houston, where the local sheriff drove us over to Galveston and Si Garrett’s sanitarium. We were met in the lobby of this big white antebellum building by a doctor and a lawyer, one with a clipboard and one with a briefcase, fully ready to fight us. I presented the lawyer with the warrant and extradition papers while the doctor rattled on about all the delicate and frail sensibilities of a very ill man.

“Can we see him?” John asked.

The doctor looked to the lawyer. The lawyer shrugged.

They led us out the east wing of the building, following a well-worn brick walkway through colonnades and past large twisted oaks that grew only in this part of the country. The doctor used a key from his pocket to open a side door and walked ahead down a long gray linoleum hall dimly lit with artificial light. He spoke to a nurse sitting at a desk at the end of the hall, and we all followed to a small metal door, where he used another key from his other pocket.

He unlocked and opened the door, light following the sharp edge, opening like a weak dawn into a small square room where a skinny man lay huddled in the corner squinting up at us.

“Mr. Garrett?” I asked.

The room smelled of antiseptic and urine.

“I am Silas Garrett.”

“I’m Sheriff Lamar Murphy of Russell County, Alabama,” I said. “I’ve been sent to take you back to face charges of killing Albert Patterson.”

From the corner, Garrett palmed his way up on the two walls and stood. He wore a white smock. He looked much smaller than I remembered him, without the crisp white suit and big clean Stetson. His brown eyes looked confused, his hair thin, skin pale with the scruff of a black-and-gray beard that made him seem dirty.

“Are you well, sir?” I asked.

He shook his head. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at John Patterson. He began to tremble.