“They done found him already.”
“No, they didn’t. They’re wrong.”
“And I’m supposed to believe you, a lawyer?”
“A Jew lawyer to be precise, and yes.”
“How the hell?”
“Because I knew her, Mr. Cutlip. I knew her before she was murdered. What happened to her was wrong and needs to be punished.”
I saw something just then, something in those stern, dark eyes, just a flutter come in an out, like a snake’s tongue slashing in the air. I stared at him, and he stared at me, and the thing in those eyes got brighter and glowed until he turned away from me and looked at Beth.
“I thought this was all up and finished already,” he wheezed out. “I thought you was going to take the plea and put the son of a bitch in jail so we can all rest easy?”
“You knew about the offer?” said Beth.
“Of course I knowed about the offer. I ain’t blind out here in the desert. It’s damn generous, that offer, too damn generous. I thought it was a done deal.” So he, too, had been anxious for me to accept Troy Jefferson’s offer. That was more than passing strange. Didn’t it make sense for Hailey’s uncle to want the greatest measure of justice for the murderer of his niece? You would think. And wouldn’t a trial with a punishment of death waiting at the end be more to his liking? You would think. But that’s not how he was acting. Instead he said, “I don’t know why the hell you folks ain’t snapping at it.”
“Because it’s been pulled,” I said.
“Is that a fact?” he said, a smile growing. “I guess now they’re going to go through with a trial and kill that sumbitch.”
“Our client says he didn’t do it,” said Beth.
“I can’t do nothing about the lies he tells you.”
“The story I heard was that you were a gambler, Mr. Cutlip,” I said.
“Is that the story?”
I looked around at the lovely courtyard. “You must have read the odds pretty damn well to be able to afford this place.”
“Oh, I could, yes I could, when I wasn’t drinking, though that wasn’t much time total, was it, Bobo?”
The attendant smiled and nodded stupidly.
“But that’s not how I can afford this. Hailey paid for it. And she paid for Bobo, too. What with her being a lawyer, it wasn’t too much a strain.”
I looked around again at the high-toned surroundings. “I’d expect it would be a strain for anyone. And she called you frequently?”
“Sure she did. We was close, we had a bond. Hailey and me, we had history. It warn’t no picnic raising her and her sister after the father died. Warn’t no picnic at all. We had us some tough times, some times we both of us would rather forget. But we can’t, can we? I mean, the past it just jumps out and bites you in the ass whenever it gets itself real good and hungry, don’t it?”
“What kind of past, Mr. Cutlip?”
“I don’t know, the past. The past. Maybe it’s best it’s just forgot. What about my check, my insurance check? When’s that coming?”
“You’ll have to ask the insurance company, Mr. Cutlip. But I’m glad to see you’re not so overwhelmed with grief that you can’t keep your mind focused on the more important matters, like your check.”
He stared at me. His lips quivered. “Why you son of a…” came out of his throat until it was choked back by an acute breathlessness and a rising flood of anger that filled those dark eyes until they swelled with something else, something else, and then I could see that the something else they swelled with was tears. Whatever salty anger he had been aiming at me disappeared as if dissolved by the tears, and he came apart in front of us, his once huge body shaking with sobs, gasping for breath, the back of his still-large hands trying to wipe his cheeks dry and failing. And out of his trembling lips came one sentence, over and over again.
“My Hailey. My Hailey. My Hailey.”
Bobo leaned over the wheelchair and whispered in Cutlip’s ear and Cutlip nodded before tossing Bobo a withering glance. Bobo jerked back and stood straight. Beth and I glanced at each other and rose from our chairs, about to leave Cutlip with his grief, when he raised a hand in the middle of his sobs to stop us from leaving. Slowly the jag subsided, the tears abated, his breaths slowed and then deepened, the loose flesh of his palms pulled away whatever wetness still lay on his face. He coughed loudly as he slowly gained control.
“I’m sorry,” he said, waving one of those big hands as if to cover his face. “It happens sometimes when I think, when I remember. I’m sorry. Sit down. It’s just it’s… it’s…” It appeared as if he were about to start again.
It seemed genuine, his grief, it seemed deep and painful and more than I ever would have expected, and it caught me off guard. I turned and frowned at Beth as we both sat again. She had taken off her sunglasses and was staring at Uncle Larry with deep interest.
“How were you and Hailey related, Mr. Cutlip?” she asked.
“She was my sister’s daughter,” he said as he wiped again at his eyes. “But I didn’t have nothing much to do with her until her daddy died in the accident.”
“When was that?” asked Beth.
“They was eight, the girls, when it happened. After that, I could see they was having troubles. After that, I could see they was near to starving. Little eight-year-old girls with no one much taking care of them, raggedy dresses falling off their bones.”
“What about the mother?”
“My sister Debra was a sweet, pretty thing, but she didn’t have what it took to do it all by herself, and when her husband died, she sort of broke apart. They needed somebody with them. So I moved myself in. Never had a steady job before, never needed one or wanted one, could always cadge a drink or find a game with a couple of fish that would keep me going for a spell. But I moved myself in with Debra and the girls and found a job and for eight years I didn’t miss so much as a day at the plant carving carcasses, grinding meat, stuffing casings. Stood ankle deep in blood just so I could help those girls be raised.”
I saw the image just then, Lawrence Cutlip as a younger man, tall, dark, broad, hip boots on, wading through a wilderness of blood as he hacked away at the carcasses passing by him on a conveyer belt of hooks, a wild man who had tamed himself so that two little girls who weren’t his own could have a decent start. The man wading through the blood, I knew, was the uncle that Hailey had told me about, the uncle who was the hero of her life and whom she had put up in this luxury nursing home as a way of offering thanks. My opinion of him shifted as fast as the image came and I felt a sudden swell of affection for the old coot. His grief had been real, his sacrifice true, his gruff, hard exterior a way to hide the caramel inside.
“That must have been hard, doing all that for them,” I said.
“It was, sure, but I ain’t never regretted it. It was the rightest thing I ever done in my life.”
“And looking around at this place, Hailey seemed to appreciate it.”
“Them girls, they needed a firm hand in that house. Now, Roylynn, she was a good girl, a little on the quiet side with all her big ideas, but Hailey, she was trouble, more than her mother could ever hope to handle. There was something about her that was catnip. No man could resist her. Those boys couldn’t walk close as five feet without losing control of they bowels and shittin’ themselves. They swarmed around her, like she was some kind of queen bee, and she let ’em. She let ’em. I tried to swat ’em away, but it wasn’t they fault, it was just the way she was.”
“Did she have boyfriends?”
“Course she did. She didn’t tell me things like that, personal things, she wasn’t one to kiss and tell, but sure she did, though they never lasted too damn long. There was Grady Pritchett, who was older and I didn’t like him hanging around the way he was. And there was that Jesse boy, but he was kilt out near the quarry when she was fifteen. She and Jesse knew each other since grade school, and they was more like friends, not boyfriend girlfriend, but still, that was hard on her. After that there was that Bronson boy, the football player, but it was a halfhearted thing at best. Turned out he was more interested in standing over his center than being with Hailey, if you know what I’m saying. And he wasn’t even the quarterback. If you know what I’m saying.”