As the congregation read a response to some prompting I hadn’t heard, I shifted my stance, and when I did, I kicked a chair hidden in the dark catwalk. It grated on the stone floor, and the priest looked up in my direction. As he registered my presence, his eyes widened with surprise, then narrowed sharply. I realized that the police had probably briefed him about me, the forbidden intruder, and I suddenly pictured him interrupting the service-Jess’s service-to have me hauled away. I clasped my hands in front of my chest in a gesture of prayer, a gesture whose sincerity I hoped he could see. Maybe he did; maybe he saw sorrow etched in my face, or tears streaking my cheeks; maybe he simply didn’t want to interrupt the ser vice. At any rate, his expression softened, and he turned back to his text. “O God of grace and glory,” he read, “we remember before you this day our sister Jessamine. We thank you for giving her to us, her family and friends, to know and to love as a companion on our earthly pilgrimage. In your boundless compassion, console us who mourn.” He never looked at me again, but at that moment he seemed to be speaking to me, speaking for me, alone among the crowd.
At the end of the main ser vice, the priest invited the mourners to join him for a brief burial ser vice in the courtyard beside the nave. Then he lifted the brass urn from the altar and processed out the nave.
Retreating into the maze of hallways and stairwells, I made my way by blind reckoning in the direction the priest had indicated. I soon found myself in an elegant lobby just outside the parish offices; then, down a long, sunny hallway, I glimpsed windows looking out onto an enclosed garden. At the garden’s center was a sunken circular courtyard inlaid with black and white tiles that formed the pattern of a labyrinth, a symbol of spiritual pilgrimage. To one side, in a raised bed of flowers and hostas, stood a statue of an angel, and in one edge of this plot was a freshly dug hole, perhaps a foot square. The priest stood there with the urn, and the tightly bunched crowd faced him. I recognized Preston Carter in the group; I also saw the woman I’d known at a glance to be Jess’s mother. She held her head high, almost defiantly-another recognizable echo of Jess-but her face told how much the show of strength was costing her. She kept her distance from Carter, which I took as a sign that she had not forgiven him for what ever had caused the rift between him and Jess.
The priest began to speak, and I crept to a window to catch his words. I got there just in time to see him pour the urn’s contents into the ground. He straightened and then raised both hands in a gesture of blessing. “In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ,” he said, “we commend to Almighty God our sister Jessamine, and we commit her body to the ground. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless her and keep her, the Lord make his face to shine upon her and be gracious to her, the Lord lift up his countenance upon her and give her peace. Amen.”
“Amen,” I whispered. “Sleep well, Jess.”
CHAPTER 36
I SLIPPED OUT THE church’s side door and made it back to Broad Street undetected-more to the point, unarrested-and had just climbed into the Taurus for the sad drive back to Knoxville when I heard a soft, familiar voice. “You not speaking to me?” Miss Georgia was decked out in a sleeveless calf-length black dress that simultaneously covered and stunningly packaged her willowy body. A hint of cleavage showed at the neckline; the naughtiness was somehow both undercut and underscored by a panel of sheer black mesh stretching from the neckline up to her throat. The outfit was topped off by a pair of black gloves and the broad-brimmed black hat I’d seen in the church, trimmed with a spray of black feathers. Miss Georgia raised a stiletto-clad foot to the running board; the movement caused a long slit in the dress to open, revealing a stocking top, a garter, and several inches of bare thigh above the stocking. It was an elegant, womanly thigh, and it startled me all over again to recall that Miss Georgia was not actually a woman. “Dr. Bill, I’m sorry about your friend,” said Miss Georgia. “I saw it on the TV, and I cried and cried. She a classy lady.”
“Yes, she was,” I said.
“How come the police not let you in the church, Dr. Bill? Everybody talkin’ ’bout that after the fun’ral. You loved her, didn’t you?”
I nodded. “I think maybe I did, or I could have. I was just beginning to find out.”
“You did; it was all over your face that night at the club. She crazy ’bout you, too-I axed her, and she told me so. Anybody deserve to be in there at that woman’s fun’ral, it was you. You and her mama. Who tell the police to keep you out?”
“Her ex-husband,” I said. “I think he thinks I killed her. So does Detective Sergeant John Evers. So does the district attorney.”
“You?” Miss Georgia threw back her head and cut loose with her high, cascading laugh, whose femininity was undercut slightly by the prominence with which her Adam’s apple bobbed into view. “Dr. Bill, you as meek as a baby lamb,” she said. “No way you do something bad to a woman, ’specially a woman you in love with. I got me a mind to go find that ex-husband and bitch-slap some sense into him. Bitch-slap me some polices, too.” She grinned lasciviously. “Some of them white-boy polices? They just dyin’ to be bitch-slapped by a long-legged Nubian goddess.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “I appreciate your willingness to take up for me, Miss Georgia, but I don’t want to drag you into my troubles.”
“Sweet Jesus, did somebody say drag? Tha’s one of my most favorite words. I am all about drag, and draggin’, and bein’ dragged. Next time somebody start messin’ wif you, they gonna find theyself messin’ wif me. Then they be the one in a mess.”
“Okay,” I said. “Next time the police-the po-lice-mess with me, I’ll holler for help.” She gave me an exaggerated wink of approval.
“Dr. Bill, I done found out somethin’ ’bout that case you and Miss Jess was workin’ on.”
There was a deli near the corner-Ankar’s Downtown-so I suggested we get a bite to eat while we talked. “You know I gots to watch my girlish figure, but I would just love some sweet tea,” she said. I held the door for her, then ordered two teas and a bag of chips, and we headed for a booth that looked out of earshot of the handful of other customers. Heads turned as we walked through the deli; Miss Georgia beamed at all who stared, as if accepting tribute. And in a way, maybe she was.
Once seated, she took off her gloves, laid them on the table, and drew a sip of tea through a straw so as not to smudge her coral lipstick. “Oh my,” she sighed, “that is refreshing.” I took a swig of mine and popped a potato chip in my mouth. It was a thick, kettle-cooked chip, so it crunched loudly. Miss Georgia crinkled her nose in disapproval.
“You said you found out something,” I said. “Tell me.”
She reached down under the table and produced a folded piece of paper which I guessed had been tucked into the top of her stocking. When she unfolded it, I saw the forensic sketch artist’s two renderings of Craig Willis, in drag and in men’s clothing. “I axed some of my friends-girlfriends and boyfriends-about this person you and Miss Jess was wondering about,” she said.
“Oh,” I said, “we identified him by his fingerprints after I talked to you.” I described finding the skin from the hand, and how Art had donned the skin like a glove in order to take prints.
“Dr. Bill, that is just fascinating,” she said. She sounded like she meant it, and I was grateful for the compliment. “One of my boyfriends, he recognize the picture-the regular picture, not the one in that tatty Dolly Parton outfit-and he say, ‘That guy is not a drag queen; that asshole motherfucker is a chicken hawk.’ ’Scuse my French, Dr. Bill.”
“Chicken hawk? What’s a chicken hawk?”
“Iss a bird. And iss a pedophile. Chicken hawk swoop down and grab li’l baby chickens. They’s even a damn chicken-hawk support group, calls isself ‘Nambla.’ Stand for ‘North American Man-Boy Love Association.’ Nambla say men should be able to have sex with boys of any age, long as the boys consent.” She paused, then added, “What ever ‘consent
’ mean to a six-year-old chile.”
“You seem to know a lot about this,” I said.
Miss Georgia looked away. When she looked back, I saw deep-seated hurt in her eyes. “You know that tree it talk about in the Bible-the tree of good and evil?” I nodded, startled-Art and I had discussed it, in the same context, a few weeks ago, or a lifetime ago. “Somebody make me eat some fruits off that tree a long time ago,” she said. “You choke down something like that, it stick with you for life, Dr. Bill.”
I felt a wave of compassion for Miss Georgia, but I didn’t want to pry and I didn’t know a graceful way to express it. Instead, I simply told Miss Georgia about Craig Willis’s arrest for child molestation in Knoxville, shortly before he moved to Chattanooga; she nodded. “See, thass what I’m talkin’ about. I tole you that night at Alan Gold’s I’d remember if I seen anybody in that sorry-ass drag-queen getup.”
“So a chicken hawk couldn’t also be a drag queen?”
For the second time in as many minutes, Miss Georgia looked uncomfortable. “Don’t never say never, Dr. Bill. They’s some mighty twisted people in this world. And queers be some of the twistedest.” I studied Miss Georgia for any hint of irony in her expression, and detected none. “But my friend, he say he cannot imagine this guy in drag.”
“But that’s how he was dressed when he died,” I said.
“When he die? Or when y’all find him?”
“But what’s the-” Suddenly I saw what she was getting at. “You think maybe whoever killed him dressed his body in drag for some reason?”
“Mm-hmm.”