Amanda sat down on the couch and ran her fingers through her hair. That explained part of her appearance. “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I don’t know how to react, either. But I’m trying to fight this overwhelming feeling that I’m responsible for his death. It’s been eating at me since Morrie called. Don’t you feel that way, too?”
I looked down and noticed the forgotten Sam Adams bottle in my hand. I took a long pull, decided there was no point in confessing the wave of guilt washing through me, and said, “I’m not sure what I feel, but I know in my head that neither one of us is responsible for Jones’s death. Your head is better than mine, so you must know it, too. You were representing your client, and I was doing a job. Jack stroking out over the tape is not a foreseeable effect of that.”
“I don’t know, John, I’m having a hard time going with my head on this one.”
“Your head has gotten you a long way,” I said. “You ought to stay with it.”
3 _____________________
The heat wave broke the second week of September, bringing the highs down into the mid-eighties and lowering the humidity. It was a temporary respite, and there would be more days in the nineties, but the emotional worst of summer was over.
I had the windows open in my office and was sitting at my desk on a fine blue sky Thursday morning, sipping coffee and watching a barge of gravel work its way up the river when Amanda called. I hadn’t heard from her since she had delivered the news of Jack Jones’s death, and I knew it would be at least several months before Betty Jo, then Amanda, then I received any money from his estate.
“I’ve got a case I want you to take, Jack,” Amanda said. “Don’t worry, it’s not a divorce. It’s a missing person case.”
“Who’s missing?” I asked.
“The son of a client,” she said. “She’s sitting here in my office. I was wondering if you could come over now.”
“Now? You must think I’m not very busy,” I replied.
“Can you come or not, Jack? It’s important,” Amanda said.
“No time for levity this morning, huh? Give me fifteen minutes.”
I was wearing khakis and a white buttondown shirt, and added a tie and seersucker coat before heading out. Amanda was not a believer in casual day.
Ten minutes later, Amanda’s receptionist led me into her office. Amanda was seated behind her glass-topped desk, and in one of her red leather client chairs sat an overweight black woman who appeared to be in her forties. She was wearing orange stretch pants that didn’t look like they could stretch any further, and a t-shirt with a picture of a basketball star dunking the ball. For shoes, she was wearing purple house slippers without any heels.
“Ms. Tuggle,” Amanda said formally, “this is John McAlister. John, Ms. Tuggle.”
“How do you do, ma’am?” I said.
Ms. Tuggle nodded at me, but didn’t say anything or offer her hand. I sat down in the other chair and waited.
“Ms. Tuggle’s son, Thomas, is missing,” Amanda said. “Ms. Tuggle, why don’t you tell John about it.”
“I done told you, why I got to tell him, too?” she asked.
“Because,” Amanda replied patiently, “John is the one who will look for Thomas, not I.”
Ms. Tuggle took a deep, ragged breath, and began to speak in an angry voice. “I never had nothing good in this life but Thomas, and now he gone, too. How this white man going to change that?”
“I don’t know that I can, but I’m sure that I can’t if I don’t know what’s going on. If you don’t want to tell me, I’ll go enjoy the rest of my day. It’s entirely up to you,” I said. I looked across the glass at Amanda and shrugged with my eyebrows.
“Goddamit, Lucy, tell the man the story,” Amanda said, in a voice that had made more than one philandering husband fear for his retirement plan and club membership.
“Fuck you, Amanda, don’t you be cussin’ me,” Tuggle hissed back.
“I see you girls know each other already,” I said.
“You shut up,” Amanda said to me, “and you quit being so pig-headed stubborn and tell the man what you know,” she added, jabbing her finger at Amanda.
“I know he gone, and he ain’t comin’ back, that’s what I know,” she said, her eyes still defiant but her voice breaking.
“Tell him, Lucy, just tell him,” Amanda said quietly.
“’Bout three weeks ago, Thomas was over at my house on a Friday night like always, eatin’ supper and drinking wine with me when the police come knocking on the door. They said Thomas been dealin’ crack, and started to read him his rights, like they do on TV. Thomas, he been drinking a lot, and he say he ain’t had nothing to do with crack, and that the policeman is a lying nigger. The other police, he white, he shoot Thomas with one of them cattle prod guns. Thomas jerk like he havin’ a fit and fall down on the floor and start throwing up on the black cop’s shoes, and so he get mad and whack Thomas on the back two three times with his night stick. I started in after him with the bottle of wine but the white cop pull his gun and say “freeze, nigger.” I know I ain’t doing no good against a gun with a bottle of Thunderbird, so I do what he say. Then they each grabs aholt of Thomas and drag him out my house and th’ow him in the police car.”
“When did you see him next, Ms. Tuggle?” I asked.
“I ain’t never seen him again,” she said with a sob. I was afraid for a moment that she was going to break down, but she pulled herself together and went on without any prompting.
“He called me next day and said they set bond on him of twenty thousand, and he already paid it and was out. He said he be over the next Friday night like always for dinner, but he didn’t come. I tried to call him three four times, but he never answer, and when he didn’t come over the next Friday night, I got my friend to carry me over to his house. Thomas wasn’t home, and his neighbors say they ain’t seen him in a couple of weeks. “
“I’ve been over to the neighborhood and asked around, too. Nobody has seen him,” Amanda added.
“Have you called the police,” I asked, “or is that a stupid question?”
“You’re right, that’s a stupid question,” Amanda said. “They are obviously looking for Thomas, too. He missed his first hearing.”
Ms. Tuggle spoke up, “No, I ain’t called the police, ‘cause that sho’ wouldn’t be what Thomas wanted me to do and they ain’t nobody else to call cept Amanda.”
“When you went over to the house, did either one of you go inside?” I asked.
“I don’t have a key,” Ms. Tuggle said.
“What about a court order to get in?” I asked.
“Another stupid question,” Amanda said. “That would involve filing a missing person’s report with the police.”
“And the police would want to come with you to the house, right?” I asked them both.
Now they both gave me the blank stare.
“Look,” I said, “if Thomas is wanted for crack dealing and bail jumping, the cops can get into his house anyway. We might as well go in and see what we can find.”
Lucy looked at Amanda, and Amanda said to me, “No cops.”
“Okay.