South of Broad by Pat Conroy

Author:Pat Conroy
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Coming of Age, General, Charleston (S.C.), Fiction
ISBN: 9780385532143
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2009-09-15T07:46:52.846000+00:00

CHAPTER 16

The Patel Connection

When we finish our work for Open Hand on Tuesday, a police car is waiting for us, parked in front of the Vallejo Street house. Ike and Betty go over to flash their badges and speak with a detective. Rather than the break we are hoping for, it turns out to be a surprise: the police want to interrogate me about a murder for which I am a prime suspect. That’s when I see Anna Cole walking toward me.

The homicide detective is named Thomas Stearns McGraw, the son of two poetry-loving parents. His father teaches American literature at Berkeley and his mother’s father is a third cousin twice removed of the author of The Waste Land. Since it is a new experience for me to be a suspect in a murder case, I do not learn this fascinating autobiographical detail at our first encounter, but later, since Tom McGraw is a gifted conversationalist and a man with a curious nature.

I introduce Anna Cole to everybody and explain who she is. Anna is obviously deeply shaken by the recent turn of events, and her hands tremble visibly. She turns to me in a sudden white fury and says, “I knew I shouldn’t have opened the door for you.”

“Let’s go inside to discuss this, Detective McGraw,” Ike says. Tom McGraw’s unexpected arrival breaks up the rhythm of habit that has sustained us in our search. Everyone wants to be present when the detective questions me. But Ike assumes control and sends the others to the phone bank in the dining room, ordering them to remember the hundreds of leads that need to be followed up.

Sheba kisses me on the cheek. “If Leo King committed murder, Detective, I’ll jump off the Golden Gate Bridge and let you film my suicide. You’ll have worldwide rights to my death.”

“How can you joke about something so horrible?” Anna Cole asks, then breaks down crying.

“Because none of us knows what this is about,” I tell her. “I’ve never murdered anyone, so at this moment I am fairly relaxed.”

“Shouldn’t we get Leo a lawyer?” Sheba asks Ike.

“He doesn’t need a lawyer,” Ike says. “He’s never even gotten a parking ticket.”

Anna Cole is completely unstrung, and we have to wait for her hysteria to ease before the interrogation can begin. “Ma’am, could I get you a glass of water?” Ike asks softly. “We could get this done a lot faster if you could get control of yourself.”

Anna says, through tears, “All I did was send the cops a photocopy of the man who was stalking me like you told me to do, Leo.”

“He was from San Rafael, right?” I ask. “I forget his name.”

Detective McGraw helps me out. “His name was John Summey. He lived at 25710 Vendola Drive in San Rafael. He worked as a physical therapist at a retirement center here in the city.”

“And he had picked up a bad habit of stalking young women from Minnesota,” I add.

“That’s what Miss Cole said,” the detective says.

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