Where the Crawdads Sing(81)

Ten minutes later, Jacob said their time was up and Tate had to leave. Kya thanked him again for coming.

“I’ll keep feeding the gulls, Kya. And I’ll bring you some books.”

She shook her head and followed Jacob.





45.


    Red Cap



1970

On Monday morning, after Tate’s visit, when Kya was led into the courtroom by the bailiff, she kept her eyes away from the spectators, as she had before, and looked deep into the shadowy trees outside. But she heard a familiar sound, maybe a soft cough, and turned her head. There in the first row of seats, sitting with Tate, were Jumpin’ and Mabel, who wore her church bonnet decked out with silk roses. Folks had made a stir when they walked in with Tate and sat downstairs in the “white area.” But when the bailiff reported this to Judge Sims, still in his chambers, the judge told him to announce that anybody of any color or creed could sit anywhere they wanted in his courtroom, and if somebody didn’t like it, they were free to leave. In fact, he’d make sure they did.

On seeing Jumpin’ and Mabel, Kya felt a smidge of strength, and her back straightened slightly.

The next witness for the prosecution, Dr. Steward Cone, the coroner, had graying hair cut very short and wore glasses that sat too far down his nose, a habit that forced him to tilt his head back to see through the lenses. As he answered Eric’s questions, Kya’s mind wandered to the gulls. These long months in jail, she had pined for them, yet all along, Tate had been feeding them. They had not been abandoned. She thought of Big Red, how he always walked across her toes when she threw crumbs to them.

The coroner tossed his head back to adjust his glasses, the gesture bringing Kya back to the courtroom.

“So to recap, you’ve testified that Chase Andrews died between midnight and two o’clock on the night of October 29 or the morning of the thirtieth, 1969. The cause of death was extensive injuries to the brain and spinal cord due to a fall through an open grate of the fire tower, sixty-three feet to the ground. As he fell, he hit the back of his head on a support beam, a fact confirmed by blood and hair samples taken from the beam. Is all that correct according to your expert opinion?”

“Yes.”

“Now, Dr. Cone, why would an intelligent and fit young man like Chase Andrews step through an open grate and fall to his death? To rule out one possibility, was there alcohol or any other substance in his blood that could have impaired his judgment?”

“No, there was not.”

“Evidence presented previously demonstrates that Chase Andrews hit the back of his head on that support beam, not his forehead.” Eric stood in front of the jury and took a large step. “But when I step forward, my head ends up slightly ahead of my body. Were I to step into a hole here in front of me, the momentum and the weight of my head would pitch me forward. Correct? Chase Andrews would have hit his forehead on the beam, not the back of his skull, if he was stepping forward. So isn’t it true, Dr. Cone, that the evidence suggests that Chase was going backward when he fell?”

“Yes, the evidence would support that conclusion.”

“So we can also conclude that if Chase Andrews was standing with his back to the opened grate and was pushed by someone, he would have fallen backward, not forward?” Before Tom could object, Eric said very quickly, “I’m not asking you to state that this is conclusive evidence that Chase was pushed backward to his death. I am simply making it clear that if someone pushed Chase backward through the hole, the wounds to his head from the beam would have coincided with those actually found. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Dr. Cone, when you examined Chase Andrews in the clinic, the morning of October 30, was he wearing a shell necklace?”

“No.”

To suppress the rising nausea, Kya focused on Sunday Justice grooming himself on a windowsill. Pretzeled into an impossible position, one leg straight in the air, he licked the inside tip of his tail. His own bath seemed to absorb and entertain him entirely.

A few minutes later, the prosecutor was asking, “Is it correct that Chase Andrews wore a denim jacket the night he died?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“And according to your official report, Dr. Cone, did you not find red wool fibers on his jacket? Fibers that were not from any piece of clothing he was wearing?”

“Yes.”

Eric held up a clear plastic bag containing bits of red wool. “Are these the red fibers that were found on Chase Andrews’s jacket?”

“Yes.”

Eric lifted a larger bag from his desk. “And isn’t it true that the red wool fibers found on Chase’s jacket matched those on this red cap?” He handed it to the witness.

“Yes. These are my labeled samples, and the fibers from the cap and jacket matched exactly.”

“Where was this cap found?”

“The sheriff found the cap in Miss Clark’s residence.” This was not generally known, and murmurs rippled through the crowd.

“Was there any evidence that she had ever worn the cap?”

“Yes. Strands of Miss Clark’s hair were found in the cap.”

Watching Sunday Justice in court got Kya thinking about how her family had never had a pet. Not one dog or cat. The only thing close was the female skunk—a silky, slinky, and sassy creature—who lived under the shack. Ma called her Chanel.