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The prisoner was drinking a can of Dr Pepper and did indeed look put out when Warden Graham and Barrie Travis approached her. Charlene Walters was a tiny woman, with a bony, concave chest and spindly arms and legs. Her white, overpermed hair formed a frizzy halo around her small head. Her snapping black eyes and the quick, abrupt manner in which she moved reminded Barrie of a sparrow.
Giving Barrie a once-over, she snorted with disdain. “Well, it certainly took you long enough.”
Barrie extended her right hand. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Walters.”
Crazy Charlene shook hands with her, then addressed the warden condescendingly. “We got private things to discuss. Do you mind?”
Although she had challenged his authority, Foote Graham smiled. “Of course not. I’ll make myself scarce.”
He joined the female guard who was standing at a discreet distance. Barrie and Charlene took chairs on either side of a small table. “I understand I’m interrupting your recreation time. I apologize.”
“You got any cigarettes?”
Barrie dug into her satchel and produced the same pack she had offered to Vanessa Merritt a few weeks ago. Charlene shook one from the pack and placed it between her thin lips. Barrie lighted it for her, then asked if Charlene had any objections to her recording the interview.
“Not if you’ll leave the cigarettes.”
Barrie smiled in agreement. Once she’d checked the cassette recorder, she began. “You left several intriguing messages on my voice mail at WVUE.”
“You thought I was a kook.”
“Well, I—”
“Otherwise you would have called me back.”
Charlene was going to be an exacting dance partner who wouldn’t tolerate a single misstep. Barrie took another tack. “You’re absolutely right, Mrs. Walters. I thought you were a kook. In fact, I still think you might be.”
Leaning forward, Charlene winked mischievously. “I got them believing I am. Loony, I mean. I found Jesus right after I got here, but it was getting crazy that worked miracles. Crazy people can get away with just about anything. You’d be amazed.”
Charlene Walters was crazy, all right. Crazy like a fox. “The first time you called me,” Barrie said, “you left the message ‘He’s done it before.’ To whom were you referring?”
“Well, who do you think, dimwit? The President, of course. David Malcomb Merritt.” She stabbed the tabletop with a broken, yellow fingernail. “He killed that baby boy, that little Robert Rushton, sure as I’m sitting here.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Are you dense, or what? Don’t you listen? Like I told you, he’s done it before. He killed another baby. Years ago.”
This was the information Barrie had come to Mississippi to hear. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific than that.”
Charlene exhaled a plume of smoke. “David Merritt was working for Senator Armbruster. Good-looking hotshot, he was. Had women by the dozens. One of ’em got knocked up. Her name was Becky Sturgis. She had a baby boy while Merritt was off in Washington. When he come back, she sprung the kid on him. He didn’t cotton to the idea of being a daddy and husband. But Becky, she’d made up her mind to marry him and kept pestering him about it.
“So one night, when her little baby was only a few weeks old, he went over to her trailer house to have it out with her. They got into one hell of a shouting match. The kid was squalling. He choked it to death.
“Maybe he didn’t intend to kill the kid. Maybe he just wanted to hush his crying. But since he had killed him, I guess he figured he ought not to leave any witnesses. He beat Becky Sturgis to a fare-thee-well.”
Snorting her sinuses clean, Charlene twirled the cigarette like a miniature baton. “There’s no excuse for that sorta violence against women. None whatsoever. Even if I weren’t a convicted felon, he wouldn’t have got my vote, on account of it.”
The tale was too much to absorb all at once, so Barrie cushioned her mind by thinking how interesting life was. The nation’s history could very well be altered by this comically birdlike septuagenarian who was serving a life sentence for armed robbery and murder.
But who would ever believe it? Did she believe it? Charlene’s credibility was as thin as rice paper. She could have invented this story to help fill her idle time. Robert Rushton Merritt’s death had sparked her interest. Barrie’s SIDS series had fanned the flames of her imagination. She’d found a sucker who would listen, who had come all the way to Mississippi to speak with her. Making up this story could be the best entertainment Charlene had enjoyed in years.
Or it could be true.
Either way, Barrie decided to proceed with caution. This could be the story of the century. If she blew it, not only her future but the nation’s would be sacrificed to her ineptitude.
“It all sounds very…”
“Unbelievable,” Charlene said when Barrie faltered. “You don’t have to believe me. Ask ol’ Cletus Armbruster.”
