Black-Eyed Susans Read Online Free PDF

vision of heaven.
     A drawing on lined notebook paper. Five stick figures with lopsided butterfly wings
     illuminated by a bright orange sunburst. A child’s crooked print tumbles across
     the sky: ANGIE’S ANGELS.
    I learned in Angie’s obituary that
     this drawing was a long-ago gift from the six-year-old daughter of Dominicus Steele, an
     apprentice plumber accused of raping an SMU coed outside a Fort Worth bar in the
     ’80s. Dominicus was identified by the victim and two of her sorority sisters.
    That night, he’d flirted with the
     victim up close. He was big and black, and a good dancer. The white college girls loved
     him until they decided he was the guy in the gray hooded sweatshirt running away from
     their drunk, crumpled friend in the alley. Dominicus was freed by DNA extracted from
     semen stored for twelve years in an evidence storage unit. Dominicus’s mother was
     the first to speak to reporters in terms of “Angie’s Angels,” and her
     sweet little moniker stuck.
    I’d never describe Angie as an angel.
     She did whatever she had to. She was a very good liar when she needed to be. I know,
     because she had lied for Charlie and me.
    I take a step, and the hollow sound of my
     boot echoes on the cheap yellow linoleum that covers up God knows what. The four other
     desks that are scattered around the floor, in similar states of paper chaos, are also
     empty.
Where is everybody?
    There’s a blue door
     on the far side of the room that’s impossible to miss. I venture over. Knock
     lightly. Nothing. Maybe I should just hunker down in Angie’s chair for a while.
     Swerve it around on the cranky roller wheels she complained about and stare into
     Rembrandt’s heaven. Ponder the role of the martyr.
    Instead, I twist the knob and open the door
     a crack. Knock again. Hear animated voices. Push the door all the way. A long conference
     table. Blazing overhead lights. Bill’s startled face. Another woman, jumping out
     of her chair abruptly, knocking over her cup of coffee.
    My eyes, traveling down the table, follow
     the river of amber liquid.
    Head thrumming.
    Copies of drawings, stretched edge to edge
     across the scratched surface.
    Tessie’s drawings.
    The real ones. And the ones that
     aren’t.
    I am staring at the score, 12–28,
     scrawled in white chalk on a blackboard. A lopsided Little League game, maybe, or a bad
     day for the Dallas Cowboys. It is clear from the chart’s wording that these are
     the twelve men who have been freed over the years by Angie and her rotating legal crew,
     and the twenty-eight who have not.
    The woman who tipped over the coffee,
     introduced to me as a third-year University of Texas law student named Sheila Dunning,
     has left us. William quickly swept up the copies of my drawings, tucked them out of the
     way, and set a fresh mug of hot coffee in front of me. He’s apologized multiple
     times, and I’ve said over and over,
It’s OK, it’s OK, I have to
     see those drawings again sometime
and
I should have knocked
     louder.
    Sometimes I long for the Tessie in me, who
     would have just spit out the unvarnished, angry truth:
You’re a jerk. You knew
     I was coming. You knew I hadn’t looked at these since I dug them out of a
     wall.
    “Thanks for driving
     all the way down here.” He slides into a chair beside me and slaps a new yellow
     legal pad on the table. He is wearing jeans, Nikes, and a slightly pilled green pullover
     sweater that is too short for his frame, the curse of a broad-shouldered man. “Are
     you still in the mood to do this?”
    “Why wouldn’t I be?”
     Tessie, retorting. Still in there, after all.
    “We don’t have to talk here. In
     this room.” He gazes at me intently. “This is our war room. Generally off
     limits to clients.”
    My eyes linger over the walls. Beside the
     chalkboard, enlarged snapshots of five men. Current cases, I assume. Four of the men are
     African-American. A young Terrell Darcy Goodwin stars in the