Annoyed, he waved her off, and she motioned to me to walk with her to the one grave we’d not yet excavated. As we walked, she powered up the phone, and once it was on, it gave a chirp. “Oh, great,” she said when she saw the display. “A text message from Don Asshole Nicely.” Her finger hesitated, then she pushed a button to call up the message. Her eyes narrowed, and then a hand went up to her mouth. She stared at the screen, as if something astonishing were unfolding there.
“Angie? You okay?”
“Jesus,” she said. “Read this and tell me what you think it means.”
She handed me the phone. The message read: “From: Don, May 31, 6:44 A.M. your right I killed Kate and I cant live with it. Im sorry.”
I reread the message. Three times. “Hard to know,” I said. “It might mean he’s ready to confess. Or it might mean he’s suicidal.” I handed the phone back. “Either way, I think it means you need to call the sheriff.”
She nodded, then scrolled through her phone’s contact list and hit a number. “Dis-patch,” came a woman’s flat voice through the cell-phone speaker.
“Hello, my name’s Angela St. Claire. I’m the sister of Kate Nicely, who died from a gunshot wound two weeks ago.”
In the background, I heard squawks and staticky radio transmissions, and the periodic beeps indicating that the call was being recorded. “How can I help you, ma’am?”
“I just got a text message from Kate’s husband, Don Nicely. I think maybe you should send somebody to check on him.”
“Why is that, ma’am?”
“He just text-messaged me to say that he killed Kate and that he can’t live with it anymore.”
“Could you repeat that please, ma’am?”
“I just got a text from my dead sister’s husband. Don Nicely. He says he killed Kate and he can’t live with it anymore.”
“And he sent you this text message just now?”
“Actually, he sent it a couple hours ago, but my phone’s been off, so I just now got it. He sent it at . . . hang on just a second . . . at six forty-four this morning.”
The dispatcher was silent for a moment, and I heard radio traffic in the background. “We’ll send someone to check on him. What’s that address?”
“The house is at 119 Amherst Drive. If he’s not there, you might see if he’s shown up at his job. He works at the Walmart out on the bypass.”
“And if we need to reach you, is this the best number?”
“Probably,” said Angie. “But let me give you my office number, too.” She rattled it off. “That’s the crime lab at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. ”
“I’ll send a unit to check on him, ma’am, and we’ll contact you as soon as we know anything.”
“Okay, thanks very much,” Angie said. She hung up, then phoned her husband. “Listen to this,” she said, and told him what had just transpired.
Half an hour later, as she and I were beginning to excavate the seventh and final grave, her phone rang. She glanced at the display and drew a deep breath. “Angie St. Claire.”
The volume was cranked up high, and I could hear the sheriff’s voice clearly, even though her cell wasn’t on speakerphone. “Ms. St. Claire, this is Sheriff Etheridge, up in Cheatham County, Georgia. I’m calling to ask if you could come up and see me today, please.”
“Have you talked to Don? Did he confess?”
“I need to speak with you in person, ma’am.”
“Sheriff, I’m working a big crime scene right now, the murders at the North Florida Boys’ Reformatory. I’ll be glad to come up there if there’s a good reason, but I’d appreciate knowing what’s going on. Has Don Nicely confessed to killing my sister?”
There was a long silence on the other end. Finally the sheriff said, “Ms. St. Claire, your brother-in-law is dead, and I need a statement from you. How soon could you come in and do that?”
“I’m out in Miccosukee County, Sheriff, about an hour west of Tallahassee. I can probably be there in about ninety minutes.” She hesitated, then asked, “Can you tell me how he died?”
“No, ma’am. We’re not releasing any details until we’ve done a thorough investigation.”
“Of course. I understand. I’ll be at your office in the courthouse as soon as I can.”
She hung up, stared at the phone awhile, and took a series of deep breaths. “He’s dead,” she said. “The man who murdered my sister is dead. Thank God. There is some semblance of justice in this world after all.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. She shook her head, then looked at me. “A thorough investigation. Why is it that the locals spent all of sixty seconds on Kate’s death, but they’re ready to pull out all the stops to investigate that son of a bitch Don’s?”
I shrugged. “He was a man—a white man. That might be part of it.” I hesitated, but decided it would be foolish not to say what was hanging in the air, unspoken between us. “Might also be that they figure somebody had a pretty good reason to kill him.”
“Somebody sure did,” she said. “Mainly his own sorry self.” She called up the text message she’d received. “Look here. He said it himself. ‘I’m sorry.’ That’s for damn sure. As sorry as they come.”