PEOPLE LIKE TO KNOW how a story ends, so it seemed a good idea to say a few words about what happened to Jean, after she got back to Kotemee.
She was arrested, of course. That didn’t take very long. Fran dropped her off at Jean and Milt’s house, where the driveway and the curbsides were lined with police cars and dozens of silent onlookers, many of them people Jean knew. And when she walked into the house, Detective Rinneard, who had sharp blue eyes and a shaved head and didn’t look anything like Serpico, arrested her for the murder of her three best friends. Jean didn’t make any sort of fuss and “went along quietly,” as they say, not even objecting to the use of the word “murder.”
Jean’s arrest, and the trial that followed, filled the Kotemee Star-Lookout for months. It was front-page news in the city for a day or two, and a bunch of TV reporters came and nosed around a bit, and did their reports standing on the sidewalk in front of Jean’s Expressions. Milt kept the store locked, but they took some video of her display pieces in the window, and on the Internet there was lots of discussion of Jean’s ceramics: “The art of the serial killer.” Some people, including one prominent art writer from the city, said she was a genius, and if Milt had wanted to sell any of her pieces he could have made a small fortune. But he didn’t seem to want to. Eventually, one night, someone put a brick through the front window of Jean’s shop and tried to steal all of her ceramics. No one knows how many they made off with, but judging from the amount of dust and crumbled bits on the floor of the shop and the sidewalk outside, most of the pieces likely disintegrated as soon as the thieves picked them up.
For the trial, Jean said she didn’t need a lawyer; she was content to plead guilty because she wasn’t ashamed of what she’d done. But the court assigned her one anyway, a nice enough man who, because he was graying and had a bit of a belly, looked something like Milt, except with a nicer suit. He rounded up some psychiatrists from the city who testified as to Jean being temporarily insane at the time of the killings. But when Jean got on the stand she said that was all nonsense. She stood up and told the courtroom that after what she’d learned about growing old, if anybody thought she was crazy for giving her friends a fast, happy way out, then they didn’t know much about friendship.
Cheryl Nunley stayed in Kotemee, and it was kind of funny how that worked out. She got herself into a twelve-step program, which seemed to do her some good. And when she sold the winery, she wound up with a parcel of money. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to buy a cozy little house, and the house she ended up buying was Natalie’s. She got it as cheap as could be, too, because nobody else wanted to buy a house where somebody had been gruesomely slain. Cheryl, however, bought it without any qualms whatsoever. She told people that whatever Jean had done, she’d done out of love, and so there weren’t any strange feelings or vibrations in the house. The only problem was that it was a bit cramped. She thought she might put on an addition.
As for the men, well, let’s see: Milt finally got a full-time teaching position, because without Jean’s income from her art, he needed the money. And he didn’t see Louise again; that decision stayed firm. Andrew Jr. carried on being chief of police at Kotemee, which was no big surprise. Nobody thought it strange to have a police chief with a sister serving time for multiple murders, because in a small town lots of people have relatives who do strange things that everybody knows about, and life just goes on. As for Welland, he quit the Kotemee force, applied for a patrol job in the city, and got it. The day he started, he enrolled in special training to become a detective constable. It meant coming in early and staying late every shift. But he was pretty determined.
Jean was sentenced to life in prison with a chance of parole after fifteen years. They trucked her off to the federal penitentiary for women in Mainsview, about a day’s drive from Kotemee, and she took to prison life rather well, although she found it a little hard to make friends. She got lots of time for her ceramics, though, and after asking for nearly a year, she even managed to get the prison to install an extra-large kiln. There wasn’t much greenery around the prison yard, of course, and her access to books was restricted mostly to what the prison library kept on its shelves, so the inspiration for her pieces had to come from her imagination, and from whatever her visitors might bring. And that’s where Fran Knubel came in.
One day, a few months after the trial, Fran kissed her husband, Jim, on the cheek, climbed into her SUV, and drove up to see Jean. The two of them had a good long visit, or as long as the guards would allow, which was about twenty minutes the first day. Eventually they snuck that up to half an hour. And now Fran drives up about once a month. Usually she takes with her a little package of leaves, plants she’s picked from the garden or weeds from the roadside, or even greenery she’s cut from supermarket produce, like kale and celery leaves and basil, because these days Jean is happy for whatever she can get. Fran wraps them in a damp cloth laid inside a Tupperware container to keep them supple, as per Jean’s request, and presents them proudly after the guards have given them the once-over to make sure they’re not drugs.
Of course, people want to know why she goes up
there. “Why are you going out of your way to see that killer?”
people ask her. Fran just holds herself very tall and says it’s
hard to make friends these days, and anyone in her shoes would do
the same thing. “Aren’t you afraid?” people ask her. And Fran
assures them she’s not. Jean killed only the women who were closest
to her, she explains, and she would not presume that level of
friendship, certainly not on the basis of monthly visits. But then,
Fran will become lost in her deepest thoughts, and she’ll get a
peculiar look in her eyes. It’s what you might describe as a sad
and hopeful expression.
Tina Dooley
Acting President
Kotemee Business Association