The Righteous Path

by James D F Hannah

  Hall made his way over, and the closer he got, the more Matt could see how red and flushed the big man’s face was. He huffed a few breaths of air and placed his hand on the hood of Matt’s cruiser, shifting his weight over to that side, and Matt heard the car’s suspension whine like a whipped puppy.

  “How you doing, Sheriff?” Hall said.

  The contents of Matt’s stomach soured.

  “I’m great, Lieutenant. How are you?”

  “Couldn’t be better. Just waiting on the baby to show up.”

  “Didn’t know you were expecting. How far along are you?”

  Hall laughed and winked and pointed a finger at Matt. “Forgot what a funny guy you are.”

  “Just laughing to hide the tears.”

  “My missus, she’s due here soon. A little girl. We got our boy already, so this’ll give us the bookends.”

  “That’s wonderful, Lieutenant. Good for you. So, about this attack. I understand you spoke to Mrs. Carlton.”

  “Wouldn’t call much of that ‘talking.’ She wasn’t in a state to say much. I suppose I’ll go over to the hospital and see if I can get a statement. Your chief deputy here—” He jerked his head toward Crash. “She said you had a situation similar a few nights ago. Kind of shocked you didn’t send a report over our way. We’d be more than happy to hop in on this with you.”

  “Didn’t seem like much. Home invasion. We figured it was kids doing stupid shit. Probably drugs involved. We’ve been working the case.”

  “From the looks of inside the house, I’d guess drugs played a role here also. You don’t create that kind of chaos without being in an altered state.” Hall lifted himself up from the car hood, and the car groaned in appreciation. “You think you could send over the preliminary you’ve got on the previous case?”

  Matt raised an eyebrow. “Is the state police interested in taking over this case?”

  “Not if your boys have a handle on it. I’d like to check over what work you’ve got and see if there’s anything we can contribute. If this was the second attack, you’ve got to think there’ll be a third.”

  “I’ll have Crash e-mail it to you first thing in the morning.”

  The smile that broke across Hall’s face pushed back at folds of fat and flesh, and it made him look like a jovial egg. “Why do they call you ‘Crash,’ Deputy?”

  Crash didn’t look amused. Her face was as hard and blank as a brick wall. “People just have weird senses of humor, that’s all.”

  “I guess they do.” Hall nodded in agreement. “I guess they do.” He peered back at the house. “I’ll check back in there with the deputies. You kids have a good night.”

  “You too, Lieutenant,” Matt said.

  “I’ve told you before, call me Jackie. Everyone else does.”

  “Sure thing, Lieutenant.” Matt smiled. “I mean, Jackie.”

  Hall turned and walked away, disappearing back into the house.

  Matt stared at the front of the house for a beat. Crash watched him, waiting.

  “You know what I hate to think about, Crash?” he said.

  “I cringe at the possibilities.”

  “That there’s a good chance he’ll outlive me. It might only be by ten or fifteen minutes, but it’s likely to happen.”

  “Are the state boys going to snag this from us?”

  “Don’t know. I’d prefer they didn’t.”

  “You really don’t like him, do you?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Do I need one?”

  “Common decorum and logic would say you rationally need a reason to dislike someone. But I’m not one to tell you how to live your life, either, Matt.”

  “Thank you.”

  “We need to find out what the Guthrie job is.”

  “We do.”

  “That means talking to Campbell again.”

  “I show up at that man’s door much more, I’ll have to bring a covered dish.”

  Crash covered her notebook and leaned against Matt’s cruiser. “I don’t like this, Matt. Something bad is going on here.”

  Matt looked at the flashing lights moving across the side of the house then looked at the neighbors watching it all—they probably wondered if they would feel safe when they went back inside and turned the final locks before trying to go back to sleep for the night.

  Chapter 13

  Matt came into the office the next morning and found out Foster Nolan had already called and left him a voice mail with a request to call him. It was just past eight.

  Matt set his to-go cup of Sheetz coffee on his desk and called Nolan. Nolan’s assistant connected him.

  “Jesus, Sheriff, why didn’t you tell me what the hell was going on here?” Nolan’s voice was panicked as though he were trying to convince the bank not to foreclose on the family farm.

  “Good morning to you too, Foster. And to what do I owe this pleasure?”

  “When you called about that court order for the video, I didn’t realize what the fuck was happening.”

  “Foster, I appreciate your sudden concern about my investigation, but can you cool your jets long enough to tell me what’s got you wound this tight?”

  There was a sigh on the other end of the line. “I read about the break-in that happened overnight. I’m putting in with Judge Bailey for the court order to get the video footage you requested.”

  “There’s something about the attack last night already?”

  “On the Herald-Tribune website. Everyone in the office was talking about it when I came in this morning. Haven’t you read it yet?”

  “My coffee’s not even at a drinkable temperature yet, Foster. I don’t read anything until then.”

  “You need to check it out. I told Bailey to have the order ready for one of your deputies by eleven so you can deliver it to the company before lunch.”

  “That’s a hell of a lot of hustle.”

  “Old people attacked in their own homes—that’ll scare people. Matt, fear is a good motivator for many things.”

  Matt couldn’t argue that point.

  Matt drove to Parker County General around lunchtime while Crash headed out to get the court order and go by Tri-Comm. Tri-Comm’s main office was the next county over, in Lyons.

  Like everyone, he supposed, Matt had no great love for hospitals. When he first got sick, when he had body aches and fevers and was dropping weight, he came to Parker General, to the walk-in clinic, and everyone had thought he had the flu. Then he turned shades of yellow, and Rachel made him see “a real doctor,” she said. He had always been healthy, had always taken care of himself—ever since his army days.

  Matt had been military police. Other guys he worked with gained weight—told themselves that bulk was the same thing as muscle—and Matt knew that was a mistake since the job meant dealing with combat-trained soldiers who knew those Jack Reacher methods of how to take out six guys in a fight single-handed. Matt had seen that shit go down, and he did not want to be the guy sucking back his pride and spitting out loose teeth at the end of the fight.

  So he ran and hit the gym, and he never reached the point of being a muscle head, but he kept solid and could handle himself in a brawl. When he left the military and he and Rachel came back to Parker County and he got elected sheriff, he still put in the time; part of what had put him in office was that people liked this guy who took care of himself, who hadn’t gone to seed like a lot of ex-military. There was vanity, sure; he wouldn’t deny that since he liked how he filled out the uniform. Well past forty, and he wasn’t anything to be ashamed of.

  That had been before the cancer. Losing weight. Wondering how much longer he had. Walking into the hospital today, he caught his reflection in the glass, and he didn’t know who the hell this person was that he was looking at. Every time this happened, it caught him off guard, and he worked not to let it affect him. Some days were be
tter than others, and today in the sheriff’s department polo shirt and black slacks, was one of the others.

  A young nurse at the front desk told Matt that Peter Carlton was in the ICU, and she gave him directions, which he didn’t need. He’d been there so many times before, coming to interview someone after an accident, after an assault, but he took the directions with a smile and an appreciative nod.

  He paused at the door to Carlton’s room when he heard voices. He recognized Jackie Hall as one of them; the other was a woman’s, soft, almost a whisper. He guessed Kara Carlton. Anger coiled inside him, and he exhaled deeply, trying to let go of that sense of Hall treading in on his case.

  Matt pushed the door open and walked in. Kara Carlton sat in a chair and Jackie Hall stood over her, almost looming, his back to Matt. Hall wore a gray suit, and Matt could see the seams running up the back of the jacket, ready to pop at a moment’s notice.

  A litany of machines spread out from Peter Carlton like a medical spiderweb. He looked older than Matt had expected but like one of those guys aging into Ernest Hemingway, with a head of snow-white hair and a bushy beard the same color. Someone who spent weekends fishing or camping, maybe woodworking or rebuilding an old pickup, Matt thought. The guy Matt had expected himself to age into.

  Carlton’s eyes were shut, and a ventilator hissed as it breathed for him, its sound intertwined with the beep of a heart monitor. Several IVs ran into his arm, their dripping drumming a steady beat.

  “Would you recognize their voices again, Mrs. Carlton?” Hall said.

  “I believe so. It…it was a lot, Lieutenant.” She choked on her words. “All I remember is them hitting Peter. They kept hitting him over and over, asking the same thing over and over.”

  Matt stepped farther into the room and cleared his throat. Jackie Hall twisted around and gave a nod and a head jerk to Matt to come in. The movements caused the rolls of fat on the back of his head to clump together and fold over the collar of his shirt.

  Kara Carlton craned her head around Jackie Hall to see Matt. Not knowing the situation, Matt would have guessed her to be the daughter, not the wife. She was on the far end of forty, close to where Matt was parked, a redhead dressed in an ice cream-colored linen dress. She wore minimal makeup except for dark eyeliner and cherry red lipstick, and it accentuated the paleness of her face. Some of that eyeliner had streaked and raced down her face now, and she attempted to blot it away with a tissue.

  Matt reached a hand out to her. “Mrs. Carlton, I’m Sheriff Matt Simms. My department’s involved in the investigation into the attack last night.”

  Kara Carlton shook his hand. “Thank you, Sheriff. Lieutenant Hall said another family was attacked a few nights ago.”

  Matt nodded. “We believe it to be the same perpetrators.”

  “Do you have any idea who’s doing this?”

  “We’re developing leads and some suspects. You said there were two attackers last night?”

  Jackie Hall said, “Mrs. Carlton and I, we’ve already gone over all of this. Rather than continuing to upset her, I can just pass on my notes to you—”

  “If you don’t mind, Lieutenant, I’d like to hear from Mrs. Carlton personally about what happened.” Matt’s tone was firm, no-nonsense. He was in no mood to deal with Jackie Hall, and his words edged that out more than he liked. He looked at Kara Carlton and turned on a smile intended to feel empathetic and understanding. “If Mrs. Carlton is comfortable talking about it.”

  She pulled another tissue from a box and dabbed away at her face. “If it will help, Sheriff.” She blew her nose into the tissue. It was a delicate, overly feminine sound. “We came home from dinner. Peter likes this steakhouse in Morgantown, and we go there and see his son and the son’s wife and their children. We came in through the front door, and Molly—that’s our golden lab—she didn’t show up when we walked in. Peter thought she might just be sleeping, but it didn’t feel right. Molly is as dumb as a stump, but she’s loyal, and she’s always at the door when we come home.

  “We walked into the living room, and there was someone sitting there on the couch, smoking a cigarette like they lived there. He had his ski mask on over half of his face but hooked up above his nose so he could smoke. And Peter and I stared at the guy. He sat there like he owned the place, like this was normal.

  “Peter’s got a permit for a concealed carry, and he wears it with him whenever we go out. He had it clipped to his belt, and he reached for it but before he got to it, he screamed and fell over. I saw something in the corner of my eye. Someone with a baseball bat had been in a corner of the room and I never saw him. They pointed the end at me and said—” Her face tightened. “They said, ‘Sit the fuck down, bitch.’”

  “Do you remember what they wore?” Matt said.

  “The guy on the couch, he had on blue jeans and a black T-shirt. And the ski mask. The guy who hit Peter, he wore a sweatshirt and blue jeans.”

  “What kind of sweatshirt? WVU or Marshall? A high school?”

  “Just a gray sweatshirt, Sheriff. Plain gray. The person with the baseball bat, they told me to sit down. His voice, it sounded funny. He was trying to make it sound deep, like he wanted to disguise it. The one who was smoking, he stood up and pushed me down onto the couch. He did the rest of the talking.”

  “The person with the baseball bat say anything else?”

  “Not a word.” She swallowed hard and wiped a tear from her cheek. “He kept hitting Peter with the bat. The other person, he kept asking about ‘the Guthrie job.’ He would ask Peter about the money from the Guthrie job.”

  “What did your husband tell them?”

  “Nothing. He said he didn’t know what they were talking about, and then they’d hit him again.” She let out a soft sob she tried to choke back without success. “I saw the red of the bat when they swung at Peter again, and I realized what happened to Molly.” She swallowed again. “Then the red, it got worse, and that was coming from Peter.”

  Matt crouched down low to meet Kara at eye level. “What does your husband do for a living?”

  “He owned a trucking company. He was the vice president and ran the books for years, but he sold out his share and retired when he met me.” Her eyes went to the hospital bed, and her face softened, and a smile crept across her lips. “He told me he’d spent all of those early years working to build his business, and he’d missed out on a lot of life then with his first wife, with his kids. He told me he didn’t want to repeat those mistakes with me.”

  Matt nodded. He took Kara’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “We will catch the people who did this, Mrs. Carlton.”

  Her smile turned wan and half-hearted. “Thank you, Sheriff.”

  Jackie Hall followed Matt out of the hospital room. He said, “Jesus but this, it’s something, ain’t it?”

  Matt sighed a sound of weariness. He felt tired on a bone-deep level—beyond cancer and nights of shitty, half-hearted sleep and the general exhaustion of dealing with life and the world and the bullshit that people insisted on pumping into it.

  “Everything is always something, Lieutenant,” he said. “That’s what makes things things.”

  “That’s almost philosophical sounding.”

  “I’ve got my moments, I suppose.”

  They walked down the hall until they got to the coffee machine. It was an ancient model that dispensed coffee or what was claimed to be a “cappuccino.” The machine was so old that the photo displays had long turned yellow. Jackie Hall fished around in his pants—one eye closed, tongue clenched between his teeth—and brought out a handful of change. He pumped coins into the machine and ordered up a cup with extra sweetener, extra creamer. The cup dropped into the dispenser and filled with a muddy brown solution that Matt supposed was, on some molecular level, coffee.

  Jackie Hall gave the cup a sniff. Matt could smell it too, and he tried to hide his disgust as Hall sipped the coffee and made a satisfied sigh.

/>   “I had someone tell me to never get coffee out of these machines,” Matt said. “It’s nothing but syrups that get blended together, so it’s not really coffee. Plus, they don’t get cleaned often, so you end up with a sludge milkshake that’s also the detritus of maybe ten years’ worth of other people’s alleged cups of coffee.”

  Jackie Hall listened to Matt, looked at the cup’s contents, shrugged, and took another drink. “Do I look like a man awash with health concerns, Sheriff?”

  “I guess not.”

  “I am not, though my wife, she’s got plenty for me, and she’s forever telling me what I’m doing wrong and what I’m doing right, and let me assure you the wrong always outweighs the right.” Jackie drank more coffee. “I’m hoping here you might have some insight into what they’re talking about with the Guthrie job.”

  “Sounds criminal. Sounds like what someone in a TV show would call something criminal.”

  “That’s my thoughts. That’s how they’re always referring to things in movies, on TV. It’s always a job, like it’s real work. If it was real work, they’d be paying taxes.”

  “There it’s a big heist, something perfectly planned and executed, and they’re the good guys and we’re the bad guys, and you’re supposed to be rooting for them to get away with the money.”

  “While in real life, it’s usually some idiot with a sawed-off shotgun going into a convenience store and stealing fifty bucks out of the register and a bag of pork rinds.”

  At the elevator, Matt pushed the call button and waited for the doors to open. Inside the elevator car, not even meaning to, Matt glanced at the weight limit. Even with just the two of them in there, the elevator car seemed tight and confined. Jackie Hall consumed space without effort or concern.

  There was silence as the elevator rode to the first floor and came to a stop, wobbling a little before the doors opened. The two men looked at one another.