Who Let That Killer in the House?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  It didn’t exactly fall under his earlier category of “not a lot,” but it at least explained how Buddy got DeWayne’s cell-phone number. I’d wondered about that.

  We ambled back to the cars. Yasheika sat in her driver’s seat. As Ronnie went to the other side, I saw her give him a secret look of grudging respect and say something only he could hear.

  He turned and said to Elda, “Yasheika agrees you ought to take DeWayne home. Why don’t we drive you to the funeral home right now, to make arrangements?”

  “They haven’t released the body yet, have they?” I hated to ask, but I also hated for DeWayne to get shipped back to Washington before all the investigating that could be done had been done.

  “Not yet,” Elda said sadly, “but we might as well make what arrangements we can for whenever they let us take him home.”

  Before they left, I took Elda’s hands in mine. “Before you leave town, I hope you’ll have a memorial service here. There are a lot of people who would like to pay their last respects.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “We sure will. Thank you so much.”

  I handed her a tissue from my pocketbook. She was still dabbing her eyes as they drove away. I was, too.

  21

  Monday morning Ridd dropped into the chair by my office window, stretched his long legs in front of him, and poked the arm with a puzzled look. “I thought this was red plaid.”

  “It was until Christmas. That’s when I had it re-covered.” The chair and valance over our window were now dark green, decorated with game birds.

  “Guess I’m a little slow in the noticing department.”

  “I guess you are. I reckon you haven’t noticed anything that might help us figure out who drove DeWayne to do what he did, either?”

  “Nope, but I did find out that DeWayne taught Smitty. DeWayne flunked him last semester, in fact, which is why he has to go to summer school.”

  “Do you reckon Smitty cares whether he passes or fails?”

  “Oddly enough, he does. He usually gets A’s and B’s. Smitty’s not dumb, just wicked.”

  That certainly might give Smitty a motive to paint up DeWayne’s house and send him the clippings, but I shared Yasheika’s uncertainty that he’d kill a teacher who flunked him. I needed to talk to Smitty, that much was certain. But first, I wanted to know what Ridd told Yasheika about the team.

  When I asked, he sighed. “I was planning to tell her that I wouldn’t do it, that we’d have to call in one of the other coaches from the county. But Bethany and Hollis carried on so about how we have to do this for DeWayne’s memory and how he’d want me to do it for him, that I guess I’ll do it. Hollis even says she’ll catch now. I wish Yasheika would come back to help but she’s not real crazy about Hope County right now.”

  “Which we can all understand. But maybe if you sic Hollis and Bethany on her and point out that DeWayne’s rent is paid through the end of the month, and if you say that somebody will pay her airfare so she can fly up for DeWayne’s funeral, then come back—”

  “Is that an offer?”

  “I think the team sponsor can come up with a plane ticket if she will use it.”

  We sat in a few minutes of silence. Ridd was the first to speak. “You know, Mama, something’s got to be done about Smitty. Kids at school are scared to use the lunchroom if his gang is in there. Teachers are nervous about giving any of them a bad grade. They’ve taken over Myrtle’s corner booth like it’s their private dining room, and the way they acted about DeWayne, Yasheika and Ronnie being in the place ought to be illegal. Can’t you do something?”

  “They’re juveniles,” I reminded him. “Magistrates don’t deal with juveniles.”

  “What’s the point in having a mother who’s a judge if she can’t help you out?” He pulled himself to his feet. “If we can prove Smitty drove one of the best friends I ever had to take his life, I’m going to deal with him real good.”

  Now I knew how Joe Riddley felt when I headed off investigating a murder. “Be real careful, son. He’s mean.”

  “So am I.” From the back, he looked a whole lot like his daddy on the warpath.

  After that, I signed warrants for four deputies who came in so close together I didn’t have time to think. Then, just as I was catching my breath, I got a call from Slade Rutherford down at the paper. Slade and I hadn’t hit it off when he first came to town, but after I had alerted him to a few news stories Chief Muggins had been trying to conceal, and he had liked my monthly gardening column so well he’d moved it to a better location in the paper, we’d become better friends.

  “I’ve got something here that baffles me,” he greeted me.

  Just then, Joe Riddley came in. For forty years my husband has persisted in believing I can talk on the phone and listen to him at the same time, so he started right in explaining something about a shipment of roses. I said quickly, in my most charming, apologetic voice, “Listen, I’ll come right down to check that ad. Joe Riddley’s just come in. He can hold the fort here.”

  Slade chuckled. “I’d hoped you’d come. I just hadn’t gotten to that. See you in a few minutes.”

  I grabbed my pocketbook. “Be back in a little while. I need to look at next week’s ad for the paper. There may be a problem with it.” I hurried to my car before he could ask how I’d missed the problem, since I wrote the copy.

  The person working the Statesman’s front desk that morning was Chancey Carter, their circulation manager. Chancey was a large woman who seemed to hover over a desk rather than sit behind it. She was so conscientious, Slade sometimes joked that if he’d let her, she’d hand deliver the papers to be sure they got to the right destinations.

  She wore thick glasses and a big bun of hair as black as it was when we started first grade together. In Hopemore, you don’t pass an old schoolmate without speaking, so I asked how her mother was. Mrs. Carter was one of the crabbiest old women God ever made. At ninety, she was the bane of our local nursing-home staff, but Chancey remained devoted to her even on days when she thought Chancey had come from the IRS to take all her nonexistent money.

  “She had a little turn on Wednesday, so I had to leave early and spend the night with her,” Chancey told me in a gush of worry. She started a long droning story about how her mother’s bowels wouldn’t move, and then when they did—“right on the stroke of twelve!” in case I was interested in that intimate detail—the aide didn’t come for the bedpan because she was down the hall, fighting with her son, who had come to ask for money, and Chancey had to empty the thing herself, and what were we paying those people for if they didn’t do the work? There were other people who would love to have a job if they’d quit. By then I was a bit numb.

  “Is she any better now?” I asked to stem the tide.

  “Oh, yes. She even knew me yesterday. How’s Joe Riddley?”

  “Ornery as ever, but pretty much back to normal. Slade in?” I tried to sound casual.

  She nodded. “He sure is. But your ad is fine. I checked.”

  “People who listen in on phone calls are apt to hear things about themselves they’d rather not,” I warned.

  “I picked up by mistake, trying to call and check on Mama.” She and I both knew she had listened in on purpose. All her life Chancey has thrived on knowing other people’s secrets. When I went into Slade’s office, I shut the door firmly behind me.

  He looked up and grinned. “I see you know Miss Chancey.”

  I nodded. “Since first grade. She hasn’t changed a bit.”

  Going to see Slade was always a pleasure. He had the kind of dark good looks that made a woman look better just being in his vicinity. That morning he was right handsome in tan slacks with a rust cotton sweater. He leaned back in his chair, locked his fingers, and stretched his arms over his head. “You and Ridd found DeWayne Evans’s body, I understand. Want to tell me how that happened, for the record?”

  “Yeah, but just say Ridd found him. He’d gone over to the school to see how De
Wayne was taking the mess somebody made of his house. I hope you got pictures of that.”

  “We got them, but I was out of town at the time. I was just getting in when I picked up the call about DeWayne.” Back in the winter, Slade had fitted his car with a radio that picked up the police band.

  “That’s two major incidents we’ve had at night since the police discontinued our night patrols,” I pointed out. “The school and DeWayne’s house.”

  He raised his eyebrows and reached for a pencil. “Discontinued night patrols? I hadn’t heard about that.” He jotted a note. “So, tell me about finding the body.”

  I gave him the gory details, reminding him again not to use my name.

  “An anonymous source, that’s you. Was anybody else around besides you and Ridd?”

  “Only the security guard at the front door. I don’t think you’ll get much from him. What was it you wanted me to see?”

  He jerked his head toward a credenza behind his desk. “All this came in Saturday’s mail, and I just opened it this morning.”

  He had spread out a number of computer printouts and a note written in purple block letters on a sheet torn from a spiral notebook. A large manila envelope was propped against the credenza on the floor. I got up and went to see what he had.

  The first clipping was three columns, and the picture showed Gerrick Lawton shackled and being taken to jail. The others were stories about Anne Colder’s death, Gerrick’s trial, and—as I had suspected—copies of the stories about DeWayne I’d read on the Internet. I got out my reading glasses to be sure, but Slade didn’t have that little paragraph Yasheika mentioned about DeWayne being cleared.

  I didn’t need my reading glasses for the note. Its letters were big and square.

  YOU DON’T KNOW IT ALL. DEWAYNE EVANS’S DADDY KILLED A WHITE GIRL. DEWAYNE EVANS RAPED A WHITE GIRL. PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW WHY HE’S IN THIS TOWN. DO WE REALLY WANT HIM HERE, HANGING AROUND OUR WHITE GIRLS?

  There it was: the word “raped” with the same three purple letters I’d seen on the burned page. Bile rose in my throat.

  Slade was watching me closely. “You aren’t surprised, are you?”

  I shook my head. “I saw ashes in DeWayne’s wastebasket, and bits hadn’t burned. I knew about Gerrick, of course, and when I got back to my office, I checked the Internet and found the rest.”

  “Including this one they didn’t bother to send, I presume.” Slade laid one more printout beside the others, the article saying DeWayne had been cleared.

  I shook my head. “Yasheika told me about this later, but I stopped reading one article too soon,” I confessed. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “No newsman worth his salt would presume those were the only clippings about that story.”

  I couldn’t say a word, but I think he could tell from my face how proud I was to know him. He took back his article and asked, “You got any idea who sent that bunch?”

  “Ideas, but no proof. I’ve also got a lot of anger at whoever it was. You may not know it, but DeWayne never got over the terror of seeing his daddy pulled from their car and hauled off to jail. Just thinking about it was enough to give him the shakes, so the idea of all this being spread around town, even though he was innocent, may well have been enough to drive him over the edge. Whether the law ever admits it or not, if he took his own life it was still a kind of murder. Are you going to mention all this other stuff when you report DeWayne’s death?”

  Slade shifted in his chair. “Well, like the letter said, people want to know.”

  “What you really mean is, this will sell more papers. I’m a big believer in freedom of the press from political oppression, but I don’t think the Constitution intended to give papers license to print things that are nasty or hurtful. I don’t even think people really want to know.”

  “If it bleeds, it leads. You know that.” But he had the grace to look embarrassed.

  “Somebody ought to check up on all the damage done to people by that philosophy.” I picked up my pocketbook. “At least point out that both times, DeWayne was the victim—and now he’s been made a victim again. Have you called the police yet about this?”

  “I’m going to call them as soon as I write the story,” he promised. “Maybe they can trace the note or the envelope.”

  I gave the note one more look and felt sorrow clutch my heart. I was pretty sure they could trace it, all right, to Tyrone Noland. That child was in a whole lot of trouble.

  “Call Ike, not Chief Muggins.” I didn’t need to explain. Slade knew them both.

  “One more thing,” he said, reaching for another envelope on his desk. “This came in today’s mail. What do you recommend I do with it?” He handed me a poem titled “Justice.”

  Othello! Look not on her with desire,

  Let not eyes burn with unholy fire.

  God roars with fury, earth feels his ire.

  Oh, come, sweet justice!

  I wondered if the end of the poem was so abrupt because the poet ran out of rhymes. I mentally ran down the alphabet: “byre,” “choir,” “dire,” “fryer”—when I got to chickens, I brought myself back to the problem at hand.

  Slade was finishing a sentence I hadn’t heard him begin. “. . . both know who and what that refers to. I’m going to get every racist crackpot in town chiming in before this is over.” I handed him the poem and he slung it back on his desk in disgust.

  “Write your story and call Ike,” I urged him. “This has got to stop.”

  As I passed Chancey’s desk on my way out, she waved a copy of our upcoming ad in my face. “At least take a squint at it. It’ll make an honest woman out of you.”

  I had to hold traffic court down in south Hope County late that afternoon. Coming home, I had just gotten back inside our city limits when I saw blue lights flashing. Disgusted at myself, I pulled over. I do speed sometimes, but generally I keep a weather eye out for troopers. I was downright embarrassed when the cruiser’s door opened and Ike climbed out. This was going to be awkward for both of us.

  “I was late getting back from traffic court and not paying attention,” I started as soon as he came to my window.

  He held up one huge hand. “For a wonder, you were no more than five miles over the limit, Judge. I pulled you over because I have some news for you that I knew you’d want right away, and I suspected you wouldn’t want Joe Riddley to hear. Come sit in my car a minute.”

  I shifted the paraphernalia he had spread out on his passenger seat and settled in, expecting him to say Slade had called him. Instead, he said, “As much as I hate to admit it, you were right. DeWayne Evans did not kill himself. He was murdered.”

  For a minute I was so shocked I couldn’t think of anything to say. Finally I managed, “Are you sure?”

  “Real sure. I started where you suggested—looking at where DeWayne was hanging. He was near the lavatories, but I took some measurements, and the rope wasn’t quite long enough for him to have stood on the lavatory to jump. He’d have choked himself first. You understand?”

  I grimaced. “Well enough to picture it.”

  “So I called in the forensics folks and they started looking at things we hadn’t checked when we thought it was suicide. They found several curious things. Two doorknobs were a lot cleaner than the school janitor ever keeps them—both the one from DeWayne’s room to the hall and the one on the outside door to his room. Part of that doorjamb was wiped, too. And the knobs to the locker room on both sides were smudged like somebody was wearing plastic gloves.”

  “Gloves?” I blurted. “It was premeditated, then?”

  He nodded.

  “But how?”

  “We think he was killed in his own classroom. They found traces of urine and feces in the seat of his desk chair—which had been carefully cleaned, by the way, just not quite enough—which makes us suspect he was choked there, then taken to the bathroom to be strung up. The hall was pretty much a mess—nobody had bothered to preserve it as a crime scene, since
nobody thought it was part of anything—but forensics picked up a couple of traces that look like his heels were dragged. ”

  I sat there trying to take it in. “So he wasn’t even hanged?”

  “Not in the technical sense. He was choked by the rope, then hauled over the pipe when he was dead. Not a pretty way to go, but better than twitching at the end of the rope waiting for the end.”

  “But DeWayne was so strong. Who could—?”

  “We don’t know, but it would have to be somebody who both surprised him and had the strength to hang on until his air was gone.”

  I couldn’t help picturing bulging biceps with dragons crawling up them. “Could it have been Smitty? Ridd says DeWayne flunked him last semester.”

  Ike shrugged, which was hard when you were his size and sitting behind a steering wheel. “We’ll check his alibi for Saturday morning, but you can be sure he’ll have one, and we’ll have a tough time breaking it.”

  I climbed out of his car feeling two hundred years old. “Thanks for filling me in, but what the heck is going on in this town?”

  He shook his massive head. “If I knew, Judge, I’d put a stop to it. You know I would. Looks like the devil got tired of hell and has decided to take up residence in Hopemore.”

  22

  Talking to Tyrone was now my number-one priority, but finding him took a while. Finally, Tuesday afternoon, on my way back from the jail where I’d held a bond hearing, I stopped by the Bi-Lo. Tyrone’s mother, Florence, worked in the produce department.

  When I asked if I could talk to her a minute about Tyrone, she didn’t stop putting apples in rows in a bin. “I don’t see enough of him anymore to recognize him on the street.” She’d never been a beauty, but back when she was in high school with Walker, she’d had nice blond hair and a figure she took pains to show off. Now her hair hung limp and shaggy around her face, her body carried a lot of extra weight, her shoulders slumped, and she spoke in a perpetual whine.