Who Let That Killer in the House?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  Joe Riddley beat me to it. “When’s your court date, son?”

  “Next Monday at nine o’clock.” Tyrone finished his second sandwich and reached for his third. Since he was busy squirting it with sauce, he could be forgiven for not looking our way.

  Joe Riddley leaned across the table like they were discussing the high school’s chances of winning a football game. “Did the judge tell you it would go easier for you if you told him who else was involved in painting the school?”

  Tyrone nodded, his eyes still fixed on the sandwich clutched in his hand. His fingers were so dirty, I averted my eyes to his face, but it was so pink, plump, and miserable, I couldn’t help thinking of a pig awaiting slaughter.

  “Are you going to tell him?” I demanded.

  Still Tyrone stared at that sandwich. Maybe he hoped it would turn into a crystal ball and give him a magic answer.

  I opened my mouth to urge him to tell everything he knew, but Joe Riddley put a hand on my arm. “Son, somebody is scaring you. I can see that real clear. Is Smitty threatening your mother?”

  Tyrone shook his head.

  “Who then?” Joe Riddley’s tone was so normal, you’d have thought people threatening each other was nothing unusual.

  Tyrone swallowed a big bite. “Hollis.” It was little more than a hoarse whisper. “He says he’ll hurt her real bad. And he will, too.” The eyes that met ours were full of more anguish than anybody ought to know at that age.

  “And Hollis is your friend.” I hoped my voice was as calm as Joe Riddley’s.

  Tyrone nodded and gulped. “We’ve been friends since—well, practically forever. She’s not my girlfriend or anything”—he flushed beet red, so I knew he’d had a few thoughts in that direction—“but if something happened to her because of me—”

  Maybe that was why she had been holed up in her house this past week. “Have you warned her?” I asked, testing that theory.

  “Sorta. I told her to stay away from Smitty and watch out not to be by herself on the street or anything after last Saturday—when she made fun of him over at Myrtle’s.”

  “If Smitty were in detention, he couldn’t hurt Hollis,” Joe Riddley pointed out, “but the only way he’ll go to detention is if somebody talks. Did Smitty help paint the school?”

  It took Tyrone a few seconds to get used to the idea of telling what he knew, but once he started, a torrent of words nearly swept us away. “It was his idea. He says black folks are taking over the country and need to be stopped. He says they’ll get all the good jobs and elected to offices and even start marrying all the good women, if we don’t do something to stop them. You saw the way Hollis and the others were carrying on. It like to made me sick to my stomach. We gotta do something.” He looked up and met Joe Riddley’s gaze, but he found no sympathy there. Quickly he lowered his eyes and changed direction. “Smitty said writing on the school was one way to warn folks,” he muttered. “He did the words and stuff. I just painted the picture.”

  “Did you help paint up Mr. Evans’s house Friday night?” I was too angry to even try to be subtle.

  Tyrone shook his head. “No way. I’d just gotten out of juvey. If I’da done something like that, they’d send me away next Monday.” He seemed earnest enough, but I pressed him.

  “Did Smitty? Could he have painted the house that night after, say, one?”

  “I don’t know. Mama made me stay home that night. Smitty said he was over at Willie’s playing video games, but I don’t know for sure.”

  “Could they have surfed the net, looking up things about Mr. Evans?”

  “Not unless they went somewhere else. Willie doesn’t have an Internet connection. His mama stopped paying after we—well, she stopped it.” He added in righteous indignation, “They don’t even have cable. All we can do there now is play games and watch videos. And she’s told the video store he can’t rent R-rated ones, just PG-13.” You’d have thought they were restricted to Cinderella and Snow White.

  “Does Smitty have a computer at home?” Joe Riddley asked in the mild tone he used to use when our boys were getting a bit too het up about something.

  Sure enough, Tyrone calmed down. “Not yet. He keeps saying he’s going to pick one up—”

  “I hope he pays for it after he picks it up,” I snapped.

  Joe Riddley gave me a warning pat under the table. Tyrone flushed and bent his head to suck his drink.

  I thought of something else. “Was it you or Smitty who wrote notes to DeWayne and the newspaper?”

  He shook his head without looking up. “I don’t know anything about no notes.”

  “They were written on pages torn from the back of your notebook—the one with your drawings in it.”

  His brains nearly rattled, he shook his head so hard. “I told you already, over at juvey—I lost it. Left it at Myrtle’s and it disappeared.”

  “You all came back and got it.”

  He gave a disgusted sigh. “We came back for it, yeah, and Smitty hit on Garnet so Willie and I could get it, but somebody else had already swiped it.”

  “You didn’t toss it in a garbage can next to the school?”

  The look he gave me convinced me even before he demanded, “Why would I toss it? It had all my drawings in it.”

  I didn’t have an answer. That had been bothering me, too. But if he hadn’t tossed it, who did?

  “Tell us about painting the school,” Joe Riddley suggested.

  Tyrone shrugged his husky shoulders. “What’s to tell? We met over there a little after twelve—they’ve taken off night patrols, so we waited until the last cop went by—then we started.”

  Great. Criminals already knew we had no night patrols—it was just decent folks who didn’t know.

  “Smitty brought the paint and I brought a ladder,” Tyrone finished. He sucked up the last of his Coke and gave us a worried look. “But I’m not going to tell all this to any judge. Who’d believe me with Willie saying Smitty was over at his place? Others’ll back Willie up, and all I’ll do is make Smitty mad.”

  “Willie,” I said thoughtfully. Hadn’t I heard something recently . . .? I tried to remember while Joe Riddley asked Tyrone if he’d like another Coke and headed to the counter to fetch it. Like St. Augustine says, memory is a convoluted thing: You can remember you have forgotten something and can even remember what it was that you forgot, but you can’t remember the thing. What was it I had heard about Willie Keller? Suddenly I knew what it was and reached for my cell phone. “Let me see if Dad’s got a phone book.”

  Chancey Carter answered the phone after the first ring, her voice breathless. “Oh, Mac, I’m so glad it’s you. I was scared it was the nursing home. Mama had another spell tonight, and I just ran home for a minute to get a few things so I can go over there to sleep.”

  “I won’t keep you then, but I need to ask about something you told me yesterday. You said you were at the nursing home last Wednesday night?”

  “Yes. That was when Mama had her last spell. She’s been having a lot of them lately. I’m so worried about her, but the doctor says it’s to be expected at her age.”

  “And you couldn’t get the nurses’ aide because she was talking to her son about money?”

  “They weren’t talking. They were fighting. We needed her because . . .” Off Chancey went into another description of her mother’s intestinal activities. I finally steered her back to the aide. “Yes, I rang and rang, but Linda didn’t come. Finally, I went to look for her, thinking she must be with another patient or talking to one of the nurses. Instead, she was with a real scruffy-looking boy down the hall. They weren’t talking loud, but the way they were waving their arms, I knew they were fighting. He looked so awful, he scared me to death, to tell the truth, so I went back and emptied the pan myself, which families are not supposed to have to do. That’s clearly stated in the papers I signed, that all personal needs will be taken care of.”

  “How did you know he was her son?”

&nbs
p; “She told me, when she finally came. Said her son had been there wanting money, as usual, and she wasn’t made of money, that he needed to get a job.”

  “And you remember when this happened?”

  “Sure. I wrote it on the pad I keep in my pocketbook, in case I ever have to report somebody. Mama’s bowels moved exactly at midnight—remember, I told you—but it was 12:30 before I got the aide to come. They were fighting all that time. But listen, Mac, I can’t go into all this. Mama’s real bad tonight and they may be trying to call me.”

  “One more thing.” I tried not to sound miffed that she accused me of keeping her on the phone when she’d been the one going into such graphic detail. “What was the aide’s last name?”

  “Keller. Linda Keller. It’s on her badge.” She sounded like I should have remembered from the few times I’d been to see her mother. “But I really do have to fly.”

  “Go on. And thanks.” I hung up, picturing Chancey flying across the housetops toward her mother’s room. When I got back to the table, I informed Tyrone, “I can prove that Willie wasn’t home around twelve that night. He can’t alibi Smitty. Is that enough to make you testify?”

  Tyrone shook his head. “Even if you can prove Willie’s lying, you can’t guarantee the same thing won’t happen to Smitty as happened to me—he’ll go to his detention hearing and get released to his mom. He’d have time to hurt Hollis before his trial.”

  I appreciated that he seemed more worried about Hollis than about himself.

  Joe Riddley sucked up the last of his own Coke and looked at the cup in disgust. “Dad puts too much ice in these things. Get me a refill, will you, Little Bit?” I knew he wanted me out of the way so he could talk man-to-man with Tyrone. As I headed to the counter, I heard him say, “Son, intimidation is an ancient art.”

  There was a line at the counter. By the time I got back, Joe Riddley had gotten Tyrone to agree to testify by promising we’d ask Hollis to move in with us until Smitty went to detention. I sent Tyrone to the counter for three pieces of lemon icebox pie, which Dad bought from Myrtle. I had something important to say to my husband. Alone.

  “You don’t know if Hollis will want to stay with us, and you don’t know Smitty will get a sentence. It’s a first offense, remember? And how are we going to explain why we’ve practically adopted Hollis for who knows how long without scaring Sara Meg to death? Besides, we aren’t at home much of the time, and Clarinda leaves at two. How is Hollis going to be safer down at our place than at her own?”

  He scratched his chin. “We could see if Ridd and his family might like a week at the beach, taking Hollis along.”

  I sighed. Joe Riddley is the kindest man in the world, but he doesn’t always think things through. “A week wouldn’t be anywhere near long enough. Besides, Ridd and the girls have ball practice, and you know they won’t give that up.”

  “We’ll have to think of something. Unless he knows Hollis is safe, Tyrone won’t testify. He says Smitty is holding something like this over almost everybody in the gang—a sister, a girlfriend, somebody who will get hurt if they don’t do things his way. That boy’s got to be stopped, Little Bit.”

  “So I keep hearing. I just haven’t been told why I’m the one who’s supposed to entertain a teenager for an indefinite period of time so it can happen.”

  “Because these are lost children, honey. The other day when Cricket got lost, it scared me to death. Afterwards, I got to thinking. We got all het up about one little boy riding a mile on his bicycle—”

  “He could have been killed!”

  “He could have been, but he wasn’t. And he’s got folks who care about what happens to him. What about kids whose parents don’t or can’t take care of them? They’re lost a lot of the time. Somebody needs to be as concerned about them as we were about Crick. If we aren’t, who will be?”

  I heaved a sigh and gave him a sour look. “You know what makes me mad? You’re right, dang it. And I can’t stand it when you’re nicer than me.”

  He grinned. “Happens all the time.”

  Tyrone carefully set three pieces of pie on the table, and I tried to ignore the black thumbprint on my Styrofoam plate. He and Joe Riddley talked about football while we ate. Tyrone seemed a lot happier since he’d shared his burden with us.

  When they’d settled the upcoming football season between them, I told Joe Riddley that Tyrone was a good artist who might get to go to art school if he got his grades up and got a job to help pay for it. Joe Riddley said he sure could use a strong back to help down at the nursery between then and the Fourth of July sale. Next thing we all knew, Tyrone was joining the payroll. We all got up from the table in lighter spirits.

  “Don’t worry, Little Bit,” Joe Riddley told me as we were pulling back onto Oglethorpe after dropping Tyrone off. “Things are going to work out. Just wait and see.”

  I looked down that gloomy damp street, lit only by street-lights, and thought it looked a lot like life in Hopemore right then: long dark stretches illuminated by patches of caring. “Things don’t work out, honey—people have to work them out. You know that.”

  He frowned in the dim light and slowed the car. “From some of the things you were saying to Tyrone, you’ve been working more out than you ought to. How’d you know about Tyrone’s notebook, that there’s anything on the Internet about DeWayne Evans, or that somebody sent notes to DeWayne and the newspaper?” When I didn’t answer, he put a big, warm hand on my leg. “I’ve told you already, Little Bit, I don’t want you messing around in this. I nearly lost you back in February. I can’t go through that again. You hear me?”

  I understood. I’d nearly lost him the previous summer. So I was glad to reassure him with a squeeze on his arm. “I won’t do anything dangerous. I promise.”

  I really meant it, at the time.

  24

  Joe Riddley slammed on the brakes and I nearly lost half my bosom to the seat belt. “Sara Meg’s lights are on,” he said with satisfaction. “Let’s talk to her about Hollis now, before we forget.”

  Hollis herself answered the door and said they were all in the den watching television. When we got back there, we found Buddy, too.

  Joe Riddley told them what Tyrone had said—how Smitty was threatening Hollis and some other girls to keep his troops in line—and invited Hollis “or both girls” to move down to our place for a while. I tried not to let them see that his inviting Garnet was as much a surprise to me as the whole idea was to the rest of them.

  Hollis shook her head vehemently. “No, thanks. I mean, it’s real nice of you and everything”—her blue eyes looked as earnest as Tyrone’s had a little while before—“but I’d feel safer here. Nobody can get in. We have good locks.”

  Sara Meg sat looking at us like she didn’t believe anything dangerous could really be threatening her daughters.

  Buddy offered to move into their place for the time being, and Garnet and Hollis said “No!” at the same time. Then they glared at each other as if they couldn’t stand to agree on anything.

  Sara Meg gazed at them in bewilderment. “If it’s true, wouldn’t you feel a lot safer with a man in the house?”

  “It might be for only a short time,” I told them. “We’re hoping Smitty will get arrested in the next day or so, and we’ll use any influence we have to get him kept in juvenile detention until his trial comes up.”

  “But you can’t guarantee that he won’t get probation, can you?” Buddy demanded. “He could be back on the streets in a couple of weeks.”

  Hollis was adamant. “I’m not scared of Smitty. I’ll stay in the house except when I have to go to work or practice. I’ll be fine. We don’t need you here, Buddy.”

  “I can at least start driving Garnet again.” Buddy spoke not to Hollis but to Sara Meg. “That way Hollis won’t be driving all the way out to the school and coming back alone.”

  Sara Meg nodded. “That would be helpful. This seems so unreal.”

  I didn’t look at Joe R
iddley, because I knew he’d be sending me looks that said She’s not facing up to things again.

  That’s how we left it: Hollis would be careful and drive their car to the pool, and Buddy would take Garnet to and from class. Even that didn’t please Hollis. “I can drive Garnet.”

  “What does it matter who’s driving?” Garnet swept scornfully up the stairs. I figured she was annoyed that her sister was getting so much attention.

  Late afternoon the following Tuesday, Ike called to say Smitty had been arrested on charges of painting the school. It had taken that long for the gears of justice to work after Tyrone testified Monday morning at his own trial. They had to substantiate Chancey’s report about Willie being with his mother while he claimed to be at his house with Smitty, and they had to get a warrant to search Smitty’s mother’s house, which yielded absolutely nothing. As Ike had said, Smitty was smart—too smart to leave incriminating evidence at home. It was Willie’s evasiveness that finally steered them to the Kellers’ garage, where they found partially used cans of blue, red and white spray paint hidden up in the rafters with Smitty’s prints on the cans. Smitty’s reaction was to hurl a stream of invective toward Willie for not throwing out the paint.

  “Poor Willie,” Ike said with a chuckle. “The whole time Smitty was yelling at him, he was cowering against the wall, sniffling and protesting over and over, ‘But there’s still good paint in there, and Mama won’t give me money for no more.’ ”

  “That’s a relief,” I told him. “Maybe our graffiti days are over.”

  “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray,” Ike replied.

  At Smitty’s detention hearing the next morning, though, the out-of-town judge standing in for Judge Roland decided that the charges were not serious enough to warrant detention until trial, and released Smitty to his mother. I saw Smitty on the street that afternoon, and the venom in his eyes made me shiver. I immediately called Hollis and warned her to stay real close to home unless she traveled in a group.