The Virgin of Small Plains

by Nancy Pickard

“Oh, come on, Rex,” Abby said, sounding the calmest she’d sounded since first showing up in his office that afternoon. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  His mouth almost dropped open. She wasn’t reacting very dramatically to his momentous announcement of the terrible secret he’d been keeping to himself for all these years, that his older brother had probably killed a girl.

  “Of course I believe it!” he protested. “I just said so. My God, I just called my own brother a murderer.”

  But she shook her head. “You two have never gotten along. Patrick would love to beat you any way he could and you’d love to believe the worst of him. It’s true, Patrick is a jerk. He’s a liar and a manipulator, but he’s not very good at it, Rex. You know that. He always gets caught. If he had done this, he would have given himself away by now. No matter whether our dads were covering up for him or not. So, okay, he’s all those things. But he wouldn’t kill anybody, Rex.”

  When he looked at her as if she was naive, Abby said, “He wouldn’t!”

  Then, seeing him gathering the folders and getting up from his chair, she said, “Where are you going?”

  “We’re going out to the ranch.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re going to find out if my parents know anything that we don’t know.”

  “Rex! You’re not going to accuse Patrick to them!”

  But he was already heading for the door. Abby jumped out of her chair and hurried after him. On her way out the door, she suddenly remembered the awkward moment in Verna Shellenberger’s kitchen when Verna had seemed to falter in her own belief in Patrick. Abby’s heart sank, remembering that, and suddenly she wasn’t quite so sure of her own conclusions about him. And if she wasn’t even sure about Patrick, who had been in and out of her life for all these years, then how could she possibly be so sure about the innocence of a man who had been gone for half of that time?

  In his SUV, when she couldn’t get him to talk about Patrick, Abby said, “We’re a fine pair, aren’t we?”

  “We?” She had finally goaded him into speech. “What do you mean we? What’s this we business?”

  “You and me, Rex,” Abby said. “Too much in love with other people to ever fall in love with anybody else.”

  Rex gave her an angry, puzzled look as he drove. “Huh? I’m not in love with anybody.” Sounding reluctant, as though he hated to humor her even with a joke, he said, “Though I’ve probably been overfond of a horse or two.”

  “Sarah,” Abby said, simply and directly. She looked over at him. “I know about the flowers, Rex. Every Memorial Day you give her flowers.”

  “How the hell do you know about that?”

  “I maintain the cemetery, remember? I’ve seen you.”

  He tried being indignant. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “It looked private.”

  “Well, so what? It doesn’t mean I’m still in love with her, Abby. I’m just showing respect, that’s all, and saying I’m sorry.”

  “Really? When’s the last time you were in love with a woman, Rex?”

  When he didn’t answer, but only shifted uncomfortably in his seat, Abby said, “There hasn’t been anybody, has there? Anybody you’ve loved, I mean. There hasn’t been anybody since Sarah.”

  “She has nothing to do with it. And, anyway, you’re a fine one to talk. Who have you ever loved since Mitch?”

  “But that’s what I mean, Rex,” Abby said, without defending herself. “We’re a fine pair.”

  They rode for two miles in complete silence.

  Finally, he sighed, breaking it. “Yeah.”

  “I’m sick of it,” Abby told him, taking up right where she’d left off.

  He sighed again. “Me, too.”

  They were already driving alongside the fence line of his family’s ranch. His parents’ home was ahead on the right. “Look,” Abby said, “your mom’s waiting for us.” Rex had called ahead to say they were coming. Now they both saw that Verna had spied them and was starting to run toward the gate where they would turn in.

  “Rex?” Abby said, as they got closer and she could see Verna’s face. “I think something’s wrong.”

  When they pulled into the driveway, Verna hurried up to Abby’s side.

  Rex and Patrick’s mother was weeping.

  “Abby! Oh, Abby! I’m so sorry, honey! Abby, your dad’s been shot!” She looked across at her sheriff son while Abby gasped, turned white, and grabbed for Verna’s hands to hold. Verna squeezed them tight.

  Abby almost couldn’t get the words to come out. “Is he…?”

  “He’s dead, sweetheart,” Verna told her gently while the tears flowed down both their faces. “Your father’s dead.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Two sheriff’s deputy vehicles were already in the Reynoldses’ driveway, blocking the exit by the other cars parked at the top of it. Rex and Abby rushed into the house through the wide-open front door.

  All Abby saw was her father lying on the living room carpet.

  The wound was tremendous, fired at close range, opening up his chest and penetrating his heart and lungs.

  “Dad!” she screamed, while Rex held her back.

  “I’m sorry, Abs, you can’t go over there.”

  It was a crime scene now and he saw that his deputies were struggling to get it right.

  She had called her sister, Ellen, from Rex’s car, but she wasn’t there yet.

  He took Abby out of the house again and then walked around to the back and through the office door. Inside her father’s little clinic they found four other people huddled, waiting for somebody to pay attention to them.

  Her father’s long-time nurse ran up to Abby and they sobbed in each other’s arms.

  “We heard shouting,” one of the patients said.

  “Then we heard a shot,” a second one said.

  “What did you do then?” Rex asked them all.

  “She tried to get into the house through that door—” The first one pointed at the nurse and then at the door that led into the Reynoldses’ kitchen. “But it was locked from the other side.”

  All the patients were locals, older men whom Rex had known for years.

  He realized they’d been scared, and who wouldn’t be, hearing a sudden gunshot inside their doctor’s house.

  “We shoulda gone around to the front sooner than we did,” one of them said.

  Rex nodded. But they’d been frightened of what they’d find. It was a kindhearted town where people went out of their way to help one another, but it was also a town full of small-town fears of big-city problems, where an elderly nurse and three old men sitting in their doctor’s office and hearing a shot might have imagined there were people wanting to steal drugs, or some such. He didn’t blame them for being slow to act, but he knew they would forever blame themselves.

  Deputy Edyth Flournoy walked in at that moment, carrying a rifle encased in plastic, which she displayed for Rex to see.

  “That’s it?” he asked her.

  “This is it.”

  Rex looked over at Abby, then back at the rifle.

  It was Mitch’s childhood gun.

  Rex, who had shot it many times himself, would have recognized it anywhere because of the heart and initials that Abby had scratched into the wooden barrel, an act of loving vandalism that might have infuriated another boy but had only made Mitch laugh and kiss her. Rex had been there to see it and he remembered thinking at the time, it must be love.

  His cell phone rang. When he saw on the Caller I.D. screen that it was his parents’ number, he answered, saying, “Mom?”

  “Rex—” His mother’s voice was shaky. “Mitch is here.”

  “Mitch is there, at your house? Now? ”

  Both the nurse and Abby looked up sharply at him.

  “He’s in our driveway, Rex,” his mother said, sounding near panic. “With Jeff. Rex, he’s got a gun.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Upsta
irs.”

  “Can you get to Dad’s gun case?”

  “No!” Abby screamed, breaking away from her father’s nurse. “No, Rex!”

  Ignoring her, he continued giving instructions to his mother. “Get out one of Dad’s rifles. You know how to use it, Mom. If Mitch does anything to threaten either of you, shoot the bastard.”

  “Rex, I can’t! I couldn’t do that!”

  “Mom, it’s his rifle that shot and killed Doc.”

  “No!” Abby screamed again.

  Rex took the phone from his ear for just long enough to look his friend in her eyes and say, “Maybe it’s about time that you and I believed the worst of Mitch Newquist.”

  She ran after him when he raced out to his SUV and jumped in before he could stop her. He didn’t have time to argue with her or to force her out of the car. He had told his deputies to leave what they were doing and follow him. “But don’t make any moves until I tell you to,” he instructed them.

  Rex flipped on his siren and his lights and left them on until they were close enough to be heard from the ranch. At that point, he turned them off again, but he continued to speed toward his parents’ property, driving faster than any car Abby had ever been in before. He did it all with one hand, because his other hand never left his cell phone and his cell phone never left his ear.

  When he got to the front gate, he heard his mother say in a calmer voice, “It’s all right now, Rex. Your father has things under control.”

  Under control meant that Nathan Shellenberger had his own rifle leveled at Mitch Newquist’s face as the four of them—Nathan, Mitch, Jeff, Verna—stood on the side porch by the kitchen.

  When Rex and Abby walked up, Abby’s heart betrayed her and lurched at the sight of the man she realized in that moment she would always love, whether she ought to or not, whether it was right or not, whether he had done the worst possible thing he could do to her family or not. She loved him, she had always loved him, she would always love him, God help me, Abby thought as she stopped in the driveway, exactly where Rex told her to.

  “Rex, tell your dad to put his gun down!” Mitch yelled. And then to Nathan he yelled, “What is wrong with you? I’m Mitch! Remember? Mrs. Shellenberger, you know me, or you used to, and I know you know Jeff—”

  “Where is your gun, Mitch?” Rex asked him, drawing nearer.

  He did not tell his father to put the rifle down.

  “Rex, my gun,” Mitch said in a tone of deep sarcasm, “is over there on the ground where I dropped it when your father came charging out of the house with his gun.” To Nathan again, he said, “What do you think? That we’re here to rob you? Or is this how far you’ll go to keep me from telling what I know?”

  “You show up with a gun at my house,” the old sheriff said gruffly.

  “After you’ve shot Quentin Reynolds,” Rex said. “What do you mean, what Dad—”

  Mitch turned so fast to stare at him that Nathan tightened his grip on his rifle, causing Verna to cry out, “Nathan!” Mitch interrupted, “What? What are you talking about, Rex? I haven’t done anything to anybody. I haven’t shot anybody. Are you telling me that somebody shot Abby’s dad?” He looked at her. “Abby—”

  “Do not move,” Rex told him. “Jeff, are you all right?”

  “Well, yeah,” the teenager said in sarcastic tones to match his brother’s. “What are you talking about, Mitch shooting Doc? We were just over there, dude. Nobody shot Doc. Okay, they yelled at each other. I don’t know what that was all about. But nobody fucking shot anybody.” Belatedly, he realized Verna was standing there. “Sorry,” he mumbled, with a glance at her. “But I mean, I was there the whole time, Mitch and me, we walked out of the house at the same time, and I’m telling you, Doc was just fine.”

  “Abby?” Mitch said, looking concerned and worried. “Your father?”

  “My son told you not to move,” Nathan warned him. “If you didn’t shoot anybody then what the hell were you doing walking up to my house with a gun?”

  Mitch ignored Nathan and talked directly to Rex. “It’s Dad’s old pistol, Rex. Remember the one he kept in the bed stand at the ranch house?” Then he remembered its history and turned back to look at Nathan. “You gave it to him, Sheriff. You and Doc, for one of his birthdays, remember?”

  “I don’t care who gave it to him, what are you doing with it here?” Nathan demanded.

  “I had it,” Jeff said, stepping forward. “Mitch made me give it back.”

  “You had it?” Rex asked.

  “Okay, I took it. The other night, from the ranch house.”

  “We were arguing…talking…about it in the car on the way over here,” Mitch said, “after we left Doc’s house. Just now, when we got out of my car, I made Jeff give it to me. That’s what your mom and dad saw.” He looked at the older couple. “Verna. Nathan, that’s what you saw, that’s all it was. Now will somebody please tell me what’s going on? Did something happen to Abby’s dad after we left there?”

  In spite of the arm that Rex put out to hold her back, Abby came walking up until she stood within a few feet of them. She looked at Mitch first and then at all of them and she began to cry again.

  “Dad’s dead,” Abby confirmed for them. “Somebody shot him in the house.”

  “Abby,” Mitch said for the third time, and started to move toward her.

  “Stop!” Nathan barked, but then his arthritic arms gave way and he lowered the rifle.

  “Will somebody tell us what the hell is going on?” Jeff said to all of them.

  For the first time, Verna stepped forward and took charge. “We’re going inside,” she informed them. “You are going to clean up your language, young man,” she said to Jeff, though her tone held affection as well as disapproval. “Come here, Abby.” Abby ran forward into the older woman’s embrace. With Abby enveloped in her arms and crying on her shoulder, Verna Shellenberger looked at her husband and then at each of the others in turn, and she said in tones that brooked no argument, “We’re going inside.”

  The old sheriff gave her a wary look, but then something in his spirit seemed to collapse in the way his arms had, because he nodded, turned, and was the first to go into the house. All of them, looking at him, understood that that was the moment when Nathan Shellenberger really grasped that his lifelong friend was gone.

  Rex remained outside for a few moments, warily telling Mitch and Jeff what was known about Quentin Reynolds’s murder, and then the three of them went inside, too. “Can I pick up the gun?” Jeff asked, still sarcastic.

  “I’ll get it,” Rex told him. “Go inside with your brother.”

  Then he sent his wide-eyed deputies back to the Reynoldses’ home to continue dealing with the aftermath of homicide.

  They gathered in the living room, taking seats on couches and in armchairs, with Nathan holding court from his leather lounger in the center of the room, opposite the television set. Nathan’s hunting rifle was propped against his chair. The judge’s pistol was in the kitchen, on the table. Rex’s own gun was still holstered at his hip, and he kept his hand on it, just in case he needed it.

  Abby sat as far away from Mitch as she could get, curling herself up against Verna on one of the two long couches where Rex and Mitch had used to laze and watch Sunday football when they were kids.

  His father may have been center stage, but Rex took charge.

  “All right. Mitch. What did you mean out there?”

  “Yeah,” his dad said in a voice that was still gruff from emotion. “What is it you think I’m supposed to know?”

  Mitch shook his head. “Doc denied it, too.”

  “Denied what?” Rex said.

  “The night Sarah died,” Mitch said, still looking at Nathan, “I was in Doc’s office, hiding. I saw you and Patrick bring her in, Nathan. I saw what Doc did to her body. I know the two of you covered up her identity.”

  Nathan Shellenberger couldn’t have looked more shocked than he did.

  Verna stared
at her husband, while Abby stared at Mitch.

  “My God,” Mitch said, looked nearly as shocked himself. “You really didn’t know that? What Doc told me, it’s true? Neither of you has ever known? You didn’t know I was there and I saw you?”

  The old sheriff shook his head, seeming incapable of speech.

  “Covered up her identity?” Rex said, taking a step forward. “Dad? What’s he talking about?”

  On the couch, still hugging Abby, Verna Shellenberger remembered the promise she had made to the Virgin…to Sarah Francis…to return the favor if Sarah could help Nathan with his pain. He was in a different kind of pain now, and Verna knew it was time to relieve that, too, and there was only one way to do it.

  “Nathan,” she said in the same firm voice she had used to corral them when they were all standing outside. “No more secrets. It’s time for all of us to talk about it. Starting with you.” In a quieter voice that was suddenly tear-choked, she added, “Do it for Sarah. Please, Nathan, for Sarah.”

  Slowly, and as if the effort hurt him more than arthritis ever had, Nathan began to talk to them. First he told them everything he remembered from the night when he and his sons had found the girl’s body. And then he told them what he knew only from hearing it from Quentin Reynolds seventeen years ago.

  Chapter Forty

  January 23, 1987

  In the late afternoon of January 23, 1987, Doc was in the middle of medicating old Ron Buck for an inner ear infection when his nurse stuck her head in the door and said, “Judge Newquist is on the phone, Doctor. He says it’s an emergency.”

  Getting up quickly from his swivel stool, Quentin said, “Don’t go away,” to his patient.

  The elderly man with his head bent over to allow liquid medicine to drain down into his ear canal, snorted with phlegmy laughter, and said from his bent position, “You pretty well made sure of that, Doc.”

  Quentin picked up the extension in his examining room.

  “What’s the emergency?” he said, right off the bat.

  The deep voice of his oldest childhood friend filled his ear. “You need to come out here to the ranch, Quentin, you have to come out right now.”