by R.J. Ellory
The engine gunned into life, but—even above this—Doc Sperling could hear Rebecca Riggs screaming at the top of her voice.
Roy Sperling looked at Carson Riggs as the car reached the end of the Wyatt driveway, in his expression some last desperate hope that Carson might find compassion in his heart.
“We’re done here,” Carson Riggs said. “And I have nothing else to say.”
Sperling stood in shocked silence as Carson Riggs got into his car, started the engine, and then headed back toward town.
FORTY
It was the kind of place where the blue-plate special had been special for way too long. Low-slung, flat-roofed, dusty windows, one of which wore a spider’s web of fine cracks, Lonny’s Roadside Diner was more in need of demolition than a bucket of soapy water and a lick of paint.
The absence of clientele within was testament to the success of the uninviting facade, and when Henry stepped up to the counter and asked for coffee twice, his order was met with a hint of resentment by a greasy-aproned short-order cook who seemed to consider customers an interruption of what he was really supposed to be doing.
The coffee came, predictably overboiled and bitter, and Henry carried the cups to where Evie sat in the farthest booth from the door. Through the window was a bare red-dirt lot, the pickup sitting there like a lost and patient dog.
“You think Carson Riggs had anything to do with Warren Garfield’s death?” he asked her.
Evie shrugged. “Hell knows.”
“What was he like, this Warren Garfield?”
“I didn’t really know him so well,” Evie replied. “He used to hang out at the saloon with the rest of them. He was a lawyer in Calvary pretty much his whole life. Had a wife, no kids. Wife died a good while back. One of those old Texas boys who just do the same job forever, end up widowed, never remarry, retire, don’t believe they’re lonely, but die of it anyway.” She smiled ruefully. “I reckon that’s the way my dad’ll go.”
“He’s a good man,” Henry said.
“He is. You’re right there. Breaks my heart that he’ll carry the ghost of my mom for the rest of his life. Thinks it’d be a crime to let go of her, but I think that’s the first thing she’d ask him to do.”
“A while ago,” Henry ventured, “after we left the saloon that first night, you said that it was a good thing for people to keep their promises. You said it like someone broke a promise they made to you.”
Evie sighed and shook her head. “I was young and innocent and he was a cruel boy and he broke my heart and it will never mend and I will never love again.”
Henry smiled. “Seriously, what happened?”
“A different story for a different day,” she said, her attention distracted by the sight of a car pulling into the lot beside Henry’s pickup.
They watched without comment as Roy Sperling got out, as he went through the routine of checking each door was locked before he walked to the diner.
Sperling stepped into the shadowed entranceway of Lonny’s and glanced around. He seemed both troubled and relieved, the latter perhaps attributable to Henry Quinn and Evie Chandler being the only people in the place, the former due to the reason for his own presence.
The short-order cook appeared through the multicolored strip curtain, his expression one of mild irritation. And what the hell is it that you want?
“Coffee, please,” Doc Sperling said.
“That all?”
“For now,” Sperling replied, and walked down the room to the far booth where Henry and Evie awaited him.
“I have no idea why I am here,” was his opener.
“To try the worst coffee in West Texas,” Evie said.
Sperling smiled, glanced at Henry. “Son, if you got this girl’s heart, then you must be doing something right.”
“Is that a compliment, Roy?” Evie asked.
“It is, Evie.”
“Then I shall graciously accept it. I have to say that of all the crazy old fucks who hang out in the Calvary saloon, I like you the best.”
“Aw, shucks, lady,” Sperling said. “You’re just saying that.”
Sperling’s coffee arrived. Sperling took a sip and grimaced. “Jeez,” he said, “last time I had that taste in my mouth, I was heavin’ up a half pint of bad bourbon.”
Sperling slid along the seat and faced Henry and Evie.
“So, why are you here?” Henry asked. “Why did you agree to speak to us?”
Sperling shook his head resignedly. “I am older than Carson Riggs by a good fifteen or so years,” he said. “I don’t know about anyone else, but you get to the point where you realize that pretty much everything in your life is now behind you, and your attitude starts to change.”
Sperling reached into his jacket pocket and took out a hip flask. He unscrewed the lid and added a half inch to his coffee. He did not offer any to Henry or Evie, perhaps of a mind that he might need all of it to get him through the meeting.
“Conscience?” Evie asked.
“Doesn’t have to have a name, does it?” Sperling asked. “Your boyfriend here done three years in Reeves for getting drunk and shootin’ some poor woman in the throat. Can’t say you’re too proud of that, eh, son?”
Henry shook his head. “No, sir, not too proud.”
“Grown-ups ain’t so different from kids,” Sperling said. “I never had none myself, but I doctored enough to get an idea. Most everyone in their thirties and forties came through my surgery as a little ’un. Seen and heard it all, and some of it is the dumbest shit you ever did hear. Fool stunts, accidents, pranks gone wrong, you name it. Broken bones, broken teeth, bullet holes … hell, anything you can think of. Ask a kid how the hell he ever thought that leaping off the roof of his house into a water barrel was gonna wind up with anything but trouble, and the answer is always the same. Some eight-year-old thinks that gittin’ his daddy’s sidearm and takin’ a potshot at the neighbor’s cat will be nothin’ but shit an’ giggles, little girl gets pissed with her brother and sets his comic books on fire, both of them wind up at the clinic in Sonora with the nastiest burns you ever did see … always the same answer. It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Sperling shook his head, took a healthy swig of his bourbon-laced coffee. “Guess you never think any other way, no matter how old you get.”
Henry watched Doc Sperling. He was winding himself up for a confession. That was how it looked. Detail the justifications before you start, and you temper the severity.
“What happened, Roy?” Evie asked, highlighting once again that she was a straight shooter. The more time Henry spent with her, the more he understood that what you saw was what you got. Just like her father. Seemed there had been too few such people in his life. Even now, looking back at the time he’d spent with Evan Riggs, he was aware of how little the man had actually told him.
“A lot of things, Evie,” Sperling said, “and I can’t think of a single good reason to tell you any of it, save the simple fact that Carson Riggs is starting to grate on my nerves.”
“He certainly seems to have the place in his pocket,” Henry said.
“Son, you have no idea. There is a lot of history here, and there’s no way to explain or understand much of it, except that everything we did, every decision we made … well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“This is about Sarah, right?” Evie asked.
“You don’t know anything about Sarah,” Sperling said, “and Lord knows if you ever will. Sarah doesn’t even know about Sarah. I doubt she has ever heard the name ‘Riggs,’ and she sure as hell wouldn’t know her parents. Her father is in jail and will never see the light of day as a free man. Her uncle Carson is a crazy fuck, her maternal grandmother is in the same nuthouse where we put her mother, and her granddaddy …” Sperling sighed.
“The same nuthouse …” Evie prompted. “You mean Ector County, where we went to see Grace Riggs?”
“’S right. Me and Warren Garfield and Carson Riggs put that poor dumb pregnant
girl in a crazy house, and then we took her baby off of her. We took her baby off of her and gave it to some strangers.”
Sperling lowered his head, as if in shame, and when he looked up again, there were tears in his eyes.
“Why?” Henry asked. “Why did that happen?”
“Because Sarah’s mother was Carson’s wife. That’s why. Rebecca Wyatt. That was her name. There was a party, all the way back in February of 1949, and right after that party, Evan done slept with Rebecca when she was already kind of promised to Carson. She’d never said yes, but the very next day, maybe out of guilt or shame or whatever, she went on over to Carson and agreed to marry him. Carson was lit up like a jack-o’-lantern. Never seen a man happier. Evan left for someplace, Austin, I guess, and he went on doing whatever Evan did best—getting’ drunk, bein’ an asshole, the usual thing—and Carson and Rebecca got themselves married and settled down. That was until she came to me pregnant, and I knew from the get-go that something was awry. She was too pregnant. Carson had his ways, always considered himself a churchgoin’ man and whatever, but he was of a mind that sex was something you did after you got married, not afore. So she’s a good deal more pregnant than she should be, and Garfield’s wife …” Sperling smiled nostalgically. “You never did see ears so big on a woman. Only thing that matched the size of her ears was the size of her mouth. She overheard something, said something to Grace Riggs, and before anyone could say or do anything, Carson knew what was going on. His wife was carrying his brother’s child.”
“Christ Almighty,” Evie said.
“Goes a way to explainin’ the bitterness between them,” Henry added.
“Hell, if Carson Riggs knows how to do something, it’s hang on to a grudge,” Sperling said, “though I have to say that when it comes to upsetting your brother, fucking his wife and getting her pregnant is pretty high stakes.”
“So he had her committed and took the child away?” Evie asked.
“He did,” Sperling said, and then he looked away through the dusty window as if the past was right there in the parking lot. “Actually, he didn’t commit her … We committed her. Me and Warren Garfield and Carson Riggs. We consigned that poor girl to hell, and she never came back. She died in there. June of 1951. Little girl o’ hers wasn’t even two years old, her mother was dead and her father was in jail for the rest of his life.”
“How did Rebecca die?” Henry asked.
“Same way we all do, son. Short of breath and brokenhearted.”
“Did Evan know she’d died?” Evie asked.
“I don’t know, Evie. I just know what I did and what I didn’t do. I just know that I made some bad decisions, and somehow, some way, I’m gonna end up payin’ for them.”
“So why did you agree to commit her?” Henry asked. “You and Warren Garfield … Why did you let that happen?”
Sperling’s expression was then one of reconciliation, as if he’d known this moment was coming for a very long time.
“What you’re asking, Henry Quinn, is how was Sheriff Carson Riggs able to blackmail Calvary’s doctor and Calvary’s lawyer into falsifying documents so as his wife could be consigned to Ector County Hospital Psychiatric Facility and his bastard niece could be handed over to strangers, never to be seen again. Correct me if I’m wrong, but is that what you want to know?”
“Yes, Dr. Sperling, that’s what I want to know.”
Sperling smiled sardonically. “Regardless of what anyone might think or believe or suspect, there are only four people in the world who know the answer to that question. Two of them took it to their graves, the third is Carson Riggs, and I am the fourth. And I have the same plan as Garfield. That is going to my grave with me, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Two of them took it to their graves?” Evie asked. “Garfield and someone else.”
“That’s right, sweetheart. Garfield and someone else.”
“And the someone else—”
“This is not twenty questions,” Sperling said, cutting her midflight.
“And you don’t know which family Sarah went to?”
“I do not.”
“But Garfield knew, right?” Evie said. “He must have handled the adoption.”
Sperling nodded, glanced at Henry. “This one’s dangerous,” he said. “Smarter than all of us put together.”
“So the only person who now knows where Sarah went is Carson Riggs,” Henry said.
“That’s right,” Sperling replied.
“I have one more question,” Evie said.
“Which does not mean I have one more answer, but you go ahead and ask me.”
“Warren Garfield,” Evie said. “Did he die, or was he murdered?”
Sperling laughed. “Murdered? My, oh my, you do have an overactive and excitable imagination.”
“I wondered,” Evie said.
“So did I,” Henry added.
“Well, if you are wondering whether Carson Riggs is capable of such a thing, then I think you already know the answer. However, I attended the autopsy. Warren Garfield’s heart quit on him—no question about it. Maybe holdin’ on to all them secrets finally killed him, and maybe Carson Riggs had something to do with the stress that was brought to bear. It’s all supposition. There was no smokin’ gun in Carson Riggs’s hand, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Henry leaned forward, elbows on the table, voice lowered. “What do you think is really going on here, Dr. Sperling?” he said. “Why do you think Sheriff Riggs is so afraid that we will find Sarah?”
Sperling smiled knowingly. “Oh, I think you are looking at this the wrong way around, son,” he said. “I think you should be wondering what Sarah will do if she finds Carson. What would happen if that girl knew where she really came from? Seems to me that a number of pertinent answers might be revealed if you took a look at that letter of Evan’s, but from what I understand, you are not going to do that.”
Henry shook his head. “No, sir. I’m not. Just doesn’t seem right. Private business is private business, and he asked me not to read it.”
“Well, that’s mighty noble, Henry Quinn. Seems like such a lesson might have been of use to Ida Garfield, God rest her soul. Carson Riggs, too, I guess. Carson’s had his nose in everyone’s affairs and his hand in everyone’s pocket for the better part of thirty years, and it seems about time someone cut it off. Maybe you’re the man to do that, eh?”
“I have no beef with Carson Riggs,” Henry said. “I only came here to—”
“Doesn’t matter whether you have a beef with him or not,” Sperling said. “As is all too obvious now, he sure as hell has a beef with you.” Sperling raised his cup, drained it, wincing at the taste. “What we did was wrong. There’s no other way to dress it up. We sent that poor girl to her death, and it has kept me awake more nights than I ever care to recall. Maybe you can do something to fix some small part of this. I don’t know. Maybe you pair are gonna wind up lost somewhere in the Davis Mountains, never to be heard of again. My sole interest here is not what Evan Riggs may or may not want, and to be honest, I don’t much care to know what’s in that letter that you are protecting so fiercely … What I want to see is the expression on Carson Riggs’s face when he realizes that you can’t get away with this kind of thing forever. Some say he’s done more good than bad, and maybe that’s the truth. Calvary is a safe place to live, quiet, peaceful, sure, but at what cost? We are all getting old now. Me, Clarence Ames, George Eakins, Harold Mills, and maybe it’s time to man up, deal with the consequences, let Calvary drag itself up out of the past and get on with the future. Carson Riggs has controlled that town for way too long. Time for new blood. Time for change. Time for the truth, I guess is what I’m saying.”
Sperling made as if to get up to leave.
“Doc?” Henry said.
Sperling looked back at him.
“Where do we go now with this? Give us something. Please.”
“If I were you?” he asked. “Where would I go if I w
ere you? Hell, son, that’s a good question. Heard Sheriff Riggs sent you on some wild-goose chase out to Menard.”
“He did, yes.”
“Someone told you the girl was dead.”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s a lie, for sure and certain. Warren told me three weeks before he died that Sarah was alive and well and living not so very far from here.”
“I knew it,” Evie said. “I fucking knew it.”
“Did he say where?” Henry asked. “What her name was?”
“He told me she was alive and well and living not so far from here,” Sperling repeated, “and would say nothing further. Whatever he knew, and I am sure he knew a lot, went with him to the worms.”
“Records?” Evie asked. “Adoption records, maybe. Something in writing somewhere.”
“I couldn’t swear on it, but I doubt very much that anything was on official lines. Carson Riggs is a good tracker, always has been. Good trackers don’t only know how to follow tracks, but also how to cover ’em up. Anyway, you now have an answer to that all-important question—why Carson Riggs is so pissed with his brother. Sarah should have been Carson’s daughter, but she wasn’t. Rebecca should have been Carson’s wife, but she was Evan’s sweetheart all along. At least that’s the way Carson sees it, and I don’t disagree with that. It was enough to break any man, but Carson got vicious—”
“Did he frame Evan?” Henry asked.
Sperling paused. He looked away for a moment and then turned back to the pair facing him. “I think Evan Riggs was always more than capable of getting into the worst kinds of trouble all on his lonesome. Evan was a firework, you know? He was a bomb just waiting to go off. Rebecca Wyatt was a hell of a woman, but I don’t know that even she would have corralled that boy any. Some people just deal with today and that’s fine an’ dandy. People like Evan always think that tomorrow is gonna be so much better, and they smash today all to pieces trying to get there.”
“So, do you think Carson framed Evan for that murder in Austin?” Henry asked again.
