by Joan Hess
I had no urge to grasp his hand and hum an antiwar hymn. “Maybe after Tuck follows Sarah to the motel, he loses it. When he gets home and Tricia’s there, he tells her that he’s going to call the FBI right then. She tries to talk him out of it, but he won’t budge and they end up having a bitter fight. Now she’s incensed because he’s dumping her after she’d made sacrifices to be with him—or because she’s liable to be arrested along with Sarah. Life without Tuck, or life without parole. She convinces him to take the shotgun out to the barn. Blam.”
Roderick nodded. “I can buy that. Tuck was hysterical, and therefore easy to manipulate. Once it was done, Tricia put the shotgun back in the closet, turned off the lights, and walked back to the campsite. Turned out she couldn’t crawl into her sleeping bag straightaway, thanks to Grady’s transgressions, and was berating them at midnight. Sarah didn’t leave the motel until after twelve, so she didn’t get home until twelve thirty at the earliest.”
“How ironic that the only way Sarah can save herself is to send you back to prison. She and Tricia had more in common than they thought, although Sarah has an alibi.” I recalled what Evan had said regarding the alibi and found myself with a second scenario, an unnerving and unwelcome one. Was it possible that Sarah and Roderick had decided to choose fight over flight? If she was found innocent, the two of them could continue their affair with a mere modicum of discretion for the foreseeable future. He would ditch the van in another state, and then move into Sarah’s house. He’d be introduced to William and Junie as an old friend from college or a distant cousin. My breathing quickened as I envisioned Sarah in the barn with Tuck. Sarah or Roderick, or both of them.
“Something wrong?” he said.
“I’m worried Grady might watch the news and find out about Tricia’s death,” I said with commendable glibness, considering his proximity. Sarah decapitated chickens for dinner. Roderick had gone to prison for murder. My only weapon was a glass of water.
“Not gonna happen. He has forty-three episodes of Law & Order on his DVR, and he’s determined to watch them all in a mindless marathon. He’s mastered the art of fast-forwarding through commercials. Are you old enough to remember when you had to walk across the room to change channels? After I escaped from prison and moved in with a woman I met at a bar, the remote control was the first technology that blew my mind. The bulls at Folsom decided what we watched. Changing the channel without permission cost a week in solitary.” He leaned back, his hands hooked behind his head. “I was so damned bored that I played with the bugs. I was known as ‘the Roach Man of Folsom.’ Not my favorite sobriquet, I have to say.”
I was exhausted, and my blood sugar level was on a roller coaster. I was in desperate need of Peter’s arms around me, his voice assuring me that it would all go away. I was battered, and a particular part of my anatomy had not yet recovered from the excruciating escape on a riding lawn mower. But more than anything, I wanted to convince myself that Roderick had not been lying to me since our encounter in Miss Poppoy’s kitchen, that he was not a calculating killer. “Tell me the truth about the demonstration,” I said. “I need to hear it.”
“Yeah, okay, but it was forty years ago, so the details are mushy. When I joined up with SAC, I found out that all they did was stage pathetic little antiwar protests in front of the student union—if the weather was nice. They held up their signs and chanted the same ol’ slogans. The campus cops walked right past them. I’d been at Berkeley, was a member of SNCC, and stood alongside the Black Panthers. We staged sit-ins and occupied buildings, and took beatings from the pigs.” He groaned. “Sorry, Claire, I know your husband’s a cop.”
“He has no porcine proclivities,” I replied tartly.
“Of course not. I convinced this SAC chapter to make themselves a true nuisance to the campus administration. We gathered in front of the ballroom, symbolically chained the doors, and plunked our butts on the floor. We refused to respond to the campus cops when they ordered us to leave. Nothing should have happened, even after the local cops arrived. I’d warned everybody to expect to be arrested and dragged to jail. The rich kids, like Sarah, were ready to bail us out via American Express. We were having a fine time singing the anthem from Country Joe and the Fish—you know, ‘and it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?’—when this new guy, Abel, jumps up with a knife and grabs hold of a scrawny boy cop. The cop pulls his gun. It turns into a shoving match, the spectators panicking, everybody yelling. Abel yanks the gun away from the campus cop and thrusts it at me. By now, it’s looking like a full-fledged football brawl, with fists flying and cops bellowing. Abel knocks me down and we’re wrestling on the floor. The gun goes off, which scares everybody shitless. To this day, I don’t know if I pulled the trigger. The jury decided that I did. End of story.”
“Hardly the end of the story,” I said, “or we wouldn’t be here.”
“True. If the demonstration had simply wound down, Sarah and I’d be teaching literature courses at a community college, planning our retirement, and watching our grandchildren play soccer.”
“Vera, Chuck, and Dave?”
“Or something like that.” He finished the beer and crumpled the can in his hand. After a long moment, he said, “If you’re thinking that Sarah and I conspired to shoot Tuck, say so and I’ll be blowin’ in the wind. You can tell the FBI that I took you hostage and had a gun at your back the entire time. Maybe I threatened to harm your daughter if you didn’t cooperate. After all, you’re highly skilled in the art of improvisation. You don’t even bat an eye when you dish out bullshit.”
“You’re not bad at rumbling,” I said. I was aware I might be making a mistake, perhaps a fatal one, but I could not believe he was capable of cold-blooded murder. Or Sarah, unless I’d seriously misjudged this gray-haired, sexagenarian version of Romeo and Juliet.
“Can your husband rumble?” Roderick asked.
“I hear him now. Picture an incredibly handsome man with dark hair, an authoritarian nose, soft brown eyes, glittering white teeth, and molten lava coming out of his ears. I almost feel sorry for the FBI agents assigned to babysit him.” I smiled, albeit sadly. “Okay, you and Sarah weren’t responsible for Tuck’s murder. I think Billy saw Tricia on her way back to the campsite—and that was after he’d been awakened by the blast. He swore he saw zombies across the field. Someday his parents will have to explain what his zombies were doing, and I don’t want to be within a hundred miles of that conversation.”
“Billy?”
“The Lunds’ grandson. He’s four and endowed with a flamboyant imagination. The deputies from the sheriff’s department basically ignored him.”
“Because he saw a couple of zombies? Very pedestrian of them.”
“I reared a child like that,” I said in defense of my disparaged witness. “There was always a mote of truth in her dust storm; the trick was to spot it. I talked to him and William before I went to Miss Poppoy’s house. Oh, dear, do you think she’s all right? I can picture her on the front porch, waving a gun at the deputies and agents as they charge up the driveway.” I covered my face with my hands. “I’ll live with guilt for the rest of my life if she…”
“What she did was feed them fresh gingersnaps and send them away, thoroughly bewildered. Who in the hell is Geronimo?”
“He was an Apache chief who instigated attacks on the Spanish when they invaded his territory, wherever that was, back in the early nineteenth century. These days he has something to do with jumping out of airplanes. I don’t know, Roderick, and I truly don’t care. All I want to do is tidy up this mess and go home.”
“You sure he was an Apache?”
I dumped the last of the water in my glass onto his lap. “It’s time to talk to Grady. Rumble your heart out.”
17
Grady sat on the edge on the sofa, intently watching as the jury forewoman said, “We’re unable to arrive at a verdict, Your Honor. We’ve debated for three days, and we’re deadlocked.”
T
he avuncular judge sighed. “I have no other choice than to declare this a mistrial. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the court thanks you for your time. You are dismissed.”
I stepped in front of the TV screen. “Now it’s time for a reality show, Grady.”
He reached for the remote control, but Roderick was quicker. I remained where I was until Grady sank back with a martyred moan.
“Let’s talk about Tricia,” I said.
“Let’s not,” he said. “I told you every damn thing that occurred that night, as best I remember. Sex and drugs, but no rock and roll. No blackmail, either. You want the salient details? Do you want me to draw a picture? Are you some kind of voyeur?”
Roderick planted himself next to Grady. “Shut up and listen.”
“No! I’ve had it! I want you both to leave my house. Call the prosecutor and tell her the whole story. I’ll be tried, sentenced, and sent to prison, where I’ll be beaten and sodomized. Is that what you want?” He tried to get up, but Roderick had him pinned against the arm of the sofa. “Beat me now if it’ll make you happy. I don’t care!” He raised his knees and folded himself into what appeared to be a very uncomfortable yoga position. With his head between his thighs, his sobs were muffled.
I studied him for a long moment, unable to decide if I’d overestimated him and he truly was a pitiful wimp, or if I’d underestimated him and he was a liar—and a killer. I glanced at Roderick, whose puzzled expression mirrored my own. “Pull yourself together, Grady,” I said coldly. “You need to read the local morning newspaper. There are a lot worse perverts than you who end up with probation, community service, and compulsory therapy. On the other hand, you can never get off the sex offenders list.”
“I knew a guy in prison,” Roderick commented, “who had a thing for a pretty little heifer. He was doing life for first degree murder. The farmer sold Elinor to a meat-packing plant, and the guy went berserk with a shovel. His cellmates said he mooed in his sleep all night. I always think of the poor jerk when I order veal scallopini.”
I clamped my hand on my mouth before I laughed. Grady’s sobs grew louder, and his body was twitching as if he’d been poked with a cattle prod. “I think what Roderick is trying to say,” I said, still struggling to remain solemn, “is murder is a serious crime.”
“So?” Grady squeaked.
“You told us you were here all afternoon. Can you prove it?”
He looked up through watery red eyes. “Why?”
Roderick rumbled. “Answer the lady’s question.”
“Yeah, I can prove it. I had company. What does this have to do with the campout? That was a year ago.”
I crossed my arms. “I need to know the names of your visitors. We’ll use your cell to call them and confirm your alibi.”
“Alibi? I don’t need an alibi. Why do you care what I did this afternoon?” He blinked as he began to assimilate what I’d said. “Did somebody get killed? Tricia? Is that why you asked me if I’d seen her? What the hell happened to her?”
“Why don’t you tell me,” I suggested.
“I don’t know!”
“Tricia was stabbed to death in her apartment. My working theory is that you were afraid she’d expose you. You went there to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen to you. The ensuing argument escalated until she was screaming at you. You grabbed the nearest weapon, a large knife, and chased her into her bedroom. The police found her body two or three hours ago.”
Grady squirmed free and stumbled to his feet. “You’re crazy! You’re both crazy! I was here all afternoon with a friend. I’m not going to give you her name because I’m not a suspect!” His arms were waving so frantically that he might find himself under siege by Don Quixote. Merely watching him made my shoulders ache.
Roderick chuckled. “But you are a suspect, my man. Skull Creek is a five-minute drive from here. There was no sign of a break-in, which means Tricia opened the door for her assailant, someone she knew. Five minutes to kill her, five minutes to drive home. That adds up to all of fifteen minutes.”
“And another fifteen minutes,” I said, “to bundle your bloody clothes in a plastic bag, shower, and cram the bag into someone else’s trash bin. The CSI will find minute traces of blood, no matter much you scrubbed the bathroom.”
“But I didn’t do it!” Grady howled, stomping his bare feet, spittle spewing in a most repulsive manner. “Tricia wasn’t going to do anything that would incriminate herself. We’ve gone over this a dozen times. Even if she wasn’t involved with the murder, she’d lose her job. She’d already lost her so-called soul mate.” He squeezed his lips together as he realized what he’d said. “She committed suicide,” he added lamely. “Menopause was messing with her mind. All those hormones. She was depressed, drinking more, showing up late for work. She told me that at a board meeting in May, she came close to punching Deacon Wentworth in the nose.”
“So Tricia confided in you about her relationship with Tuck. Did she tell you that he was going to turn himself in?”
“Turn himself into what?”
“Sheesh!” Roderick said, exasperated.
My head began to pound in an arrhythmic tribal war chant. I sat down and tried to think, but no more than a dozen neurons fired. “I need to get some sleep,” I announced. “I’ll take the bedroom. Roderick, you and Grady figure out something.” I pointed my finger at Grady, but my aim was wobbly. “Call the police, run away, or watch reruns until the sun rises. Keep in mind you’re in so far over your head that your best bet is to start tunneling for China.”
I went into the bedroom and closed the door.
* * *
When the alarm went off at six, I rolled out of bed. My outer clothes lay in a circular heap not unlike poop from a very large dog. I found a pair of jeans, a belt, and a long-sleeved white shirt in Grady’s closet. I felt no remorse; he would not require an extensive wardrobe in prison. I took a short shower and dressed in clean clothes. I ran my fingers through my hair but once again avoided the mirror.
Roderick was sprawled on the sofa, snoring. Grady squatted in his bare feet on a chair in yet another bizarre yoga pose. Rather than meditating, he was absorbed in an alley scene on the TV. Captain Cragen and Detective Logan were somber as the body of a young woman was placed on a gurney. “It’s the fiancé,” Grady whispered helpfully.
I went into the kitchen and started the coffeemaker. After searching the cabinets, I set out a box of crackers, the package of sliced cheese, a can of tuna fish, and three small cans of chopped green chilies. Bacon and eggs were not on the menu. I poured myself a cup of coffee and ate a cracker while I reflected on the cast, the crew, the sets, and the script of Tuck’s murder a year ago and Tricia’s the previous day. Sarah’s trial would start in slightly more than twenty-four hours. Wessell was armed with a cannon; Evan had a water pistol. I didn’t even have fingernail clippers. What I did have was every law enforcement agent within a hundred miles searching for me. My mother-in-law was on a private jet over Virginia or Tennessee. The pilot might comment as they flew over the Blue Ridge Mountains, while the butler served fresh croissants. I hoped she ate heartily, since my luncheon menu was nonexistent.
I went back into the living room and whacked Roderick’s foot. “Wake up, and for pity’s sake, put on your pants. I don’t have all day to deal with this nightmare.” I whacked his foot again, and then swooped in on Grady and snatched the remote control. “Go have some coffee and something to eat. We’re leaving in half an hour.”
“Can’t leave,” he panted. “Briscoe is about to inform the girl’s parents. They don’t know she was paying her tuition at Hudson University by pole-dancing at a strip club. The fiancé went there for his best friend’s bachelor party. He was enraged.” He held out his hand. “I need the clicker. A commercial’s coming. I never watch commercials. Got to fast-forward through ’em.”
I turned my back on him and hit the power button. As the TV screen faded into darkness, Grady whimpered. I looked at him and
said, “We’re down to twenty-eight minutes. You can shower and change clothes if you wish. We will not be stopping at a café for waffles, so make do with what’s on the table. You, too, Roderick.”
Roderick sat up. “Where are we going?”
I was no longer a mild-mannered bookseller motivated by a desire to do my civic duty. Hell hath no fury like a woman meeting her mother-in-law for the first time. Attila the Hun would step aside as I approached him. Genghis Khan would cower. Harvey Dorfer, the sheriff of Stump County and presumably supervising heavily armed barricades on every county road, would weep when Election Day rolled around. As for County Prosecutor Edwin Wessell, I was prepared to grind his case under my boot heel and walk all over him, figuratively. Literally, if I could figure out how to do it.
“Coffee’s ready. Do whatever you have to do, but be ready to leave when I say so.” I glared at them but opted not to rumble.
* * *
Half an hour later, Roderick was in the backseat of Grady’s car, complaining steadily about the close quarters. “Drive out toward the church,” I ordered Grady, who was still mumbling hints to the Law & Order detectives. Had I not been in his presence for the previous twelve hours, I’d have suspected him of being high on drugs or alcohol. I wondered if there was a twelve-step program for rerun addiction.
Grady emerged from his fantasy precinct long enough to say, “There’s a cop car behind us. What do you want me to do?”
I ducked. “Don’t run any stop signs, and obey the speed limit. It’s just a coincidence.”
