by Hank Early
“Okay.” I picked up the binoculars and leaned against the corrugated side of the water tower, pressing them to the opening.
I moved them slowly, taking in the detail of the corn but also wondering how they were really helpful. Sure, they gave the viewer a close-up, but only of the corn stalks, which were too dense to reveal anything useful. I lifted the binoculars, searching for something on the horizon. I saw the train tracks and followed them until they disappeared inside thick trees.
I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to use binoculars from here. They were essentially useless.
“You see anything?” Rufus asked.
“Kernels of damn corn,” I said. “And leaves. There’s nothing to see. The water tower isn’t tall enough to see what’s actually inside the field, under the stalks.”
“There’s got to be a reason this stuff is here,” Rufus said.
“I agree, but damned if I know what it is.”
I picked the binoculars up again and made another sweep, this time focusing on the cornfield, taking it slow to see if there was something hidden in the details. Talk about not being able to see the forest for the trees.
I put the binoculars down and pressed my face against the opening, to see if I would fare any better without them. Now I could see Patterson standing near Deputy Nichols. They were talking about something. Nichols glanced toward the water tower. I ducked back quickly.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
19
I took Rufus home and went by to check on Goose before heading to the sheriff’s office. I wanted to talk to Ronnie and check to see if anyone had been to visit Johnny Waters.
The deputy on duty was Deputy Clark, the same one who’d arrested both Ronnie and Johnny a few hours earlier. She led me to Ronnie’s cell, where he was leaned up against the wall, snoring loudly.
“Johnny’s two cells down. I wouldn’t talk too loud unless you want him to overhear.” She looked inside Ronnie’s cell and shook her head. “The way this one is sleeping tells me something.”
“Yeah? What does it tell you?”
“He’s either innocent or doesn’t have a conscience.”
I nodded and watched him snore. I hoped it was the former. Otherwise, I’d read this whole situation wrong.
“Want a chair?” she said.
“No thanks, I’ll stand. Shouldn’t he be cut loose?”
“Not until the sheriff says so.”
“Right.”
“Coffee?”
“I’m good.”
“At least one of us is. I’m ready for this shift to be over.” Just before walking away, she took out her baton and clanged it against the bars.
Ronnie sat up, sucking a line of drool back into his mouth and looking around. When he saw me, he smiled.
“You’re a damned sight for sore eyes. You come to bail me out?”
“No, I came to talk.”
“You know this is bullshit, don’t you? I didn’t do nothing to your girlfriend.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s bullshit.”
“Pretty sure? Why only pretty sure?”
“Well, you did set me up. It’s hard to trust a man that would do that.”
“Yeah, well, I told you why I done it. I didn’t have a choice.”
I leaned against the bars. “There’s always a choice.”
He spat onto the floor in disgust. “That’s what people say who’ve always had one. One of these days, you’ll understand. Sometimes there ain’t a right or wrong. Sometimes there’s just two wrongs and it’s all a matter of priorities.”
“Priorities, huh?”
“That’s right. And, I don’t mind saying I put the safety of my little niece before yours and your girlfriend’s.”
“If you would have just come clean in the beginning,” I said, “I could have helped with the little girl.”
“No, you couldn’t. See, this is what you don’t understand. Lane does what he wants. You couldn’t have stopped him then, and you won’t be able to stop him now. I’m surprised a smart guy like you ain’t already figured that one out. I’ll bet you didn’t sleep last night, did you? And I’ll bet you’re frustrated because there’s not any leads. You know why? Because it’s Lane Jefferson. He’s un-fucking-touchable.”
I gripped the cell bars so hard I felt the skin around my knuckles stretching. “Nobody’s untouchable.”
Ronnie stood up and walked over to where I stood. “He’s smarter than you think.”
“I’m smart too.”
Ronnie smiled. “You ain’t smart, Earl. You’re just determined.”
I shrugged. “Maybe that’s better.”
Ronnie laughed. “Nah, it’s not, but if you can get me out of here, I could help you.”
I looked at him closely, trying to decide what the best approach was. He obviously didn’t know about Johnny’s confession yet. And because of that, I had one more question I needed to ask. And I didn’t care nearly as much about his answer as I did his reaction when I asked it.
“Did they tell you about Johnny confessing?”
He looked confused. But not scared. Confused and scared would have been a bad combination. Confusion by itself was probably good.
“He did?”
“Yeah.” I waited, wanting to see how much he knew.
“Well, fuck. I don’t understand.” He kept shaking his head in disbelief. All at once he stopped. “Oh shit, he and Lane were in it together, weren’t they?”
I shrugged. “It’s a possibility, but that’s not what he’s claiming. He says it was just him.”
Ronnie shook his head. “Somebody got to him.”
“That’s what I thought too. You seen any visitors?”
“I been asleep the whole time.”
“I wanted to ask you something else.”
“Hit me.”
“You ever heard of Old Nathaniel or the AOC?”
“The first one. I knew a guy who had that tattooed on his chest.”
“Old Nathaniel?”
“Yeah. Wasn’t just the name either. He had this real grim reaper–like shit right below it.”
“Grim reaper–like?”
Ronnie shrugged. “Sort of. Maybe like if you mixed the grim reaper with a scarecrow. It was fucking creepy. Come to think of it, the guy was fucking creepy too.”
“This friend have any contact with Lane Jefferson?”
“Yeah, he worked with us in the cornfield once or twice, but mostly he was up on Summer Mountain.”
“Doing what?”
“Security.”
“What was he securing?”
“Hell if I know. There was some warehouse up there. He told me people came and people went. As long as they had the little sticker in their window, they got let in. If they didn’t, he sent them packing. Easiest job I ever heard of.”
Just then the admitting door opened. Patterson came in. He looked irritated as he approached Ronnie’s cell.
“You’re free to go, Mr. Thrash,” he said. He reached for a key and unlocked the cell.
Ronnie grinned. “About fucking time.”
Patterson looked at me. “If someone had just opened a jail cell to let me go free, I think I’d show a little respect. How about you?”
“I’m right fucking here,” Ronnie said. “Why don’t you look at me? Why don’t you talk to me?”
Patterson swung around quickly, his face twisted with a sudden rage. “Want me to talk to you? I’ll talk to you.” He pushed his face into Ronnie’s until their noses almost touched. “Just give me one damn reason, and I’ll stick every charge I can think of so far up your asshole you won’t be able shit for the rest of your life. Do you understand me, you pompous fuck?”
Ronnie’s eyes lit up. He smiled. I realized then that he’d won, that Ronnie always won when he got under another person’s skin. It was a silly game, a vindictive game, but just like me, Sheriff Patterson had found himself playing it, and just like me, he’d lost.
&
nbsp; “I will make a note of that, Sheriff. Thank you for making your intentions regarding my freedom and my asshole perfectly clear.” Ronnie extended his hand comically. “I respect that in a man.”
Patterson was furious at this point, but somehow he kept it in check and walked away. Ronnie shot me a victorious grin and literally skipped to the door.
Patterson turned to me. “What are you doing here?”
“I want to talk to Johnny, and I want to know if he had any visitors.”
He sighed. “So you really think he was threatened?”
“I’m not ruling it out. Are you?”
“Of course not.”
I followed Patterson to Johnny’s cell. Johnny was sprawled out on his cot in nothing but a pair of soiled briefs.
Patterson frowned. “Put some clothes on. We need to talk.”
Johnny looked at me but otherwise didn’t move. “Why’s he here?”
“He wants to talk to you.”
“You ain’t going to let him hit me, are you?”
Patterson chuckled. “I don’t do that kind of shit.”
“You sure?”
“Just get some clothes on. Goddamn, when’s the last time you changed your underwear?”
Johnny shrugged. “A few days ago.” With that, he stood and collected his blue jeans from the other side of the cell. He slid them on slowly and went back over to the bed to lie down.
“You had a visitor today,” Patterson said.
“So?” Johnny said. “What, did he forget to sign in?”
“No, he signed in. Used the name Preston Argent. Claimed he was your counsel.”
“That’s right.” Johnny lifted his right leg and twisted his torso a little and then farted loudly. “Can I have something to eat?”
“This guy, this Preston fellow—he’s not a lawyer.”
“Says who?”
“Says me. I know the lawyers in this town. He’s not one of them.”
“He’s from out of town.”
“This is bullshit,” I said. “It’s obvious this visitor coerced him to confess.”
Patterson held up his hand. “Why did you confess, Johnny?”
Johnny sat up and looked at me as he answered. “I was advised to confess because it would be in my best interest.” He sounded like he was repeating a canned line.
“He’s full of shit,” I said.
“I don’t know, Earl. It’s a confession. We can’t just assume he’s lying. I mean, as much as I don’t like the visitor, I don’t know why he’d agree to confess.”
“Because he’s being threatened.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Just promise me you’ll keep the investigation open.”
“We’ll keep looking, but as far as I’m concerned, we know what happened. We’re not looking for any more criminal angles.”
I stepped toward Johnny and gripped the bars in my fists, shaking the cell. “If you’ll tell me the truth, we can get the people who really did this, and you’ll be safe, Johnny.”
He looked at me, studying my face, as if trying to determine if I was the kind of person he could trust. Slowly, he shook his head. “I already told you the truth.”
20
Patterson led me to a little room that was no bigger than a closet and sat down in front of a large computer monitor. He opened a program and surveyed a long list of files. He shook his head and pulled out his two-way. “Martha?” he said.
“Yes, sir?”
“What was the approximate time of Mr. Waters’s visitor?”
“About ten or so. Maybe ten thirty.”
“Over.”
He selected a file, and a view of the front doors of the sheriff’s department came up. He pressed a key, and the footage sped up. He stopped it a second later and reversed, going slowly this time. A man moved backward toward the main entrance. Patterson stopped the video and played it forward at normal speed.
The man walked toward the desk, his head down, but I didn’t need to see his face to know who it was.
The feathered hair, the faux-Southern gangster style. It was Walsh’s thug, the man who’d accompanied him to the library a few days ago.
* * *
I argued with Patterson until my voice was nearly gone. He just kept shaking his head and telling me it was out of his control. “I’d be a fool to ignore this confession.”
“How do you explain Preston Argent’s visit?”
“I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” he said and picked his two-way off the desk. He clicked the button again.
“Martha, can you run a search on a Preston Argent?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Print me anything relevant, and bring it to the closet, okay?”
“Give me a minute.”
He put the two-way down. “Happy?”
“Maybe. Depends on what she finds.”
While we waited, I tried to explain Jeb Walsh to him. That was part of the problem. Patterson didn’t understand why I considered Jeb so vile. All he seemed to know about him was that he was an author and good friends with the mayor.
When I finished telling him about his book and the hateful rhetoric inside, he sighed. “I get your concerns. I really do. And because of that, I’m going to keep an open mind about this. But, I have to tell you”—he looked at his watch—“I feel like we’ve wasted nearly an hour talking about the part we already have the answers to when we could be out there looking for her.”
I understood his point. In his view, she was missing, alone, maybe injured. In my view, someone had her. And until I figured out who, nothing else mattered.
Martha came in with a file a few minutes later. She handed it to Patterson, smiled at me, and walked out.
Patterson looked it over and nodded. “You ain’t going to like this.”
“What?”
“He’s a lawyer, all right. Or at least was in Alabama. He’s fairly clean too. There’s something in here about assault and battery, but he was a minor, and the charges were ultimately dropped. Since then, not even a speeding ticket.” He closed the file. “I think we just need to keep looking for her.”
I wished he was right, but every instinct I had told me he wasn’t.
21
I drove out to the cornfield that afternoon. I parked my truck in the same place I’d parked it the night I’d lost Mary. Then I walked over to where I’d last seen her.
She’d had to pee and had walked into the corn. I did that now, immediately feeling a sense of dislocation as I entered the high stalks. From here, there was no telling where she’d gone or how she’d gotten turned around.
I looked up at the perfectly blue afternoon sky. It was the kind of day that I’d taken for granted before Mary went missing, the kind of day that used to mean something to me. The kind of day that made me think maybe, just maybe, everything was going to be all right in this godforsaken world. That feeling was gone now, replaced by a longing so deep I felt hollowed out inside. I tried to breath in the fresh air, the smell of the corn and the red clay, but there was nothing sustaining in it. I remained an empty vessel.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember something good.
It wasn’t too difficult. In my front yard, near the ridge, Mary and I had once shared a bottle of wine and danced to the music of the wind chimes she’d hung around the house, both of us deliriously drunk. Later, we’d made love against and on top of Granny’s ancient cast iron table, oblivious to the way the iron latticework gripped and twisted our bare skin. We ended up in a heap on the grass and fell asleep. Sometime later I awoke in the cooling dark of that summer night and looked over at her sleeping, her face content and bathed in the light of a rising half moon. Crickets and cicadas and other summer sounds throbbed in the night. It was a moment of profound contentment that I had not experienced before, and I realized that in many ways, I had held on to that moment, carrying it with me. But now, even that was gone, like a lost coin that had fallen out of my pocket somewher
e along the way.
I hadn’t realized just how much I’d needed her. Now I did. It was like hunger, like slow starvation, but worse.
I sat down and buried my face in my hands. I didn’t look up again for a long time.
* * *
When I did get moving, dusk was fast approaching, and a partial moon loomed high above the fields, surrounded by stars as far as the eye could see.
I walked through the corn for a long time, moving in the direction I imagined Johnny and Mary would have taken. It was ridiculously easy to become disoriented and confused, but I kept at it, plunging through the places where the stalks grew so closely together that they formed wall-like barriers. At some point, I heard a train coming from up ahead on my right, and that helped me get my bearings. A half hour after that, I emerged from the corn and into the woods. They looked vaguely familiar, and I thought I must be getting close to the spot where we’d found Johnny. I kept walking until I reached the train tracks. I stepped onto the tracks and turned left.
I walked long enough to see the Blackclaw River and the lights glittering on the other side. It looked like a small community over there, possibly a trailer park. I picked up my pace, deciding suddenly to cross the river and see if I could find anyone in the community who might know something.
I’d gone no more than a few hundred yards when I realized I was living my dream. The black water of the dream was the Blackclaw River. The train trestle was right in front of me now. I slowed as I neared it.
Something was on the trestle. I stopped, squinting into the dusk. A girl sat halfway across the long trestle, her legs dangling lazily off the side.
She turned and saw me. I stepped forward, holding up a hand in greeting. She lifted her hand in return, and I took that as implicit permission to continue out onto the trestle.
By the time I reached the halfway point, where she sat, I had no doubt that this was the setting of my dream. I moved carefully, aware that a misstep could result in a fall that would make the dream come true.
“Hello,” I called.
The girl said nothing, watching me draw near. The moon above the river washed everything in a pale gold, and I wondered briefly if this wasn’t just a different version of the same dream, and all of this would be only half-remembered later in my waking hours.
