The whole town was buzzing over the previous day’s events. Everyone was talking about the bank robbery and subsequent shootout, or the death of Missy Thomas.
Or both.
Judge Croft rubbed a hand across his bearded face. “Tracked down three bank robbers all on his own, shot it out with them and left all three of ‘em layin’ dead over in Weaver’s Creek. And, took a bullet in the chest himself, and still come out of it smelling like a rose.” He shook his head in apparent disbelief. “Who would’ve thought that big lunk had it in him? You?”
“Hell no,” Levay said, laughing. “Not in a million years. That’s why we made him sheriff in the first place.”
“Doesn’t that bother you none?” Croft asked him. “Hell, you usually worry about everything. What if he stumbles onto our little deal here? Somebody’s child didn’t come home last night, you know.”
“No way in hell is he going to figure this out. How could he?”
“Yeah, that’s what them boys over in Weaver’s Creek thought. Now look at ‘em.”
“At least Fraley got his money back.”
Croft nodded. “Thank God for that,” he said, smiling and settling back into his chair, staring across his desk at the mayor… “You’re not worried at all?”
“Before last night I would’ve been. But after all that shit down in the basement…” Levay paused for a moment. “The hell could he do if he did find out? Pitch would crush him like a bug.”
“Humph,” Croft said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Judge, it never would have occurred to me that I could be involved with something like this. I can’t believe what we did last—”
“I don’t think we should talk about that.”
“Did you feel something in there with us? Did you see how—”
“Stop it.”
“—Jack Colbert’s head exploded, and the fucking blood and brains—”
“Goddamn it!” Croft pounded the desk. “Shut the fuck up about that shit. I was there. I saw it. I saw everything.”
“I’m sorry… I… I just need to talk it out with someone.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that along to Pitch.”
“Wha… what?” Levay’s face went pale as he slumped back in his chair, and Croft smirked at the ashen-faced mayor. “Now that I have your undivided attention… the sheriff, where is he?”
“Earl called me about eight o’clock this morning. Told me they’d been up all night. Said he sent Alvie Ross home to get some rest and he was going to bed, too.”
“June Hodges has called me twice this morning. Her youngest didn’t come home last night. She’s been calling the police station all morning. She wants to know why the hell our sheriff isn’t out looking for her little boy.”
“Jesus,” Levay said, sighing, raising a hand to his forehead to massage his temples.
“Oh, now you’re worried.”
“Should I wake him up?”
“No, Teddy, let him sleep. We want our sheriff to be well rested and on top of his game when another of those little bastards turns up missing tonight… Wake up Earl and get him out to Butcher’s Holler. And make sure he takes Alvie Ross with him.”
Levay leaned forward to grab the telephone on the corner of the desk, and Croft shook his head in disgust.
“Fucking moron,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Pitch crossed the crushed gravel parking lot on his way to the Whitley Baptist Church of God. He had been looking forward to this all night, and was damned interested in getting a look at the man who had gotten the townsfolk all riled up, the preacher who seemed to have Teddy Levay quaking in his boots.
He stood for a moment, closed his eyes and saw hicks and hillbillies and all the phony pricks of Teddy Levay’s ilk lined up in front of the old country church. He could almost hear the bells tolling, calling the congregation to worship Him.
Pitch opened his eyes and grinned.
Him.
That’s why he had looked forward to this.
Him.
He looked up at the belfry, at the sunlight gleaming off the bell’s brass casing, the rope trailing down from the center of it. Pitch imagined the good reverend swinging from that rope, his tongue hanging out like a swollen black tie, his red face bloated as his feet kicked and banged against the belfry; the bell pealing out its dulcet tones while the stunned flock looked on in horror. And He, looking down from His mansion in the sky. What would He do when Pitch stood before Him and his ecclesiastic puppet? Would He reach His almighty arm down from the clouds and intervene, send a heavenly band of angels to stop him?
Pitch could hardly wait to see.
He made his way up the concrete walkway, past a sign calling worshippers to Sunday services. Stepping onto the porch, he turned to see Hastie sitting in the car, his arm hanging out the open window, a cigarette pinched between his index and middle finger. Ribbons of smoke spiraled into the air as Pitch’s chauffeur stared out at the roadway, and Pitch walked across the porch, to the front door. When he touched the doorknob, a fluttering in his chest caused him to flinch. He hadn’t been inside a church since he was a kid, not since leaving his family to seek out his fortune in the gambling halls of the Virginia delta. He wondered if the ceiling would fall in on him, or if He would send down a bolt of lightning to strike him dead. Pitch turned the doorknob, thinking, let’s find out.
He opened the heavy oak door and entered a small lobby. Ahead stood double doors—leading to the sanctuary, Pitch assumed. His newly-polished leather shoes thudded across the wooden floor as he made his way across it. Pushing the doors open revealed that he was right. Two rows of empty pews lined the large room. The aisle he stood in led down to a stage where a large man towered over a pulpit, head bent forward as he hummed Bringing in the Sheaves. The man looked up, apparently surprised, and maybe a little uneasy to see a stranger in the building so early on a Wednesday morning.
“Good morning, sir,” Carlton Stone said, his baritone voice filling the quiet sanctuary as he smiled down at Pitch. Sunlight streamed through a decorative cut-glass window depicting Jesus standing amongst a flock of sheep, arms held out, palms up as if trying to gather the animals unto him. Bathed in a rosy-red hue, Pitch raised his hand until a beam of pure, white light that seemed to be coming out of Christ’s mouth sparkled on a huge diamond set into the ring on Pitch’s finger. Like a bored school kid causing mischief, he maneuvered his hand and twisted the ring, reflecting the beam of light onto the preacher’s chest.
Reverend Stone frowned, his forehead wrinkling, his eyebrows bunching together.
“Can I help you?”
Pitch raised his hand higher and the beam found Carlton Stone’s eyes, drawing a squint from the preacher, who tilted his head sideways and said, “What are you doing?”
“Can a rich man get into heaven?”
“What?”
“Can a rich man get into heaven?” Pitch lowered his hand. “What’dya say? Can he?”
“What in tarnation are you talking about?”
“Because I’m rich.” Pitch brought both hands up to his shoulders, brushing them down his neatly pressed jacket, as if to say ‘See? Look at me in my fine clothes’. “Hell, I own most of this town.”
Reverend Stone narrowed his eyes. “Watch your mouth, Mister.” He pointed his finger at the ceiling. “You’re standing in His house.”
“Oh, yeah.” Pitch smiled. “Him.”
“Oh, that’s funny to you?”
“Can a rich man get into heaven?”
Carlton Stone spread his arms, raising his hands skyward. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, so sayeth the Lord.”
“C’mon, Reverend. If I fork over a pile of cash as tall as you, will you get me in?”
“What!”
“That’s a lotta money there, Reverend.”
“You have no money.”
“My ass!” Pitch crowed, enjoy
ing the consternated look on the red-faced minister’s mug.
The reverend clenched his fist and shook it in the air, and then busted out into a full-fledged sermon: “Everything belongs to the Lord! The trees, the lake and the bubbling brook! All His! The Lord sayeth the silver is mine!” Carlton Stone stretched mine into two syllables, until it came out sounding like my-eene, and then danced across the stage, much like Pitch himself had done last night, shaking his fist and pointing his finger toward the heavens.
“Bullshee-yit,” Pitch said, gleefully mimicking the prancing preacher, who kept right on sermonizing:
“The gold is my-eene! The cows and the sheep, the earth and everything thereof, are the Lord’sa; everything in it is hee-isss!”
“I’ll be goddamn!”
“Fall down on your knees to Hee-yum, you blasphemous heathen, and beg the Lord’s merciful forgiveness!” Carlton Stone, sweat running down his face, made his way back to the pulpit, and pounded his huge fist against it. “Money is not eeevil! Love of money is evil! Lusting after it will send you straight to Hell! Listen to me, rich man. Weep and wail, because misery is upon you! Your wealth will rot, your health will falter!” Reverend Stone pointed an accusatory finger at Pitch. “Your gold and silver will slip away! Your evil deeds will testify against you, burning through your flesh like wildfires through dry fields! You have hoarded your wealth far too long. The wages you failed to pay your workmen cry out against you!”
“Fuck you, Jagoff,” Pitch taunted. “I pay my bills.”
“Repent heathen, or He will strike you down!”
“Ask Teddy,” Pitch cackled. “He’ll tell you!”
“Sell everything you have and give it to the poor!”
“Yeah, right!”
The reverend pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and dabbed it to his forehead. “The camel cannot pass through the eye of the needle. No man can get you into the Kingdom of Heaven. But Jesus can. He can take you through those pearly gates.”
Pitch stared at Carlton Stone as if the preacher had lost his mind. Then he sharpened his stare, and his cold blue eyes bore into the wildly gesticulating preacher.
The reverend looked deep into Pitch’s eyes, his voice lowered, his words coming out as if he were pleading, “Repent. Fall on your knees. Turn your life over to Him. Let Him take your sins. Come to God… come to God. All sins are washed away by the blood of the lamb. Give yourself to Him.”
Pitch held his arms out, like Jesus in the stained-glass window, palms out, beckoning the flock to him. Staring up at Carlton Stone, he felt his mind reach out and grab hold, could almost see ghostly arms stretching across the room, long hands spreading over the good reverend’s forehead, their sharp, skeletal fingers drilling deep into his skull, until the reverend’s eyes glazed over and his voice lowered even further, and his words turned into a barely audible mumble: “C… come to H… Him… Come to… Chri… Christ.”
Pitch, concentrating now, focusing all his energy on the preacher, wondered what it must be like to have someone take control of your mind, your very being, as Carlton Stone stopped speaking entirely, and Pitch knew he had him.
“Raise your right arm in the air.”
Reverend Stone looked around the room, and then up at the ceiling, as if he didn’t know where the voice was coming from.
Pitch smiled and repeated his command, and the reverend’s arm rose, slowly, until it pointed toward the ceiling.
“Hoot like an owl.”
“Hooot hooot!”
“Again.”
“Hooot! Hooot!”
Pitch grinned. “Scratch your ass,” he said.
His hand darting behind him, Reverend Stone scratched his ass.
Pitch, struggling to keep from laughing, said, “Look up at the ceiling and repeat after me.” He paused for a moment, and then said, “Fuck you, God.”
Reverend Carlton Stone, right arm held above his head, his left hand scratching his ass, cast his eyes to the heavens, and said, “Fuck you, God.”
“Well, Pitch said. “Now that I have your undivided attention, listen very carefully to what I have to say.”
Chapter Thirty
Earl tossed and turned most of the time he had been in bed. When the telephone rang, he woke up feeling like he hadn’t been to sleep at all. And he wasn’t real happy about having to hunt down a kid who more than likely had sneaked off for an afternoon of playing hooky.
He didn’t want to wake up Alvie Ross, but the mayor had insisted Earl take him along. He told his deputy about June Hodges’ boy, and they headed off to the schoolhouse to make sure Jerry Hodges wasn’t there. For all they knew, he might have stayed out all night and gone to school this morning. Maybe his mother was assuming the worst. Worried mothers had a tendency to do that. But Jerry Hodges wasn’t in school today, and none of the kids they talked to had seen him.
Earl touched base with Vonda, and the two policemen made their way through town, out to State Road 21 on their way to Butcher’s Holler. Downshifting as they crossed the wooden bridge into the Holler, Earl said, “What’dya think, Alvie Ross?”
“Ain’t no tellin’. Could’ve stayed out all night and played hooky. Might be on the mountain with some of his buddies. They do that all the time around here. Hell, he could be down by the river, skippin’ stones or fishin’. Who knows?”
They pulled onto a hard-packed, rock-studded dirt road, passing look-a-like farms, shacks and shanties. When they came to a fork in the road, Alvie Ross motioned Earl to the right. They traveled a mile or so before turning into a driveway that led them to a ramshackle farmhouse framed against the mountainside.
“That’s June,” Alvie Ross said when a tired-looking woman stepped through the front door. Dressed in a dark, ankle-length dress, she stood on the porch, watching the two policemen get out of the car and make their way across the yard.
“June,” Alvie Ross said. “What’s all this about?”
“I told the judge,” June said. “Don’t none of you people talk to each other?” Hands on her hips, she narrowed her eyes at the two policemen. “I’ve been waitin’ all mornin’ for y’all to show up.”
“We’re real sorry about that,” Alvie Ross said. “Missy Thomas and her babies were murdered last night.”
June gasped. “My God,” she said.
“Earl and I have been out to her house trying to piece it all together.”
“Tell us what happened, Ma’am,” Earl said, as they reached the porch steps.
“My boy is missin’, Sheriff.” June crossed the porch and leaned against the banister. “He didn’t come home last night.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Yesterday, when he got home from school. About an hour before dark he went off to play and never came back.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“Down to Jimmy Clark’s house. When he didn’t come home for supper we went ahead and ate without him. I figured he got to playin’ and lost track of time. He does stuff like that. They all do. I sent one of the boys down a couple of hours later but Jerry wasn’t there. They said he left right after it got dark. Luke told me not to worry. After all, it ain’t the first time one of the boys took off and stayed out late. Luke left at eleven o’clock to work his shift. I stayed up for another hour, and went on to bed. When I looked in the boys’ room early this mornin’, Jerry’s bed was still made up.”
“Ma’am,” Earl said. “Are you sure your boy didn’t run off somewhere? Did y’all argue about something, or have a falling out?”
“He’s only twelve years old, Sheriff. He’s a good boy, and he ain’t never done nothin’ like this before.”
If I had a nickel for every time I heard that, Earl thought… “The Clark’s house, where is it?”
June started to speak but Alvie Ross cut her off. “I know where it is,” he said, then to June, “How about the other kids around here? Who else might he have gone to last night?”
June brushed a few st
rands of straight black hair away from where the wind had blown it her across face. “There’s kids all up and down this holler. The Joneses, Hopkins and Collins. Every house around here is full of kids. You know that, Alvie Ross.”
“I was hoping you might be able to give us a starting point, June, that’s all. Where’s Luke now?”
“Him and some of his mining buddies went lookin’ up the mountain.”
Earl glanced past the roof, at the trees dotting the landscape behind it, wondering if the boy might actually be out there. If he was he could be anywhere, lost in some old abandoned mine or lying dead in the middle of a clearing. Or he could be walking up that dirt road right now, smiling and wondering what all the commotion was about.
“What was he wearing?”
“Blue jeans, a T-shirt and a red jacket, and his Cincinnati Reds ball cap.”
“Well, don’t worry, Mrs. Hodges,” Earl said. “I’m sure he’ll turn up. In the meantime, Alvie Ross and I’ll go ‘round to your neighbors and see what they have to say.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Jason Thomas, giving Rita Mae Toler the fucking of her life, grunted and looked into the mirror. He loved seeing himself in action as their sweat-slicked bodies slapped rhythmically together, the makeup running down Rita Mae’s face and her expression as he rammed her from behind—pained but satisfied.
Missy still at the undertaker’s, and he’s doing this. He smiled. Fuck her, he thought. She brought it all on herself. It’s not like he didn’t warn her. He’d warned her, plenty. Mess with the bull, you get the horn, which was exactly what he was giving Rita Mae right now, one huge fucking horn.
Rita Mae shuddered, and buried her face in the quilt. She squeezed her legs together, pinched her nipples and tightened herself around him, swiveling her hips as she rocked back and forth.
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