by Terry Shames
This room puts the residents in a different light. Why were there children living here in what looks like a bordello? Another thought makes my skin crawl. Were the children here for sex? I wonder what Sutherland or the Rangers will make of that. I remember what Albert Lamond ranted, that no one would bother to investigate. Will Sutherland shrug off the whole episode as beneath his interest? I remember him off in the woods, retching. He may have had a personal reaction, but my gut tells me that doesn’t mean he’ll take the deaths here seriously.
Much of the living room is charred, and the rest is sooty and singed. I suspect the sofa and chairs were saggy and worn before they were damaged. The big console TV is old. It’s set in a corner with all the seating facing it. There’s a big hole in a burnt-out front window. I walk over gingerly, avoiding charred places in the floor that might give way, and look out to see a window air-conditioner that has fallen to the ground. I don’t know how I missed seeing that outside.
Some photos taped to one wall escaped the fire. Some are school pictures of young girls and one of a boy. There are also group photos, but taken from such a distance that it’s hard to see any faces. They are all black people. In one, everyone is dressed up like it’s a wedding or a Sunday church meeting. If it’s a funeral, everybody was glad the person died, because they’re all looking cheerful.
One picture was taken out front of this house with two youngsters standing in front of it, grinning. The house looked brand-new. How is it that it was built and I knew nothing of it? I think I know what goes on in town, but obviously I don’t know as much as I thought I did. I have a sudden desire to leave. I feel a little ashamed that these people came here under what was supposed to be my watch, and not only did I fail to protect them, I didn’t even know they existed.
Before I leave, I suck up my courage and peer into the front hallway. It’s a burnt-out shell. The bodies are gone, so there’s nothing to see, but that doesn’t keep my mind from manufacturing images of bodies heaped up near the door.
I hear voices outside and go back out the back door to find two young highway patrolmen I don’t recognize smoking cigarettes and drinking beer.
“Whoa!” one of them says. “I didn’t know anybody was inside. What’s it look like in there?”
I ignore the question since I get the feeling he’s looking for a thrill rather than for information. Instead, I introduce myself.
“I heard you were a kid,” the older of the two says. He’s tall and blond, with a blond mustache and ice-blue eyes. He can’t be more than a few years older than me.
“Must have been Sutherland told you that,” I say.
Both men laugh. “Yep. He’s an ass,” the other one says. He’s got red hair and freckles. “Don’t let him get to you. Everybody knows he likes to ride greenhorns.”
“You fellas spending the night?”
“Unfortunately.”
“You need anything?”
They tell me they don’t, that they’ll take turns napping in the car, and go for supplies as need be. They’ve clearly scouted out the liquor store.
Chapter 8
On my way home, I stop at Truly Bennett’s house, hoping to have a chat with him to find out what inspired his cold shoulder toward me, but no one answers the door. In fact, the whole neighborhood seems quiet after today’s excitement. I’ll come back and talk to him tomorrow.
As soon as I step into my house, I feel a chill that matches the weather. I call out, as always. Jeanne’s reply has frost around the edges.
I follow the sound of her voice to the spare room, where she has a sewing machine set up. I have no idea why she insists on sewing. She seems to hate it, and the only thing I’ve ever seen come of it are the kitchen curtains, and they hang crooked. Not that I’ve mentioned it. She’s bent over some unfortunate piece of cloth and doesn’t look up. I go over and slip my arm around her shoulders and bend over to kiss her, but she shakes me off. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.” I don’t hear that tone often. The question is, do I acknowledge it and ask what’s wrong, or do I pretend I didn’t notice and hope it goes away? I’d prefer to do the latter, but I suspect it will prolong the situation.
The silence persists, so I take a sideways approach. “What are you working on?”
She sighs and lets it fall to her lap. When she looks up, I see that her eyes are red-rimmed, which punches me in the gut. “What difference does it make? It’s going to turn out awful.”
“No, it won’t. But why don’t you put it down and come on in the living room? We can have something to drink.” I take the pitiful rag out of her hand and pull her up. Something has brought on this mood, and I think I know what it is.
“I’m going to build a fire in the fireplace and then have a beer. What can I get you?”
She waves her hand. “I don’t care. A beer, I guess.”
She hates beer. I don’t know why this mood comes as a surprise to me every month, but it does. For two years now we’ve been hoping to get pregnant, and naturally she’s more attuned to the failures than I am.
It isn’t really cold enough for a fire, but it will feel cozy, so I wad up some newspapers and tuck them under the log set up left from last winter. I set a match to it, and it whooshes to life. I sneak a look at Jeanne, who has come into the room and is gazing morosely into the fire. The burning newspaper reminds me of today’s fire. I get up and back away. In the kitchen I make her a gin and tonic, and pour myself a couple of fingers of bourbon. Being reminded of the fire, I need something stronger than beer.
When I bring in our drinks, she is sitting on the sofa in front of the fire and greets me with a determined smile. That’s the way she is. She may have disappointments, but she’s not one for wallowing. One of the first things that attracted me to her was her good cheer.
I hand the drink to Jeanne and sit down next to her, kiss her gently, and brush the hair back from her face. I feel her shrink away, but I know it’s not me she’s upset about. She feels like a failure in the one thing she wants so badly. She has big brown eyes, and I can hardly stand it when they are sad. She isn’t beautiful by magazine standards. Her face is round and her hair is a plain color of brown. But I love her impish smile and the way her eyes crinkle up at the corners when she laughs. I normally do what I can to make that happen. But now it’s best if I just sit with her.
I slump against the back of the sofa and can’t help letting out a weary sigh.
“Oh, I’m so selfish,” she says. “Here I am pouting and you’ve had a hard day.”
“All that falls away when I’m here with you. You know that.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes tear up.
“I should go down and take a look at my new toys before it gets too dark,” I say. “Why don’t you come with me?” I get up and reach my hand out to her.
“I went down there earlier. They were pining away for you,” she says, and smiles.
The phone rings. I groan.
“Don’t answer it,” she says.
“Got to,” I say. I get up and go into the hall to answer it.
It’s my brother, Horace. “I’m wondering if me and Donna can bring Tom by to stay with you for a while. Me and her have somebody we need to see in Bobtail.”
“Tonight? Why don’t you have him pack a bag and stay overnight.”
“That sounds like a good idea. I’ll see if he wants to.”
With everything on my mind this afternoon, I had forgotten Donna’s beating. She’s vain about her looks, and it surprises me that she’s going out of the house with her eye swollen shut and bruises on her face. But I’m glad they’re going. We love it when Tom comes over. He’s a bright little kid who deserves better than what my brother and his wife do for him—which seems to be the minimum. But they do love him, and that counts for a lot.
I go back into the living room. “Guess what? That was Horace. Tom’s coming to spend the night.”
“Really? I�
�d better get some supper on.” Jeanne jumps up with new light in her eyes.
I follow her into the kitchen. She opens the refrigerator and starts getting food out. “You think he’d rather have fried chicken or chicken-fried steak?” Her face is pink with happiness.
I know which one I’d rather have. “What do you think?”
“I know you’d rather have the steak,” she says. “But he loves fried chicken.”
“Then make that. I like it, too, especially the way you make it.”
“And some mashed potatoes and gravy and peas,” she says. She’s on high speed now.
“Something I need to tell you,” I say. “I saw Mamma today.”
She pauses and cocks her head. “Good for you.”
I tell her about Donna’s injuries.
“Oh, my goodness. Poor Tom.” She turns to face me, leaning back against the counter. “I bet he’s worried about his mamma. Did she say . . .” She hesitates. “Never mind.”
She turns back to the counter and spends a few minutes hacking the chicken into pieces. When she starts dredging them in the flour-and-egg mixture and has the oil heating up, she says, “You don’t suppose Horace did it, do you?”
“I’ve never known him to be violent toward a woman. I expect it was somebody passing through. She said she was hitchhiking and didn’t recognize the guy.”
She looks toward me and lifts an eyebrow but keeps whatever she’s thinking to herself. She doesn’t have much use for Horace. She thinks he’s lazy and uses any excuse to make people feel sorry for him. “Donna said she was hitchhiking? That doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t she call us if she needed a ride?”
I shrug. “What can I do to help you?”
She turns around and gives me a stink-eye. “Stay out of my way, that’s what.”
I tell her I’m going to go pay my new cows a visit. “Send Tom down when he gets here.”
I can’t help getting a silly grin on my face when I get to the pasture. The cows are huddled together, and they give me a suspicious look when I get to the fence. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I say. “You’ll get used to me pretty fast.”
I remember the snide comment Mamma made about me wanting to be a gentleman farmer. Suppose I do? Why is that so bad?
Before I can start brooding about it, I hear Tom hollering, “Uncle Samuel!” I turn to see him sprinting toward me. I run to greet him and grab him up and twirl him around. He’s breathless when I set him down, and he reels around like he’s dizzy for a minute. Then he charges over to the fence, grinning a mile wide at the new arrivals. “Them are some good-looking cows,” he says, confident in his opinion. “What kind are they? Are they boys or girls?”
“These are Herefords. White-faced. And these are all females. I’ll be having a bull delivered before long. He’s the male.”
“Can I watch them have sex?”
I bust out laughing. “What do you know about that?”
“I saw Cootie Barton’s dogs having sex. His mamma told us what they were doing. So can I?”
“We’ll see when the time comes. Is your daddy up at the house?”
“No, he let me off and went on. He said to tell you hi. Did you know Aunt Jeanne is making fried chicken? I love fried chicken.” He clutches his chest, squeezes his eyes shut, and wiggles.
“Let’s get on back to the house, then. If we’re not there when supper’s ready, she’ll throw it out.”
His eyes pop open. “She wouldn’t do that.”
“I don’t want to test her and find out. Come on, I’ll race you.”
Chapter 9
I’m up early the next morning, my first day as a gentleman farmer. Mamma meant the phrase as a jibe, but the idea is beginning to grow on me. As perky as Tom usually is, he isn’t a morning child, and I leave him to Jeanne to try to coax some breakfast into him while I go down to the pasture.
Truly Bennett told me to give the cows half feed this morning, since they’ll still be unsettled from their move. The cows all keep an eye on me, as if they’re not quite ready to trust me. Most of them crowd up to the feed station, but a couple of them hang back. I need to keep an eye on them to make sure they aren’t ailing. I thought I’d have trouble telling them apart, but already I see differences, everything from markings to the distribution of their weight to the way they look at me. And of course they aren’t all the same age. There are several settled breeders and a few yearlings and some calves.
The next order of business will be to get a bull, but Truly said the best thing to do is get the cows comfortable and then hire a bull after the first season. He knows a couple of ranchers who could use the breeding money and who have good breeders. He says not to rush it.
As soon as I drop Tom off at school, I head into work early. As tired as I was after the grim day yesterday, I still tossed and turned all night, chasing the images of those bodies and the stink of the fire from my senses. This morning Jeanne said if I kept that up, I was going to be banished to the sofa.
The cool spell is short-lived, as they tend to be this early in September, and by eight a.m., it’s already warm. By afternoon it’ll be back up in the eighties.
I’m glad no one else is in the office yet. I need to figure out a few things. I may not have much experience, and I may not have any standing in the investigation, but I don’t like being pushed aside in my own town. It’s up to someone else to investigate who did it, but I want to know who was living out there and why they were murdered.
It’s likely that if the THP is going to hold onto the case, Sutherland will be the lead investigator, and he made it clear that he’s not volunteering information. I could ask Curren Wills, but I’m leery of looking like a hanger-on, somebody who doesn’t have the guts to confront Sutherland. I could also call the county morgue in Bobtail and ask for the autopsy results.
The phone rings. It’s Mickey Wells, a chronic complainer, who wants to know why the town hasn’t cleared up the smoke from yesterday’s fire. I don’t know what he has in mind. Maybe setting up a big fan on one end of town and blowing it out the other end. I tell him I’ll take it up with the fire department.
I’ve barely hung up when Bonnie Bedichek calls. “Anything new?”
“Not anything concrete, but even if I did know something, I couldn’t tell you. You have to get official information through the THP.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I can’t be blabbing to the press.”
“It could be a two-way street.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I could give you information in return.”
“Bonnie, all due respect, I don’t think I can use your information since I’m not officially part of the investigation. You better save up anything you hear to feed to John Sutherland.”
She chuckles. “I’ve got nothing to say to that man. ‘Little lady,’ he calls me.”
I tell her I have work to do and I wish her well with her reporting and hang up with her still protesting.
The next call surprises me. It’s John Sutherland. “If you’re so all-fired anxious to be involved in the investigation of the murder in your territory, I have a lot going on and I may turn a little something over to you.”
I don’t give a damn if he’s up to something; all I care about is getting to be involved in the case. “What might that be?”
“I’m thinking you might want to be in on a couple of the autopsies. They’re doing some of them today, and the others tomorrow. It’s too late for you to get in on them today, but it occurred to me you could get up to Austin for the ones they’re doing tomorrow.” There’s a hint of a smirk in his voice. Finding out what I’m made of. The idea of viewing those burned and twisted bodies gives me a knot in my belly. But I have to prove to myself and to him that I can face whatever is necessary to get the job done.
“When and where?” I ask.
“That would be in Austin first thing tomorrow.”
“You have a phone contact?”
“I’ll be there.” If I’m going to be there first thing in the morning, I either have to leave at five a.m. or go up to Austin tonight. Maybe Jeanne would like to go to Austin for the day. But then I stop short. I’ve got a new responsibility: the cows. Although Jeanne reminded me that having cattle would tie us down, I didn’t take it seriously. Even if Jeanne stays home, I can’t very well ask her to feed the cattle. This is my responsibility.
But I have an even-greater responsibility as chief of police. Then it strikes me that I can kill not two but three birds with one stone. I’ll ask Truly Bennett if he’ll take care of the cows, which gives me an excuse to go by and see him. When he knows why I’m going to Austin, he’ll let his people know that I’m making good on my vow to take the murders seriously.
I jump in the car and head for Truly’s place. It’s a modest house, probably no more than four or five rooms, though I’m guessing. I’ve never been inside. The only times I’ve been here is when I needed his help. He doesn’t have a phone, so I have to drive over here to hire him. He not only works with livestock but also does some repair work, and people say he’s good at painting.
I get out of the car feeling uneasy, remembering how curt Truly was yesterday. He has always been mild-mannered and easy-going, no kind of rabble-rouser, and I wonder what’s eating at him. I don’t think I said or did anything to offend him, but I’ll get a chance to find out.
His daddy, Ezekiel, answers the door. An older version of Truly, he’s wearing overhauls over a worn blue work shirt. He greets me gravely, looking me straight in the eye. No challenge there, but he appears to be watchful and maybe wary. “Mr. Craddock, everything okay with them cows?”
“Yes, but I need some help from Truly. Is he here?”
He screws up his face and looks past me, reaching up to scratch the side of his neck. “He’s gone out for a while.”
“You know when he might be back? I need to ask him to take care of my cattle tomorrow morning.”
He clears his throat. “When he gets back, I’ll ask him to come over to your place and talk to you.”
