Walking Woman (Gratis Book 2)

by Jackson, Jay

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2017

  A Kindle Scout selection

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  For Mom, Dad, Sherry, Karen, and Michael

  CONTENTS

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  32.

  33.

  34.

  35.

  36.

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  43.

  44.

  45.

  46.

  47.

  48.

  49.

  50.

  51.

  52.

  53.

  54.

  55.

  56.

  57.

  58.

  59.

  60.

  61.

  62.

  63.

  64.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE SERIES

  1.

  Claudia started every day the same way. Up at six, sharp, she renewed herself, scraped away the night’s betrayal, and put on a clean dress. It was always red or blue, and she always wore white stockings. Even in the heat of summer, she wore those stockings everywhere. She went through at least one pair every week.

  Claudia would then go to the kitchen and make breakfast. It was always bacon, scrambled eggs, and pancakes with syrup and butter. Before she ate she started cleaning the dishes, washing the batter from the mixing bowl before it had the chance to set.

  Finally, with breakfast ready and no hint of stress on her brow, she woke up her sister, Jewel. This task took longer than getting dressed and making breakfast combined.

  She would open her sister’s door, go to the window, and open the curtains. Claudia always made sure it was just when the morning light was fully bringing the world into focus. Jewel already had too much in her life that was fuzzy. She didn’t need the haze of dawn adding to her ongoing confusion.

  Opening the door removed the only barrier between Jewel’s snoring and the rest of the house. Some mornings, Claudia noticed the bedroom window shake as she pulled away the heavy gingham. Studying her sister, she would take a moment to look at her face, florid and full, making sure she wasn’t waking her from a bad dream. Claudia had done that before. It never went well.

  Satisfied that Jewel wasn’t in the midst of some night terror, Claudia would start a slow and gentle nudge. It was always the same speed—not too fast, just slow and consistent. Sometimes she prodded her sister for almost twenty minutes, never getting impatient, never changing her rhythm. If she did it right—which was almost all the time after all these years—Jewel’s eyes would slowly open. They were slits at first, still watching the last of her dreams fade away. Gradually they got wider, as Claudia came into view, bending over her bed with a slight smile. She’d also hum along to the Glen Campbell song jingling from the player in the living room. It was always a Glen Campbell song.

  Her Claudia over her, Jewel would smile at the face she loved the most. She then slung herself off the side of the bed and made her way to the kitchen table, ready to eat the waiting pancakes. They would’ve cooled by now, as had the rest of her meal, but that was the way she liked them.

  Hot was bad.

  Before her first bite, Jewel would tell her sister the same thing she told her every morning.

  “I’m glad you found it. I’m very glad you found it.”

  “So am I,” Claudia always replied.

  Breakfast over, Jewel would move to the back porch, enclosed in cracked and dirty glass. There she sat in her recliner, staring into the woods stretching to the Bird River three hundred yards away. Like her sister, she hummed along with Glen.

  Claudia would then make Jewel’s lunch, place it in the icebox, and leave through the front door. She’d put on her tennis shoes, kept on the front porch, and go to the little barn just to the left of the house. There she retrieved her baby carriage. It was a child’s toy, pink with faded blue trim, barely more than half the size of a real one. She always kept the hood down, as a mother would while strolling with her child on a bright day. Claudia had taken the original wheels off and replaced them with small, fat bicycle wheels she found at the flea market. She had also reinforced the body of the carriage with metal from her cousins’ scrap yard. If there was ever a toy baby carriage demolition derby, hers would surely win.

  Then, every day when the weather allowed, she walked.

  Gratis County, where she lived, didn’t have sidewalks on its country roads, and Claudia was miles from the county seat of Gratis. She would have to walk on the side, dodging ruts, mud, and the trash thrown out every day. It wasn’t easy, but that’s what she did.

  She walked from her home and then along the northern arc of the county. Every couple of days she made her way to Gratis, where it sat along the Bird. Her route was circuitous, following country roads as it did. She carefully planned how far she could go in order to be back home before dusk turned into night. Walking the roads was too dangerous at night—then she couldn’t see, couldn’t watch as she walked.

  If she couldn’t watch, there was no reason for her to walk.

  Once she finished her northern arc, she walked the southern route. This was easier, as much of it was swallowed by the Neck Swamp. She did have to be careful on the two bridges that spanned over the Bird. They were the only way to get to her southern route, so she had to take them. Claudia only traversed them during light traffic hours. Most motorists weren’t too kind to a person slowly pushing a toy baby carriage in the roadway.

  Claudia found that most folks weren’t too kind to her anyway, no matter where she was. When they drove by, the best she could hope for was indifference. Often, her hopes fell short. She was met with whatever foul words could be conjured up at sixty miles an hour.

  “Freak!”

  “Weirdo!”

  These were common, but usually not the unkindest words thrown her way as she walked. No matter the words, she just kept walking.

  Words didn’t matter, not for long. She had a job to do, a task appointed to her. Whatever the abuse, she could take it.

  Anyway, if she hummed Glen loud enough, she found that the mean words faded quickly. Some days, if the air was clear and still, you could hear her from nearly half a mile away.

  2.

  Delroy Jones didn’t stir this first Saturday of spring until his dog, T-Bone, licked his face for a full minute. He hadn’t slept much that night. Instead he drank at Daddy Jack’s until the owner, his friend Kero, carried him home
after the bar closed. He finally got into his own bed around two in the morning. T-Bone had to do his business around eight.

  “Okay, buddy, give me a second.”

  Delroy cracked open his eyes, looked around, and noticed that he had failed to take his contacts out again. He wasn’t really sure how he got home from Daddy Jack’s, but he was glad to find himself in his own bed. Lately, that wasn’t always the case.

  He got up and put on jeans and a T-shirt. T-Bone bounced down the stairs in front of him, eager to start the day. Delroy opened the back door to let the dog into the small, fenced backyard. T-Bone performed a couple of full pirouettes before racing into the weedy grass.

  Delroy stood there watching his dog, afraid to leave him alone—even there. He was so small.

  He and Amy had gone to a pet rescue and gotten the little dog when he was only four months old. Delroy wanted a big dog, but Amy fell in love with the tiny longhaired Chihuahua. As small as he was, the rescue people opined that the twitchy ball of fur would grow large for his breed, a “puppy-mill dog that might get to be nine pounds, or ten.” They brought him home that day, Delroy only agreeing on the condition they could at least give him a big-dog name. They settled on T-Bone. It matched the shape of the white blaze on the tiny puppy’s chest.

  Despite his best intentions, Delroy fell in love with T-Bone almost immediately. He bought him a studded black collar the day after they brought him home. If he was going to walk the smallest dog in Gratis, he would at least make sure there would be no pink or baby-blue collars.

  And for God’s sake, no little bandanas. I have to live in this town.

  Delroy stood there in the door, watching the little dog sniff under every bush and plant as if for the first time. T-Bone always looked amazed at every sprig of grass, every small bug. Delroy started to smile. His hangover sharpened as his lips curled upward.

  Then he remembered that Amy was gone.

  It was only a month ago, but it seemed more than that. Some days seemed to last forever, some longer. The worst part of her being gone was knowing he was to blame.

  She had told him she wanted to take a job with the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office in Atlanta. Hanging her own shingle after law school hadn’t prepared her for practicing law, and she felt lost. She needed some direction, a real-world education. A district attorney’s office was the best place to get that for a new attorney.

  Delroy got mad at her, accusing her of running away from him and what they had together. He was unreasonable. He knew it but couldn’t stop himself. The tighter he tried to hold her, the harder she pulled away.

  She left for Atlanta a week before the new position started, moving into a small one bedroom in Midtown. When he offered to help her move she refused him, telling him she couldn’t see him, “just now, anyway.” That was the last time they spoke.

  Four weeks going on four years, it seemed. As hard as it was to lose his first wife, this was harder. He’d caused this loss.

  After twenty minutes of exploring every inch of the yard, T-Bone found a spot in the new-morning sun and lay down. The little dog stretched and closed his eyes. Delroy hurried to his front door. There, he grabbed the Gratis Proclaimer from where it had landed that morning. He then went to the kitchen, poured a Coke into a coffee mug, and went outside to join his dog.

  Unfolding the Proclaimer, Delroy read the bottom of the front page. That’s where Johnnie Lee’s column, “Lee’s Little Secrets,” resided. The column landed there last summer, after the murder of several local women.

  Johnnie had written that Newt MacElroy, the main suspect in the case, was innocent. This affirmation flew in the face of all the evidence. She assured her readers that her sense of justice compelled her to stand up for the wrongly accused man. The truth was that Johnnie’s only sense was for self-preservation. She had already written herself into a corner regarding the whole matter, and got lucky when the real killer was caught. Johnnie was smart enough to parlay that luck into a front-page column.

  On this morning, Delroy winced as he read her column. “Seems that one of our most prominent esquires has been seen keeping late nights at a local tavern. I wonder if it’s because his lovely friend has left town and he now has too much time on his hands. It seems that he’s done this dance before, with another partner.” She was, of course, referring to his ex-wife.

  Some folks don’t stab you in the back. They make you watch while they stab you in the eye.

  Delroy didn’t mind so much that she wrote about his breakup with Amy. This was Gratis. He was pretty sure most of the town knew before it even happened. That was just the nature of this place. You needed to have something to gossip about. Besides, Johnnie Lee wrote about everyone’s problems. Delroy wasn’t alone.

  He did mind, however, the bit about his late nights at Daddy Jack’s. No one trusts a drunk attorney. It’s not a smart thing to do.

  But not as dumb as being drunk in front of these people I need.

  He took another sip of his Coke while watching T-Bone loll in the morning sun. The dog rolled over on his side, scratching at the ground in front of him, never opening his eyes.

  Lucky little dude.

  Delroy almost smiled, despite his hangover and the accusing paper in his lap. He went inside, freshened up his Coke with a healthy splash of Jack Daniel’s, and came back to sit beside his dog.

  Closing his eyes, he turned his face to the sun. It was warm, and he tried not to think.

  3.

  Mister Brother never thought he would live by himself for so long. He came from a large family, with more cousins than he cared to claim. His dad, the last to arrive at every family get-together, always cursed upon arriving at them. Mister Brother’s five uncles would already be there, hogging all the shaded parking spots in his grandparents’ front drive.

  But here he was.

  His parents and baby brother died when he was only seventeen, killed in a wreck on I-16 by a truck driver with too little sleep. Losing his sister was worse. She overdosed on pills in her dorm room the first Thanksgiving after their parents’ death. Even his too-numerous cousins dwindled down to only a few, most moving off as they grew older. They needed to see what was on the other side of the Gratis county line.

  Mister Brother stayed. The world showed him more than he could handle at a very young age. Gratis was the only constant he knew. He threw himself into his parents’ business and it thrived. Within five years of their deaths, profits increased almost threefold.

  The last couple of years, though, things hadn’t been quite right. Despite his success, the hole ripped into him when his family died never healed. Instead it grew, metastasizing from his heart to his head.

  He wanted to fill it. Church, clubs, volunteering—he tried everything that brought him into contact with others. He even tried a dating service, wanting to start his own family. Women, unfortunately, were never drawn to him. It wasn’t that he was ugly, because he wasn’t. It was just that, one on one, he wasn’t really there. Mister Brother could feel it himself, the hard hollowness. There was nothing for him to give to anyone, and so eventually he believed there was nobody to receive it.

  One day, leaving work, he spied a client in the next room over. The client resembled his dad so much it startled him. He retreated to his office, closed the door, and cried for the first time since his sister’s funeral. The pain inside eased with the drop of every tear. He felt better, if only a little, and if only for a moment.

  Then the idea awoke in him, banging around in his hollow space.

  At first he tried to kill it, because it was just too wrong and too crazy. He may be lonely, but he knew the difference between right and wrong. His whole life he had done right, even as life insisted on doing him so wrong.

  The thing about hurting all the time, though, is that a person can justify anything that makes the hurt go away. He found this easier to do than expected. At first, the new idea repulsed him. He would physically turn his body around when the thought arose,
as if to turn his back on it. Finally, though, Mister Brother couldn’t escape his own mind, no matter how much he tried. As the idea continued to assault him, he got used to it. Soon it felt like the only natural and right thing he could do.

  He found that client and took him two days later. The client would stay with him, filling space in his too-empty house. Mister Brother knew that taking him was the right thing to do almost immediately. After work he talked to the client for hours, and soon started to call him “Dad.”

  The hole got a little smaller.

  The idea soon told him that he needed to put his family back together. If he waited and looked long enough, he would find those who looked like his mother, sister, and baby brother. All he had to do was wait and look. They would come, and soon they would do more than just look like his family.

  Soon, they would all be together again. The hollowness would be gone.

  4.

  The phone rang three times before Delroy’s eyes fluttered. He winced when he opened them, the noonday sun blinding him as he answered.

  “Umm, hello? This is Delroy Jones.” Clients often called him on his cell phone, and so he tried to sound professional, or at least coherent. With his head still aching, that was a hard thing to do.

  “Mr. D, a man is here. A devil-man is here again!”

  The voice on the line was Jewel Peters, one of his clients. She was Kero’s first cousin, so most of Delroy’s work for her was billed against his bar tabs at Daddy Jack’s. Kero got the worse end of that deal.

  “I said the devil-man is here again, and I know he wants me! He’s gonna kill me Mr. D, and then he’s gonna eat me up!”

  Delroy was trying to think clearly, fighting the hangover fogging his mind. Jewel was delicate, and obviously having an off day. He needed to answer in a way that wouldn’t agitate her any more.

  “Okay, Jewel, do this for me. I need you to look at that man. Can you tell me what he’s wearing?”

  “Well, a black suit, coal black, and a red tie around his neck. He’ll choke me with it!”

  “Okay, you’re doing good Jewel. Now tell me more. Is he wearing red shoes, too?” Delroy picked red, knowing it would be a rare shoe color for a man to wear with a suit. His mind was starting to swim its way out of the previous night’s rye whiskey soup.