Close to the Broken Hearted

by Michael Hiebert

“You know anythin’ ’bout this?” she asked him straight out.

  “Your pa was a good man, Leah,” he said flatly. He moved his chair back slightly from his desk, pushing himself away from her in the process, she noticed.

  “My question was one with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, Ethan. I gotta know if my pa lied to me the entire four years before he died.”

  Ethan held up his hand. “You’re startin’ to get all riled up. Don’t. And ’fore I answer your question—and I will answer it, I promise—I want to discuss your interpretation of the word lying. You have already convicted Billy of lying to you when really all he did was avoid tellin’ you somethin’. Those are two different things.” He pointed a thick forefinger at her.

  “Ethan, come on. Failure to disclose is lyin’. You know that better than anyone, probably more so, to use your words right back at you.” She was getting upset now. “Don’t you read any of these law books you have on these shelves? If Billy didn’t tell me ’bout his sister after five years of marriage, he lied to me. I don’t care what you say. And if my pa was carryin’ on a relationship with Billy’s folks knowin’ damn well I didn’t know they even existed or anythin’ ’bout ’em then he lied to me, too. And if you’re gonna try to defend that position in any way then you’re a goddamn liar yourself!” Her hands were trembling as she lifted her mug to her lips and finished her own coffee. It wasn’t nearly so hot anymore.

  Both Ethan’s palms came up now. “Whoa, Leah, slow down. Seriously. Relax.”

  “Answer the question, Ethan!” she said, nearly shouting. Her mug swung down at her side. There was no question Chris sitting at his desk in the room outside the office could hear her yelling.

  “Okay, okay,” Ethan said. “Yes, your pa knew Billy’s folks. He did meet them at Billy’s funeral.” He went back to sliding his mug from one hand to the other across the top of his desk.

  “And you knew this, too? And you didn’t tell me either?”

  “Go ahead. Call me a liar. Might as well. Everyone’s a liar. There’s a reason you weren’t told, Leah.”

  “Oh, yeah? And what’s that?”

  “Because,” Ethan said. “Because you had enough on your plate with Billy’s death. You had two kids to look after and you was refusin’ to let anyone help you. You was still reeling from the Ruby Mae case, which nearly cost you your sanity. The last thing we all thought you needed was to have Billy’s folks pop into your life.”

  Once again, he raised his forearm and pointed at her.

  “Within a week of him dyin’,” he said, “you took every picture of Billy down from the walls of your house. You basically packed your memories of him away. You didn’t want anythin’ to do with him no more. We was worried havin’ his folks in your life would push you too far. As it was, we were all worried you was close to the edge.” He picked up his mug and set it down hard on his desk with a thump. “And that’s the God’s honest truth.”

  Leah fell silent. Had she been that crazy after Billy’s death? It was true, every photograph of him had been taken down and put away. To this day, she still hadn’t looked at any of them. They were all in her closet. Her wedding ring came off the day after the funeral and was still in the shoe box with all the pictures Abe found. Every present and little gift Billy had ever given her she had taken out of sight and tucked away inside her closet. Some things she even threw away.

  “Oh my God,” she said quietly. “You’re right. I packed Billy right up and tossed him out of my life the moment he died.”

  Ethan nodded. “Only you didn’t really. You’ve never let him go inside of you. You’ve never gotten over his death. Part of you even hates him for what you think he did: You think he purposely left you to raise two young children on your own.”

  Her hand came to her mouth. “I’m . . . I’m an awful person. No wonder his folks didn’t want to meet me.”

  “Oh, they wanted to meet you. They wanted to be part of your life so bad they was crazy ’bout it. They offered to support you and the kids. They wanted to be real grandparents to Abe and Carry, but Joe knew that couldn’t happen, so he made them a deal and told them they had to settle for letters and photos that he’d send them on a regular basis.”

  “Apparently, he took Abe to visit them once.”

  “Is that so? Joe never told me about that. Good on him, I reckon. Does Abe remember?”

  Leah shook her head. “No. He was too young.”

  “But at least they got to meet their grandson. What about Carry?”

  “They only know her from pictures.”

  Putting his hands behind his head, Ethan interlaced his fingers and leaned back in his chair. It made another loud creak. “So I guess you got a decision to make.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Whether or not you try to make up for some lost time now and let these fine folks get a chance to play Grandma and Grandpa after all these years.”

  “I don’t think I have much choice in the matter.”

  “Oh, it’s entirely your choice.”

  Leah smiled. “You have met my son, right? He has his heart set on meeting them. When Abe sets his heart on somethin’, it usually happens, one way or ’nother.”

  “Yes, I’ve had some experience with that myself,” Ethan said. “I know his momma. Anyway, if it’s any consolation, I think it’s the right decision. As long as you can handle it.”

  Leah looked down at the floor. “ ’Bout time I stopped runnin’ away from ghosts.”

  “I think you’ll find they ain’t so much ghosts as imaginary monsters that are hauntin’ you,” Ethan said.

  “Same thing.”

  “Not really.”

  Leah started to get up out of her chair. “Sorry for yellin’ at you.”

  “It’s okay,” Ethan said. “Wouldn’t feel like work if you didn’t yell at me from time to time. But don’t go so fast. Sit down for another minute or two.” Pushing his mug out of the way, he pulled a file folder from a stack of papers he had on the top of his desk while Leah settled back into her chair.

  Opening the folder, Ethan pulled out a few pages that were stapled together and flipped through them. “Am I to understand you asked for an autopsy for a cat last week?”

  Oh Christ, Leah thought. Here we go. Now I’m gonna get in trouble for wasting the department’s resources. “Yeah, I did, but I can explain. It was because Miss Sylvie was so—”

  Ethan held up his palm again and Leah went quiet. “I’m not askin’ you to explain. I just wanted to tell you the results are in. Thought you might like to know what caused the demise of your little kitty.”

  Leah tried not to look too surprised at this response. “Okay,” she said. “What was it?”

  “Well, first off let me read the note Norman attached to the front of his results here. It says, ‘Thank you for giving me something other than heart attack victims to work on. This was quite refreshing.’ ” Ethan looked up at Leah. “I think that man needs to get out more.”

  Leah laughed.

  Ethan flipped to the next page. “There was no physical signs of death, as you and Chris discerned at the crime scene, so our Mr. Crabtree did a pump of the animal’s stomach as well as a toxicology analysis. It turns out your cat ingested common off-the-shelf brodifacoum. In other words, rat poison. What’s surprising is the amount of poison Norm found in the animal’s system. According to our coroner, there was enough to kill an elephant, or so it says here, although I reckon he may be exaggeratin’ a mite.” Ethan looked back up. “Norm figures there should be evidence of the cat bein’ sick around the area. Find anythin’ like that?”

  Leah shook her head. “We searched the property pretty well, too.”

  “Any idea where that cat would find that amount of poison around Miss Sylvie’s house? He couldn’t have gone too far after consumin’ it. Norm figures thirty minutes to an hour at most before he’d be dead. Probably sooner.”

  Again Leah shook her head. All she could think of was how dangerous it would
be for the baby to have rat poison lying around. She hoped Sylvie wasn’t that stupid. As far as Leah knew, Sylvie didn’t have a rat problem, so why would she have brodifacoum lying around?

  “Something about this is ringin’ familiar to me,” Leah said.

  Ethan leaned forward and started playing with his mug again. “What’s that?”

  “Remember when Sylvie’s ma was found in the barn?”

  “Yeah, you investigated her death. Ruled it accidental.”

  “I did. With the help of some experts out of Mobile. It wasn’t just my call.”

  “Right. What’s your point?”

  “She died from ingestin’ brodifacoum, too,” Leah said.

  Ethan hesitated. “You’re sayin’ you reckon this cat’s death and the death of Miss Sylvie’s ma seven years ago are linked? Please tell me that’s not what you’re thinkin’, because that’s crazy talk. Besides, we caught the person behind Mrs. Carson’s death. I should say you caught him. James Richard Cobbler. Crazier than a shit-house rat, that one. And I know he’s gone. I watched him die. Up at Holman, in Atmore.”

  Leah remembered the look in Cobbler’s eyes the last time she saw him on death row before his execution and shivered. That man had no emotion, just a cold, icy stare that pricked the bottom of her backbone and caused an electric shock to wind its way up. “I’m just sayin’,” she said, “the whole thing has a familiar ring to it. Coincidence is all.” Leah found herself lost in thought for a moment.

  Ethan narrowed his eyes at her. “Coincidence is all. And don’t you forget that. Do not try to link the death of a cat with the murder of someone seven years ago by one of Eli Brown’s radical congregation members and turn them both into open murder cases. You’ll have this entire department laughed out of town.”

  “What do I look like to you, Ethan?”

  “It’s not what you look like that’s got me concerned,” he said. “It’s the way your mind works that I’m worried ’bout.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The weird coincidence of Sylvie’s cat dying from ingesting rat poison and Sylvie’s ma going the same way settled itself into Leah’s mind in a manner that wouldn’t let itself go as Leah got into her car and headed for home. Only Police Chief Montgomery didn’t have to worry, she wasn’t thinking the cases were linked, but she did start thinking back about the investigation all them years ago when Sylvie’s ma died. The court had decided James Richard Cobbler acted on his own volition and Eli Brown had no link to Mrs. Carson’s murder. But what if that wasn’t true? What if Preacher Eli’s role in his land dispute hadn’t ended with him going to jail? Everyone just assumed that had put an end to the whole contentious situation, but what if he kept connections with people on the outside and the whole thing had kept going? How much did the police and the courts really know about the land dispute, anyway?

  Back when Eli Brown shot little Caleb, Leah’s pa, Joe Fowler, had still been on the Alvin police force and he had been the lead on the case. Leah hadn’t ever looked over her pa’s files, so she didn’t really know much about it other than what had been in the news since and local gossip. She had been the investigator for the death of both of Sylvie’s parents ten years later, so she knew all about those cases, but she’d never pushed the idea that the murder of Sylvie’s ma might be linked to the earlier case her pa had handled involving Preacher Eli.

  Now she couldn’t help but wonder if it was.

  So it turned out Ethan Montgomery did know Leah all too well. Her mind liked to make connections, only it wasn’t the cat he had to worry about, but the digging up of old bones from the far-flung past. That’s where Leah’s brain was making links.

  She decided it was time to review the old case files her pa had worked on and maybe pay a visit to the records office that was part of the Alvin Courthouse. Between the two of them, she might be able to come up with something pointing its way toward Sylvie Carson maybe not being quite so crazy after all. Because, like it or not, part of Leah was starting to believe the girl’s calls weren’t all false alarms. There were just too many things going on. Sure, some—probably even most—of her calls into the station were just cases of shadow jumping, but something in Leah’s gut told her not to write Sylvie off as fast as everyone else had. Like she’d told herself a hundred times before, her daddy and Ethan had drilled it into Leah’s head that she should listen to her gut. It was her biggest asset. And if she was perfectly honest with herself, she actually wasn’t that comfortable calling the death of Snowflake accidental. It just seemed so odd that the cat would show up poisoned after all this time when she’d been going in and out of that house since the day Sylvie brought her home. And Ethan had raised a perfectly good question to which Leah didn’t have an answer: Where did that cat find so much rat poison, anyway?

  One thing being a detective had taught Leah was to not like unanswered questions. They never sat well in her stomach or any other part of her, for that matter.

  Checking the clock on her dash, she realized she wouldn’t be able to go to the records office until tomorrow. They likely closed at five and it was already half past. She would try to drop by work first thing in the morning even though she wasn’t supposed to be on duty tomorrow. After looking through her daddy’s old files about Preacher Eli and the Carson family (which she figured would make for some pretty interesting reading), she’d head on over to the courthouse and pay a visit to the records office.

  But tonight she was going straight home for a nice relaxing bubble bath.

  Or so she thought.

  All too often, such thoughts turn out to be too good to be true. This turned out to be one of those times because, right at that instant, she got a call on her radio from the station. It was Chris telling her Miss Sylvie had just called in again with another disturbance. This time, he said, she’d seemed almost as frantic on the phone as she had when she’d found her cat lying dead on her back porch.

  “What was she callin’ ’bout now?” Leah asked.

  “Hell if I know,” Chris said uselessly. “She was so upset, I could barely understand a word that girl was sayin’. I finally just told her you’d be by as soon as you could get there.”

  Leah ground her teeth. She hated the fact that she’d become part of the protocol when it came to handling Sylvie. It pissed her off that nobody else would pick up the ball. She even found herself somewhat hoping it did turn out that her calls weren’t completely benign just so everyone else would feel stupid. But that was a horrible way of thinking. She really didn’t want it to turn out that Sylvie was in any actual danger.

  “She said somethin’ ’bout some door bein’ open or somethin’, I reckon,” Chris said, after much prodding. “I’m not sure what door, or why it was open.”

  “You do know I was on my way home for the night, right?” Leah asked him. “I was off duty a half hour ago.”

  There was a long pause, then Chris said, “So you’re not gonna show up?”

  She wondered if Chris would go if she didn’t. If he did, he wouldn’t take anything Sylvie said seriously, so there’d be no point in him being there. He’d be as useless as udders on a Brahman bull. “No, Chris, I’ll go. My kids can go hungry a little while longer. They’re pretty well getting used to it.”

  This was a little white lie. Leah had started getting the kids to make their own meals on her workdays almost a year ago. She just figured that was fair. The last thing she ever felt like doing when she got home was cooking. On the odd day, she would break the rule by taking them out for a burger or something when she got home, but, for the most part, on workdays it was everyone for themselves. The rule hadn’t worked out quite so bad, other than the fact that Abe seemed to eat a lot more macaroni and cheese than was probably healthy for a twelve-year-old boy to consume.

  Leah could almost hear Chris sigh with relief on the other end of the phone. It just annoyed her. For the past month, there’d been really nothing else crime-wise going on in Alvin except Sylvie Carson’s calls, and so he’d just sa
t behind his desk doing nothing while she worked unpaid overtime covering for his inability to be sympathetic.

  “Okay, that’s great,” he said. “I appreciate ya doin’ that. Montgomery said you would.”

  Oh, Leah thought. That figures. He probably thinks I want to go investigate more of the cat murder scene, too. “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Y’all better get me somethin’ nice at the office Christmas party this year.”

  “We always do, don’t we?”

  “Chris, last year you got me nothin’ and Ethan gave me a bottle of eight-dollar wine. I know hobos who drink better than that.”

  “Oh. Well, we’ll try to do better this year.”

  “You got five months to think ’bout it.”

  “So, you’re goin’ to Miss Sylvie’s now?”

  “Yes, Chris,” Leah said. “I’ve already turned my car round and I’m headin’ back up Main Street. I’ll be passin’ the shop in ’bout two minutes. If she calls back, tell her I’ll be there in less than ten.”

  “You’re the best.”

  “I know it.”

  She hung up her radio, not bothering with the siren. She’d get to Sylvie’s quick enough following traffic. Main Street cut an angle to Old Mill Road, making it less than a couple miles to her place.

  On either side of Leah’s vehicle, the shops along Main Street went by. Some were closing up for the night; others, like the restaurants, were just getting ready for the dinner crowd. Not that anything ever got that crowded in Alvin. Except maybe church.

  She’d already gone back past the station. Now she came to a stop behind a Honda that was trying to parallel park in front of PJ Party Pizza. Outside her window were the two most popular stores with local farmers, Superfeed and K’s Bait & Tack—both of which were owned by rancher Jacob Tyne. Superfeed was already closed and Pete was taking the sign for K’s in from the sidewalk, so it was shutting its doors for the night, too. A broad sassafras tree stood between them, its canopy of gray-green leaves extended from thick brown boughs that touched the sides of either building.