Out Of The Deep I Cry

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  “Ho-ly Christ,” Lilly said.

  Renee stepped away from the car and swung the gun toward Debba, stiff armed, her movements jerky. “Where is my husband?” she said.

  Clare could see it better now, a big.38, the sort of gun people bought when they went into a store and said, “Gimme something with stopping power.” From the way she was holding it, Clare doubted Renee had ever done anything more with it than tell her husband to keep it locked up out of sight. She might not even have taken the safety off.

  Debba’s hands went up to waist height, as if she didn’t know if she was supposed to raise them or not. “I don’t know.”

  Renee took another step toward her. “You did something to him out there. I want to know what you did. I want to know where my husband is!” Her voice broke on the last word.

  Lilly, her boots planted in the mud and her arms whipcorded around Whitley, swayed back and forth, as if torn between going to her daughter or retreating with her granddaughter. Skylar ambled within arm’s reach, pebbles in hand, and his grandmother snagged him one-handed and drew him to her side.

  “Mrs. Rouse.” Clare was surprised at how calm she sounded, considering her heart was jackhammering in her chest and a tide of adrenaline was tripping every nerve ending she had.

  Renee twisted toward her, keeping the gun pointed in Debba’s direction. Clare could see her face now, pale white and blotchy red, her eyes swollen and stained with too much crying. Clare lifted her arms in the same welcoming gesture she used in church, unhurried, unthreatening. “I know your heart’s breaking right now,” she said, “but this isn’t right. Look around you. There are children here. Are you really going to shoot a mother in front of her children?”

  Renee looked at Whitley, who had stopped squirming on Lilly’s hip and was now clinging to her grandmother, whimpering. Then the doctor’s wife turned back to Debba. “If I have to,” she said, her voice flat.

  O-kay. That was the wrong question. How did she get involved in these things? She didn’t know anything about negotiations. “Let Lilly take the children into the house,” she said. “Then Debba and you and I can talk about this.”

  “No.” She waved the gun toward Debba. “You don’t think I’d do it. But I will. I want to know what you did with Allan!”

  “I didn’t do anything with him!” Debba shouted. Whitley started to cry, and Skylar, who had been staring at his mother, twisted out of his grandmother’s hold and pressed himself to the purple bus.

  Whang! The boy beat his hands against the bus. Whang! Whang! The hollow metallic sounds were like a whale assaulting a submarine.

  “What is that?” Renee said, her head swiveling between Skylar and Debba. “What’s he doing? What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s autistic, thanks to your husband!”

  If Clare had had a gun, she would have shot Debba herself. Renee swung the gun straight at Debba’s face. “I ought to shoot you right now, you witch!” Debba squawked and ducked, covering her head with her arms. Renee pivoted, and the gun was now pointed at Whitley. “Or maybe it should be her first!”

  Lilly cried out and turned, moving forward, one step, two, before the gun went off with a sound that filled up the valley like God’s handclap.

  “Stop right there!” Renee ordered.

  Clare clenched her teeth, forcing herself not to lunge forward. She realized the doctor’s wife had shot high. Lilly stood in the barnyard, trembling, holding Whitley to her front so that her body was between her granddaughter and the gun. The echo of the shot rolled off. Debba was sobbing now, still bent over, her son beating away the outside world; Whang! Whang! Whang!

  Clare considered the distance between herself and Mrs. Rouse. If she rushed fast enough and hard enough, she might be able to knock the older woman over even with a bullet in her. Then Debba could get the gun. If she could keep it together. If she even thought of it. Clare wasn’t afraid. She was glad she wasn’t afraid. Just worried that Debba wouldn’t understand what to do, and that she’d die for nothing.

  Hardball Wright stood behind her, draped his memory arms around her shoulders, and gave her a shake. There’s a better way. Misdirect. Feint. Delay. Reinforcements.

  And she saw it, the whole thing laid out, what she had to do.

  There’s hope for you yet, Fergusson. Hardball laughed in her ear.

  “Mrs. Rouse,” she said, this time letting her nerves show in her voice. “Let me go. I don’t have anything to do with this. Please. Just let me go.”

  Debba and Lilly both looked at her in disbelief.

  “Please,” Clare said.

  “You’ll just call 911,” Renee said.

  “No. I swear to you, before God, on my priestly vows, I won’t call 911.”

  “Clare!” Debba’s voice was outraged. Renee Rouse glanced at her. Clare could have kissed her.

  “Okay,” the doctor’s wife said. “You may go.”

  The walk across the road and up the gravel drive was one of the longest in her life. As soon as she slid into the Shelby, she yanked her bag off the floor and dumped its contents on the seat next to her. There it was. Her cell phone.

  “Roll down your windows!” Renee had taken several steps closer to the drive. “I want you to roll down your windows so I can see you’re not calling anyone.”

  People didn’t even trust priests anymore. What was the world coming to? She leaned over and cranked down the passenger window with one hand, hitting the last-call-list button on her phone with the other. She scrolled down to Russ’s cell phone number while unrolling her own window. She pressed the call button, dropped the phone in her lap, and shifted her car from park to first and back to park again. Then she turned the key and laid on the gas.

  The screeching, coughing noise of the engine covered up the sound of Russ, saying “Hello?” She turned the key again. The car sounded as if it were dying. “Hello?” The tinny, unamplified voice sounded annoyed.

  She leaned over toward the passenger window, making sure the phone’s mike was unobstructed. “Mrs. Rouse,” she shouted. “There’s something wrong with my car! It won’t start!”

  Mrs. Rouse stood stock-still at that. Clare had pegged her as the sort of woman for whom any car emergency was man’s business. And there were no men around to help out here.

  The small voice in her lap was swearing now. Clare went on. “I want to come back out of the car, but I’m afraid you’ll shoot me! Please lower your gun!”

  Russ’s voice had fallen silent. She risked a glance down. The call was still in session. He was listening.

  “I haven’t called 911,” she yelled to Mrs. Rouse. “I kept my promise. Can I get out of the car and go stand by Debba?”

  “Clare, tell me where you are.” Russ’s small voice was hushed, as if he was afraid of being overheard.

  “Or if you want, I could go into the Clows’ house!”

  From her lap, she heard Russ telling someone to drive toward Powell’s Corners.

  Renee finally came to a decision. “Come back out here,” she said. “Slowly. I don’t want to see anything in your hands.”

  “I won’t have anything in my hands. Please don’t shoot me.”

  “Clare, can you hide your phone? Snap two times for yes.”

  She snapped twice.

  “Keep the line open. I’m muting from my end, so no one will hear me saying anything. But I’ll hear you. This is Renee Rouse? With a gun?”

  She snapped twice.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  “What’s keeping you?” Renee yelled. “I told you to get out of the car and get over here!”

  Clare slipped the phone into one of her skirt pockets and opened the door. She walked slowly and carefully toward Debba. “Mrs. Rouse, you were going to let me go. Please, I beg you, let Debba’s mother and two children go.”

  “I already told you no. That’s far enough.” She waved the gun at Clare, who stopped a few feet away from Debba. From across the roof of Mrs. Rouse’s car, she coul
d see Lilly’s back, with Whitley’s skinny legs wrapped around her waist. One of the girl’s rain boots had fallen off. Renee’s attention was on Clare, and Lilly was moving, step by step, closer toward her grandson. Debba saw her, too, and in a moment, Renee was going to realize what was happening.

  Clare began to walk toward the doctor’s wife. Renee frowned and trained the gun more decidedly on Clare. “Stop right there,” she said. Clare took another step. “I said stop!”

  Clare raised her arms dramatically. “Jesus!” she said. Across the barnyard, Lilly was almost to Skylar. Lord only knew what sort of sound the kids might make when their grandmother took off running. She’d better turn up the volume. “Jesus, call down Your healing power on these Your servants!” she bawled.

  “Stop that,” Renee said. Debba stopped staring at her mother and turned to look at Clare.

  “Bring down the power of the Almighty and save these poor sinners!” She could do this. Her great-grandfather Avery had been a dirt-road preacher in Alabama a hundred years ago. “It is sin that fills our hearts with wrath and fear and pain! It is sin that separates us from our loved ones! It is sin that makes us turn our backs on Your loving aid!”

  “Stop it! Stop it right now!” Renee advanced on Clare, her arm shaking.

  Clare dropped to her knees, ignoring the gravel’s bite. “Pray with me, Sister Rouse! Pray with me, Sister Clow!” She launched into the loudest hymn she knew. “ ‘Wha-at a friend we have in Je-sus! All our sins and grief to bear!’ ”

  The car blocked her view of Lilly and the children, but she knew when it happened. Debba let out a strangled cry of fear and relief, and Renee spun around. She screeched, an inarticulate sound of rage, and turned on Debba and Clare. “Get up!” she shouted. “Get up!”

  Clare shut up and climbed to her feet. She didn’t see Lilly or the children. “Where are they?” she asked Debba.

  “Behind the bus.” Debba started to weep. “Behind the bus.” She glared at Renee. “Shoot me if you want. You can’t hurt my children now.”

  “Where is my husband?” Renee Rouse’s voice dropped so that it was almost a whisper. She would do it, Clare thought. She would kill Debba. They had to tell her something. Anything. Keep her talking.

  “I don’t know,” Debba said through her tears. “I told the police everything I knew. I told them. I don’t know anything else.”

  Mrs. Rouse shook her head. “Turn around.” Debba stared at her. “Turn around!” Debba did as she was told. Renee jammed the gun against the back of Debba’s skull. “I’ll give you one more chance. I don’t care what happens to me. I won’t go on without my husband.”

  Oh, holy God. This was going to be a murder-suicide. “Debba,” Clare said.

  Debba was crying harder now, her voice muffled and wet.

  “Debba,” Clare said. “You’re going to have to tell her the truth.”

  Renee stared at her. “You know what happened?”

  “I’ve been acting as Debba’s spiritual adviser,” she said. “She’s made her confession to me.”

  “What?” Mrs. Rouse’s eye lit up. “Tell me!”

  What, indeed. If they said the doctor was still alive, Mrs. Rouse would demand that Debba take her to him. And going someplace with Mrs. Rouse would be a death sentence. They had to stay out of the car, out of the house, away from anyplace she could hole up in when the cops got here. They had to be right out here in the open when Russ arrived. What could they tell her? What?

  “Go ahead, Debba,” Clare said. “It’s all right. Tell her about you and the doctor having an affair.”

  “What?”

  “They were having an affair and Dr. Rouse wanted her to run away with him. So he took off first.” Why? “So no one would know.”

  Debba, bless her heart, picked up the ball and ran with it. “Except I changed my mind. I decided to break it off. I couldn’t uproot my kids.”

  Mrs. Rouse’s eyes bugged out. “You’re saying my husband had an affair with you? You slept with my husband?”

  They heard the noise of an engine. A red pickup truck crested the hill, followed by a police car. Then another. No lights, no sirens, but they swooped down the hill almost faster than the eye could follow, faster than the time it took to decide what to do, faster than the heartbeats between waiting and hoping. Clare looked at the barrel of the gun, pressed into Debba’s head, and she looked at Mrs. Rouse.

  “Your husband does not want you to throw your life away,” she said, knowing, of all the things she had said this horrible morning, it was the most true.

  And then Russ’s pickup and the squad cars were whipsawing over the yard and onto the drive, spinning up gravel and clots of mud and dead grass, and the doors were open and men tumbled out and there were one two three four five guns all pointed toward Mrs. Rouse. Debba buried her face in her hands and fell silent.

  Renee Rouse looked at the officers, at Clare, at the sky, and she lowered her gun and let it drop to the ground.

  Noble Entwhistle was the first to her, drawing her away, pulling her hands behind her back, reciting her Miranda rights.

  Debba touched the back of her head, feeling the absence of the gun, and turned toward Clare. She opened and closed her mouth. “How?” she finally said.

  Clare fished her phone out of her pocket. “What a friend we have in cell phones,” she sang softly.

  Debba started to laugh wetly, then jerked away as her mother and kids emerged from behind the bus. She ran blindly across the road, weeping and laughing, and crashed into her family.

  Clare felt a hand on her shoulder and turned around.

  “Are you all right?” Russ was looking at her. That was all, just his hand on her shoulder and his eyes. For a moment, she wanted to lean into him and let him hold her. Instead, she propped a smile on her face.

  “It wasn’t me with a gun to her head.”

  “Oh.”

  “What did you think of my preaching?”

  He smiled. “Pretty good for an Episcopalian. Kevin Flynn was listening, too. I think he had a conversion experience on the way over here.” He jiggled her shoulder, a small remonstrance. “What the hell were you thinking of?”

  “Lilly Clow was trying to get the children out of sight. Mrs. Rouse got distracted when I was in the car, but when I got out, I was afraid she’d look back and stop Lilly. I figured if I acted strange but unthreatening, she’d keep her eyes on me for a few more seconds.”

  He glanced over to where Officer Entwhistle was guiding Mrs. Rouse into the back of the squad car. “I should have done something to stop this. Had someone with her. She really fell apart when Lyle and I spoke to her Wednesday.”

  “Do you honestly think anyone in Millers Kill could have foreseen she’d go around the bend?” She shook her head. “I guess this gives new meaning to the phrase ‘crazy in love.’ ”

  “It’s not love. It’s dependence. He was the oak, she was the vine, all that sort of garbage.” He glanced down at the crutches he was balanced on. “You take away someone’s crutch and what happens? They fall down.”

  “Poor lady.” Clare watched as Officer Entwhistle closed the car door behind Mrs. Rouse. “She must have been building up to this every day since her husband disappeared.”

  “I don’t think so,” Russ said. His voice, dark and heavy, made her look at him. “I think I’m the one who tipped her over. Up until this morning, she was still hoping we were going to find her husband alive. All this”-the sweep of his arm took in the barnyard, the Clows huddled together talking with one of the officers, Renee sitting in the squad car-“all this is just a massive case of denial.”

  “What happened this morning?”

  “I shouldn’t have just told her-I should have prepped her more. But I was afraid she’d hear about it on the news first.”

  “What?”

  “The divers started searching Stewart’s Pond yesterday. This morning, I got the call. They found human remains.”

  Chapter 32

  NO
W

  We were on our way over there when I got your stealth call,” Russ said. “Emil Dvorak should already be there.” The county medical examiner. So Allan Rouse really was dead. Russ glanced across the street, to where Kevin Flynn and Lyle MacAuley were questioning the Clows. “As soon as Kevin’s finished up, I’m headed for Stewart’s Pond.”

  “I’ll take you,” Clare said.

  Russ’s mouth twitched. “Oh, you will, will you?”

  She looked at the outline of Mrs. Rouse in the car. Clare sighed. “I suppose I ought to go sit with Mrs. Rouse and see if I can help her in any way.”

  “No,” he said, “I don’t suppose you ought to do that.” When she looked sharply at him, he said, “Let her simmer down, Clare. I want her in the right state of mind when Lyle interrogates her.”

  “What’s going to happen to her?”

  He leaned forward into his crutches. “Pointing a gun at people and threatening them is a felony. We in the law enforcement field frown upon it.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sakes. You know what I mean. She’s no criminal. She just went over the edge because of what happened to her husband.”

  He lifted his chin toward where the Clows stood, Debba rocking Skylar, Whitley hugging her grandmother tight. “What would you have said about her if she had hurt one of those kids, Clare?”

  She looked down. The tips of his crutches were sinking into the wet soil, crushing the withered grass. Her own boots were splattered with mud drying into pale dirty streaks.

  “Right,” he said.

  “I should see if there’s anything I can do for them.”

  “Stop trying to help people for five minutes. What were you doing here, anyway?”

  “Remember Dr. Stillman, who set your leg? The one who was the third-generation doctor?” He nodded. “He loaned me some of his grandfather’s personal journals. There’s all this stuff about the diphtheria outbreak in 1924, including an entry about the Ketchem children dying. I wanted Debba to read it. To get another perspective on vaccinations.” She stuffed her hands into her skirt pockets. “Same thing that Allan Rouse was trying to do, I guess. I thought maybe words would have a bigger effect than the old tombstones.” She looked at him looking at her. “What?”