Nowhere USA: The Complete Series: A Psychological Thriller series (Nowhere, USA)

by Ninie Hammon

“I said, I’m Viola Tackett and—”

  “I know who you are. What can I do fer ya?”

  “Come to ask about your neighbor, Howie Witherspoon. Where’s he at?”

  “Howie, you say?”

  “Yeah, next door. Howie Witherspoon.”

  “Don’t think he’s home.” He started to close the door.

  “I know he ain’t home. That’s why I’m here. You know where he’s at?”

  “You sure he ain’t home?

  “I done looked.”

  “Car’s there.”

  “I can see that,” Viola snapped. “But Howie ain’t there and neither’s the boy, Toby’s his name. You seen ‘em?”

  “Nope. I thought they was home. You sure they ain’t there?”

  This was useless. Viola turned to walk off the porch.

  “Might be they left in that van.”

  Viola stopped and turned around. “What van?”

  “I think it was a van. Cain’t hardly see nothing but blobs, but it was a white blob bigger’n a car. Figured it must be a van. Or a truck. Might be it was a truck.”

  “What makes you think Howie left in a van?”

  “Van? It mighta been a truck.”

  Viola ground her teeth but remained calm.

  “Truck, then. Why do you think Howie left in a truck?”

  “Well, he left in something, didn’t he, if he ain’t home,” the old man snapped. “You think he walked, him with that bad knee?”

  Viola fought to control her temper.

  “When did you see this truck — or van or whatever — that you think he mighta left in?”

  “Yesterday ‘fore sunrise. I’s up. Don’t hardly sleep at all no more. I wouldn’t a seen it, but the security light over the garage come on and lit up this white thing in Howie’s driveway. Parked behind his car. Can’t see hardly nothing in the daylight, but lit up in the dark like that …”

  “Did you see Howie or the boy, Toby, get in it?”

  “Didn’t see nothing. Then the light went off and I went back to bed.”

  Viola sighed. No help. She turned again to leave.

  “Took the dog with ‘em. Musta, ‘cause it ain’t been around in a couple a days. They let it out and it craps in my yard and I can’t see it, so I step in it when I go to the mailbox to get the mail. Ain’t stepped in nothing since Saturday.”

  The last time Viola’d seen Howie was Sunday afternoon, when she sent him packing out of the courtroom with the kid. The kid had mentioned the dog. It was the dog that’d dug up his dead mama’s purse.

  “You see anything else? Anything at all. Think. It’s powerful important.”

  “Nothing but them squiggly lines?”

  “Squiggly lines?” Was the old man senile?

  “On the side of the truck. Or van. Musta been a van, now that I think about it, because it had squiggly lines on the side.”

  “Squiggly—”

  “Words. They was words written on the side of the thing but I couldn’t read it, all I could make out was squiggly lines.”

  A van with words on the side. There were a couple of those Viola could think of. Joe Stovall had a van, a big cargo thing with the store’s logo, Stovall’s Used Furniture Store. But it was black, with white lettering. Lester Peetree had a van said Peetree’s Hardware Store on the side. It was white. So was E.J.’s. Viola had ridden out to the county line in it on J-Day. It was white and said vet clinic on the side.

  “‘Preciate yore help,” she told the old man and got halfway down the sidewalk when he called after her.

  “Fine by me if they don’t never come back. Hate the smell of dog crap.”

  Zach wanted to know what she’d found out but she shushed him, needed to think.

  Didn’t none of this make sense. Best way to puzzle a thing out was to start with what you did know. She did know Howie wouldn’t, couldn’t have run off somewhere on foot and didn’t have no reason to. Somebody took him and the kid somewhere. Maybe in a white van with words on the side. And unless they’s going duck hunting, wasn’t no reason to leave the house before sunrise — unless they went in the dark so wouldn’t nobody see.

  Might be Howie didn’t go willingly.

  Who woulda forced him? And why?

  She didn’t like where this was leading. Didn’t like it one bit. But Viola never lied to herself. Couldn’t hardly trust nothing that come out of other folks’ mouths so you best be able to believe what you told your own self.

  “Turn this thing around and take me to the Middle of Nowhere. I need to have a talk with Malachi.”

  Zach pulled out into the street and laid rubber on the asphalt all the way to the corner.

  Chapter Ten

  After Charlie called out to Fish from the top step leading down into the basement, he began to scream, to wail, to make noises that didn’t even sound human. The sounds scared little Merrie and she yanked backward on her mother’s hand.

  “Not go there!” she cried, then threw a stranglehold around her mother’s leg. “Scares me.”

  “Scares me, too,” Charlie said, and backed away from the steps. She could not take Merrie in there with her, but she needed to talk to Fish. Had to talk to him. And from the sounds he was making, it seemed clear that he needed somebody to take notice of him.

  Then the screaming stopped abruptly. Like a spigot turned off. There was silence for a time … then singing.

  “Thirty-nine bottles of beer on the wall. Thirty-nine bottles of beer. Take one down, pass it around, thirty-eight bottles of beer on the wall. Thirty-eight bottles of beer on the wall, thirty-eight …”

  Given the nature of the song, Charlie expected she’d find Fish three sheets to the wind, but as she descended the steps, she noticed that his words were crisp and clear, he wasn’t slurring them, and when she caught sight of him, he was sitting at the piano pounding out the music in what appeared to be — oh, please, let it be so — complete sobriety.

  The basement was bare of most everything but piles of ancient hymnals, floor to ceiling on one wall, an old upright piano pathetically out of tune on the other with a bench seat in front of it where Fish sat, hammering on the keys and singing at the top of his lungs.

  In a far corner was a … nest. A homeless person’s nest, consisting of a cot, blankets, a sleeping bag, even a pillow and a couple of shirts and pairs of pants that dangled wet from a makeshift clothesline stretched between water pipes. There was a bathroom in the far corner of the room that Charlie assumed was still functional. The floor was clean, the place was neat and orderly. All things considered, it was a reasonably decent place to live.

  She’d glanced in a broken-out window into the church building upstairs and it was clear teenagers had had a grand time in the sanctuary. Graffiti spray-painted on the walls and a pew resting halfway out a broken stained-glass window.

  There were no empty liquor bottles in Fish’s basement, though, none of the disarray you’d expect from a place occupied by someone in a constant state of inebriation. She stepped into the room without his notice as he banged out his song and howled the words as loud as he could. But there was no way Merrie McClintock could go unnoticed for more than ten seconds at a time and she burst out of Charlie’s grip and raced across the room toward the piano bench where Fish sat.

  “Mr. Fish, I like dat song!” she cried.

  He didn’t acknowledge her presence in any way, just kept at it, with a frenetic quality Charlie had only just noticed.

  “Mr. Fish, I play it, too.”

  The little girl climbed up on the seat beside him and began to bang her hands gleefully on the keys on that end of the piano.

  Still Fish didn’t notice her.

  This was weird. Charlie approached and instantly saw what Merrie had not noticed. Fish’s eyes were fixed straight ahead.

  And there were tears streaming down his cheeks.

  Charlie went to the wall piled high with hymnals.

  “Merrie, come here,” she called, picking up the top book a
nd opening it. Merrie hopped down off the piano bench and went to her mother.

  “I playin’ the nano. I makin’ music.”

  “Would you like to make some paper airplanes?”

  Merrie’s face lit up. “Like da man wiff the cigar?”

  Charlie nodded, tore a page out of the hymnal and folded it into a rudimentary paper airplane.

  “Like this.” She threw it; the paper fluttered to the floor but Merrie didn’t know it was supposed to sail so she supposed it had worked just fine.

  Charlie ripped out a handful of pages and showered them on the floor at Merrie’s feet.

  “See if you can make one fly. Or you can wad the paper up into balls and” — Charlie’s eyes scanned the room — “see if you can throw them into that trash basket.” She thought a moment. “Or you can pretend the books are bricks and you can build a castle with them.” That should keep her occupied for a while.

  Merrie dropped to her knees and picked up a handful of paper and Charlie crossed to where Fish was banging on the piano.

  “Fish …” she said softly but he didn’t respond. She put out her hand and touched his shoulder and then said, for what reason she couldn’t have explained, “Mr. Fischer.”

  Fish froze in place, his hands hanging over the keys. He didn’t look at her, just slowly raised his hands, buried his face in them and began to cry softly.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he said through his tears. “It was an accident. I never meant to hurt anybody.”

  “Hurt who?”

  “It was my fault for going there in the first place, though. I had no business there.” He turned to her then. “But I told Viola. I stood right there and confessed. And she hanged him anyway.” He put his hands back up over his face and continued to cry.

  Now Charlie sat frozen in place, trying to fit what Fish had just said into her mind.

  Liam had said Dylan Shaw hadn’t killed his grandmother. Charlie had tried to defend the boy to Viola … and earned the wrath of the most dangerous human being in the county. But Viola had ignored her and hung the boy … even though she knew he didn’t do it.

  Apparently, Fish had killed Martha Whittiker, accidentally somehow. He’d confessed, and still Viola had hanged an innocent teenager. Why? Did Dylan Shaw make a more sympathetic victim? Maybe it was because she’d ruled that the boy had done it and she wasn’t willing to admit she’d been wrong. Maybe— Charlie stopped herself. No way could she fathom the depths of that woman’s depravity. Nobody could. Viola Tackett was a heartless psychopath who would kill anybody who got in her way.

  The bottom dropped out of Charlie’s belly when she thought about it, though she didn’t need what Fish had said to convince her that Viola Tackett absolutely would make good on her threat to kill Charlie if it suited her. Anytime. Anywhere. There was no safe place in Nowhere County.

  Charlie’s only hope for survival lay in getting out of here. So did E.J.’s. And maybe even Rusty’s.

  The Jabberwock. That’s what she’d come here to talk to Fish about. When she tuned back into his monologue of grief, she heard him say, “… always getting other people killed. But I didn’t know. How could I know? How could anybody know?”

  “Know what?”

  He took his hands away from his face and looked at her for the first time.

  “About the Jabberwock.” His eyes were pools of pure misery. “That it could kill people.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Viola instructed Zach to cruise around the Dollar General Store and the back side of the clinic. Sure enough, parked by the back door was a white van with the words Healthy Pets Veterinary Clinic and Hospital on the side. There were no cars parked outside.

  “You wait here,” she told Zach.

  Raylynn Bennett was sitting at the reception desk. She was right pretty for a black girl.

  “I come to see Malachi,” Viola announced. “Go fetch him for me.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Where’d he go — I thought he was living here in E.J.’s apartment.”

  “He borrowed Charlie’s car to go into the Ridge and pick up Reverend Norman.”

  Which explained why she’d seen the McClintock woman driving Sam’s car in the Ridge earlier.

  “What was he going to do with the reverend?”

  “Take him out to Scott’s Ridge to get his car.” She paused. “You know, because that must be where Hayley left it before she …”

  Hayley Norman didn’t jump, if that’s what Raylynn was about to say. Viola knew what’d happened, and who’d done it. When the preacher found out Howie Witherspoon was the one killed his daughter, Rev. Norman might just decide to head up his own lynch mob.

  Except there wasn’t no Howie to lynch. And Viola needed to find out what had happened to him. Exactly what’d happened to him.

  “He say when he’d be back?”

  Viola didn’t intend to sit here and wait for Malachi. It wasn’t in her nature to sit around waiting. Other folks could wait for her.

  “No, but he’ll have to be here for his shift with E.J.”

  Just the way she said the words, the look on her face. That girl was heartbroken over what’d happened to the vet. Shoot, maybe E.J. was banging her, too. Who knew?

  “When Malachi gets back, you tell him his mama wants him.”

  A small smile creased Raylynn’s lips. “At least you won’t have to drag him out of here.” The girl realized Viola didn’t know what she was talking about. “I’m sorry, I was thinking about Merrie. Charlie’s little girl. That kid came in here and took the place over on J-Day. I’ve never seen a child who loves animals like she does and when her mother comes to get her …”

  Viola turned for the door, but Raylynn’s words hung on a nail in her head.

  That kid, Merrie.

  Viola had seen the little girl the night of the public meeting when she’d had to put Liam down. It’d gone just like she’d planned it until that McClintock woman started mouthing off, talking about people disappearing, getting everybody all up in arms about it.

  Truth was, the woman was right. Folks were disappearing. But Viola shied away from that truth as she had seldom shied away from any other. To acknowledge that it was happening, that somehow the Jabberwock was … taking people, was to acknowledge that she wasn’t in charge. That she wasn’t the one calling the shots. It was to acknowledge that sooner or later the Jabberwock would … Viola shoved the thought violently out of her mind and when she did, the image of the little girl returned.

  While that Charlie woman and Sam was inside seeing to Liam, Viola had seen the little girl outside playing. She had a June bug tied to a string and was flying it around like it was an airplane. Sarah Throckmorton, the crazy cat lady who looked just like Tweety Bird’s grandmother, was helping her.

  Sarah Throckmorton. She’d taken the little girl to look after so Charlie could help Sam with Liam. Taken the kid because everybody knew wasn’t nobody any better with kids than Sarah Throckmorton.

  Kids.

  Toby Witherspoon.

  Viola stopped outside the door of the clinic but didn’t get into the car immediately. She was considering. Let’s say Malachi had something to do with Howie’s disappearance. He hadn’t wanted Viola to give the kid back to his father because he was worried about the boy. As well he should have been. Howie’d killed his wife and he’d likely off the little boy, too, since the kid had fingered him for the murder.

  If Malachi and Howie’d had it out over the boy, wasn’t no hard thing to figure who’d come out on top. Malachi would have killed Howie in the blink of an eye to save that kid.

  Maybe he did. Maybe Malachi killed Howie and that’s what’d happened to the man. Howie hadn’t run off. He was dead.

  Which left the kid, Toby. If Malachi’d killed his daddy, what’d he do with the boy? Had to put him somewhere. Couldn’t leave him with Sam or the McClintock woman. Somebody’d see him since they was all the time at the clinic and such.

  No, they had to pu
t the kid somewhere out of sight, somewhere wouldn’t nobody happen to stumble over him. They needed to leave him with somebody.

  Somebody like … oh, maybe Sarah Throckmorton.

  It was worth a shot.

  Instead of sitting on her butt waiting for Malachi, Viola would go pay a visit to Sarah Throckmorton. Wasn’t far, she could be back at the clinic in half an hour. If the kid was there, she’d get him to tell her what’d happened to his daddy. But if the kid was there, she didn’t really need to ask. If he was there, Malachi had deposited him there. Which meant Malachi had defied her.

  And what was Viola gonna do about that if that’s what it turned out to be?

  Chapter Twelve

  Sarah stood by the ancient live oak tree, catching her breath, feeling around on the white bun at her neck to rearrange the hairpins that held it there. She had forgotten how much energy it took to look after a child. She’d spent the past quarter of a century since her children moved away — and took her precious grandchildren with them! — with her fur babies, her cats. And they did require a fair amount of care because there were so many of them. Twenty-one altogether — the nineteen who lived with her in the house and the three other feral cats she fed, left bowls for them on the back porch but they were too wild to want to join the family.

  But even all of them put together weren’t as needy as the boy with the big sad eyes. Poor little Toby Witherspoon. Figured out his father had killed his mother. Killed her, and then he barely escaped getting killed by his own father. What must a thing like that do to a little boy not even ten years old?

  She could imagine how broken his heart must be. The little chap needed so much love, way more than poor old Sarah could give him. But she would try, do the best she could!

  And the best she could figure to do was to try to keep him busy, keep him doing things so he wouldn’t have time to dwell on the loss of his parents.

  So they’d come out into the woods this morning to pick blackberries. Sarah knew where there was a lovely blackberry bush up the hill behind her house. She hadn’t gone there in a while, what with that Jabberwock thing and all, but it was the primary source of fruit for Sarah’s legendary blackberry cobbler. And blackberry preserves. And blackberry pie. And blackberry compote. She already had enough Mason jars full of blackberry-somethings to feed all the blond men in the Norwegian Army, but she’d brought Toby out here today to help her gather more fruit, made it sound to him like she really needed his help, like if he didn’t lend her a hand she didn’t know how she’d manage to pick all those blackberries all by herself.