Deep South

by Nevada Barr

  “Jesus, Taco,” she said, then felt self-conscious, because Paul Davidson was a priest. “You’re okay.”

  “Maybe he misses his kitty,” Davidson offered.

  When he said it, Anna remembered she had told the sheriff about Taco, about her cat. She’d told him about Molly and Zach, the husband she’d lost so many years back. Contrary to her usual practice, under the beneficent aura of the gun-toting man of God she’d talked a whole lot more than she’d listened. It had felt good at the time. Now it made her uncomfortable. Again the unwelcome feeling of exposure and vulnerability.

  “Piedmont,” Anna called to take her mind off her neurosis. “Here kitty, kitty, kitty.” No cat. Perhaps that was the wrongness she and the dog sensed. Piedmont was a personable feline. Unless occupied by nothing less irresistible than a mouse or lizard in another part of the house, the big orange tom never failed to meet Anna at the door.

  “Piedmont,” she called again, afraid that her bonding with, of all things, a dog, had forever alienated her friend.

  Taco grumbled.

  Despite the warmth of the night, Anna got a chill. “Check the empty bedrooms,” she said. “I’ll get the kitchen and the backyard.”

  “For the kitty?” .

  “For anything. Bad juju.”

  Davidson was on his feet. “Gut feeling?”

  “Feminine intuition.”

  A floodlight declared the backyard empty of anything more sinister than two cottontail bunnies, neither bigger than the average softball. Skittering roaches contaminated the kitchen, but though they made Anna queasy, they didn’t frighten her.

  “Bedrooms are clear,” Davidson announced.

  “Now we look for the cat.”

  Poking into the cramped spaces where a cat could secrete itself, Anna and Davidson worked from the living room down the hall to the study, to the room closed off for financial idiocy and finally to Anna’s bedroom.

  With Paul Davidson in her boudoir, Anna wished it was more hospitable: curtains on the windows, pictures on the wall, at the very least the bed made and her dirty underwear somewhere other than on the floor. Covertly, she watched him scan the room and was relieved to note he looked with the eyes of a policeman, not of a date.

  “The window’s open,” he said.

  “I leave it open.”

  “Without a screen?”

  Anna crossed around him. He stood near the double-sized futon she’d slept on for nine years. The thought that it was time for a real bed, a queen-size, crossed her mind. Then she was at the window and the thought was forgotten.

  “There was a screen this morning.” She raised the sash and leaned out. The screen lay on the ground a couple of feet away. Wriggling around till her rump was on the sill, her feet inside and her upper body outside, Anna looked up at the fastenings: two flattened metal hooks, the kind designed to make the removal of screens easy.

  Squirming back inside she banged her head again, just hard enough to make her mad.

  “Oooh. Ouch,” came a sympathetic voice and a warm hand touched her.

  Anna flinched unbecomingly.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He removed his hand, and Anna wanted her flinch back but it was too late. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Anna said for the second time in twenty minutes. Fine. Her psychiatrist sister said when patients said they were fine too often it meant fucked-up, insecure, negative and evasive. One for the books, Anna thought sourly. “The screen’s been taken off. Or it fell off,” she amended.

  Davidson leaned out to see for himself. Anna couldn’t get away without squishing past his behind or climbing over the bed so she remained trapped in the little space between the wall and the bed, wondering why she felt the need to escape.

  “Was it latched?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t gotten around to vacuuming the dead flies out of the sills yet.”

  Davidson laughed. Ducking, he managed to ease his bulk gracefully out the window and onto the grass. Looking lovely and man-about-the-house in moonlight and penny loafers, he picked up the screen and brought it back to rehang it. Anna didn’t ask him if there were any signs of its being forced. Old house, old screens, the latch could be slipped easily by the blade of a jackknife or a bit of stiff wire.

  While he rehung the screen, Anna looked at her room from a new perspective. If anyone had broken into the house, they’d apparently not found anything worth stealing. Illogically, she was offended. Her television was old and small, her computer a dinosaur her sister had forced upon her. A boom box served as a sound system, and she had no microwave. The would-be thief, if there was one, could probably take her to court and sue her for being hopelessly out of sync with modern criminal needs. A lot of money was tied up in her Navajo rugs, but only a specialist would recognize what they were worth.

  Comfortably aware of her house being secured from without by a man who used nice-smelling shampoo, her mind free-floated as her gaze moved slowly around the room. Was the clutter on the dresser rearranged? Maybe. Was her book, facedown on the nightstand, at a different angle? Maybe. Had she left the lid of her trunk open? Maybe. Maybe not. Things looked as if they’d been moved ever so slightly, but in the scatter of unpacking, she could not be sure.

  The sliding door to the closet was open about four inches. Odd. Open: not odd. Shut: not odd. Four inches, as though someone in a hurry had started to close it and left the job unfinished: odd. Naturally, Anna couldn’t remember if that hurried distracted individual was her. She’d had a lot on her mind when she left to pick up her damaged dog.

  Events that were out of the ordinary tended to stick in the brain. Things done every day, done without thought were virtually impossible to remember. Hence questions like “Where were you at eight-thirteen P.M. the night of January 7, 1999?” were more or less unanswerable. Except by the evildoer in question. One could always hope, even to criminals, a truly heinous crime was sufficiently out of the ordinary to stick in memory.

  As she crossed the room, visions of bogeymen danced in Anna’s head. By the time she’d traveled the couple of yards to the closet door, she was scared to open it. Norman Bates might’ve left the motel business and moved south to go into ladies clothing.

  The front door opened and closed. Realizing she was waiting for Paul to return before she opened the closet, Anna was disgusted with herself. Since the age of four, she’d been checking under her own bed for tigers and witches. She wasn’t going to ask for help now. In one sweeping move, she slid open the closet door, moving with it so when the butcher knife slashed down, it would miss her.

  Bates wasn’t on duty. An array of uniforms in various stages of decay hung undisturbed. Paul came into the room, and all at once Anna was aware of how few pretty things hung amid the green and gray.

  “There he is,” the sheriff said softly.

  Anna’s fears rushed back with such force that for an instant she could neither move nor speak. Cowardice saved her from the more egregious sin of foolishness. Paul crouched down and reached in among the piles of cordovan dress boots, shoes and hiking boots.

  “The definition of a scaredy cat,” he said as he lifted Piedmont from his hiding place.

  “Somebody’s been in the house,” Anna said with conviction. “That’s the only time Piedmont hides in the closet. He’s done it since he was a kitten.” She took the cat from Davidson’s arms and hugged him, pushing her nose into the fur on the back of his neck as much to comfort herself as the cat.

  Paul did not try to convince her that her house had not been invaded, and for that she was grateful. A screen off its hooks and a cat in the closet did not constitute much in the way of hard evidence.

  Instead, while she brought Piedmont out to visit with a much calmed Taco, Davidson checked the windows, outdoors and in and, after asking Anna’s permission, closed and locked them.

  With far less awkwardness than she would have anticipated, she managed to offer him crackers and wine and slip a CD i
n the boom box. She chose the soundtrack from Leap of Faith, feeling the mix of great gospel singers and Meat Loaf would set the proper tone for this makeshift communion.

  Davidson seated himself cross-legged on the floor near Taco. Piedmont was rubbing against him shamelessly. The St. Francis of Assisi pose suited the priest, Anna admitted, as she joined them on the floor. Davidson broke a Triscuit in two, popped half in his mouth and gave the other half to the dog.

  “Who’d want to search your house?” he asked.

  Anna didn’t know. Unlike the alligator incident, this wasn’t meant to scare her off. The intention had been to go undetected. Nothing appeared to be disturbed or missing. Had the intruder believed she had any information on the Posey murder, her study would have been the obvious place to look if he was too stupid to break into her office in Port Gibson.

  They belabored vague possibilities: kids looking for loose cash, campers intent on borrowing a cup of sugar, perverts who’d never outgrown panty raids. Finally they had to give it up.

  Anna poured herself a second glass of Merlot. Davidson was still working on his first. Silence settled between them. Anna thought the awkwardness she had narrowly avoided earlier would creep in, but it didn’t. Davidson had sprawled out. Lying on his right side. Head propped on his hand, he dragged for Piedmont’s entertainment a bit of weed one of them had tracked in.

  After a time he said: “This wasn’t purely a social call.” He looked up and added, “Though it was mostly.” She wondered if he’d amended his statement because he glimpsed the flicker of disappointment she’d felt. “Leo Fullerton killed himself.”

  Anna took a swallow of wine to aid in processing this. Alcoholics Anonymous was a distant memory only slightly tinged with guilt. Some vices had to be accepted that one’s virtues, as the playwright of The Matchmaker said, could spring up modestly around them.

  “He took his bass boat out on the Big Black River, tied the transmission of an old VW bus to his ankles, and jumped overboard. My deputies found his boat half a mile downstream caught up in the roots of a drowned tree. The body hasn’t been recovered yet.”

  Anna was having trouble making sense of the story. She’d talked to the re-enactors that morning. They’d never said anything about Leo being dead. Maybe AA wasn’t such a bad idea after all. “Downstream? How do you know where Fullerton went in?”

  “Found his truck parked on the riverbank. One of the pastor’s favorite fishing spots.”

  The pastor. Anna remembered that Fullerton and the sheriff had been friends—or at least knew one another. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.

  “A lot of people will be. Leo was well liked. He helped his flock in more than just spiritual ways. Leo looked after kids when people needed to go on job interviews. Reroofed houses. Dug new cesspools. He was trying to get one old lady’s book published before she died. It was her dream. A black woman telling her story of the slaves butchered in Port Gibson during the war. This will hit everybody pretty hard.”

  Anna let his words trickle down with another mouthful of red wine. “They haven’t found the body?”

  “We will. The Big Black’s not a deep or fast river.”

  “How did you know about the VW transmission?”

  “Leo called Jimmy Williams and told him what he was planning. Williams got hold of Ian McIntire, and they drove down from Jackson to stop him. When they got to his house, Leo was gone. They found his truck where he said it would be and called us.” “Why didn’t they call you right off? It’s nearly an hour’s drive from Jackson to Port Gibson.”

  “They said they didn’t think he’d do it. That he was just feeling down—he got that way sometimes, I can attest to that—and it would have embarrassed him if they’d called anybody.”

  “Was there a note?”

  “We didn’t find one.”

  “Is it possible it wasn’t suicide?”

  “Anything’s possible, but Ian and Jimmy wouldn’t have hurt him. The three of them have been friends since they were little kids. Their mothers were friends. The two living—Mrs. Williams and Mrs. McIntire—still are. I’m betting on suicide. Leo had an ongoing fight with depression. He never talked about it, and odds are it never even crossed his mind to get treatment. That’s a danger with being a man of God, so to speak. If you don’t watch it, you can start to take things personal. Shouldering crosses when there are perfectly good God-given forklifts sitting around to take some of the burden.”

  Davidson continued dragging the weed around in enticing patterns, but he was only amusing himself. Piedmont had lost interest. Taco slept, his breathing even and regular. “Stone’s Throw from Hurtin’ ”played on the boom box. Its usually pleasant strains grated on Anna’s ears. Air-conditioned drafts fell clammily across her neck and shoulders, and she longed to shut the damn thing off and open the windows to the healing fragrance of the night. Out of deference to Fullerton’s death and Paul Davidson’s mood, she remained still.

  Finally stiff with cold or memories, Paul struggled into a sitting position. For the first time since Anna’d met him, he looked his age.

  “I guess this was purely a social call, after all,” he admitted. “Leo’s got nothing to do with anything except you’d met him and I needed to talk about him.”

  “Anytime.” Impulsively, Anna put her hand on his knee. Before she could feel silly or snatch it back, he’d taken it in both his own. She couldn’t tell if the warmth she felt was from his skin or within her own. Slowly, as if it were an object of great value, he turned it palm up and traced what felt like an A on her palm. The phantom letter tingled in various portions of Anna’s anatomy.

  Davidson laughed. “Now I’m feeling guilty because I used poor Leo’s death to pay you a visit. If it hadn’t been for the celibacy thing, I’d have made a heck of a Catholic priest Do you want me to stay?”

  Startled by the abrupt change in the weather, Anna said nothing for a bit. The South. Nothing was as simple as it seemed. Beneath everything were seventeen more layers of everything else. “Do you mean am I scared to stay here by myself?” she asked carefully.

  Davidson laughed again. Anna was growing to like the sound. “That’s what I did mean. Freud would sure have a field day with me. But yes, after the break-in, if you wanted me to, I could sleep on your couch.”

  “No you couldn’t,” Anna said. The couch was Victorian, designed to ensure no one ever lost their virginity or even enjoyed a moment’s comfort in its uptight embrace.

  She walked the sheriff to his car. The driver’s door between them, solid as a bundling board, he leaned over the top and kissed her. The kiss was quick, light and not in the least brotherly. Though Anna stood her ground in true John Wayne fashion, she noted a wateriness in the vicinity of her knees and a faint humming in her ears different from the drone of the insects.

  ★ 14 ★

  Anna was having fantasies. She wanted to buy a summer dress, new underwear, perfume, lipstick. The glossy magazines she routinely ignored in airport news-stands and hair salons had had a cumulative subliminal impact. If the phenomenon was progressive, she’d soon begin to worry about cellulite or invest in a Wonderbra.

  It wasn’t that Anna eschewed the feminine artifices on ethical, moral, religious or political grounds. They had simply been nonproductive in her chosen profession. Used injudiciously, they became counterproductive. When arresting a drunk, one didn’t want one’s come-hither scent or kiss-me red lips to distract him from the respectful business of being cuffed and booked.

  What Anna often forgot was there was such a thing as “off duty” The night before, with Paul, she had been genuinely off duty for a few moments. She had every intention of being seriously off duty again in the not-so-distant future. For the next eight hours, however, she had to drag her mind out of the lingerie department.

  Turning off the Trace into the Port Gibson Ranger Station Anna noted several cars, one a patrol car. She hoped it was Barth. Randy Thigpen would be continuing his black-cloud persona,
and Anna wasn’t in the mood to have her psychological parade rained on. Then she remembered Randy was on four to midnight, and it was just noon. She was off the hook for a few hours.

  George Wentworth was tucked in his office, his broad shoulders bowed over papers piled neatly on his desk.

  Anna poked her head in his office. “Hey,” she said, bubbling over with good cheer. “Any new offers for the next Air McWhatsis?”

  George raised his head in the slow and unhappy way a bull might when it was deciding whether or not to charge. The whites of his eyes, usually a cool, almost minty white, were yellowed, the tiny blood vessels ruptured from stress, lack of sleep or booze. For an instant Anna thought he hadn’t heard her or, at any rate, was not going to answer her. She was deciding whether to repeat the question or slink away to savor the better part of valor, when he spoke.

  “Lockley’s dropped out of college.” His voice rolled the words flat, squeezing everything from them but the dull residue of disappointment.

  “Shit,” Anna said sympathetically. “That sucks.”

  “His mom’s all tore up.”

  Anna capped off her good cheer and came into his office to lean companionably against the bookcase in the event he wanted to talk. “What happened?”

  “We don’t know. He won’t talk to us. Won’t talk to me.” George’s throat closed on him, and he stared out the window till he’d mastered it. “Everything seemed to be going along just fine, then he changed.”

  “Drugs, you think?”

  “That’s the first guess everybody makes. But Lock’s never done drugs. He’s too smart for that.”

  Anna said nothing. Even smart kids got duped into drugs. The really smart ones figured they could handle it, as if intellect could rule chemical dependence. George leaned back, stared out the window at the buggy grill on Anna’s patrol car. His left hand twitched among the papers as if it continued working on its own.