With a heavy sigh, Whaley turned on to Salola and pulled up in front of the Shaw house. Empty tables were still set up across the front lawn, remnants of yesterday’s yard sale. As he parked his car he thought of the Shaws. Richard had been the hard-nosed chairman of some department at the college. His wife, Leslie, was a pretty woman who scuttled around after her husband like an acolyte with a priest. The son in question, Adam, reminded him of the cocky little shits from his own school days—the cool, funny ones who snapped towels at his butt in the locker room. Any of those assholes could have offed a little girl and just talked their way out of it. And so could Adam Shaw.
He walked to the front porch and rang the bell. A small woman with bloodshot eyes pulled the door open. Though her dark hair was now gray and feathery age lines sprouted from her lips, he recognized her immediately. Leslie Shaw. Mother of Adam, wife of Richard. He looked behind her to see packing boxes lining the foyer of the house, along with huge, waist-high roles of Bubble Wrap. The hold-out Shaws were finally leaving too.
“Yes?” She squinted at his badge, as if the light was too bright. If she recognized him, she did not show it.
Whaley drew up his great bulk. “I’m looking for Adam Shaw.”
“Adam … doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Do you know his whereabouts?”
“No.”
Whaley felt a flash of impatience. Leslie Shaw wasn’t stupid. Did she not realize you couldn’t stonewall a cop anymore? Back in ’89 maybe, but not today. These days the police were far too well connected.
“Do you know how I can get in touch with him?”
“No.”
He gave her one of his cards. “Ma’am, we’re updating our files. I’d like to ask Adam a few questions.”
She straightened her shoulders, as if summoning all her strength. “You’ll have to talk to our attorney, Robert Meyers. We no longer entertain questions from the police.”
“You no longer entertain questions?” Whaley stared at her, anger warming his neck. “I didn’t know you could entertain a question.”
“Robert Meyers.” The woman repeated the attorney’s name as she lurched forward to close the door.
Whaley took a step forward and stuck one of his size-thirteen brogans into the doorway. “Let me tell you how this works, ma’am. I don’t need your or your husband’s or your attorney’s permission to talk to your boy. And I can find him, probably in about ten minutes. I was just checking to see if he might be here. A courtesy call, if you will.”
“Robert Meyers,” the woman repeated for the third time.
“I’ll remember that name,” said Whaley. “Also this conversation, when we have your boy by the short hairs again.”
The woman paused in her closing of the door. “What did you say?”
“I mean, you cooperate with us, we go a little easier. If you don’t, we don’t. Goes to respect for the law.”
She thought a moment, then said, “Wait—let me see if my husband … ”
“Sorry.” Whaley withdrew his foot from the doorway. “You had your chance. It’s too late now.”
He turned and left her standing at the door, talking to his back as he headed to the house across the street.
Unlike Leslie Shaw, Janet Russell recognized Whaley the moment he rang her bell. Opening the door wearing a gaudy, tie-dyed robe, she had tattoos crawling up both arms, eight rings on the fingers of both hands, and three different kinds of crosses resting between her copious breasts. If Leslie Shaw was a meek little acolyte in the First Church of Richard the First, Janet Russell was the high priestess in a faith of her own making.
“Detective Whaley. How nice to see you again.” The woman’s hair was white and wiry, her eyes chips of bright blue. She put her hands together in front of her chest and said, “Peace unto you.”
“Peace to you, too,” Whaley replied, uncomfortably. “Uh, we are updating our files, ma’am. I need to ask Lawrence a few question.”
“What about?”
“It’s police business.”
“Then it must be about Teresa.”
Whaley sighed. These women weren’t stupid. They knew what was up when he knocked on their doors.
Janet Russell shook her head. “But you’ve asked him so many questions. He always answers them, but you never believe him.” She fingered her jeweled cross. “You know, you once had Butch so scared he started wetting his pants. For years he slept at the foot of my bed, shivering like a dog.”
“Murder investigations can be hard on everybody.” Whaley took a deep sniff. The house smelled of some musky herb. Not weed—he would recognize that—but something akin to it.
“But he was just a little boy.” Sighing, she walked back into her living room. It held the same kind of chaos as the Shaw house—half-filled packing boxes, Bubble Wrap, some carved decorative tree branches she was trying to fit into a too-small box. She turned to him. “May I show you something, detective?”
“Sure.” He followed her through a maze of boxes as she weaved her way down a long hall lined with photographs. Pictures of her, Butch, Jesus, the Dalai Lama, and a group of people in white robes gathered around a wigwam. He stopped as one figure in that photo caught his eye. A Native American with long Apache hair, a silver disk the size of a poker chip embedded in one ear lobe. Whaley recognized him from his mug shot. It was Two Toes McCoy.
“Come tell me if this looks like the bedroom of a normal thirty-seven-year-old man,” Janet Russell called, standing at the doorway at the far end of the hall.
Whaley hurried to catch up. As he did, she opened the door and stepped aside, as if revealing some grisly but compelling scar. Whaley looked into the room and saw a twin bed with a plaid bedspread, made up with military precision. In one corner was a barbell with a set of weights and a police scanner. On the walls hung posters for X-Men movies and a sad little diploma from a security guard training course. The only photograph was of Butch himself, red-haired as his mother had once been, standing serious and sober in his campus cop uniform. Over his bed was a gun rack, filled with semiautomatic weapons. Whaley took a deep breath, trying to catch the odor of cigarettes, but he smelled only the sharp aroma of gun oil and dirty sheets.
“I’m not even allowed in here,” said Janet Russell. “If I was, it would smell far better than this. Bad odors invite bad karma.”
“And you think Butch invites bad karma?” Whaley felt silly asking the question. He wasn’t even sure what karma was.
“This is the room of someone profoundly afraid,” she replied. “Someone shut off from the possibilities of the universe.”
Whaley wondered if Butch wasn’t trying to shut off the possibility of life without parole, but he said nothing.
“He’s been like this ever since Teresa went into the light, so long before her time.”
“I see.” Whaley stepped inside the room to see a small security camera in the corner, its lens pointed at the door. On the opposite wall was another one, aimed at the window. A chill went down Whaley’s spine. He imagined the bedrooms of the sickos who shot up schools and shopping malls probably looked a lot like this one.
“He watches those cameras on his cell phone,” said Janet Russell. “He trusts no one. Not even me.”
“So where is Butch now?”
She glanced at the red numbers of the digital clock on Butch’s desk. “I imagine he’s just left work. He’s a security guard at the college. He likes to work the early shift, so he can get home before dark.”
“Seriously?” Whaley frowned. Janet Russell made Butch sound more like seventy-seven instead of thirty-seven.
She leaned toward him, spoke in a whisper. “Do you know he’s never been married? Never even asked a girl out? He goes to work, comes home, and watches television with me! No wife, no sweethearts, no friends at all.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.�
� Stepping back, Whaley pulled a card from his wallet. “Tell him to call me at his earliest convenience. Mostly, we’re just updating our files, but I would like to talk to him.”
“I’ll see that he gets this.” With one hand Janet Russell made some kind of sign at the threshold of Butch’s room, then re-closed his door.
“I don’t suppose you have any new leads on Teresa, do you?” she asked as she followed him back down the hall. “Not, of course, that you’d tell me if you did.”
“Just updating our files,” he repeated as he again passed the picture of her with Two Toes.
“Well, Butch will cooperate, as always.” She opened the front door for Whaley to leave, then she put a hand on his arm. “Please find the killer this time. All this suspicion sucks the life out of people.”
“That’s what we’re trying to do, ma’am.”
“Then Godspeed.” Once again she pressed her palms together, jingling her necklaces again. “And peace.”
Whaley made his way back to his car, feeling a curious sadness for the families on Salola Street. Their lives had been blighted by Teresa Ewing’s murder. One mother couldn’t stay sober, another had become a religious nut, and yet another had turned into a jailer, keeping her kid under permanent house arrest. “Jack always said this street was cursed,” he whispered as he got back in his car. “Maybe he was on to something way back then.”
Nine
While Whaley was touring Butch Russell’s bedroom, Rob Saunooke was threading his way deep into the Quallah Boundary. Kenny Anderson, Two Toes’s parole officer had told him that even though Two Toes’s official address was Birdtown, he always met him at the Hartsville Burger King, because it was more “convenient.”
“More convenient, my ass,” Saunooke grumbled as he drove up the twisty road to Birdtown. “It’s just safer. Anderson knows Two Toes won’t slit his throat at the Burger King. There’d be too many witnesses.”
But Birdtown was not where Two Toes resided. After searching the little village for more than an hour, a withered old crone at a convenience store said she thought Two Toes might live in a trailer up on Lickstone Ridge. “He’s got some kind of sweat lodge up there, but don’t tell him I told you,” she said. “He might burn my store down.”
“Don’t worry,” Saunooke assured her. “I won’t tell.”
“Geyatahi,” she called after him. “Be careful. I hear he’s become a witch.”
So Saunooke drove down the coves and up the ridges, looking for the thin threads of white smoke that would indicate a trailer or a cabin. So far he’d heard that Two Toes had become a minister, then a witch. He remembered the man’s reputation from his childhood, when his mother would warn him, Don’t forget to say your prayers, and keep Two Toes away! His father told him that was nonsense, that he would keep Two Toes away with his shotgun. Though Saunooke said his prayers every night, he always slept better when his father was home.
He drove to the point that he’d almost decided the old woman at the store had been mistaken, when the road dribbled down to just a grassy sward that was swallowed up by a low-hanging cloud. As he stopped to put the cruiser in reverse, he heard a chorus of dogs start barking off to his left. Following their yapping, he turned down the long, mashed-down grass. At the end of the path, an arch made of willow branches spanned the road. From the center hung a sign that read Right Path Retreat. Hoping the thing wouldn’t fall on his cruiser, he drove under it. He continued a few hundred feet farther down the path, finally making a sharp turn to the left. In the middle of a small meadow a rust-streaked trailer sat on concrete blocks, surrounded by three teepees. A battered black truck was parked outside, next to a long, fifty-foot wire, to which four dogs were tethered. They looked like German shepherds, but with longer legs and thick, curly tails. Slowly he drove toward the trailer. With every turn of his wheels the dogs went crazier, saliva flying from their dark lips as they snapped first at their chains, then at each other. He realized that there was no way he could get out of his car and approach the trailer. The wire was not much stronger than a clothesline—if those dogs broke it, he’d be a dead man before he could draw his weapon.
He put the car in park and was reaching to announce himself with his siren when the door of the trailer opened. Saunooke held his breath, waiting to see if a minister or a witch or the devil of his childhood would emerge. He half expected someone wild-eyed, with their hair on fire. He was astonished when a barrel-chested man with long black hair came out, wearing nothing but a dingy pair of jockey shorts. The man yawned, glanced once at Saunooke, then began urinating off the front porch.
Saunooke got out of the car but stood behind the open door, his weapon drawn. The dogs went even more berserk.
“Elawei!” the man barked at the animals. They went silent in an instant but kept watching their master with sharp, bright eyes.
“Are you Two Toes McCoy?” Saunooke called, thankful that his voice didn’t betray his nervousness.
“I might be,” replied Two Toes. “Are you the yonega who pulls a weapon on an Indian with only his dick in his hands?”
Saunooke wanted to say that he wasn’t yonega, he was Tsalagi. His was a family of chiefs and diplomats. But Kenny Anderson had warned him that Two Toes was clever with words. “Just stick to the facts,” he’d said. “If you don’t ask him what you want to know, straight up, he’ll have your head spinning in circles.”
“Approach the car with your hands raised,” Saunooke ordered him. “You have to answer some questions.”
“Can I put my wadohli back?” asked Two Toes. “Or do you want it for target practice?”
Saunooke didn’t know what to tell Two Toes to do about his penis. “Take care of it,” he finally said. “Then come down here.”
Two Toes shook off his dick, then made his way down the steps. The dogs watched him silently, their ears pricked. As Two Toes came closer, Saunooke saw that his body was a landscape of his life. Knife scars crossed his torso, while both shoulders had the crater-like scars of old bullet wounds. Various tattoos decorated his arms—GWY for Cherokee, the old logo for AIM, the American Indian Movement, and some designs on his neck that looked like oddly shaped crosses. He’d apparently kept up the weight-lifting regimen of so many prison inmates. He had little old man flab, just bone and muscle. True to his name, he had only two toes on his right foot. The other three, rumor had it, had been bitten off by a wildcat, turning his given name of George forever into Two Toes.
He stopped even with Saunooke’s front fender and held his arms out wide. “There,” he said proudly. “Ecce homo.”
Saunooke didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what Two Toes was talking about.
“It’s Latin. It means ‘behold the man’.” Two Toes explained, his dark eyes boring into him. “Jesus said it when they were crucifying him.” His eyes flickered over to Saunooke’s gun. “You about to crucify me, boy?”
“I need to ask you some questions.”
Two Toes shrugged. “Ask away, then. I got nothing better to do than stand here in my panties and talk to you.”
Saunooke began, asking Two Toes his long list of questions. All his answers were predictable—no. No, he hadn’t been to Hartsville since his last parole meeting; no, he hadn’t been near Undli Adaya; and no, he hadn’t smoked any cigarettes in years.
“This is about that little girl, isn’t it?”
Saunooke decided to play dumb. “What little girl?”
“The little white girl they found underneath Undli Adaya.” Two Toes folded his arms, rocking back on his heels. “Back when you were sucking your mother’s tit.”
Saunooke checked an impulse to plant his fist in Two Toes’s face. “What would you know about that?”
“Which one?” Two Toes grinned, showing dark gums and incisors he’d filed into points. “The girl or your mother?”
Quivering with anger, Saunooke lifted his
gun. “What do you think?”
“Considering the way your hand is shaking, I think I’d best say the little girl.”
“And what do you know about that?”
“Only what unole whispers at night.”
Saunooke frowned. This is what Anderson had warned him about. Two Toes talked, but like a rabbit. Hopping down one hole to pop up in another.
“Maybe you could hear unole better in Hartsville. In jail.” He glanced at the dogs. “Your dogs have no rabies tags, and it’s illegal to keep them chained in Pisgah County.”
“This is not Pisgah County. This is Quallah.”
“The same laws apply.”
Two Toes pinioned him with a black stare for what seemed an eternity, then held out his hands in a gesture of giving. “I heard they found something to do with the girl. The cops are on it. I imagine that’s why you’re here.”
“How did you know that?”
“If you knew your people, you’d know Undli Adaya tells us everything that happens there.”
“Did the tree tell you who killed Teresa Ewing?”
He shook his head, slow and deliberate. “Not a Tsalagi,” he replied. “And certainly not me.”
Jack Wilkins was feeding his chickens when one of them came calling. He figured it would be Whaley on tamp-the-crank detail; he was pleasantly surprised to see the young sheriff emerging from a slick-looking black Camaro. They must be taking me seriously, he thought, puffing up with a little pride as he stood up from filling the chicken feeder with grain. Or else they really do think I planted those underpants.
“Detective?” Though Cochran was out of uniform in jeans and a plaid sport shirt, he still showed his respect by addressing Jack with his old title. Jack would have done exactly the same, had their positions been reversed.
“Nice to see you, Sheriff.” Jack let himself out of the chicken pen and extended his hand. Cochran’s handshake was firm, collegial. He smiled over at Lucky, who was tethered to a tree, wagging his tail. “How’s the dog doing?”
A Judgment of Whispers Page 7
