The woman’s smile barely lifted her lips and never reached her eyes. ‘Hello, Sheriff,’ she said to Bill. ‘How may we help you?’
‘Earl around?’ Bill asked.
‘He’s in the church house.’
‘Be OK if I go over there?’ he asked.
She stared at him for a long moment, then said, ‘If you don’t mind interrupting a man at prayer.’ With that said, she shut the door. She didn’t slam it. Just shut it firmly.
Bill looked down at me. ‘OK, so one wife’s not exactly happy,’ he said as he came down the steps.
‘I’d say she’s pretty surly, but that’s just me.’
It was about a hundred feet from the door of the double-wide to the door of the metal church building. Bill rapped on the church double doors then opened one. ‘Hey, Brother Earl, mind if we come in?’ he called into the room.
We both stepped in and I saw a vast room, devoid of anything – pews, chairs, whatever. There was a podium at the back and a man was standing there. He was a short, thin man with wiry gray hair shooting out every which way, a beak of a nose, and small, squinty eyes, color hard to tell.
‘Hey there, Sheriff!’ the man called back, coming down from the raised dais to meet us. He shook hands with Bill and then got introduced to me.
‘I take it you’re here about Sister Mary Hudson?’ he asked.
I nodded and he shook his head.
‘The Lord works in mysterious ways,’ he said. ‘I’m still praying on this one, though. I don’t think this was God’s will. Somebody murdered that poor woman and took a good mother away from her children. I am at your beck and call, Sheriff Kovak. Anything you want or need, I will help you receive.’
‘Thank you, Brother Earl,’ I said. ‘If we could sit for a spell so I could ask you a few questions?’
‘Absolutely! We got about a couple hundred folding chairs back in that closet,’ he said, pointing to the right of the podium. ‘Sheriff Bill, why don’t you round us up a few?’
Before Bill could even think about protesting, the two of us were knee-deep in the closet pulling out beige folding chairs. ‘How come we ended up doing this?’ he said in a half whisper.
‘Beats the hell out of me,’ I whispered back, before I remembered I was in a house of God and therefore shouldn’t be cussing out loud, or even to myself, really.
We took the chairs back to where Brother Earl waited for us. Once the three of us were seated, I said, ‘Brother Earl, I thank you for taking the time. I just wanted to know if you had any idea who might have done such a thing? If Mary or her husband Jerry Hudson had any enemies that you knew of?’
‘Well, now,’ he said, looking off, ‘I don’t know the Hudsons really well; they’ve only been with us two years, and though I did get to know Jerry some through our men’s group, I didn’t know Mary that well. My ladies tell me she was a wonderful mother and a gifted homemaker.’
‘Any troubles that might have reached your ears? Rumors about trouble in the family, some other lady mad at Mary about something? Any gossip at all?’
Brother Earl frowned. ‘I don’t hold with gossip, Sheriff,’ he said in a stiff tone. ‘As a group, we do not condone gossip and I’m sure no one would tell tales to either myself or my wives.’ At this point he sighed heavily. ‘But, and this is a big but, gentlemen, I have been known to hear things through . . . um . . . the grapevine, shall we say?’ He leaned forward to impart his wisdom. ‘Sister Carol Anne Hudson’s brother seemed to be a bother to Sister Mary.’ Straightening up, he added, ‘Now I can’t say what it was about, just that there appeared to be a . . . um . . . dispute amongst the two.’
‘That’d be Dennis Rigsby?’ I said.
‘Um-hum. He and his mama come to our church with the Hudson family. I just noticed the two of ’em having words after Sunday service a couple of weeks ago. And one of our congregation mentioned the two of them having at it after a Thursday social supper, last week I think it was.’
‘You remember which member of your congregation mentioned this to you, Brother Earl?’ I asked.
‘That would be confidential, Sheriff,’ he said. ‘I would not be at liberty to divulge that information.’
I looked at Bill Williams and he shrugged. I took a minute to think about it. I knew Catholic confession was confidential, but I knew that anything told to a priest outside of the confessional, in conversation, wasn’t. So, in a Protestant sect, counseling would be like a confession, and a conversation would just be a conversation, right? I hoped so.
‘Brother Earl,’ I said, ‘were you having a formal counseling session with this person?’
‘What person?’ he countered.
‘The one who said they saw Mary Hudson and Carol Anne Hudson’s brother Dennis having at it?’
‘Now, what do you mean by a formal counseling session?’ he asked.
I sighed deep. ‘Mr Mayhew, I do believe you know what I’m talking about. If this wasn’t a formal counseling session, then it was not confidential and you are required to tell me who it was.’
He sighed right back at me. ‘Rachael McKinsey,’ he said. ‘Brother Michael McKinsey’s wife.’
‘And where would I find them?’ I asked, looking quickly at my list of congregants. I didn’t see the McKinseys on there.
‘Michael and his family live in Longbranch,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you the address.’
‘Before we do that, Brother Earl, is there anything else you can tell me about the Hudsons?’
‘Like I said, Jerry’s a nice enough fella, his wives seem fine, and their kids – other than being a handful – are good kids. I don’t know anybody who’d want to kill Sister Mary. And I want this duly noted: neither I nor Sister Rachael McKinsey have accused Brother Dennis Rigsby of a darned thing, OK?’
I stood up. ‘Understood, Brother Earl. Now, about Mrs McKinsey’s address?’
On the way back to Longbranch, I called my wife on my cell phone and asked her if she was busy.
‘No. I finished with patients this morning. Just busy-work for the hospital this afternoon. What’s up?’
‘You wanna help me interview another plural family?’ I asked.
‘Why, yes, Sheriff, I believe I would like that very much,’ my wife said. I think she was being flippant.
I picked her up in my Jeep and we headed to the house in town belonging to Michael McKinsey and his family.
The house that matched the address was in an area of houses with acreage. The McKinseys had about five acres, I’d say, and the house that sprawled out on those acres might have taken up at least one all by itself. It was a one-story house that, from the front anyway, appeared to be shaped like an off-center ‘U,’ with the wings going toward the back.
I’d called ahead to make sure Rachael McKinsey would be there and she’d answered the phone herself. She’d refused to talk to me without her husband present, and I’d asked her to get him to come home because I needed to speak to her within the hour. There was a large Dodge Ram pick-up truck in the circle drive, and I pulled in behind it.
A man answered my knock. He was about six foot two, maybe six foot three inches tall, had to weigh well over 200 pounds, had a blond military haircut and his hands, hanging off meaty, muscled forearms, were fisted. I pulled my wife behind me.
‘Mr McKinsey?’ I said.
‘Sheriff,’ he said back. If this had been happening a hundred years earlier, somebody would be pulling a gun right about now.
‘I need to speak to your wife Rachael about a police matter, sir,’ I said.
‘I speak for my wife,’ he said.
‘Well, no, sir, in this case you don’t. I understand Mrs McKinsey has an eyewitness account that might be crucial to my investigation of the murder of Mary Hudson.’
‘My wife doesn’t know anything about Mary Hudson,’ he said, and started to shut the door.
I almost hesitated putting my boot-shod foot in the door, but a man has to do what a man has to do. So I did.
‘
Ow!’ I said.
‘Then move your foot, Sheriff,’ he said.
‘Mr McKinsey, you’re gonna make me come back here with a warrant? It’s just gonna waste my time and this psychiatrist’s time,’ I said, pointing at Jean behind me. ‘And your time too, if you took time off work. I mean, you’d barely get back to work before we had a deputy out there pulling you into the station so your wife can talk to us. I understand she doesn’t speak without you present?’
‘Damn right she doesn’t. And you know what?’ he said.
‘What?’ I said.
‘You’re right.’ He opened the door wider. ‘I don’t really give a crap about your time or her time, but I do about my own. So come on in and get this over with.’
Rachael McKinsey was already sitting in the living room, an immaculate room with no personality at all. All the furniture looked generic in shades of brown and beige. The only adornment on the walls was a cross over the mantle, and under foot was a thin beige carpet.
The lady sitting on the brown sofa was the only woman in this sect I’d seen with shortish hair. It was still long by most standards, but not by the standard that seemed to be set by the women I’d seen. Her dress was beige, totally covering her body from head to foot. The only spark of color in the entire room was the bright red shape of a handprint on her right cheek.
I wasn’t surprised that Michael McKinsey was a hitter. I made a mental note to check with Charlie Smith, police chief of Longbranch, when I got back to the sheriff’s department. See if there’d been domestics called on this house. With all the land around it, and the stifled demeanor of the woman sitting on the sofa, it was a good bet she didn’t make much noise when he abused her.
‘Mrs McKinsey,’ I said, addressing the woman on the sofa who still hadn’t looked up from her folded hands in her lap, ‘I’m Sheriff Milt Kovak, and this is Dr Jean McDonnell, a department consultant. I understand you witnessed a confrontation between Sister Mary Hudson and Dennis Rigsby last Thursday after a social at the church. Is that correct, ma’am?’
She said nothing. Just sat there staring at her hands.
‘Ma’am?’ I said again.
Still no answer.
I looked at Michael McKinsey. ‘Would you ask your wife to answer us, please?’
‘I said you could talk to her. I didn’t say she’d talk back,’ he said, as a smile played across his mouth.
I stood up. ‘OK, then, Mrs McKinsey, looks like you’re what they call a hostile witness and I’ll have to take you into custody until I find out what happened.’
I walked over to her and pulled her up by one arm. She flinched, bit her lip, but stood up. I loosened my grip on her arm. Who knew what kind of bruises that ugly beige dress covered.
‘OK, Rachael, we’ll be seeing you,’ Michael said.
Tears were streaming down her face, but she still said nothing.
‘Mommy!’ wailed a young voice, and a little girl of about four came running from the back of the house. Her blonde hair was shorn almost to her scalp. She wore a black dress that was too long for her and she tripped as she ran. Her little fists pounded my leg. ‘You can’t take my mommy! You can’t! You can’t!’
‘Emily!’ McKinsey shouted. ‘Come get this kid!’
A young woman, whose age I was definitely going to check, came out of the hall and took the child. She didn’t look more than fifteen or sixteen, but she wore the same kind of band on her ring finger as Rachael. Her carrot-red hair hung down to her waist and her pale blue dress was cut the same as Rachael’s. I was startled to see the look she gave Rachael – a half-hidden smile and a look of triumph. The child beat at the young woman, trying to get away from her. I let go of Rachael’s arm.
‘Mr McKinsey, who is that young woman?’ I asked.
‘My sister-in-law,’ he said, a smile on his face.
‘I’m going to be back in the morning and I want to see her birth certificate and your wife Rachael’s birth certificate and, just for the hell of it, birth certificates for every child in this house. Anybody who doesn’t have one will be going into custody. And yours too, you big-boned asshole son-of-a-bitchin’ mother––’
Jean had my arm by then and was hauling me out the door, which was rude. I had a lot more to say.
She got me outside and I asked her, ‘You got a camera in your telephone, right?’
‘Yes,’ she said, staring hard at me.
‘I want you to go back in and take a record of Rachael’s bruises. Count ’em if you have to. I just wanna make sure he knows we know and that there better not be any more in the morning!’ I said, breathing hard. I was so mad I could’ve gotten physical with Michael McKinsey, which would probably have gotten me killed; but I gotta say, that first punch of mine woulda felt so good.
‘There’s no way that woman will strip in front of me,’ Jean said. ‘She doesn’t want anyone to know he beats her. And the other one – the, excuse the expression, ‘sister-in-law’ – she won’t help. Milt, we need to just leave here, OK?’
‘He’s gonna beat her again!’ I said.
‘Come on, honey,’ Jean coaxed, pulling me by the arm. ‘There’s nothing we can do here. You know that. You have to actually see him assault her, or have someone call—’
‘I know, I know!’ I snapped, shaking off her arm and going on my own to the Jeep. ‘Just pisses me off!’ I said, once we were both in the car.
‘I know, honey,’ she said.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Didn’t mean to take it out on you.’
‘You didn’t. I know how you feel. Impotent.’
The word stopped me. ‘You mean like I can’t do anything about McKinsey, right?’
Jean smiled and traced my cheek with her index finger. ‘Yes, honey. You are definitely not impotent any other way.’
‘Damn straight,’ I said, as I started the car.
Jean Mcdonnell – Wednesday
I knew how Milt felt. He dropped me off at the hospital and I stood in the foyer, considering what I could do. One thing was screaming at me loud and clear. Michael McKinsey had another punishment for his women other than beating. The length of Rachael McKinsey’s hair, and the shorn state of the rambunctious little girl’s hair, reminded me of a documentary I’d seen in med school. A documentary that depicted resistance fighters cutting the hair or shaving the heads of women who had slept with Nazis during World War II. In a sect like the one we were dealing with, this kind of punishment went to the very core of their womanhood. Women in this sect never cut their hair, and even after marriage kept their hair loose, hanging down their backs. To cut their hair showed the other women how ‘bad’ this one had been, and was a lesson to them all.
The whole thing made me want to puke. I felt like I’d been taken in by Jerry Hudson and his clan. Lured into a false sense of security. The true story lay in the clan of Michael McKinsey. Something had to be done for Rachael and her small daughter. And I decided that I was probably the one to do it.
Milt Kovak – Wednesday
After I dropped Jean off at the hospital, I figured there was nothing to it but to do it. Go to the source. I headed to The Branches to have a serious talk with Dennis Rigsby.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t home, but his mother was.
‘Dennis is not home at the moment, Sheriff,’ she said upon opening the door. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Could you tell me where I could find him, Mrs Rigsby?’ I asked.
‘He’s at work, of course. Come in, Sheriff. Let me get you a glass of lemonade.’
‘No, ma’am, I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a hurry. Could you tell me, please, where Dennis works?’
‘Oh, no, I can’t do that, Sheriff,’ she said. ‘You can’t go disturbing him at work! They’re just awful to him there, and a visit by the police would just be the excuse they need to fire him!’ She welled up. ‘Oh, no, you just can’t do that!’
I checked my watch. It was getting close to five o’clock. ‘Ma’am, what time does he get off?’
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‘His shift ends at five,’ she said.
‘Well, it’s almost that now. If it’s close, I can run by and catch him as he gets off. Won’t have to actually bother him at work at all. Now, where is it he works?’
She sighed. ‘Just don’t get him fired!’ she pleaded.
‘I won’t,’ I assured her.
‘At the Jack-in-the-Box on Rancho Road.’
I had to wonder what Dennis Rigsby, whose back was so bad he was on social security disability benefit and relied on Jerry Hudson for the rest of his keep, was doing with a job. And if social security knew about it. I thought I might bring this up when I talked to him – if I thought he didn’t kill Mary Hudson. A little social security fraud was nothing compared to murder.
Rancho Road where the Jack-in-the-Box was located was the main strip of Bishop and the Jack-in-the-Box franchise had to get special permission to put their trademark box up in the air. Most everything on Rancho Road was made of red rock and Mexican tile, save the Jack-in-the-Box and McDonalds.
I found Dennis Rigsby, all dolled up in his Jack-in-the-Box get-up, getting into a navy blue and rust Honda Civic, vintage 1989–90, somewhere around there. I pulled up next to him and motioned for him to get in the passenger seat of my Jeep. He did. He smelled like French fries. Not a bad smell.
‘Hey, Sheriff,’ he said on sliding in. ‘What can I do you for?’
Witty, I thought. ‘Got some questions for you, Dennis.’
‘Well, I’ll check and see if I got answers.’
Jack Benny he wasn’t. ‘I been hearing some stuff about you and Mary Hudson,’ I said.
His hands went up in a defensive gesture. ‘I swear I never laid a hand on the woman!’ And then he laughed.
‘Now why would you say that?’ I asked.
‘What?’ he said, hands now down and a frown on his face.
‘That you never laid a hand on her. How about a meat tenderizer?’
‘Oh, jeez!’ he said, a frightened look on his face. ‘Ah, no, Sheriff! Really, I was just teasing! I thought you were insinuating that me and her – that you know, were, like, doing it or something.’
‘Were you?’ I countered.
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