If she was correct, the muzzle of the gun that shot Robert had been placed at an upward angle against the skin. The hot metal had seared a V-shaped impression of the muzzle into the flesh. Either the person who shot him had been in an inferior position, squatting or kneeling, or Robert had held the gun to his own side and pulled the trigger. The second theory would explain why so little damage was done. The abdomen contained seven major organs and around thirty feet of intestines. The bullet had managed to miss them all.
Sara would have voiced her suspicions to the sheriff last night, but after taking one look at the man, she knew that, like Jeffrey, he was going to do everything he could to give Robert the benefit of the doubt. Clayton “Hoss” Hollister screamed good ol’ boy, from his nickname to his cowboy boots. Sara knew exactly how his kind operated. Her father certainly wasn’t part of Grant’s network of powerful old men—he hated doing favors because he had to—but Eddie Linton played cards with most of them. Sara had learned how they worked her first week as coroner, when the mayor explained to her that the county had an exclusive contract to order all their medical supplies through his brother-in-law’s company, no matter how much he charged.
Today, Sara wanted to see Robert’s wound again, and even if Jeffrey wouldn’t—or couldn’t—keep his promise to let her do the autopsy, she wanted to watch while whoever was in charge examined the slain man—or victim, depending on how you looked at it. After that, all she wanted to do was get the hell out of Sylacauga and away from Jeffrey. She needed time and some distance so she could get her head together and figure out exactly how she felt about him in light of last night’s explosion.
Sara tested her weight on her feet. Her soles were bruised from the impromptu run last night, and something sharp had taken a chunk of skin out of her heel. She would stop to buy Band-Aids once she got on the interstate.
Nell offered a faint smile when Sara limped into the kitchen. “Kids won’t be up for another hour.”
Sara tried to be polite. “How old are they?”
“Jared’s ten, Jennifer’s ten months younger.”
Sara raised an eyebrow.
“Trust me, I got my tubes tied the second she was out.” Nell took a coffee cup out of the cabinet. “You like it black?” Sara nodded. “Jen’s the smart one. Don’t tell Jared I said that, but Jen’s a full grade ahead of him in school. It’s his own damn fault—he’s not stupid, he’s just more interested in sports than books. Boys that age just can’t sit still for anything. You probably know all about that with your job.” She put the cup down in front of Sara and poured coffee as she spoke. “I guess you want a houseful of kids when you settle down.”
Sara watched steam rise from the cup. “I can’t actually have children.”
“Oh,” Nell said. “There’s my foot in my mouth again. You’d think I loved the taste of leather.”
“It’s okay.”
Nell sat down across from Sara with a heavy sigh. “God, but I’m nosey. It’s the only thing my mother says about me that’s true.”
Sara forced a smile. “Really, it’s okay.”
“I won’t press you for details,” Nell said, but her tone of voice implied she would be more than open to hearing them.
“Ectopic pregnancy,” Sara provided, though she went no further.
“Does Jeffrey know?”
She shook her head.
“You could always adopt.”
“That’s what my mother keeps saying,” Sara said, and for the first time she voiced the reason why she couldn’t bear the thought of adoption. “I know this sounds horrible, but I take care of other people’s children all day. When I get home…”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Nell said. She reached over and squeezed Sara’s hand. “Jeffrey won’t mind.”
Sara gave her a tight smile and Nell breathed out a heavy sigh, saying, “Well, shit. Can’t say I didn’t see that coming, but I was hoping it would last a little longer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Forget about it.” Nell slapped her thighs as she stood. “Nothing bad between you and me. Jeffrey’s loss is my gain. First damn time that’s ever happened, I can tell you.”
Sara stared down at her coffee again.
“You want pancakes?”
“I’m not that hungry,” Sara told her, even as her stomach grumbled.
“Me neither.” Nell took out the griddle. “Three or four?”
“Four.”
Nell put the griddle on the stove and went about preparing the batter. Sara watched, thinking she had seen her mother do this same thing thousands of times. There was something so comforting about being in a kitchen, and Sara felt the nightmares from the night before start to fade.
“Stupid neighbor,” Nell said, tossing a cheery wave at someone outside the window over the sink. A car door slammed, followed by an engine starting. “He’s gone every weekend with some whore he met in Birmingham. Watch it,” she said, tossing Sara a look over her shoulder to make sure she was paying attention. “Soon as he pulls out of the driveway, those dogs will start barking and they won’t shut up till he comes back around ten tonight.” She stood on the tips of her toes and craned her head to see into the neighbor’s yard. “I’ve talked with him ten times about getting those poor things some shelter. Possum even offered to build him something. God, they howl when it rains.”
The dogs started barking on cue. Just to keep her talking, Sara asked, “They don’t have a doghouse?”
She shook her head. “Nope. He kept having to come home because they jumped the fence, so he put them on chains. So, of course every morning like clockwork they knock their water bowls over and I have to trudge over there and fill ’em back up.” She handed Sara a carton of eggs and a bowl, saying, “Make yourself useful,” before continuing, “Boxers are so damn ugly. They’re not even the cute kind of ugly. And Lord, do they slobber. It’s like taking a spit bath every time I go over there.”
Sara broke the eggs into the bowl, not listening to Nell’s words so much as the cadence of her voice. She was thinking about Jeffrey and trying to put logic to what had happened last night. Sara knew that both her biggest strength and her biggest weakness was that she saw things clearly in black and white, but right now, for the first time in her life, she was seeing the gray. She had been tired last night, and upset by everything that had happened. Had she really seen the sear mark? The more she thought about it, the more she convinced herself that she had not. But her gut still told her to go with what she had first thought. And why would Robert keep covering the wound unless he really had something to hide?
“Sara?” Nell said. She had obviously asked a question.
“I’m sorry,” Sara apologized. “What?”
“I asked did Robert recognize the man?”
Sara shook her head. “I guess not or he would’ve said something.”
“It hasn’t made the papers yet—we only get a weekly here and it’s not due until next Sunday—but I heard on my walk this morning that it’s Luke Swan. The name won’t mean anything to you, but we all went to school with him. He used to live a couple of houses over.” She pointed toward the backyard. “Possum was born here and I grew up across the street—did I tell you?” Sara shook her head. “We moved in after his mama died. I couldn’t stand the woman—” she knocked three times on the wooden cabinet under the sink, “but it was nice of her to leave the house to us. I thought Possum’s brother would make a stink, but it all worked out.” She paused for breath. “Where was I?”
“Luke.”
“Right.” She turned back to the stove. “He lived here a few years before his father lost his job, then they moved over by the school. He didn’t exactly run with our crowd.”
Sara could guess she meant the popular crowd. The same groups had been at her own school, and though Sara had been far from popular, she was lucky enough not to have been picked on for it.
Nell continued, “I heard he’s a troublemaker, but who knows? People say all k
inds of things after somebody’s dead. You should hear Possum talk about his mama like she was Mary Poppins, and that woman was never happy a day of her life. She was a lot like Jessie that way.” Nell poured four pancakes onto the griddle. “I heard Jessie’s at her mama’s.”
“Yes,” Sara confirmed.
“Good Lord,” Nell mumbled, taking the bowl of eggs from Sara. She beat them with a fork, then dumped them into a frying pan. Even though Sara had graduated in the top ten percent of her class at one of the toughest medical schools in the country, she always felt inadequate around women who could cook. The one meal she had prepared for her last boyfriend had resulted in the throwing away of two pots and a perfectly good garbage can.
Nell said, “I ebb and flow with that woman. Maybe it’s because Robert and Possum throw us together all the time and expect us to make happy. Sometimes I think she’s not that bad and sometimes I just want to pop her upside the head to knock some sense into her.” She tapped the fork on the edge of the pan before setting it on a napkin. “Right now I just feel sorry for her.”
“It’s an awful thing to have happen.”
Nell flipped the pancakes with a spatula. “Bobby’s a real doll but you never know what they’re like until you get them home and take them out of their packages. Maybe he sucks his teeth. Possum started doing that a few years ago until I threatened to beat him with a bat.” She put the pancakes and some of the eggs onto a plate and handed it to Sara. “Bacon?”
“No thank you.”
Nell took three strips of bacon out from under a napkin and put them on Sara’s plate. “I was hating her something awful until a few months ago. She had a miscarriage. I was over at her house every day making sure she didn’t do something stupid. Liked to tore the both of them up. She’s wanted a kid ever since I met her. We’re talking back in junior high school. Never been able to have one, though.”
Sara poured syrup onto the pancakes. They were all perfectly round and the same thickness. “What stupid thing did you think Jessie would do?”
“Take too many pills,” Nell said, flipping the pancakes one by one. “She’s done it before. If you ask me, it was just to get attention. Not that Robert seems all that inattentive, but you just never know, do you?”
“No,” Sara agreed around a mouthful of bacon. Until last night, she never would have guessed that Jeffrey was capable of threatening her. She could still feel the breeze from his fist passing just a few inches from her head as he punched the wall. “Would she ever cheat on him?”
“Ha,” Nell laughed, filling up her plate. She sat down across from Sara, pouring a liberal amount of syrup over the pancakes as she talked. “If she did, it’d have to be with somebody up in Alaska. Robert knows everything that goes on in this town. He’ll probably take over for the sheriff if the old fart ever retires. Hoss has held the office since before dirt. I think the only way he’ll leave is feet-first. Hell, knowing this town, people’d still vote for him, even if he was dead.”
“You don’t have a police force, it’s only the sheriff’s office?”
Nell took a bite of egg. “You know how small this town is? If we had both, there wouldn’t be anybody left to work at the gas station.” She stood up. “Juice?”
“I’m fine.”
Nell got two glasses out of the cabinet and put them on the table. “Mind you, if Jeffrey was around, Hoss would have retired years ago.”
“Why is that?”
She poured the juice. “Heir apparent. Robert’s father was half useless, but better half useless than being stuck with Jimmy Tolliver. That man was a monster. Jeffrey won’t talk about it, but that scar under his shoulder came from his daddy.”
Sara had seen the scar, but not wanting to open a conversation about scars, she had never asked about it. Now she asked, “How?”
Nell sat back down. “I was standing right there,” she said, taking a bite of pancake. Sara waited while she chewed, wishing for once that Nell would get on with it. Finally, she swallowed. “May said something smart-ass and Jimmy just laid into her. I mean like a fury. I’ve never seen anything like it. Never hope to see it again, knock wood.” She rapped her knuckles on the table.
Sara swallowed, though she had nothing in her mouth. “He hit her?”
“Oh, hon, he hit her all the time. It was like she was his own private punching bag. Jeffrey, too, when he was home. Not that he was home much. He spent most of his time out by the quarry, trying to get away from it. He’d just sit out there and read until the sun went down. Sometimes he’d sleep out there unless Hoss found him, then he’d make Jeffrey sleep at the station.” She drank some juice. “Anyway, this one time I was there, they were hauling off on each other and Jeffrey tried to step in between them. Jimmy backhanded the shit out of him and Jeffrey went flying—and I do mean flying—across the room. Cut his back open on the stovetop. This was back when they had those knobs with the sharp metal edges, not like now where it’s all just buttons and dials.”
After a while, Sara said, “I didn’t know.” She tried to imagine what it must have been like for Jeffrey growing up in that kind of environment and could not. Like most pediatricians, she had seen her share of abused children. Nothing made her more angry than a cowardly adult who took out his or her frustrations on a child. As far as Sara was concerned, they should all be left to rot in jail.
“Takes a hell of a lot to get Jeffrey angry,” Nell continued. “I guess that’s a good thing, though maybe not. You’ve got to wonder about him holding that in all the time. He hates to argue. Always has. You know he had an academic scholarship to Auburn?”
“Jeffrey?” Sara asked, trying to absorb this new information.
“Part of it was football, but they don’t give you a full ride to warm the bench.” She gave a surprised laugh, as if she could not believe what had just come from her mouth. “Don’t ever tell Possum I said that, but it’s the God’s truth. The minute Jeffrey got to Auburn, he hated football. He would have quit the team if Hoss’d let him.”
“What did Hoss have to do with it?”
Nell put down her fork. “You know why Jeffrey’s called Slick?”
“I can take a wild guess.”
She snorted a laugh. “Yeah, he’s slick, I’ll give him that, but the name came because no matter what kind of trouble he got into, he was real slick at getting out.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Oh, not anything big when you consider what kids get up to today. Stealing things from the five-and-dime, borrowing his mama’s car while she was passed out on the couch. The same kinds of things his daddy probably did when he was that age. We’re talking ten or twelve. You gonna finish that?” Sara shook her head and Nell reached over with her fork and took the last bite of pancake. “Jeffrey’d probably be where his daddy is if Hoss hadn’t come along.”
“What did Hoss do?”
“Made him cut the grass at the jail instead of spending a couple of nights locked up in it. Sometimes, he’d take Jeffrey back in the cells and make him talk to some of the guys who were hard cases. Basically, he scared the shit out of him. Robert, too, but he didn’t need as much scaring. He’s always been more of a follower, and with Jeffrey straightened out, you got Robert, too.”
“It’s a good thing Hoss came along.”
“Sometimes I wonder,” Nell said, sitting back with her coffee. “Jeffrey’s got a tender heart. I guess you noticed.”
Sara did not answer, though she wondered if Nell had an accurate picture of him. A lot could happen in six years. A lot could happen in one night.
“I always saw him ending up teaching, maybe coaching football at the high school. After Jimmy went up for life, he changed. Maybe Jeffrey thought joining the force and being a cop would make up for the fact that his daddy was a criminal. Maybe he thought it’d make Hoss happy.”
“Did it?”
Nell pushed away her plate. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
Sara saw Jeffrey walk by the kitchen window a
nd she stood from the table, telling Nell, “I should get dressed.”
Jeffrey opened the back door. He seemed surprised to find Nell and Sara eating breakfast.
Sara said, “I was just going to get changed.”
He gave her a quick glance, saying, “You look fine,” even though she was still in the pajamas she had been wearing when she ran out of his mother’s house last night.
Nell asked, “How’s Jessie and them?”
“Like you’d think.” He indicated their cleaned plates. “That smells good.”
“I didn’t marry Possum to cook for you,” she said, standing up. “There’s plenty of batter left in the bowl and the eggs shouldn’t be too cold. I’ve gotta go check-see if those stupid dogs have knocked over their water bowls yet.”
Nell took all the conversation with her when she left the room. Not knowing what else to do, Sara sat back down at the table. She felt like the pancakes she had eaten were expanding in her stomach. The coffee left in her cup was lukewarm, but she managed to swallow it.
Jeffrey chewed a piece of bacon as he poured himself a cup of coffee. He put the pot on the warmer, then took it out again, holding it up to see if Sara wanted more. She shook her head no, and he put it back, eating another piece of bacon as he stared at the kitchen faucet.
Sara took up her fork and traced it around the syrup in her plate, wondering what, if anything, to say. Really, the burden to speak was on him. She put down the fork and crossed her arms, staring at Jeffrey, waiting.
He cleared his throat before asking, “What are you going to say today?”
“What do you want me to say?” she asked. “Or are you going to threaten me again?”
“I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” she told him, her anger coming back in sharp focus. “I’ll tell you this right now, between the way your mother talked to me last night and your threats, I could leave right now and never look back.”
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