Chief Roy Cloud was enough younger than Sly, Emily, Mickey, and Kenny that he’d never been part of their social circle. Cloud had no reason to know or suspect that Sly had worked among them. At least, he had no reason that Sly knew about. Still, he looked a lot less surprised to see him than Sly’s former friends did.
Sly guessed that the chief knew when a man was trouble, and it was only natural to expect to see a troublesome man when life took a dark turn.
Sly watched his son approach with an unspoken question on his face. Sly didn’t need to hear the question to know that it was “Why are you here, Dad?” More specifically, his question was “What business do you have at the funeral of this murdered woman?”
It was a hell of a thing for a man’s son to ever wonder why he was there. To his credit, Sly understood that he deserved this. Also to his credit, he was trying to step up. It was just too bad that it had taken him all of Joe’s life to do it.
Sly wasn’t proud of much, but he was proud of getting on a plane and going to Florida to seek his son’s forgiveness. Since that trip, he’d stayed the course. He’d invested in a cell phone plan with unlimited minutes and he’d used it until he was afraid the phone company was going to call him and say, “We didn’t really mean unlimited.” He’d even learned what a video chat was, so that he could visit with his grandchildren, face-to-face.
Did these things make up for the years he spent driving an eighteen-wheeler, instead of being home with his wife and son? Did they make up for letting Joe walk away and stay gone for all those years, when a real man would have turned the country upside down looking for his son? Did they make up for the shame of his penitentiary term?
They did not. But a man could only do the things that were possible. He couldn’t fix the past, but he could use the hell out of his cell phone and its video chat capability, so that’s what Sly did.
And speaking of the past, it was about to roar back into his life. When Sophia Townsend’s bones surfaced, they had brought his past with them. There was every likelihood that this past was going to tear up the tender and fragile relationship he was building with his only child.
Sly might not be able to do anything to prevent that, but he was going to try.
***
“Dad?”
This was the moment when Sly realized that he should have planned his words. He knew better than to walk into a situation half-cocked. The penitentiary had been full of men who did what they felt like doing and said what they felt like saying. That’s why they were in the penitentiary.
Sly had vowed never to go back. To keep that vow, he had to change. And he had to stay changed.
“I wanted to—”
Sly felt around for the right words, and in that moment he lost.
“Sly! Damn, man. How’ve you been? Good to see you!”
Mickey embraced him in the kind of hug that manly men give, both fists pounding on his back. Sometimes it means “How’ve you been? Good to see you,” but sometimes it means “Long time no see, asshole. This is the only socially acceptable way to punch you.”
Kenny was neither a fist-pounder nor a hugger, so all Sly got from him was a nod and a brusque “It’s been a while.”
***
Roy watched Mickey, Kenny, Emily, and Alba file past Sly, dutifully shaking the ex-con’s hand as he joined the group, or hugging him or scrupulously avoiding physical contact, as appropriate. Roy sensed that they weren’t doing this because they were glad to see Sly Mantooth, but because that’s how you behave at a funeral.
They all clearly knew Sly, but their faces were guarded. Alba’s welcome seemed sincere, but no one else’s did. Their smiles were wooden. From the looks of them, Roy couldn’t tell whether his murder suspects were really glad to see the newly arrived ex-con, or whether they were just barely able to keep from killing him where he stood.
***
Joe asked, “Are you here for the funeral, Dad? Did you know Sophia Townsend?” and Sly wasn’t quick enough to be the one to give his son an answer.
Mickey answered so quickly that Sly suspected him of cutting him off on purpose. “I forgot it until he drove up just now. We all worked together. Right here, back when you and Carson were just kids. Just for a few days, I think. Right?”
There it was on his son’s face. Doubt. Suspicion. Distrust. He’d seen them on Joe’s face before, but not since they’d been reunited.
Sly hated Mickey Callahan for putting the ugliness back into his relationship with Joe, but the hatred wasn’t really new. Sly had hated Mickey Callahan for a long time.
“Dad? You worked here? Back in eighty-seven?”
That was all Joe said, but Sly saw all the other questions in his eyes.
We’ve been talking about this job since Faye and I got off the plane, Dad. We talked about it all the next morning, wondering how Faye was doing and whether Carson was excited about being in charge. After Faye called and told us they’d found a body, we talked about that until I got so antsy that I had to come make sure she was okay. We’ve been talking about nothing else since then.
Why didn’t you mention even once that you’d worked here, too?
What are you hiding?
***
Roy was an investigator to the core, so he hadn’t taken his eyes off Sly Mantooth since the man stepped out of his truck. Sly had paused and squared his shoulders, and his body language had been so obvious that it was almost cartoonish. This was a man getting ready to do something hard.
Sly had watched Joe approach his father slowly, only to be overtaken by the back-slapping Mickey and his shadow Kenny. Then the four men had stood silent and stiff, like a pack of hunting dogs who weren’t sure whether to tree a bobcat or to run from its claws. Roy decided to complicate their lives even more by joining them.
“Sly? Here to see your son?”
Roy saw Faye sidle up beside Joe, as if she too had read the group’s body language and thought they might need her to keep the peace.
“No. I think I’m here to see you, Roy.”
This was news in itself. Sly didn’t ordinarily seek out the company of law officers.
“Ever since Faye called and told Joe that Sophia was dead, I’ve been thinking. Remembering. It’s been a long time since I worked for Sophia, and I didn’t work for her long, but I thought maybe I might remember something that would help you find out who killed her. Seems like I owe it to an old friend to help her get justice, you know? And it seemed like I owed it to an old friend to be at her funeral.”
Roy wasn’t sure Sly was telling the whole truth, but Sly wasn’t looking at him for a response to his statement. He was looking at Joe.
Joe’s face was a blank. Maybe Sly could read it, but Roy couldn’t.
Faye looked like she wanted to take her husband by the hand but she wasn’t sure it was a good idea. Roy thought he saw her right hand twitch, but she kept it by her side.
Agent Bigbee looked like he was thinking that this case had just gotten a whole lot more interesting.
Roy said, “You got something to tell me, Sly? We’re going to spend a few more minutes remembering Sophia and Kira, but we can talk when the memorial service is over. I’d like to give over this whole day to remembering those two women, cut down in their prime, but I can’t do it. The day’s getting old and we have a killer to catch.”
***
Faye watched Joe as he watched his father. After the memorial service was over, Sly, Agent Bigbee, and Roy had sat down in three camp chairs that Carson had provided from his project’s storage shed, the same chairs where Roy had sat when he interviewed all his witnesses and suspects.
Which was Sly? A witness? Or a suspect?
The men sat under a cedar tree that wasn’t throwing much shade. They were just talking. In fact, they looked almost friendly, but Joe was looking at Sly like a man who thought his father was he
ading back to the pen, and soon.
***
“You got something you especially want to tell me?” Roy asked, looking at Sly Mantooth up close for the first time in a lot of years.
He could see that time was weighing light on Sly, who had to be ten or more years older than Roy. He had seen Sly with the sallow, clammy skin of an active alcoholic whose liver couldn’t keep up. Not today. His face was almost unwrinkled, except for some faint lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, and it was the warm brown of his youth. It seemed that Sly Mantooth had stopped drinking and that he’d done it in time to save his health. It was probably too much to hope that he’d given up cigarettes, too.
There were individual strands of gray in his straight hair, but it was still thick and most of it was still black. Roy saw that Sly’s face was broader than his son’s through the cheekbones and jaw. With that sturdy bone structure, Sly might never have the jowls of an old man. Roy, who was nearing fifty, resisted the urge to touch his jawline to check on the condition of his own jowls.
“I ain’t got much to tell you, only that I was here, working, a couple of months before Sophia disappeared. I don’t know what to tell you about it. It’s not like I knew she was going to die, and I was only here for a couple of weeks, maybe three. I’ve had thirty years to forget things, and it looks like my friends have used those thirty years to forget me, but coming here seemed like the right thing to do. I’ll answer any question you’ve got, best as I can.”
Sly’s words sounded right and honorable—although Roy did notice that he’d called his former boss by her first name—but it had taken him a long time to come here and say them. The logical thing for an innocent man to do would be to come right away, as soon as he heard that a body had been found. The logical thing for a guilty man to do would be to stay away.
This man had thought about it for days, and then decided to come. Did that make him a guilty man who’d decided he needed to cover his tracks? Or did it make him an innocent man who’d decided he’d better start acting like one?
Chapter Twenty-one
“Let’s go.”
Joe was watching his father talk to Roy Cloud and Agent Bigbee, so Faye repeated herself.
“Did you hear me? I said let’s go!”
She hustled Joe to the passenger seat of the rental car and took the wheel.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To a mountain cabin in Arkansas.”
“That sounds romantic.”
“I wish.”
Faye handed him her phone. On its screen, Joe could see the report from Mickey’s 1987 visit to Sophia Townsend’s cabin, including detailed directions to the spot where it hid on the side of a mountain.
“Help me navigate,” she said.
“You plan to tell me why we’re going there in such a big hurry?”
“I do, just as soon as I get out of Roy Cloud’s sight and can stop driving like an old man.”
Joe studied the screen for a minute. The Arkansas officer’s sloppy scrawl made his dyslexia kick up something fierce. After he got the letters to settle down and stay in one place, he said, “Head for the interstate. That’ll take us across the state border. After we get off the highway, we’ll have to pay attention or we’re going to miss some of these little roads. I’ll pull up a map on my phone and see if I can plot out where those roads actually are. It’ll be a lot easier than following these directions.”
“Are they really bad?”
He watched Faye squeeze the accelerator toward the floor. She was a far more aggressive driver than he was. The road between them and the interstate was rough, but it was paved and straight, so he guessed they’d be okay.
“Naw, they’re pretty good. Had to be. There wasn’t any GPS back then. These directions tell you every little twist and turn. They even give you landmarks. But when they say ‘Turn left at the third dirt road on the left,’ how are we supposed to know they ain’t built another dirt road in the last thirty years?”
“Or paved one of the ones that was already there.”
“Yeah. Now do you want to tell me why we’re doing this?”
“I suppose it’s obvious that I just lost my consulting job with the Lighthorse Tribal Police.”
“Because Dad’s a suspect now?”
Faye nodded. He watched her nudge the accelerator a little closer to disaster.
“Faye, why do you think Dad hasn’t said the first thing about working for Dr. Townsend? He should’ve told us.”
“I don’t know, but Roy Cloud is going to think that he waited so long to come forward because he’s guilty. No, that’s not right. Roy is fair. He’s going to think that your dad might be guilty and he’s going to try to get at the truth. But it doesn’t help a bit that Sly’s an ex-con. And heaven only knows what Bigbee is thinking right about now.”
Joe looked out his window. He didn’t like thinking about his father’s past. He also didn’t particularly like his wife saying nice things about the man who had been taking up so much of her time, the man who coincidentally might try to railroad his father. Faye continued talking as if she didn’t notice his annoyed sigh.
“Someone with your father’s past would naturally steer clear of the police. Cloud knows that, so it’s good that Sly came forward on his own. But he just made himself a suspect until he and Bigbee sort everything out. We already know that Roy won’t work with Carson because his father is a suspect. Now that my father’s a suspect, there’s no way he will continue to work with me.”
At the word “father,” Joe jerked his head around to look at his wife. Her lips were pursed together so hard that they were pale. “What did you say?”
“I never knew my father,” Faye said. “Now that I’ve got one, do you think I want to lose him?”
“How will it help Dad for us to die in a burning car?” He leaned over to look at the speedometer as she merged on to the interstate. “Dang, Faye. Why’ve you got to go so fast?”
“I’ve read enough of Sophia’s field notebooks to know that the last one is missing. We know she stayed at a motel during that last week, checking out on Friday like she always did. She went missing on a Friday when all her stuff would have still been in her car. If she made it home, there’s a good chance that the notebook is there.”
“And you think there might be something in that notebook that will tell us who did it?”
“Could be. Or maybe it will just tell us something about the figurine and the pearls and the bone. They all seem to be connected to her murder, though I can’t imagine how. We need to know more about the last days of Sophia Townsend’s life if we’re going to clear your dad.”
“You’re not going to steal that notebook, are you? If we find it, I mean.”
“And get charged with obstructing justice or tampering with evidence or being an accessory after the fact? No, thank you. But I can certainly take pictures of the pages and read them after we get out of there.”
***
Faye’s nerves were too frayed to sit with her husband in silence. She had driven twenty minutes since he last spoke, and that was long enough.
“Joe? You doing okay? About your dad, I mean. We’re going to work this thing out. You don’t have to worry about him so much.”
Joe was thumbing something into his phone and he didn’t look up. Faye moved into the left lane and gave the car some more gas, praying that there were no speed traps.
Finally, Joe spoke, but he didn’t respond to her reassurance that he didn’t need to worry about his dad.
“Faye? You think that Roy Cloud is going to come to the cabin today, too?”
Of course, Roy would be following them to Arkansas. This was the thing that was driving her to travel at such a suicidal speed. “I know he’ll come. We were already planning to make a trip there. He’d already be on the road, except your father made himself fir
st priority.”
“That’s what I thought, so I just texted Dad. Couldn’t call him, because he probably wouldn’t pick up. Besides, I couldn’t risk Roy hearing what I had to say. Dad keeps his phone pretty loud. Don’t know why. He can hear just fine.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him to stall as long as he could, then to call us when Roy gets done with him.”
When Faye heard that Joe had taken an action, any action, she felt better. Now that he had broken out of the strangely passive place he’d inhabited since they came to Oklahoma, she allowed herself to think that maybe their family was going to emerge from this crisis unscathed. As she thought about it, this was exactly what Sly had done that morning. He had walked away from passiveness and taken back control of his life.
“Excellent. Now let’s just hope that your dad checks his texts. I might not if I were being questioned in a murder case.”
“That’s why I dialed his number after I texted. You know he never turns his ringer off. He’ll pull out the phone and see that I texted. If we’re lucky, he’ll read it. He wouldn’t have to be obvious about it. Just tapping the screen twice would pull up the text.”
“He could send you back a text that says, ‘K’ with two more taps.”
“He won’t think of that. Just drive and hope he’s busy talking Roy Cloud’s ears off.”
***
The last gravel road leading to Sophia Townsend’s cabin looked to Faye like it hadn’t been graded since 1987. The underbrush reached out from both sides of the road, dragging against both sides of the car.
Joe rolled down the window to see what the scraping branches were doing to the car’s paint job. “We’re going to owe the rental company big bucks for those scratches.”
“We’re lucky to be able to get through at all,” Faye said. “You would think we’d at least have had to stop and move some fallen limbs.”
“Somebody else has come down this road lately. No way to do that without clearing anything blocking the road.”
Burials Page 19
