by Craig Smith
Chapter 21
Sunday 3:00 p.m., March 21.
AT THREE PASTOR ASKS WILL if there is anything special he would like to do. The public library, Will answers. Lots of books here you’re welcome to look at, Pastor tells him. Will knows that, he says; then he smiles bashfully, but it isn’t the public library.
A phone call. Yes, the library is open until nine every evening but Saturday. Pastor asks Tamara to drive Will into town. Pastor tells her he will pick Will up later, when he calls.
It is not raining, but the sky is still grey. For a couple of minutes neither Will nor Tamara talks. Then Will tells her to turn right. Tamara protests but she turns where he indicates. They leave the asphalt at once for a gravel road. Soon they are in open farmland. Five, then eight miles out from town. Will remembers the road. Almost nothing has changed along the way.
Then he sees it ahead, what he is seeking. An abandoned property. Still there, still desolate. A quarter of a mile distant six new homes stand where there were once only fields, but here there is still the quiet of decay. A fence tangled in briars. An old lawn turned to high weeds and heavy brush. A broken concrete lane leading to a bald patch of dirt.
‘In here,’ Will tells her.
Tamara looks at him strangely, but she obeys. They are hidden from the road the moment she turns into the lane. The weeds and trees press close, scratch the girl’s banged up Chrysler. A few feet more and they have a view of the pad of dirt where the house stood.
Behind it is a broken down shed. Beyond that was an abandoned barn, where he had once found a bat and shovel. The new houses down the field might as well be miles away. Here they are
absolutely alone, perfectly invisible. ‘Come here, Tammy,’ he tells her. Tamara does not wait this time when he asks. She comes quickly. Her lips find his. Her breath pours over his face as they kiss. He tastes the Sunday staleness of her. The green beans they have eaten, mashed potatoes, beef and gravy. Cherry pie. He holds her neck reverently. ‘Do you like that?’
‘Oh, Will!’
He looks away sadly. ‘I know it’s wrong,’ he tells her, ‘but I can’t help myself. The moment I saw you...’
‘It’s not wrong, Will!’ After a long, quiet kiss, she finishes, ‘If two people care for each other it’s never wrong.’
He studies the girl’s face. ‘For me, knowing how you prayed to get me out, the moment I saw you, I knew this was what I wanted.’
‘I wanted it too!’
‘Your parents aren’t going to understand.’
‘I don’t care!’
‘We can’t tell them.’
‘I could keep driving,’ she tells him. He stirs from his thoughts and focuses on the girl.
He is not sure what she means. ‘No one would ever find us, Will.’
She is serious. Eighteen always is. ‘They’ll put me back in prison if I run, Tammy.’
She throws herself at him. She weeps and kisses his face. It’s not right what they’ve done to him. It is not fair. He should be free! They should be free! Will holds the girl tightly while she laments. He thinks of things past; he summons pain, hunger, cold. ‘We have to wait,’ he tells her with quiet decisiveness. ‘Once I’m free, it will be different. Then it won’t matter what your parents say. It won’t matter what anyone says.’
He kisses her mouth to seal the promise. ‘How long do we have to wait?’
Will shakes his head. ‘That’s up to the law.’
‘My dad says there won’t be a trial!’
‘If he’s right about that, we won’t have to wait more than sixty days.’ While she considers the changes in her life that might come in the next sixty days, he tells her, ‘We’d better go, Tammy. I need to … I mean I should spend some time in the library, since I said that’s where I’m going.’
She starts the Chrysler and backs out to the road. A car comes toward them, forcing Tamara to wait. It sweeps past them, a rock kicking into Tamara’s rear bumper. Tamara swears brightly, and Will thinks she is worried about the damage the rock has caused. ‘I knew that woman!’ she tells him, ‘It was Mrs Breen. She goes to our church!’
Will closes his eyes. A mistake. A bad one if the woman really saw them. ‘Pull back inside,’ he whispers.
Tamara does as he tells her. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asks.
Will thinks he should kill Tamara here and now. It is not what he wants, but if Pastor finds out about them before it is time for him to know the truth...
‘Tell me about Mrs Breen.’
‘She’s an old busybody.’
‘Is she your mother’s friend?’
‘They don’t get along. My mother hates her.’
‘You can’t say anything about us,’ Will whispers. ‘If your father finds out...’
‘He won’t.’
‘What about your mother?’
Her gaze drops away. ‘I won’t tell her,’ she answers quietly.
‘She’ll know, especially if Mrs Breen calls her.’
‘Mrs Breen won’t call her.’
Will stares at a patch of weeds in the distance. Then he looks across the overgrown property to the barn. He is not ready. He needs time, a day or two more. For Penny.
‘Are you going to tell Tabit about us?’
‘It’s none of Tabit’s business what we do!’ Tamara is bitter. She hates her sister’s slender dark beauty.
‘We won’t have to hide from anyone once I am free,’ he tells her.
‘Oh, Will!’
‘We better go.’ She hesitates, wanting his promise to be true. ‘Go on,’ he tells her. He is smiling like a lover. ‘Take me into town like you said you would.’
Chapter 22
Sunday 9:43 p.m., March 21.
A KNOCKING AT THIS BEDROOM door stirs Will. It is late; he is back from his studies at the public library. He is reading his Bible, the story of Job, who kept faith. When he opens the door, Will sees Pastor’s face is stricken. Will is certain Pastor has found out about Tamara.
‘The sheriff is downstairs, Will. He wants to talk to you.’
‘The sheriff?’ Pastor does not answer him. Will has no choice but to follow.
Will recalls the other sheriff vividly when he gets to Pastor’s study. The gun in his mouth. The dirty words he spoke. This one is a big man too. ‘I thought I better come see you personally,’ he announces at once, ‘because I don’t want any confusion between you and me on what I have to say. Do you follow me, William?’
Breath of booze, eyes red, mean. ‘I’m not sure I do, Sheriff.’ Will feels his guts boiling.
‘We had a complaint about you!’
Pastor moves in by one big step. Mug-to-mug, Pastor’s head tipping down into Sheriff’s face, ‘What kind of complaint, Max?’
Sheriff looks uneasily at Pastor. Pastor scares him. All the same, Sheriff stands square.
Gets mean when he is scared. Like prison guards and dogs. ‘I’ll ask the questions, Connie.’
< I studyy at Past1em" align="justify">‘Then maybe we’d better call Will’s lawyer.’
‘Call a baker’s dozen! All I want to know is where William was this morning.’
Pastor grins. He does not like Sheriff Max Dunn. ‘Will was with me from six-thirty until close to three this afternoon; is that good enough for you?’
‘I asked him.’
Will blinks in confusion, then answers. ‘I went with Pastor to the church this morning.
At three I went to the public library.’
‘And you were up at six-thirty this morning?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Sunday is a work day around here!’ Pastor chuckles.
Sheriff ignores him passionately. His frown tightens down on Will. ‘William,’ he drawls, ‘have you seen Missy Worth since you have been out?’
‘No, sir. Not to my knowledge. Maybe she was at church this morning. If she was, I didn’t recognise her.’
‘She wasn’t at church!’ Pastor answers with a laugh. ‘Not Missy Worth! Is
that your complaint, Max? You think Will here was making eyes at Missy Worth in church?’
Sheriff angers, ‘They’ve got Missy Worth up at the hospital, Connie.’
‘The hospital?’
‘Catherine Howard. They’ve got her in for observation until noon next Sunday.’
Pastor gets a strange, questioning look, his head leaning out like a leering mask. ‘She’s had another breakdown!’
‘They don’t know what it is.’
Pastor looks at Will. ‘Catherine Howard is a psychiatric ward, Will.’
‘Her parents are beside themselves with worry. They think your friend here came to see her and made some kind of threat.’
‘This morning? Well that proves she’s a liar, doesn’t it? Or just plain crazy! Now let me tell you something, Max. They’re grabbing at straws so they can send Will back, but they made a mistake this time. Will has an alibi! You hear me? That’s proof positive, isn’t it? Your eyewitness can’t be trusted!’ Sheriff has no answer. He cannot quite figure this out. ‘I asked you a question, Max.’
Sheriff’s face flushes, ‘Don’t you take that tone with me, Connie Merriweather! I came out here –’
‘I’ll take any tone I like! You come into my home and treat Will like he’s done something wrong because you’ve got a poor woman locked up in a psychiatric ward. Well, she’s a drug addict, as I have pointed out many times. Is now and was ten years ago! It’s a tragic situation, I’ll grant you that, but so is her accusation against Will! Especially as it cost him ten years of his freedom!’
‘You’re a damn fool, Connie Merriweather!’ Sheriff shifts his glare suddenly to Will, murder in his eyes. ‘Talk your Jesus to this fool all you want, boy! But I know the devil when I smell the sulphur!’
‘You get out of my house, Max Dunn! Your welcome has worn out!’
‘And let me tell you this, my Sweet William, if you get the urge again, you had better go do it in someone else’s county! If I find dead kids in my jurisdiction I’ll load all six before you and I play the game!’
‘That’s a threat! I’m a witness to that, Max! You’re talking about Russian roulette.
Don’t think I don’t know exactly what you’re saying!’
‘Go back to your pulpit, Connie. You don’t have a hog’s breath of an idea what’s going on here.’ One last look for only Will, his big finger pointing. ‘Mind what I say, boy, or I’ll get you! You hear me? I will!’
Pastor’s voice cools. ‘Max, I want you out of this house, now.’ Sheriff only has eyes for Will as he leaves. Like a dog driven off, barking all the way. A bad man, he is. As evil as the last. And godless, too.
Pastor opens the door for him as he leaves. ‘You have not heard the end of this, Max Dunn!’ They have words again, but Will cannot hear them all. The word fool is clear. He hears the name of Rachel, then mention of Pastor’s two little girls. Does he want them all to die?
Whatever Pastor answers, Will cannot hear it. When he comes back into his study, Pastor is shaking his head, pretending a calm he does not possess. His face is red. Will thinks Sheriff has scared Pastor with his warnings, but it isn’t so. Pastor is thinking about Will. About the trial.
Will focuses on Pastor’s face, nods and answers as he must. He cannot follow everything. He knows only Pastor believes Sheriff has made a mistake. Pastor wants to call Mr Griswold about it. Will is not so confident. He fears this sheriff as much as he did the last, as he feared the guards and the convicts at Graysville Prison. Against such men even God is quiet.
Chapter 23
Monday 11:15 a.m., March 22.
I DID NOT GO BACK TO WORK Monday morning. I did not call to say I would not be in, either. Max Dunn meant well. Pat Garrat, even. But I was finished with it. Finished with politics and the dreams that take you places where you don’t belong. I walked down to St. Jude’s and spent a hard hour on my knees. I told the Lord to take me where he would because I was finished with Pat Garrat. The Lord had absolutely nothing to say to any of this.
Afterwards, I found my car in the lot of one of my favourite taverns and drove to a cafe, where I bought a couple of big newspapers and settled down to a life of leisure. I’m pretty good at loafing, and I did it up right that morning. I got back to the house a little before eleven and made a couple of calls to the newspaper. Rooms for rent at my house. PI for hire. I cleaned up the place some and then decided to go see Sarah’s grave. In the back of my mind I had couple of options afte sa I and at tr that, a tavern or a gun shop, and I was not real sure which I would take. Dead or dead drunk, I mean. At that point it did not seem to make much difference. I don’t know now, even, what I would have done, because I got a phone call as I was heading out. And that changed everything. The voice was heavy, somehow familiar, but the name meant nothing.
‘This is Clint Doolittle.’
‘What is this about?’ I asked, running the name through my memory and wondering why I knew the voice.
‘You said you might be able to help Missy.’
Doolittle. Doo. Missy Worth’s boyfriend. I started to explain that I was not with the county prosecutor’s office anymore, but I was a little slow getting started. It’s hard sometimes to say a truth we hate.
‘Well, she’s in trouble, and she wants to talk to you.’
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘That freak came by her house Saturday night. They got Missy up in Catherine Howard for a week and he’s still walking the streets.’
I went through things with Clint Doolittle for another few minutes, but I was still pretty much in the dark. So I called Garrat.
‘Rick? Are you coming in?’ Garrat sounded like nothing at all had happened last Friday.
It was no concern of hers if I spent Saturday night in the drunk tank. I was already on the road, not more than six blocks from the office. ‘I was thinking about it,’ I answered, ‘assuming you haven’t changed the locks.’
‘No reason to do that, but we’ve had some developments in the Booker case, if you’re interested.’
‘The attack on Missy Worth?’
‘You didn’t get that on the news, did you?’
‘Clint Doolittle called me, Pat. The boyfriend. He said Will Booker broke into Missy’s house and terrified her all Saturday night and early Sunday morning.’
‘Mr Doolittle has a perspective that does not necessarily accord with the facts.’
I put my signal on and caught the light. ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked her.
‘Why don’t you get in here, and I’ll tell you what I know?’
I slipped my car into one of the prosecutor’s parking slots. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’
Getting out of the car, I dropped my phone into my sports coat, slammed the door shut, and trotted toward the north entrance. They waved me through security and inside of a minute I came through Garrat’s door. The joys of technology. She barely blinked, but I could tell I had surprised her. ‘Max called me last night,’ she said without preamble. ‘Said Booker appears to have an ironclad alibi for the whole of Sunday morning. There is no way he was at Missy Worth’s house, unless it was well before six in the morning.’
"1e
I stopped dead in my tracks. ‘I thought he was holding her at gunpoint, threatening her.
Now you’re telling me... what?’
‘Twelve hundred witnesses, give or take, put Mr Booker in church Sunday morning. He attended both services and got back home about the time Clint Doolittle found Missy Worth.’ I grunted at this. ‘But there are still a couple of hours Saturday night unaccounted for; so maybe he was there. And maybe he wasn’t. At this point I’m getting a lot of different stories. They’ve got her levelled out some now with the meds, so I sent Massey over to sort things out. I wanted to see if there is any chance Booker actually showed up sometime before dawn Sunday. Missy said she would only talk to the old bald guy.’
‘So why didn’t you give me a call?’
Garrat smiled wryly. ‘I asked Clint
Doolittle to do it for me.’
I shook my head at the con she had run, mad at myself for not seeing through it. ‘Did you tell him to say Booker was at her house with a gun?’
‘Doo’s been hanging around with Missy Worth for a few years, Rick. In all that time he never saw her back down from anything but a smart decision. He found her yesterday afternoon hiding under some dirty laundry like a frightened kid. Whatever he told you is what he believes.’
‘But you’re not convinced Booker was there?’
