When Ghosts Come Home

by Wiley Cash

  He slammed on his brakes in front of the house, and when he climbed out, he was surprised to hear someone yelling on the other side of the garage. He grabbed a flashlight and drew his pistol and kept it by his side as he ran up the yard, through the truck’s headlights, and around the side of the house. There he found Englehart holding a rifle on someone standing at the edge of the woods. “Englehart?” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Don’t move!” Englehart screamed at the person at the end of his barrel.

  “Englehart,” Winston said again.

  “This is private property, Sheriff,” Englehart said, then screamed at the person in the woods, “Get down on the ground!”

  Winston clicked his flashlight on and pointed it toward the woods. A Black man was standing there, and Winston held his pistol on him. “Lower your weapon, Englehart.”

  “Hell, no,” Englehart said. “I’m doing my job.” He was wheezing, trying to catch his breath after running from his truck.

  “You are no longer an officer,” Winston said.

  “Not for you.”

  The man at the edge of the yard must have seen an opportunity. He leapt out of the ring of light and disappeared into the darkness of the woods. “Stop!” Winston yelled. Englehart fired into the trees, and the crack of the shot deafened Winston for a moment. “Jesus, Englehart! Stop!” Winston holstered his pistol and ran after the fleeing man.

  As he ran, he managed to work his walkie-talkie free of his belt. “I’ve got a suspect on foot, heading east through the woods,” he said. He ran at full speed. At each turn he took, the woods exploded with the bright light from his flashlight. He could hear the man’s footfalls through the trees, and he could make out his movements as he crashed through the undergrowth.

  “Stop!” he called. “Sheriff’s office!”

  The flashlight’s beam bounced ahead of him, catching snatches of clothing as branches snapped and rebounded when the figure ahead of him shot past.

  Before he knew it, Winston found himself out of the forest and running through backyards, his flashlight fixed on the man’s back. He was out of breath, but he did his best to shout into his radio.

  “Suspect is a Black male, approximately six feet tall, white T-shirt and jeans.” He took a deep breath. “On foot in the Grove.”

  “Almost there,” Glenn radioed back.

  The man crashed through a wall of azaleas. Winston wasn’t far behind him. Their foot chase had disturbed the quiet community. Dogs were barking and howling from inside fences. Porch lights and floodlights had come on, illuminating yards and driveways and carports.

  Winston found himself in a backyard. The suspect raced toward the back of a house and tore through the tall hedges that separated the house from the yard. Winston saw the man’s hands grab on to a window and try to raise it. Winston dropped the walkie-talkie and drew his pistol from its holster, aiming it and the flashlight beam at the center of the suspect’s back.

  “Brunswick County sheriff!” Winston screamed. “Do not make me shoot!” The man’s hands dropped from the window and disappeared into the tall shrub. Winston could see nothing except snatches of the man’s white T-shirt and his tennis shoes beneath the bushes. “Come out,” Winston said. “You’re cornered. There’s nowhere else to go.”

  A light came on in the window the man stood outside of, and inside the house someone tore back the curtain. It surprised Winston, and for a moment he raised his gun and pointed it at the person standing behind the glass. It was Janelle Bellamy.

  Janelle and Winston locked eyes for a long moment. She squinted against the bright light of his flashlight, his weapon pointed squarely at her chest. He lowered his gun slowly, bringing it down to aim once again at the figure in the bushes, a person whose identity he was pretty sure he now knew.

  Winston kept his eyes locked on the area beneath the window that was bathed in light, but he could hear Janelle unlocking and then opening the window.

  “Jay,” she called out. “Jay, what did you do?”

  “Come out of those bushes, Jay,” Winston said. “This isn’t a big deal. Nobody got hurt. Nobody has to. Just show me that your hands are empty.”

  The boy lifted his hands above his head over the top of the shrubs.

  “Keep them up, and come on out,” Winston said. He could hear the siren from Glenn’s cruiser growing closer. The bushes began to move, and then the boy stepped out into the open. Winston was surprised at how young he looked, at what a kid he actually was, and he couldn’t understand how he’d mistaken his fleeing figure for a man’s.

  “Jay, I want you to keep your hands in the air,” Winston said, “and I want you to turn around and walk backward toward me.”

  The kid did as he was told. Over the kid’s shoulder, Winston could see Janelle watching the scene from the window.

  “What did he do?” she asked. “He lives here, Sheriff. That’s my little brother. He wasn’t breaking in. He’s only fourteen.”

  “Keep coming,” Winston said, doing his best to block out Janelle’s face and her voice coming from the open window.

  “What did he do?” she asked again, but by that time Jay had walked backward all the way to Winston, and Winston had holstered his gun and flashlight and removed his handcuffs from his belt. He closed his fingers around Jay’s narrow wrists and clasped the handcuffs around them. He picked up his radio where he’d tossed it on the ground. “Suspect in custody,” he said.

  Winston turned Jay around so they were facing one another.

  “You’re under arrest on suspicion of arson,” he said. “You have the right to remain silent—”

  “I’m calling Ed,” Janelle hollered from the window. More porch lights and floodlights had come on in the houses around them, and the yards were suddenly lit up as if it were early morning.

  Winston finished reciting Jay’s rights, and then he led him around through a little gate to the front yard, where Glenn was waiting for them, his cruiser parked out by the road.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Jay whispered when he saw Glenn’s cruiser, the lights still spinning in reds and blues atop it.

  “Okay, Jay,” Winston said. “Let’s just get ahold of Mr. Bellamy. And then we’ll find a lawyer for you.”

  “He wants to ride through here at night and scare my sister? He’ll see.”

  “Okay, Jay,” Winston said again. “Please don’t say anything else until we get ahold of Ed.” Winston led Jay toward the top of the yard, where Glenn stood, the back door of his cruiser open and waiting.

  In the distance, Winston heard the sound of another automobile coming toward them, and he listened as it grew closer. All the adrenaline that had abated once he’d handcuffed Jay now flooded back into his bloodstream. He could feel his body reactivating to a threat he feared was on the way.

  Bradley Frye’s truck careened down the dark, quiet street and screeched to a stop in front of Glenn’s cruiser about thirty yards away. The truck Englehart had been driving pulled in behind him. Frye burst from behind the wheel, his gun already in his hand. Englehart climbed out of his truck too, and Winston could see that he was still holding the rifle he’d fired earlier. He left the driver’s-side door open and took up a position behind it. Frye pounded across the yard toward Winston and Jay. He stopped ten feet from them and raised his pistol, pointing it at the boy. At the top of the yard, Winston saw Glenn draw his pistol and point it at Frye’s back.

  “Give him to me,” Frye said.

  Winston held on to Jay’s forearm. With his free hand, he laid his fingers on his .38 where it sat holstered on his belt. “Put that weapon away, Brad. And go home. There’s no reason for you to be here.”

  “I told you,” Frye said. “I told you they’re wild. And you ain’t doing a damn thing about it.”

  Through the woods behind them, Winston heard the curl of a fire truck’s siren as it pulled into Plantation Cove. At the sound, Frye turned his head while keeping his eyes on Jay. He hollered over h
is shoulder to Englehart, “Get back over there, Billy. You get that under control.” Englehart scrambled back into his truck and turned it around and drove back up the road.

  “You get out of here too, Brad,” Winston said. The tips of his fingers remained on his pistol. Winston saw that Frye’s eyes were wild with anger and nerves, and Winston feared that Frye was capable of doing just about anything.

  “Give him to me,” Frye said again. He moved his pistol from Jay to Winston. Winston drew his weapon and pointed it at Frye.

  The only sounds Winston could hear were his own breathing and the rumble of Frye’s truck where it idled in the road. Behind him, Winston heard the door to Janelle’s house open, and then he felt Jay tear loose from his grasp. He didn’t turn to see where Jay was running; instead, he watched Frye swing his pistol around and draw a bead on Jay as he sprinted toward Janelle and the open front door.

  A shot rang out, and Winston flinched as a warm spray of blood hit his face. He blinked and opened his eyes to see Frye staggering toward him, the front of his shirt dark and heavy with blood. Frye’s eyes stared wildly at Winston, and his lips moved as if he were trying to say something important but couldn’t find the words. The pistol slipped from Frye’s grip, and he looked down at his chest, gently placing both hands on his shirt. His fingers touched the bloody fabric as if searching for something, and Winston knew that he was watching a man die before his eyes, the force of life slowly leaving him. Frye collapsed to his knees at Winston’s feet, and Winston stepped back just as he fell facedown on the grass.

  It had all happened with such speed that Winston had not had time to consider the danger he might be in, but now he raised his eyes and scanned all he could see of the street. Someone had taken the shot that killed Frye from a pretty good distance, and they had either disappeared into the night or remained hidden and still. At the top of the road, Glenn had hunkered down inside his cruiser’s half-closed back door. He peered around it and looked at Winston. “Where’d that shot come from?” he yelled.

  Winston signaled for Glenn to stay low, and then he bent at the waist and crept across the yard toward the cruiser. Winston knelt beside Glenn, his back against the rear fender. “It came from the other side of the road,” Winston said.

  “Is Frye—”

  “Yeah,” Winston said. “I think so.” He looked down into the yard, and he could see the bottoms of Frye’s boots where he’d fallen.

  “Shit,” Glenn said.

  Both of them stayed like that, their breath coming short and fast, the night otherwise resettling itself. A few dogs barked. Winston could hear voices in a few of the nearby houses. He knew people were looking out their windows, trying to figure out what they’d heard, what they could see without putting themselves in danger.

  “Whoever it is isn’t shooting at us,” Glenn said, but Winston didn’t want to take any chances.

  “We don’t know that for sure.”

  He looked over the top of the trunk toward the other side of the road, and then he rose and raised his pistol, making a long, slow sweep from his left to his right, his eyes scanning darkened windows, roofs, the tree line, front porches, and the shadows cast by cars, bushes, and houses. There was nothing to see, but Winston kept looking. The shot could have come from anywhere, but not just anyone could have made a shot like that in the dead of night.

  Glenn crept to the front fender and assumed the same position as Winston. They stayed that way as the thrum of crickets and frogs returned to a low roar, as dogs in backyards settled in for the night, as lights in living rooms and on front porches began to shut off one by one. Soon the only lights left burning were behind them in Janelle’s windows and on her front porch, and the only sound was the idling of Bradley Frye’s engine where his truck still sat parked in the road.

  An hour later, Winston sat at the table in the small conference room at the sheriff’s office. Jay, freshly out of handcuffs, sat on his right, Ed Bellamy beside him. The boy was a minor, and because Janelle didn’t want to bring the baby and because she couldn’t leave him at home, she’d asked Bellamy to accompany him, and Winston had agreed. But he’d kept Jay handcuffed and made him ride in the back of Glenn’s cruiser in order to scare him as much as possible.

  And Jay seemed scared. He sat, his uncuffed hands in his lap, either staring at the flecks of Frye’s dried blood on Winston’s shirt or turning his head to look at Bellamy for guidance after each question Winston asked.

  Jay had told them everything, from hanging out with some white kid in the neighborhood to taking Rodney’s rifle out of his closet. He told them about meeting Frye in the woods, about him showing up outside Janelle’s house with a posse of men on the night after Rodney’s body had been discovered. The kid was scared and angry and hurt, and Winston didn’t blame him for what he’d done. He’d wanted to do much worse to Bradley Frye, but now someone had gone and done it for him. It made it hard for him to want to bring charges against Jay, especially with all he and Janelle and Bellamy had been through.

  Once Winston and Glenn felt comfortable leaving their spots by the road, they’d gone into Janelle’s house, weapons still drawn, to retrieve Jay. Janelle had been in the baby’s room, holding the sleeping boy with the light off and the door open. She hadn’t spoken or even acknowledged Winston’s presence in the doorway when he tried to explain to her what had happened and what they were now doing inside her house.

  They’d found Jay, his hands still cuffed behind his back, hiding in his closet, tears streaking his cheeks, his chest heaving in choked-back sobs.

  “They tried to kill me,” he kept saying.

  “That shot wasn’t meant for you, son,” Winston had said in return. He waited inside the house until the ambulance arrived and the paramedics covered Frye’s body. After that, he led Jay out of the house to the backseat of Glenn’s cruiser.

  Winston left Glenn behind to secure the crime scene and deal with the coroner’s office, and he and Jay rode in silence to the office, where they waited for Bellamy to arrive. In the meantime, Winston had already heard from the fire department. The fire in Plantation Cove had essentially burned itself out before they’d arrived. Englehart had been right behind the fire department, none of whom had known he’d been fired from the sheriff’s office. They’d left him there, thinking he’d be securing the scene, and that had pissed Winston off. He’d had about all he could stand of Billy Englehart.

  Now Winston and Bellamy sat alone at the conference table. Once the questioning had ended, Winston had allowed Jay to leave the conference room and disappear into the restroom.

  Winston hadn’t said a word to Bellamy about what had happened to Frye, and Bellamy hadn’t asked him a thing about the blood spatters on his shirt. Bellamy sat, his fingertips on the edge of the table, his eyes looking down at his hands from behind his thick glasses. Winston watched him for a moment. The room was quiet.

  “It’s a mess, isn’t it?” Winston finally said.

  Bellamy spoke without raising his head. “Turn this boy loose, Winston.”

  “Ed, I can’t just—”

  “Yes you can, Winston,” Bellamy said. “You’re the sheriff. You know you don’t have to charge him if you don’t want to.”

  “People know what he did, Ed.”

  “Who?” Bellamy asked. He looked at Winston. “You? That dead boy laying in Janelle’s yard? That cracker you already fired? Who knows, Winston?” Bellamy put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Jay’s parents are coming up here tomorrow for Rodney’s funeral. And they’re planning to take him back to Atlanta. What his daddy’s going to do to him is much worse than anything you can think of doing. I promise you that.”

  “Is Janelle leaving too?” Winston asked.

  “You bet your ass she’s leaving,” Bellamy said. The force of his words and the anger behind them caught Winston off guard.

  A toilet flushed across the hall, and Winston pictured Jay now standing at the sink, washing his hands and staring at himsel
f in the mirror, wondering how he’d come all the way from Atlanta to set houses on fire while people were being shot left and right. Winston figured it must’ve been a hell of a thing for a kid that age to think about. His own mind flashed back to those moments he’d spent at the barrel end of Frye’s gun. Had Winston finally felt what he’d made James Dixon feel all those years ago in the pharmacy back in Gastonia? There’d been no one there to protect Dixon at the last second before Winston took his life, but tonight had gone differently for Winston. He looked at Bellamy where he still sat with his elbows on the table. “You still have that Winchester?” he asked.

  Bellamy was still for a moment, and then he leaned back in his chair and interlocked his fingers in his lap. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “That sniper rifle you were telling me about.”

  “I haven’t shot that thing in years,” Bellamy said.

  “Well, I might need to take a look at it.”

  Bellamy shook his head. “I don’t know that I could even find it.”

  Winston smiled, shook his head too. “I thought Bradley Frye was going to blow my brains out tonight,” he said.

  Bellamy removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “He could have,” he said. “But he didn’t.” He put his glasses back on and looked at Winston. “Now turn this boy loose.”

  The bathroom door opened out in the hall and Winston heard Jay’s footsteps as he walked toward the conference room. Jay stopped in the doorway and leaned against the door frame, his hands stuffed deep inside his pockets. He seemed diminished now, even smaller than when they’d arrived, even younger than when Winston and Glenn had found him, crying in his bedroom closet after Frye had been shot. Winston wondered how he had ever mistaken this terrified boy for a grown man. Bellamy turned his head just enough to see Jay over his shoulder. He looked back at Winston. “Turn him loose,” he said.