The Hanging Judge (Nowhere, USA Book 4)

by Ninie Hammon

  “I’m good.” It was all he could say, but it was enough to reassure her so she let go of his arm. Had she been holding him on the bed? He didn’t think he’d had another seizure like this morning, but maybe he needed restraints. He would eventually, would have to be tied down like … well, like a mad dog.

  What if he bit Raylynn?

  He convulsively clamped his teeth so tightly shut his jaw muscles instantly began to cramp and his teeth hurt.

  “You need to … stay back,” he croaked, and realized then that his dry throat and mouth were what was causing his difficulty speaking. “… drink? Could I have a …?”

  She had the cup to his lips before he got the end of the sentence out and he tried to gulp down great swallows of liquid. But she wouldn’t let him, only offered it for measured sips. As many as he wanted, but measured sips.

  When his tongue no longer felt like it was affixed to the roof of his mouth like a piece of Velcro, he settled back and focused, tried to see Raylynn clearly.

  He knew exactly where he was on the rollercoaster ride from hell. The one that started in agony totally unbearable, went through the valley of narcotic ease and then started back up the slope to the zenith not far ahead.

  Sam had given him pills after the seizure. Those were wearing off now, but he was still lucid. He had to speak.

  “You have to stay away, Raylynn. You … all of you.”

  She smiled and patted his arm, like he was a four-year-old who’d just said a word he didn’t know the definition of.

  “Listen to me.” He grabbed her wrist and gripped with all the strength he had, which wasn’t much but enough to show her he meant business. “I’m not contagious … yet. But when I am … there’s no way to tell exactly when that will be — you have to protect yourselves. I might … bite you.”

  Her eyes welled with tears.

  “You’re not going to be biting anybody because you’re not going to get rabies because we’re going to get you out of here and get you a vaccination and—”

  “Hush.” He said the word softly and she cut off in mid-reassurance.

  “I could infect you … any of you. And I would rather die than—”

  “Don’t say that. You’re not going to—”

  “Yes I am.” He squeezed the wrist he was still holding and tried to pull her toward him. He was too weak, but she went in the direction he pulled. “I am going to die.”

  “No, you—”

  “Stop it. You’re not helping. Please be real. Please …”

  He hadn’t meant for his voice to break, but it did, and it broke Raylynn with it. Her eyes welled with tears so quickly they squirted down her cheeks. And though she shook her head slowly back and forth in denial, the words she spoke were acceptance.

  “Okay, you’re going … to die.” She took a breath. “There. I’ve said it. Now, will you lie back and try to relax and—”

  “I don’t want to die of rabies.”

  “Of course you don’t, and we’re trying—”

  “Will you do that for me, Raylynn? Promise me that you won’t let me die of rabies.”

  “E.J., I would do anything … but I can’t get you out of—”

  “You can keep me from dying of rabies, though. You can, Raylynn. You know you can.”

  He stared into her eyes, his eyes begging her to understand. It dawned on her slowly and horror raced denial to take over her face.

  “E.J., no! Don’t say … don’t even think—”

  “I am about to die like a mad dog, foaming at the mouth, maybe chewing off my own limbs, locked in a cage so I can’t hurt you … you want a front row seat for that?”

  He hadn’t meant to be harsh but … well, reality was harsh.

  “No, E.J., but—”

  “Then help me. Please, help me.”

  He pulled her as close as he could with the phantom of strength.

  “I’ve never needed anything more in my life than I need this now. And you’re my only hope. Please, Raylynn.” His voice broke then and he began to cry, not sob, though. He didn’t have the strength to sob. He just lay there, his chest hitching up and down, tears running down his temples and into his ears.

  She was crying, too, but she wasn’t making any noise. Silent tears streamed down her face, to drip off her chin.

  He barely heard her speak. Her voice was a whisper on a breath.

  “I’ll help you, E.J. I’ll help.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It took just about the whole afternoon to put on a show of it. Viola’d sent the boys out to gather up the “witnesses,” so’s they could come stand before her and tell her what they’d seen. They hauled in Wilbur Berg, who’d been the one to find the body. He was either so scared or so excited to be there that he didn’t make a whole lot of sense. If she’d really cared what he had to say, she’d a made him stop, slow down, begin at the front and tell the story straight through. But what he said didn’t mean beans. He coulda said that he’d seen a spaceship land in the backyard and aliens got out of it and bashed in Martha Whittiker’s head, and it wouldn’t have made no never mind.

  Viola just let him talk.

  He said he’d told the whole thing to Liam when he come, and she put a sad look on her face then and said it was a shame Liam wasn’t here to tell the court about it. Then she put a stern look on her face and told the growing crowd that she was gonna find whoever it was that shot Liam, she was gonna haul them in here into this courtroom and they was gonna get what they deserved.

  And she would do that if she had to. She didn’t think she would. She was sure that with Liam getting shot, and her stepping in instantly and taking charge — and demonstrating that she meant business by dispensing “justice” on a kid who’d kill his own grandma … no, she wouldn’t likely get any guff from anybody. But if they did need more convincing, she’d find somebody to blame Liam’s murder on, haul them in here and dispense “justice” on them, too.

  Oh, how she wished she could blame it on Sylvia Ryan’s girl, that Charlie McClintock. Trouble was, the whole crowd knew she was in the back of the room holding her kid when the shot was fired, they all seen her run in there and kneel beside the body so they was no way to hang it on her.

  That was okay, though. Viola’d see to Miss Pretty soon enough. That girl would rue the day she ever dared to cross Viola Tackett right there in public, defy her with people standing there watching. Oh, she would very much regret that she’d ever done such a thing. Viola already had a plan in mind, was still figuring out the particulars. Soon’s she had it all mapped out, she would go after that woman and make that little girl of hers an orphan quick. Maybe she’d say the line to her, what that captain said in that movie. When she was standing there denying she done whatever it was Viola’d trumped up to charge her with, maybe even being defiant to the end. She struck Viola as the same kind of stupid as Luke was. Proud stupid. Defiant stupid. All cocky and unbreakable stupid.

  Maybe she’d look Miss Fancy Pants in the face and say, even put on a southern accent and say the words like that captain done. “What we got here” — pronounced he-ah — “is a fail-yore to comun-cate.”

  That woman’d get the reference, know where it come from. And if she was as smart as she seemed to think she was, she might even figure out what Viola meant by using it. Might get the message: I’m in charge, you ain’t. Cross me and this is what you get.

  Viola smiled a little, imagining it, imagining saying them words, when she looked up and dang if that woman wasn’t standing right there in the courtroom. Had just come in and worked her way to the front, to stand just behind the railing that was all that was left to separate the sinners from the judgment. Stood there between Sam Sheridan and Malachi.

  Viola’s smile didn’t falter, though this wasn’t exactly the way she’d wanted things to play out. Best make some lemonade here, then. It was an unexpected piece of good fortune that the Ryan woman was here to see the proceedings, to get an up-close-and-personal view of what happened
to folks who didn’t sing from Viola Tackett’s sheet of music.

  What wasn’t the good news was that she’d come with Malachi. Viola did very much need to talk to her youngest son, had tried her dead level best to find him so’s they could have a sit-down, but he wasn’t never where she went looking. Him here like this was not the way she wanted this to play out. Absolutely not. She wanted him to understand what was going on from her perspective, explain to him her plan and his part in it. This was not the best introduction of that plan.

  And him here with that Ryan woman and Sam Sheridan. That was not good on so many levels. He’d been spending waaaay too much time with them ever since J-Day. She got it, they’d had a horrible time of it, the three of them together, when Abby Clayton done what she done to that little McClintock girl. Viola knew about that, though most folks in the county — including Abby’s people — only knew that she’d had some kinda stroke, went nuts and shot Malachi. They didn’t know the kid-in-the-kiln part, and wasn’t no reason they needed to. Viola seen how that could make the three of them feel a kinship, going through a thing like that together. And already being friends and all, from when they was kids, even if they hadn’t seen each other since high school.

  When Malachi started going in to E.J.’s clinic to have his gunshot wound tended, she had dropped the ball, hadn’t seen that for what it was, that it was about him spending time with Sam and the other one way more than it was about a bullet wound in the side. But he was a man grown and wasn’t up to his mama to tell him how he was supposed to be spending his time. Truth was, ever since J-Day, Malachi had seemed to be getting better. That haunted look in his eyes was fading, he had more expression in his face, didn’t seem like he was all the time in some other world and that world was on the other side of hell.

  So she was glad for him to be going in to help them as was doing for people got sick from the Jabberwock. If him helping others was helping him, more power to him. She’d missed a step, though, hadn’t seen where it was leading, him staying there all the time. Hadn’t noticed his … loyalties, was that the right words — yeah, maybe, his loyalties began to pull away from her and hook up with them two women, E.J. and Liam.

  Oh, she knew wasn’t no permanent thing. Malachi was a Tackett. He was blood. They wasn’t nothing in life more important than blood, than looking out for your own. She knew he’d come down on the side of her and his brothers soon’s he found out how she had it all laid out. But she hadn’t had a chance to tell him the particulars. Would have given him a heads-up about what was going to happen at the meeting if she coulda found him to tell him.

  And now here he was out there on the other side of that railing separating the world from the law, standing out there on the other side with Sam and the McClintock woman. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go down.

  But if Viola Tackett was anything it was a realist. Might not have been ideal, but it was what it was. Malachi’d find out what she was going to do same time everybody else did, and she was sure he’d see through the smoke and mirrors, know she had plans way bigger than just getting rid of one murdering teenager.

  Wilbur was still babbling on and on, had done said what he had to say twice and was about to plow that whole row of corn a third time when she stopped him. Rapping her arthritic knuckles on the wooden desktop ‘cause she didn’t have no gavel, she shut him up in mid repeat.

  “That’s fine, Mr. Berg. We done heard your whole story twice. Once woulda been plenty. We done here.”

  She looked out over the crowd that’d gathered. It was a fair-sized group of people, mostly from the Ridge ‘cause they could walk to the courthouse and folks was getting choicey about where they went these days, now that it’d dawned on them there wasn’t gonna be no gas to fill up they tanks when they ran dry.

  Even if they wasn’t but a 150 people, every one of them’d tell at least ten other people what they seen and that was plenty.

  “I’ve heard all the testimony I need to hear.” She looked at the other two witnesses come to testify — Wilma Thacker, whose raspy voice got on Viola’s last nerve, and Ethel Porter. They both looked disappointed they couldn’t be part of the show. “I’m ready to give my verdict and pronounce a sentence.”

  “You mean that’s it?” She looked down and seen Holmes Fischer sitting down front. He’d been one of the first people to show up. “Dylan isn’t going to be allowed to present a defense?”

  “Ain’t no reason to waste time with that. I done heard everything that matters.”

  “But he’s got a right to—”

  “He ain’t got no rights less’n I say he does.”

  “He’s an American citizen and the Bill of Rights—”

  “He’s a citizen of Nowhere County, Kentucky and the Bill of Rights don’t apply here no more. The Jabberwock changed all that and we might not like it but we do got to live with it.” She hung a sad look on her face. “‘Thout poor Liam to—”

  “Liam didn’t think Dylan did it.”

  It was her, that McClintock woman, sticking her nose in again where it didn’t belong. She was gonna have to learn some manners.

  “He told us he didn’t,” Sam Sheridan said, backing her up. And Sam Sheridan was golden in this county. Wasn’t nobody untouchable as far as Viola Tackett was concerned but Sam Sheridan come close as anybody ever would. Even Viola’d bring a world of hurt down on herself if she’s to touch so much as a single one of the red hairs on that girl’s head. “He came by the clinic after he left Mrs. Whittiker’s house and he—”

  “Told you somebody besides Dylan Shaw done it? Who?”

  “No, he—” said the McClintock woman.

  “I thought you said Liam knew who done it.”

  “That’s not what I said.” Oh, how Viola hated it when somebody took that tone with her. That condescending, I’m-smarter-than-you-are tone. Then she stopped talking to Viola altogether and called out loud so everybody could hear.

  “Liam didn’t know who did do it. But he said he did know that the murderer wasn’t Dylan Shaw.”

  “How’d he come by that conclusion?”

  “By investigating the crime scene.” Again the condescension, sharper and more intentional, with a side order of sarcasm. “He said Martha Whittiker wasn’t killed in that apartment. She was killed somewhere else and the body was moved there. A head wound like hers would have bled a lot and there was hardly any blood on the apartment floor.”

  “That don’t mean—”

  The woman interrupted Viola before she had time to finish.

  “And he said there was blood … bloody fingerprints on the door of Dylan’s apartment.”

  “You sayin’ Liam knowed them fingerprints wasn’t Dylan’s? Cause that’d be a neat trick seeing’s how Liam didn’t have no fingerprint kit.”

  That’d shut her up.

  “Liam didn’t know whose fingerprints they were, but he found them on the outside of the apartment door. If they were Dylan’s — say he left them when he was running away — they’d have been on the inside of the door. Somebody had blood on their hands going into the apartment, not coming out. Why would Dylan kill his grandmother somewhere else and then haul her body back to his own apartment and dump it there?”

  If Viola Tackett could have, she’d have leapt up off that seat and ripped that snippy woman’s face clean off her head. But she couldn’t do that. Not yet, anyway. She would, though. As sure as sunrise on Easter Sunday morning, that McClintock woman was a dead body, up walking around until Viola had time to kill her slow, with her bare hands.

  Not now, though. Now, she had to get control of the situation and get on with what she’d come here to do. When Viola spoke again, her words were measured and slow and slathered with menace.

  “Liam Montgomery ain’t here, and what you say he told you ain’t admissible in a court of law.”

  “A court of law? Seriously? You call this a court of law?”

  Viola had had it, and she could tell by the look on Malachi’s fa
ce that he knew it. He knew his little friend had pushed his mother too far.

  She stood up out of the rolled-all-the-way-up chair and leaned over the desk toward the harpy standing next to Malachi.

  “It’s a court of the only law they is in Nowhere County, Kentucky, so you’d best shut your mouth now, Miss Charlene Ryan McClintock, or I will have one of my boys shut it for you.” Malachi stepped protectively in front of her and Viola knew then this was not going to end well.

  “I am the law in Nowhere County. I’m the judge here and I done heard everything I need to hear.” She turned to the sniveling teenager. “You there, Dylan Shaw, I find you guilty of the murder of your grandmother, Martha Whittiker. And I hereby pronounce the death penalty on you for your crime.”

  In the stunned silence created by the communal gasp that followed, she cut her eyes to her sons and they knew what to do.

  “We come prepared for this, done got ourselves a rope.” Neb held it up. “We gonna hang you right now from the light pole out front.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Malachi should have known it. Did know it, actually, but allowed denial to whisper in his ear what he wanted to hear and he’d let things get totally out of hand.

  He’d felt a certain detachment as he’d watched his mother presiding over her kangaroo court, with her the judge, the jury … and the executioners. It was like he was watching somebody else entirely, some woman he barely knew. Not the woman he’d called Mama his whole life.

  Oh, it wasn’t like his mother had been the warm and fuzzy kind of mother, who kissed his booboos, tucked him into bed every night and told him bedtime stories. He’d once cut his finger so bad you could see the bone, gone running to her and she’d dismissed it with a, “wrap something around that cut, boy, you’re dripping blood all over my clean floor.”

  She’d never been affectionate. Never showed any of his siblings even a hint of maternal tenderness, and as soon as he was old enough to understand, he got it that she was as unable to do that as she was to do quantum physics.