by With Heart
Doc had arranged for him to get the job as deputy and later helped him get elected sheriff. From that day on, he’d been firmly under Herman’s thumb, paying the price to keep the doctor from talking about his affair with Hannah, the town whore. After his mother died, he would have been free to marry Hannah, but it was too late.
He enjoyed the respect he received as sheriff. For the first time in his life he was an official and not merely Pete and Ruby Carroll’s fat kid. Through the years he had thought of the baby he and Hannah had had. He’d even made it his business to find a birth certificate that had listed the date and time Hannah had given birth. Someday, he had told himself, he would go to Fort Worth, look up the DeBerrys, and see his and Hannah’s child, if only from a distance.
He tilted the rearview mirror and looked at himself. The years had not been kind. He was thirty-six years old and looked ten years older. His hair was gray; his jowls sagged. He had bags beneath his eyes. It was time to face up. Maybe he could make up . . . a little, for the damage he’d done to the only person who had ever loved him.
• • •
The sheriff parked behind the Gazette and went in the back door. The first thing he saw was a small, dark-haired girl picking type from a rack with a long pair of tweezers. Without conscious thought, he took off his hat.
“Hello, Sheriff.” Paul positioned himself protectively between the sheriff and the girl. “Adelaide is up front. Go on through.”
Pete Carroll felt a heavy lump in his chest. On stiff legs he went through to the front office. Both Adelaide and the redheaded reporter were busy at their typewriters. Alarm showed on Adelaide’s face when she looked up and saw him. Her eyes darted to the door leading to the back room.
“Hello, Pete. I didn’t know you were here.”
“I need to talk to you, Adelaide. Can we go somewhere . . . private?”
“Well . . . ah, yes, but wait here until I talk to Paul.”
“I’ve seen her. You don’t need to tell him to hide her.”
“For gosh sake, Pete—”
“I’m not here to cause trouble. I just had a long talk with Johnny Henry.”
“Go on, Adelaide,” Kathleen said. “I see Mrs. Smothers and a couple of her cronies across the street. They may be headed this way.”
Paul looked askance when Adelaide came into the back room with the sheriff. Under Carroll’s intense scrutiny, the young girl moved closer to Paul as if seeking protection. Her dark eyes went from the man with the star on his chest to Adelaide. She put her hand on Paul’s arm.
“It’s all right, Judy. The sheriff isn’t here to arrest you. Pete, this is Judy DeBerry. She’s been helping us here for the past couple of weeks.”
“How do you do, sir?” Judy’s voice was barely above a whisper.
“Hello.” Pete’s throat was so clogged he could barely speak.
Oh, Jesus. This is my little girl. Hannah and I made this pretty child out of our love for each other. She could almost be Hannah sixteen years ago. What did I give away . . . so long ago?
“Pete,” Adelaide said, then repeated it when he didn’t seem to hear. “Pete, we can go into Paul’s room, but I want him to hear whatever you have to say. I have no secrets from Paul.”
“Honey,” Paul said to Judy, “use the type out of this number six tray for the headline and out of number four for the subheading.”
“All right.” Judy looked anxiously at the sheriff. He was still staring at her with a strange look on his face. Then he turned and followed Adelaide. Paul gave her shoulder a squeeze before he left her.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Sheriff Carroll turned and faced them.
“She’s my . . . mine,” he blurted. “She’s my little girl.” Sobs came up out of his throat and threatened to choke him. “Mine and . . . Hannah’s.”
Tears flooded his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. For a minute he tried to hold back the flow, then in a defiant action threw his hat on the floor. He stood like a swaying oak before sinking down on the edge of the bed. He leaned over, his forearms on his knees, and his thick shoulders shaking with sobs.
Adelaide and Paul looked at each other helplessly. Paul opened a drawer, took out a handkerchief, and pressed it into the sheriff’s hands. Paul was the only grown man Adelaide had ever seen cry. He had cried almost silently when he had told her about his life until the time he came to Rawlings. Pete Carroll was not so reserved; he sobbed as if his heart were broken. Adelaide sat down on the bed beside him and put her arm around him.
“Do you want to tell us about it, Pete?” she asked when he had quieted a bit.
He dried his eyes and blew his nose on the handerchief Paul had given him.
“I’ll wash . . . this and give it back.”
“Pete, how do you know that Judy is yours and Hannah’s?” Adelaide asked.
“Hannah had a baby sixteen years ago. It was mine. Doc said the thing to do would be to find it a good home. We let him have it. I found out he gave her to people named DeBerry.”
“We know what Dr. Herman and Louise are doing. They don’t care if the baby has a good home. They are selling the babies to whoever has the price,” Paul declared angrily. “We’re trying to get proof so they can be stopped.”
“Doc’s a dangerous man. Louise Munday is just as bad. I’ve known it for a while, but didn’t know how to get out from under it.” Pete Carroll’s eyes were still wet, but he held up his head and looked each of them in the eye. “May God forgive me for what I’ve done to that girl and to Hannah.”
“There nothing I can say that will bring peace to your mind, Pete. I know what pressure you had from your mother. It still is no excuse. But that’s in the past. What you do in the future is what is important.”
“He’d not think twice about getting Judy out of town if he finds out who she is. He didn’t want Miss Dolan to come here; he was afraid an outsider would dig up something.”
“He hired Krome and Webb to hijack her?”
“Yeah, they were to take her to Texas and scare hell out of her so she’d not come back. They were not to hurt her. I’d not stand for that.”
“Are you willing to help us, Pete?” Adelaide asked.
“I’ll do what I can. I’m turning in my badge.”
“Don’t do that,” Paul said hastily. “You’ve got to carry on as usual until we hear from a fellow who is doing some investigating. We don’t want Doc or Louise to get wind that anyone suspects anything.”
“Pete, do you think Dr. Herman had anything to do with Clara Ramsey’s death?”
“I don’t know. Clara gave him that last baby she had. I know he paid her off and she left town. She might have come back and wanted more money. She was out at the clinic while Doc was away in the city.” The sheriff stood and ran his fingers through his hair.
“There’s a baby buried out on the Ramsey lot. Do you know about that?”
“Harrumph!” Pete snorted, but said nothing.
“Pete? Do you know anything about it?” Adelaide persisted.
“Nothing for sure. Doc uses men passing through to do his dirty work. He might have buried something out there to satisfy Hazel.” Pete stooped and picked up his hat and looked at Paul. “Can I talk to the girl, Judy, for a minute?”
“She’s a sweet kid, and she’s had a hell of a time. Don’t put the burden of who you are on her now,” Paul said sternly.
“I just want to look at her and hear her talk. I’d not hurt her for the world.”
The sheriff stood back from the counter where Judy was setting type while Paul inspected her work.
“You did good, kid, but we’ve got some white space in that top headline. Instead of saying: Skating Rink Coming to Town, why don’t we lengthen it to say: Skating Rink Coming to Rawlings? Town is five spaces and Rawlings takes up eight.”
“Yeah.” Judy laughed, forgetting for a minute the sheriff was there and looking at her.
“Have you ever skated?” Paul asked.
“N
ot on a skating rink. I skated on the sidewalk.”
“Same thing. How about you, sheriff. You ever been on a rink?”
“Once or twice when I was young.”
“You don’t need to worry about the sheriff knowing you’re here, Judy,” Paul said when he saw anxiety return to her face. “We explained to him why you had run away from home.”
Judy looked across the counter at the sheriff. Her eyes were large and deep brown. Her hair, too, was deep brown and not Indian straight like her mother’s, but with a bit of natural curl. She is so pretty.
“Don’t worry,” he managed to say. “You’ll not have to go back there. No one will make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
“I’m glad of that. I’m never going back there.” She smiled at him, and it encouraged him to say,
“You like being here with Adelaide and Paul?”
“Oh, yes! I’m going to hate to leave. But I . . . know I can’t stay here forever.”
“I don’t know about that,” Paul said with genuine affection. “You’re the best printer’s devil I’ve ever had.”
“The printer’s devil,” Judy said, her eyes twinkling at the sheriff, “is the one who does the dirty work of tearing down the pages. Paul let me think that’s a very important job.”
“It is, you little twerp.” Paul jerked on a strand of her hair.
Pete choked down his jealousy of the friendly affection that was evident between Paul and his daughter. Maybe someday she would feel that way toward him.
After he left the building and got into his car, he could still see in his mind’s eye the face of a pretty young girl with soft brown eyes and dark fluffy hair.
We have a daughter and she is beautiful. I wish you could see her, Hannah. You’d be so proud.
• • •
A message awaited Sheriff Carroll when he arrived at the office on Wednesday morning.
“Doc wants you down at the city office.”
Thatcher had ceased taking orders from the sheriff and made no bones about it. He had not cleaned the office. He went out without saying where he was going and made no pretense of being civil.
“What for?”
“You’ll find out when you get there.”
Instead of walking the half block to the city office, the sheriff got in his car and headed south out of town. By defying the doctor’s orders, he faced losing his job; but, what the hell, he was getting his self-respect back. He had enough money stuffed in the mattress to last a little while, even with a daughter to support.
Judy had been constantly in his mind since he found out about her. Judy Carroll. He wondered how he could go about getting her name changed. Would she be angry when she learned that he had fathered her and given her away? He hoped that he could get Hannah sobered and cleaned up before Judy met her. When that was all over, he would sell his house, take his money and his daughter, and go someplace where they were not known.
Yesterday he had gone to the Gazette on the pretense of paying his subscription. Adelaide and Paul seemed to understand that he just wanted to see Judy. Even the fiery redhead had been friendly. Judy had greeted him when he came in the back door.
“Morning, Sheriff. Paul is showing me how to load the press.”
“Foolish move on my part,” Paul had growled. “She’ll be taking my job.”
Sheriff Carroll thought about Paul Leahy. When he had first come to town Doc had insisted that they find out everything they could about the man. They learned that he had been a reporter for a paper in Houston, Texas, and worked his way up to the position of editorial editor. From a family of means himself, he had married into a prominent Houston family.
After an explosion and fire that killed his wife and mother-in-law, his father-in-law had insisted that he be arrested for murder even though he had been badly burned in an attempt to save the two women. Paul had served ten years in Huntsville prison before a man, who had been having a love affair with Paul’s wife, confessed to the crime on his deathbed. He had intended to destroy the house, not knowing the women were inside.
Paul Leahy had been given a full pardon by the Texas governor and money from the rather large insurance policy he’d had on his wife, and his home had been restored. He had promptly given it to a hospital that specialized in treating burn victims, then disappeared.
Doc tried hard to find out something to discredit the man. He didn’t dare use the fact that Paul had been in prison for murder lest he alienate the Texas governor who had pardoned him. Doc finally had backed off, hoping that Paul would move on. But he had stayed and provided the strength Adelaide needed to keep the paper out of Herman’s hands.
• • •
Johnny had not been sure the sheriff would show up to go with him to the river to meet Marty and Keith, and was relieved when Carroll drove into the ranch yard. He went out to meet the sheriff when he got out of the car. The man looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week.
“Morning, Sheriff.”
“Morning. I wasn’t sure what time you wanted me to be here. I may be a mite early.”
“No, just right. We’ve got to keep you out of sight down there until I whistle for you. We can go on down and find a place. Things go all right, Sheriff?”
“I talked to Adelaide and saw the girl. It was like a blow in the gut, Johnny. She’s mine and . . . Hannah’s.”
“I figured there was a connection. You looked like a poleaxed steer when I told you about her.”
“There’s no turning back the clock to make good a mistake.”
“No, but you can help us to put a stop to the baby-selling. I might as well tell you, I plan to dig up that box on the Ramsey lot and see what’s inside.”
“Let me know, and I’ll stand watch.”
“Thanks, Sheriff.”
“I’m turning in this badge as soon as this is over. ’Course, if you don’t pin Doc down, I’ll be fired and won’t get a chance to resign.” His laugh was a dry cackle. “I hope they don’t give the job to Thatcher.”
“You might have to stay sheriff just to keep him from having the job. We’d better get going. I’ll fire up the truck, and you can follow me down to the river.”
• • •
Marty Conroy’s cord britches were tucked into the tops of spit-polished boots with white stars on the sides. His Stetson was light tan with a brown band around the crown that matched his string tie. He was all business when he arrived at the McCabe ranch. Keith went out onto the porch to meet him.
“Mornin’, Marty. You’re right on time.”
“Well, I try to be when I’m doing business.”
Keith stepped off the porch. “You got a map and all the figures on the deal?”
“I’ve got the map. I’m still working on the figures.” Marty spread the map out on the hood of his car and pointed to a little-used county road that ran east of the McCabe property. “The bridge here is a one-laner.”
“How about the bridge over the main road? It would get more traffic. The relic that’s there was built in the 1880s.”
“Cost a little more money.”
“I think we’d better go whole hog or nothing.”
“Okey-dokey.” Marty folded the map.
“Let’s go take a look at it.”
Keith opened the door on the passenger side. His eyes swept the light gray upholstery and saw the splotches of stain on the seat and on the back of the seat. Just as Johnny had suspected; the little shithead had killed that girl!
Marty was clearly elated to be talking to Keith about the toll bridge. He was surprised that of all the schemes he had proposed to his distant cousin this was the one that he was interested in.
“Ever since I crossed that bridge up at Lexington I’ve thought of putting a toll bridge across the Red River. There’s a lot of traffic between Oklahoma and Texas in this area.”
“How much are you going to invest, Marty?”
“I haven’t decided. We can get backing; I’m not worried about that. Your name
carries weight, Keith.” Marty grinned.
“Hummm . . .” Was Keith’s noncommittal answer.
“I was thinking of a name for our company. How does Conroy and McCabe sound to you? The sign would hang on the bridge just over the toll booth. Twenty-five cents would be a fair price for a car and fifty cents for a truck. Some might want to cross on the riverbed if the river is low. They do that up in Lexington because the Canadian has a good sandy bottom. Highway number 77 crosses there; that makes a difference. No one will cross free under our bridge. If we own the land on the riverbank, they’ll have to pay to get to the riverbed. That’ll put a stop to that.”
Marty talked continuously until they reached the rickety bridge that crossed Red River. He stopped the car on the Texas side. Both men got out.
“We would want to put our bridge just a little east of here so that the old bridge can be used while the new one is being built.” Marty walked along the riverbank.
“It’s all right on this side of the river, but the other side is overgrown with trees and brush. You can’t see what kind of a bank is over there. Let’s go take a look.”
“Shall we walk?” Marty asked, and stepped out onto the bridge.
“Take the car,” Keith said nonchalantly. “We may want to drive down that lane that runs alongside the river.”
“Okey-dokey.”
“Turn right,” Keith said after they had crossed the bridge.
“Looks like a car down there.”
“Somebody fishing. There’s catfish in the Red a yard long.”
Keith got out of the car and walked to the bank. Marty hurried around the car to join him.
“What do you think, Keith? This is—” Marty cut off his words when Johnny came out of the bushes that grew along the bank.
“Hello, Johnny, catchin’ any fish?” Keith stepped back behind Marty and nodded as he spoke.
“Not biting today. How are you doin’, Marty?” Johnny sneered. “Still blowin’ and goin’?”
“No need to be sarcastic,” Keith said evenly. “Marty and I are discussing a business deal.”