Who Let That Killer in the House?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  “What are you doing?” Ridd demanded irritably.

  I straightened up and pressed one hand against a stiff place in my spine. “Checking to be sure this fire is out. Where’s DeWayne?”

  Ridd looked around the windowless room. “Maybe he went back to the house and we just missed him.”

  “He could have used that door.” Unlike the days when I was in school and the school had two exits, this new wing had been built to fire codes and had an exit door in every other room, always kept locked, but with a safety bar to open it. I moseyed over and peered out the window. It looked onto a grassy side yard and a sidewalk that led to the street running beside the school. I saw no sign of DeWayne, nor any reason he’d have gone out that way.

  “He’s left his wallet and keys,” Ridd reported.

  I turned and saw them on the desk. “Not real smart, if Clint’s the only security in the building.”

  “You got that right. Maybe he’s in the boys’ locker room. It’s got the nearest bathroom. I’ll check. I hate to leave without making sure he’s okay.”

  After Ridd headed down the hall, I felt uneasy. Surely I was too old to feel like a student hanging out in a classroom she wasn’t supposed to be in, so what was bothering me? The wallet and keys. Why would anybody leave them lying out like that? I strolled over to the desk and saw a folded piece of paper beneath them, with Yasheika’s name on it in block letters. That scared the living daylights out of me. Why would DeWayne be writing Yasheika when she was two miles away?

  I was battling temptation to read the note and about to lose when I heard Ridd pull open the heavy door of the locker room and call, “Anybody in here?” That brought me to my senses. I sure didn’t want DeWayne coming in and finding me reading his mail. I headed to the hall in time to see Ridd stick his head in the door as he called again, “Anybody he—?”

  He cut off midword, gave a lurch, and clutched the door for support. “No! Oh, God, no!” He clung to that doorframe and his knees buckled.

  I will never know how I covered the distance so fast, but I caught him before he slid to the floor. That was enough to stiffen his knees just a little. I held him tight around the waist and peered past him.

  I’m no expert on locker rooms, particularly boys’ locker rooms, but this one seemed extremely gray, high, and dim. The only light came from a skylight. Pipes ran along the ceiling.

  From one of those pipes DeWayne Evans hung at the end of a yellow rope. He was still swinging.

  13

  The world blurred around the edges and my lungs forgot how to function. I let Ridd go and held on to the other side of the door, unable to breathe.

  Do you know how long a woman can live without oxygen? That’s how long I stared at DeWayne swinging from that yellow rope. I know it was yellow, because I kept looking at it so I didn’t have to look at his poor swollen face. Finally I managed to suck enough air into my lungs to think halfway straight. Was he dead, or merely dying? There was little doubt he was dead. Urine had darkened the front of his jeans, and his face—well, he was almost certainly dead. But somebody had to make sure, and Ridd was busy throwing up all over the locker-room floor. He’s always had a sensitive stomach.

  DeWayne’s right arm was still warm, but limp. I found no pulse, but shoved up the expandable watchband on his left arm and tried that wrist to be sure. Behind me Ridd was still retching.

  I reached for my cell phone and called 911. The dispatcher promised to send help right away. Help? It was an unfortunate choice of words. Poor DeWayne would never need help again. Yet as I looked up through a blur of tears, I couldn’t help thinking that death gave him freedom and dignity, too. Nothing could ever hurt him again.

  I was a sopping, sobbing mess by that time.

  “Go home,” Ridd said weakly. He rubbed a hand across his mouth and looked in embarrassment at the mess on the floor. “I’ll—”

  “Get some towels to clean that up.”

  He stumbled toward the sinks and I stepped back into the hall to get away from the foul smells in that close air. The building seemed bigger than ever, and emptier. What if DeWayne hadn’t killed himself? It wouldn’t be the first murder made to look like suicide. Given how warm he was, a killer hadn’t had much time to get away. Had he heard us? I pressed my back to the wall and nearly wore my neck out trying to watch both ends of the hall at once. Where was Clint? Why hadn’t he come running when he heard Ridd’s cry?

  Running apparently wasn’t one of Clint’s speeds. It was several minutes before I heard him call through the gym, “Hey! You folks all right? I thought I heard a yell.”

  “We’re fine,” I called back, “but Mr. Evans isn’t. The emergency squad is on its way.” I went down to the gym door and saw him in the doorway across the way.

  “Is he sick? I’m not supposed to leave the door after I open up, you know.” He eased a couple of steps toward me, then craned his head, listening—maybe in case a crowd had arrived in the past half minute.

  “He’s had an accident,” I said.

  Clint rocked on his shoes, torn between curiosity and responsibility.

  “Go back to the front to let in the EMTs. We’ll take care of things here,” I promised.

  “I could come for a minute, if he needs me.” He sidled another step my way.

  “He doesn’t need you,” I told him honestly. “Go back to the door.” When he took another step, I flapped a hand at him. “Go on.” He obeyed, but I could tell he didn’t like it.

  I found Ridd on the floor with a wad of wet paper towels, smearing the mess worse. He had his back to DeWayne, but that’s where his mind was, because his first words were, “You don’t reckon DeWayne was lynched, do you, Mama?”

  The question shocked me, but once he’d said it, I had to admit it was possible. Something real ugly had been unleashed in Hopemore that week. “I sure hope not, hon. But can you think of any reason DeWayne would want to kill himself?”

  “Seemed to me like everything was going great—until Thursday. He said then that he couldn’t stand to have people pointing at him and whispering behind his back. Maybe he saw his house this morning and it was just too much.”

  “I can see that making him mad, or convincing him to move, but do you really think it would be enough to make him do—this?” I waved a hand toward DeWayne, then let it drop.

  Ridd looked down at the wet mess on the floor like he couldn’t quite figure out what to do next. “Maybe some dry towels?” I suggested, heading to the sink.

  Silently, we cleaned up his mess together. When we’d finished, we stood and looked without a word at the figure above us. Ridd moved so close to me I could feel his body heat through his shirt. I felt cold, and I pressed against him to get warm. He shuddered.

  “M-Mama?” He choked on the word. When I looked up, tears were streaming down his face. Several thoughts popped into my head, but none of them would provide one speck of comfort. I pulled him to me like he was two years old, and we sobbed together.

  Sirens wailed in the distance. I jerked two tissues from my pocketbook, mopped my eyes with one and handed Ridd the other. He blew his nose and we headed through the gym to show the police where to come.

  Chief Muggins and a deputy strode down the hall in our direction. His first words were, “You sure get around, Judge. What’s your problem now?”

  I stepped behind Ridd. “It’s your problem. We just found it. Tell him, Ridd.”

  “Come to the locker room,” he said, leading the way.

  Chief Muggins opened the door and whistled. “Isn’t that the fella whose house got messed up, the one who’s been coaching the Honeybees? Did he do himself in, or did somebody string him up and hope we’d think it was suicide?” He looked at me and narrowed his eyes—probably calculating whether I had the strength to haul DeWayne up by the neck.

  Chief Muggins closed the door and got on his phone to summon his crew. Then he folded his arms and stared down at me. “So why’d you come over here?”

  I l
ooked at Ridd so he’d take the lead again. “We came to see how DeWayne was taking it that somebody painted his house,” he explained.

  “Well, now you know,” Charlie said callously. He whistled through his teeth, which I guess was supposed to impress us that he was thinking. “Seems like a pretty strong reaction, though, doesn’t it? Has anybody meddled with the body?” He was looking at me again.

  “I checked his pulse,” I admitted.

  “You didn’t touch anything else?” His voice implied I’d tromped all over the scene dragging a string of red herrings across his trail.

  “Just both wrists, to be sure he was dead. And I moved his watch up a little. But before we found him here, we were in his room. His wallet and keys are there along with a note to his sister.”

  “You read it?”

  “Of course not.” I spoke with more heat than I intended, and knew I was getting pink. Heck, I felt as guilty as if I had read the darned thing, when all I’d done was consider it.

  Thank goodness a deputy stuck his head around the corner right then.“Slade Rutherford is here, from the paper. Can he come back?”

  Chief Muggins nodded. “I’ll talk to him in a minute.” He turned back to Ridd and me. “I’ll see that Mr. Evans’s sister gets her note. You all come by the station later and give statements.” I knew why he wanted us gone. He didn’t want to share his glory in next week’s Statesman.

  The arrival of real police had galvanized Clint. He was standing when we got to the front door, and he held up one hand. “I’ll need to take your names and phone numbers in case the police want to contact you. There’s been an accident.”

  “Cool it, Clint,” Ridd said shortly. “We talked to them already.”

  Clint looked wistfully down the hall, which had yellow crime tape across it now. Poor thing, it wasn’t fun being just outside the action. “Keep up the good work,” I encouraged him.

  The parking lot was beginning to fill with folks who wanted to know what was going on. I saw Art Franklin peering out the window of a desperately old Ford at the front curb. Smitty and Willie slouched against a poplar over in one corner of the school yard. Brandi’s family clustered under a big oak. Even Sara Meg was on the edge of the crowd, peering over heads.

  Wonder of wonders, Ridd walked beside me all the way to my car and held my door. “I guess I’d better go tell Yasheika.” He sighed. “You going on to work or back home?”

  “Work, I guess. I can’t think of anything better to do right this minute. And don’t narrow your eyes at me like that, hon. It makes you look like Chief Muggins.”

  “You won’t start poking around or anything? You’ll let them take care of this? I don’t want you meddling. You nearly got yourself killed last spring, remember.” Ridd never has been fond of what he calls my “messing around with murder.”

  “I’m not meddling.” Maybe my voice was a little testy, but that was the second time in a very short time that somebody had accused me of meddling. Still, Ridd had no call to back away holding up his hands like I was dangerous.

  “Don’t get your dander up. I just don’t want you getting yourself in trouble.”

  “I told you, I’m going to work. You go tell Yasheika. And tell her if she wants to sleep at our place tonight, she’s welcome.”

  Maybe I did spurt a little gravel as I drove away, but he had no right to speak to me like that. I wasn’t going to do any investigating, except on the computer. Any sensible person would want to know if there was anything on the Internet that DeWayne didn’t want folks to know about.

  I didn’t see much else to investigate except what it is that makes people so hateful to other people, and folks a lot smarter than me have wondered about that for a very long time.

  14

  I didn’t get to the computer right away, because Bethany met me as I came in the side door. Her hair was messy, her yellow T-shirt streaked with dust. “Hey, Me-mama, I’m done. And you know what? Our team is gonna be fantastic, even without Hollis. Coach Evans says we have a good chance to win the district.”

  I stared at her, appalled. I’d forgotten who else needed to know about DeWayne besides Yasheika: his team.

  Bethany had volunteered to come in that morning to finish the inventory that Monday’s storm and Thursday’s graffiti had interrupted. Her blue bike was propped next to our office door, so she must have ridden over early and gone straight to work. I didn’t want to blurt out my news in front of clerks and customers, so I put an arm around her waist and steered her toward the office, asking the first thing that came to mind. “Why isn’t Hollis on the team? You were both picked.”

  Bethany made a little noise of disgust. “She says she’s got too much to do, but I don’t know the real reason. She’s acting real weird right now. Hardly ever leaves her house except to drive Garnet to class and go to work.”

  “Wasn’t everything okay Thursday?”

  “Not really. I rode with her to take Garnet to school and hung out at the pool while she taught swimming lessons. After that, she said she had to go get Garnet, so we drove back to the college, but Garnet wasn’t there. Hollis got furious. She drove so fast going home, I was scared, and when we got to their house and found Garnet coloring with Cricket, of all people, Hollis really yelled at her. Garnet said she’d gotten a ride from school to Myrtle’s and brought Cricket home from there to play for the afternoon.” Bethany interrupted herself to say in an accusing voice, “They said you and Mama were over there eating pie.”

  “We do that occasionally,” I agreed. “I’ll take you sometime.”

  “Okay. Well, then Hollis decided to go back to work, but we couldn’t talk while she was on lifeguard duty. Afterwards, at her house, we went up to her room while Cricket and Garnet played the piano, and I asked what was the matter, but she wouldn’t tell me. She got mad that I even asked.” Bethany sighed. “She’s weirder than Garnet right now. You’d think she was hiding out or something.” She reached for her bike. “Well, I better go. Mama’s working, and I told Daddy I’d watch Cricket this afternoon so he can cut hay.”

  I steered her toward the office door. “Come in a minute, first. We need to talk.”

  She gave me a puzzled look. “I did the inventory exactly the way you said.”

  “This isn’t about the inventory. Come in and sit down.” I held the door.

  Bo squawked a welcome from the curtain rod. Cricket sat in my chair, drawing. Joe Riddley looked up from a seed catalogue. “Help, Crick, we’re being invaded by female relations.” He added, for my benefit, “Ridd lit out somewhere this morning, and Martha got called in to work early, so we’ve got a helper until his daddy comes looking for him.” I could tell Joe Riddley hadn’t heard about DeWayne any more than Bethany had.

  Cricket gave me a quick glance and bent back to his crayons. “I’ll be finished in a minute.”

  I picked him up and headed for the door. “You’re finished right now. We need you out front. Charlene? Don’t you need a helper at the counter?” Cricket got a kick out of standing on a chair at the register, taking money and putting it in the right places in the drawer. Charlene, whose grandchildren lived in Atlanta, kept assuring us she liked having his help.

  “Don’t you mess up my picture,” he warned as he headed to work.

  Bethany dropped into the wing chair. “What’s the matter?” Her eyes were wary.

  I closed the door and sat in my own chair. “I’ve got something to tell you both. DeWayne Evans—” I started to say “died” but that wasn’t the truth and Bethany would hear it soon enough. I’d rather she heard it from somebody who loved her. “DeWayne Evans hanged himself this morning.”

  Her shoulders hunched to shield her from what I was saying and she gave a yelp of disbelief.

  Joe Riddley swivelled my way. “What happened? How’d you find out?”

  “Ronnie brought Clarinda to do her wash this morning and DeWayne called him to say their front door got painted last night, like the school.”

  “No
!” Bethany clenched her fists to shut out this further pain. Tears trembled on her lower lids and spilled over. “Who’d do a thing like that? And why would he—he—”

  “We don’t know yet. The police are checking things out. I went with Ronnie to see the house, and your daddy came

  over and said we ought to go see if DeWayne was—all right.” My voice wobbled. “So we went to the school, and we—we found him.” I had to stop. My lungs weren’t working again.

  “Daddy knows? He knew and he didn’t come tell me? He didn’t have the decency to come tell me?” She shook with rage. “It’s not true! It’s not! It’s not!” She flailed her arms so, Bo swooped overhead, in danger of hurting himself. I held up my arm for a perch while Joe Riddley pinioned Bethany’s arms to keep her from flinging herself to the floor.

  He scooped her up like she was three years old. “Come here, sugar.” He held her on his lap like he used to, a big sprawling thing now with a tiny girl’s broken heart. As she wept against his shoulder, he stroked her hair.

  I stroked Bo’s back and set him gently on my desk when he grew calm. My own eyes stung. When I finally trusted myself to speak, I said, “We need to think about the rest of the team. Somebody needs to get them together and tell them before they find out some other way.”

  That quieted Bethany. She has always been good at thinking about other people as well as herself. “They’re gonna die,” she whispered, then realized what she’d said and gasped. “He can’t have done that, Me-mama. Somebody must have killed him. He didn’t have any reason to do it. He didn’t!” She took a deep breath and wailed, “I want my mama!”

  I nudged Bo away from my phone and dialed the emergency room. “Martha? I know you’re working, honey, but we need you real bad at our office right now. Bethany’s just heard that DeWayne Evans killed himself this morning, and she’s pretty upset.”

  “DeWayne?” Even Martha, who sees a lot of violence, was shocked. “I heard about his house—one of the deputies came by for coffee—but nobody said a thing about DeWayne.” Our law enforcement officers drink so much coffee in the emergency-room nurses’ station after they bring folks in, they tend to stop by for breaks on other days, too. Martha often brags that good coffee keeps her abreast of the news.