Wink of an Eye

by Lynn Chandler Willis

  “He said Peterson told him he knew where his sister was and if he ever wanted to see her again, he’d cooperate.”

  “So to get him to confess, they told him they knew where the older sister was, and to keep him from recanting, they told him the same thing would happen to his kid sister.”

  I nodded. “That’s pretty much it.”

  Burke slowly nodded. “But why tell you this? If he’s not goin’ to recant his confession, what difference does it make who told him what?”

  I slowly shrugged. I hadn’t figured that out yet. There was a lot to this case I hadn’t figured out yet. “Where’s Tatum?” I asked.

  Burke bobbed his head toward the bedrooms. “In his room playing a video game. Too stinking hot to do too much outside.”

  That was God’s truth. But there was work to be done. “Well, I’m goin’ drag him outside for a few minutes. I want to go over what happened when he found Ryce.”

  Burke slowly nodded.

  “What do you remember about it?”

  He rubbed his hands over his face and sighed heavily. “They’d already removed the body by the time I got here. They took him straight to the morgue. Told me not to worry about anything. They’d handle it.” His lips twisted with disgust.

  “Who is they?”

  “Peterson and Averitt McCoy. Sheriff Denny showed up about twenty minutes after I got here. For all the help he was.”

  I thought about my conversation with Sophia and wondered, giving Burke’s feelings toward the sheriff, if his perspective could have been skewed. “How did Denny act?”

  Burke shrugged. “He offered his condolences. Said if there was anything the department could do, to call.” He looked at me through squinted eyes. “Why?”

  I told him about Sophia’s meeting with the sheriff. He thought about it, then rolled over to the cabinet and pulled out a new bottle of Jim Beam. He got two glasses from the dish drainer, then rolled back over to the table. I do wish he drank Johnnie Walker. He poured me a shot, then one for himself.

  “So this gal thinks Denny’s not running the department,” he said.

  “I’m not really buying it, but it’s something to consider, I suppose.” I took a careful sip of the whiskey. Last time Burke brought out a bottle, I finished it and agreed to work pro bono. I was prone to mistakes but seldom made the same one twice.

  “Peterson’s not high enough up the command chain to run things behind the scene,” Burke said.

  “So that means either someone higher up is involved or Peterson has something on Denny. And if that’s the case, Denny knows what’s going on but he’s looking the other way.”

  Burke swallowed his whiskey in one shot, then poured another round. I waved him off as he tilted the bottle in my direction.

  “Maybe your shooting wasn’t related to the election at all. Maybe it’s related to the missing girls.”

  “Or … if Denny was looking the other way and if I had won, that would have put a damper on their little trafficking ring.”

  “Did they recover the bullet?”

  He nodded. “But I never saw it. Surgeon told Ryce he handed it over to someone in the department as evidence.”

  “But there’s no evidence file.”

  “Not to my knowledge anyway. I think Ryce had asked to see it and, of course, no one could find it.”

  I wondered if the surgeon would know the difference between calibers. “What’s the department’s standard issue?”

  “Glock .357 sig.”

  “Interchangeable with a .45.” It didn’t matter what type of gun Burke was shot with if we couldn’t find the bullet. And I’d bet finding it wasn’t ever going to happen.

  Burke poured himself another shot, then capped the bottle. “I appreciate your interest in what happened to me, but, like I said earlier … my main concern is what happened to Ryce.”

  I slowly nodded. “But if I’m right, it’s all connected.”

  “And if you’re wrong?”

  I smiled. “I’m not. Just have to prove it, old man.” I pushed away from the table, grabbed the camera, then walked down the hallway to Tatum’s bedroom.

  He was sitting cross-legged on the floor at the foot of his bed, a video game controller gripped tightly in his hands. His bedroom was small and compact. A twin bed, a corner desk, and four-drawer dresser were the only furniture. The room was tidier than my apartment had ever been. No clothes on the floor, no empty drink glasses sitting around waiting to be washed. The bed was even made. “Hey,” he said, never taking his eyes off the small television perched on the dresser. “How’s the investigation coming?”

  I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him take out several bad guys in his pretend game of shoot-’em-up. If the kid could handle a real gun like he handled a video controller, he could cover my back anytime.

  “I met Mark Peterson.”

  He jerked around and looked at me, focusing on my busted lip. “Geez … did he beat you up?”

  My pride wouldn’t let me confirm that. “He got a busted nose out of it.”

  He turned back to his war game and laughed. “You went for his nose? I would have gone for his jugular.”

  I chuckled. “He’s only about six inches taller than me.”

  “All the more reason to go for the jugular. It was closer.”

  I popped him on the back of the head. “Where’s your girlfriend?”

  He cut his eyes up at me, fighting a boyish grin. “She’s not my girlfriend. She went to work with her mom today.”

  “Oh well. Maybe you’ll get to see her tomorrow.”

  He shook his head and laughed. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “Yeah, whatever. I need you outside. I want to walk over the scene again.”

  He slowly nodded and sighed lightly. I guessed revisiting the scene wasn’t one of the things he wanted to do today.

  I gently mussed the top of his hair. “You miss him, don’t you?”

  He nodded quickly but didn’t say anything.

  I exhaled deeply, understanding the longing. I wished I could tell him it would get easier but I wasn’t going to lie to him. You never accepted it, you just learned to live with it. Sooner or later the anger burns down, but never completely out. It’s always there. Smoldering, waiting for the chance to lash out because he wasn’t there anymore. And he never would be again.

  I finally spoke. “Tatum, you know whatever did happen to your dad wasn’t your fault.”

  I caught a glimpse of tears rolling down his cheek before he hurriedly wiped them away with the tail of his shirt. “I’m the one who told him about Alvedia’s sister,” he sniffled.

  That was going to be hard to get over. It tugged at my heart thinking the kid was going to be carrying that guilt for years to come. “But you know you did the right thing. And I’m sure your dad is very, very proud of you. It’d be nice, though, if he were still here to tell you that himself, wouldn’t it?”

  He nodded again, then rubbed his face with his shirt. He turned the game off, then got up and stood staring at me with reddened eyes. “You ready?”

  I followed him outside to the backyard. Jasper ran circles around us, the sloppy tennis ball clutched in his mouth.

  “Your dog needs something to herd.” I took the ball from Jasper and tossed it as far as I could, hoping it would buy some time between yaps.

  Tatum laughed between sniffles. “He likes to herd the rabbits. Be careful where you walk—he likes to dig trenches, too. Dad sprained his ankle last year and threatened to shoot him.” A tenderness crept into his voice.

  I knew exactly where he was coming from. Memories of something my dad had said or done, or something silly that made him laugh, or something Rhonda or I had done to make him angry would pop up in my brain every now and then like random snapshots. I often tried to pull them all together and piece them side by side like a patchwork quilt to make some sense of why he left. But I never could find the pattern. At least Tatum knew Ryce didn’t leave him by choice
. Not that it made any real difference.

  We were standing underneath the tree where Ryce died, both of us looking up at the branch as if it held the answers.

  “Tell me again what happened when the paramedics got here.”

  “They got him down and laid him over there.” He pointed to a grassy spot about twenty feet away.

  “How’d they get him down?”

  “They cut the rope.”

  “But how’d they get up to him?”

  “They used the ladder. I had already gotten it from the lean-to and was trying to hold him up.”

  “Do you remember what kind of rope it was?”

  He nodded, the image firmly implanted into his memory. “It was yellow nylon. The kind you see on boats.”

  I walked back to the shed and lean-to and took a quick look around. “Did your dad keep rope like that around the shed?”

  He shook his head. “I’d never known him to use a rope for anything.”

  “Not even to take a tree down or maybe pull up a shrub?”

  Again, he shook his head. “Dad didn’t do a lot around the house. He could do the basic stuff but for big stuff he usually hired someone who knew what they were doing.”

  Ryce McCallen was a smart man.

  So the rope was something Tatum couldn’t remember seeing around the house. Which meant either Ryce bought it that day for the sole purpose of ending his life, or someone brought their own rope when they came to kill him. I made a mental note to see if Peterson or McCoy owned a boat.

  I studied the ladder under the lean-to for a moment and spotted several smudges that were probably fingerprints. Although I knew the prints wouldn’t do me any good, I still took a couple pictures.

  “Nice camera. I bet that thing cost a pretty penny,” Tatum said.

  “Yes, it did.” And I didn’t buy it by working pro bono, either. But that wasn’t the kid’s fault so I didn’t mention it.

  The various shoe prints around the shed and lean-to wouldn’t do me any good either, but I took shots of those as well. I then headed back over to the tree, carefully dodging Jasper’s trenches, and studied the massive oak from every angle.

  “Can you handle the ladder?” I asked Tatum.

  He gave me a twelve-year-old’s smirk, then dragged the ladder over to the tree. I helped him position it, then climbed up to the top rung where I could get a look at the top-side of the branch. There was a slight wear pattern that looked like the rope had sawed through the top layer of bark. I took a couple shots, adjusting the flash to accommodate for the shade from the overhead branches. From that vantage point looking down on the ground, I spotted it. The lay of the grass coming from the driveway was different. My gaze followed along a perfect trail of crushed grass, barely noticeable, but it was there. It dipped in places, thanks to Jasper, exposing the sandy dirt underneath. But it wasn’t just one trail—it was two, running side by side, the width of a truck. I came down the ladder and crept alongside the trail.

  “Tatum, have you driven the truck back here?”

  “No.” He was so close behind me, he would have bumped into me if I had stopped.

  “Did the paramedics drive the ambulance back here?” I knelt down and gently pushed a layer of grass aside and studied the tire tracks beneath it.

  Tatum shook his head. “They parked in the driveway and carried him out on a stretcher.”

  The tracks wobbled and spread out in the middle of the trail heading toward the driveway, indicating whoever was driving had turned the wheel at some point, forcing the front tires to veer off the trail by a few inches. Judging by the double tracks near the driveway, the truck was backed into the yard and came to a stop underneath the tree branch.

  “Can you bring me the keys to the truck?” I asked.

  He ran inside then returned a moment later with the keys. Burke rolled out onto the back deck and parked his chair beside the railing. I climbed into their old pickup, then drove slowly into the yard, carefully maneuvering around the trail. I drove toward the back of the yard then backed up to the tree, coming in from the opposite direction of the first set of tire tracks. I yelled out the window to Tatum to tell me when the tailgate was underneath the branch.

  “A little bit more,” he said, then yelled, “Whoa.”

  I cut the truck off, hopped out, then went around to the back and let down the tailgate. “How tall was your dad?”

  Tatum looked up on the deck to Burke for the answer.

  “About your height,” Burke said.

  I climbed up on the tailgate and stood directly under the branch.

  “About a two foot difference,” Burke said.

  So that was how they did it. They didn’t use the ladder to hoist him up, they used the back of a truck. And when the noose was tied, they pulled the truck away.

  I looked across the yard at Burke. “There’s tire tracks leading away from the tree.”

  “Averitt McCoy has a truck,” Tatum reminded me.

  Burke nodded but didn’t say anything. He turned away and slowly rolled back into the house.

  CHAPTER 14

  After I left Tatum and Burke’s, I drove to the hospital in Kermit, hoping Mom was on duty. Each breath was becoming more painful; I was hoping she wouldn’t mind wrapping my ribs without all the paperwork. The less paper with my name on it, the more trouble Frank Gilleni would have trailing me from Vegas.

  The hospital was a six-story building that had been added to so much over the years, part of the building was white brick and part was glass and chrome. The emergency department where my mother had worked for thirty years straddled the past and the present, connecting the old with the new.

  I parked and went in, stopping at the check-in desk. “Is Angie Moran working today?” I asked the nurse behind the desk.

  “Angie? Sure. She’s here. Can I tell her who’s here to see her?”

  “Her son.”

  She smiled, showing ultra-bleached teeth. “So you’re Gypsy.”

  I slowly nodded, wondering what stories my mother had divulged.

  She paged my mother to the front desk and a minute or two later, Mom came bounding down the hall leading from the trauma rooms. She was wearing blue scrubs and white sneakers—the only thing I could ever remember seeing her wear.

  “Hey,” she said as she approached. “What’s up? Other than you’ve been in a fight.” She poked at my lip. She wasn’t quite as rough as Rhonda, which, given her profession, I supposed was a good thing.

  I jerked my head away and grinned. “Can we talk a moment?”

  Her eyes immediately filled with questions. “Sure.” She told the nurse at the desk she’d be on break for a few minutes then led me down the hallway. “Want to grab a cup of coffee in the cafeteria?”

  “Are one of these trauma rooms empty?”

  She stopped, then turned around and glared at me. “Yeah, but they don’t serve coffee in a trauma room. What have you done, Gypsy?”

  I pulled my shirt tail from my pants and gently lifted the right side.

  Mom stared at the bruise, then twisted her lips and rolled her eyes. “Nice.” She pushed the door open to one of the rooms, then closed and locked it behind us. “Take your shirt off and get up on the table.”

  She pushed her fingers around the bruise, causing me to gasp. “You’ve got some broken ribs. You’ll live unless of course it punctures a lung.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  I remembered when I was a kid other mothers kissed boo-boos and spoke in soothing voices when their kids were hurt. Our mom ripped off Band-Aids, taking the first layer of skin with it.

  “Take a deep breath,” she said, standing back to watch the movement of my chest. She then grabbed a paper towel and handed it to me. “Cough.”

  “I haven’t coughed up anything.”

  “I need to see if there’s blood in it. Cough.”

  “But I haven’t coughed—”

  “Cough,” she snapped, so I forced myself to cough. She stared at the nonex
istent mucus in the paper towel, then tossed it in the trash. She then cut several pieces of adhesive and wrapped them from my sternum around to my back, pulling them like she was yanking out a tooth.

  I gasped in pain. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  “Oh, if I was trying to kill you, you’d have been dead long before now. You goin’ to tell me how you did this?”

  “A basketball game,” I said between grimaces.

  She glared at me with one eyebrow raised. “I hope you won.”

  I didn’t feel up to recounting the story again so I forced a grin. Mom finished wrapping my ribs, then tapped at my lip. “You need a stitch or two in that. It’s probably going to scar worse than it was. Want me to open it back up and—”

  “No!”

  She cocked a brow, then leaned against the counter, arms folded across her chest. There was no doubt Rhonda was her daughter.

  “How’s your grandmother?” she asked.

  “She needs to be in a home.”

  “For what? Grouchiness? She’s in perfect health, Gypsy.”

  I sighed. I wasn’t used to living with anyone and Gram’s irritable disposition was enough to make me appreciate my solo lifestyle.

  “Be nice to her. She’s old.”

  “I don’t see her living with you.”

  “I ain’t stupid. Do you need something for pain?”

  My mother—my angel of mercy.

  “I can’t give you the strong stuff because you’re already having trouble breathing, but I can get you some prescription-strength ibuprofen.”

  As teenagers, Rhonda and I were too terrified to ever experiment with drugs. Mom had us convinced anything stronger than aspirin would kill us.

  Just as mom ducked out to get the meds, my cell beeped. I dug it out of my pocket, saw that it was Claire, and quickly answered the call, cussing myself for doing so.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” she said.

  “Hey back at you.”

  Mom came back in with two red pills and a small paper cup of water. She pretended she wasn’t listening.

  “Same time, same place?” Claire asked and my gut tightened.

  “I’m … a little tied up tonight. But how ’bout I drop by the ranch tomorrow?” I did need to find out more about her hiring practices. My body parts had their own agenda.