The Guilty

by David Baldacci

  there?”

  “TOD?”

  “What?” she said looking confused.

  “Time of death,” said Robie quickly, while Priscilla continued to stare at him suspiciously.

  “’Bout one in the mornin’, paper said.”

  “No other suspects? What about his family? Lots of time family members kill each other.”

  “Well, he ain’t got no family in Cantrell ’cept for Pete. His children from his first marriage are all grown and moved off.”

  “First marriage?”

  She nodded. “He divorced his first wife, married another lady, and they had Pete. Then Clancy divorced her too, but Pete still lived with his daddy.”

  “And the ‘junkyard dogs’ he did business with in the casinos? Could they have killed Clancy?”

  She pointed a stubby finger at him. “‘Now that’s ’xactly what I done said. What ’bout them? But I guess the police checked that out. And maybe they got themselves alibis. But they could’a hired somebody to do it. Maybe Clancy and them had a fallin’-out, or he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Or they was doing somethin’ criminal-like, and he found out. Could be anythin’.”

  “But they arrested my father?”

  “Yes they did. Mighty quick, too.”

  “Why? He’s the judge. On the cops’ side.”

  “Well, I hear me some stories that Judge Robie made it hard on the police to get convictions. Especially if people’a color are involved.”

  “You mean he was balancing the scales of justice?” said Robie.

  She fingered her tea glass. “I would say that. Others not so much.”

  “Sounded like the case against Clancy for killing Janet Chisum was pretty strong. I heard he walked because he has friends and money.”

  “Shoot, I can tell you ’xactly why he walked.”

  “Why?”

  Her expression changed. “Why you care ’bout all this?”

  “My father’s been arrested for murder.”

  “So? You been gone all this time. And now you show up out of the blue?” She shook her head and looked at him disapprovingly. “Can’t say I respect you for that.”

  “I had my reasons.”

  “Not good ’nuff, Will Robie.” She rose. “Now I got me work to do. Lotta house to keep clean.” She pointed toward the front door. “I ’spect you can find your way out. And then why don’t you go back where you done come from and forget all about your daddy? Shouldn’t be too hard. You done forgot ’bout him most’a your life, way I see it.” And she walked off.

  As Robie watched her go, a part of him felt Priscilla was exactly right.

  Chapter

  12

  ROBIE WALKED BACK to his car, glancing once at the house where he, again, caught Priscilla eyeing him from an upstairs window. She didn’t look pleased, and he knew she was not happy with him. But then again, she seemed loyal to his father. And though he didn’t think much of the man, she apparently did.

  He looked past the house to the rear grounds, where he had held Laura Barksdale in his arms on that hot, humid night in June.

  They had sworn their undying love to each other in a way only the teenage heart could apparently manage. Robie had always intended to leave Cantrell, and when he shared his plan with Laura she had immediately asked Robie to take her with him. Everything seemed perfect.

  Robie had his rusty Chevrolet packed with his few belongings. He had gone to the prearranged spot the next night. He had waited for Laura to come. He had waited for three hours. She never showed up.

  Afraid that something had happened to her, he had driven his old clunker to this very place, parking well out of sight. He had snuck up to the front of the house, his eyes lifting to the second floor of the well-lighted façade till they came to the third window on the left—Laura’s bedroom. The light was on. Her silhouette was clear against that backdrop.

  She was not coming. Her undying love had apparently lasted fewer than twenty-four hours.

  Robie had gone back to his car, and—once more with the shortsightedness and accompanying stubbornness that came with being only eighteen years old—he got in his car and started driving. And he didn’t stop until the next morning. Then he ate, slept in his car, and kept driving until the Atlantic Ocean came into view.

  He had written her over the next couple years imploring her to join him but had never received a reply. He had called the house, but no one had ever answered. He had left messages, but she had never called him back. Despite all that, he told himself that he would come back and get her. That they would be together.

  But life had gotten in the way, and the love he held for her had slowly faded. The years had zipped by. And he had never returned to Mississippi.

  Until now.

  * * *

  He started his rental and drove down the pebbled drive.

  His father had remarried, and his new wife was Robie’s age.

  And they have a young son named after me who doesn’t talk.

  The one person he had not thought of while he had been here was his mother. He had come to believe that he had no reason to think of her. She had abandoned him. She had made a choice that had not included him, and had left him with the near-mad Marine turned country lawyer who fervently believed that boys were meant to be tough. And whatever method you used to make them tough was just fine. And if it came close to killing the boy, well, then even better.

  Laura had her own family problems, though she had never made Robie privy to exactly what they were despite his pleading with her to confide in him. Her natural positivism had been often tempered by painful bouts of melancholy. Hence the plan to leave Cantrell and start their lives over somewhere else.

  Only Robie had never envisioned driving halfway across the country alone.

  In many ways he had been alone ever since.

  He drove back into town on roads that had heat rising off them like mist from a warm pond on a cool morning. He cranked up the air-conditioning and let the cold air pound away at the sweat beads on his face.

  There was still so much he didn’t know.

  How Victoria had met his father and then married him. What her background was.

  How his father had become the judge here.

  How he could afford a place like the Willows.

  He had no idea why Sherman Clancy had not been convicted. He didn’t know anything about the case against his father beyond the sketchy details Blue Man had provided. But he was hoping that Sheila Taggert would fill him in when they met at five o’clock.

  He kept his car pointed back toward town and was there thirty minutes later. It wasn’t that far as the crow flew, but the roads here did not take the crow’s route. They were in poor condition and tended to ramble rather than run straight and true back to downtown Cantrell, as though the folks around here had all the time in the world.

  And maybe they did.

  He parked near Momma Lulu’s on Little Choctaw and started walking. He had a little time before he would meet Taggert and he needed a place to stay.

  There had been a small hotel on Dubois Street when he was growing up here. He walked that way, his duffel slung over his shoulder. Dubois Street was still there, but the hotel wasn’t. In its place was a large hole in the dirt with a corresponding gap like a missing tooth in the establishments that ran the length of Dubois on both sides.

  Robie stood in front of this gap studying the empty space and wondering what had happened.

  “Burnt to the damn ground,” said a man’s voice.

  He turned around and saw a stooped, elderly couple standing there. He was dressed like a farmer with coveralls, a denim shirt, and old brogans on his feet, but in an odd juxtaposition, a tweed cap was perched jauntily on his head. She wore a polka-dot dress with sandals and the thickest pair of eyeglasses Robie had ever seen. They looked to be in their eighties, or nineties. Or hundreds. Robie couldn’t be sure.

  The woman looked at her companion severely. “Cussing is trashy,
Monroe Tussle.”

  Monroe looked at Robie and grinned, showing off finely sculpted veneers. “Sixty-nine years we’ve been married and she still calls me by both my names.”

  “Got to, if I want to get your attention, like most men of a certain age,” she shot back. “Meanin’ any man that’s been married mor’n a year.”

  “Why, you’ve had my attention ever since you accepted my proposal of marriage, Eugenia.”

  Eugenia said, “Sweet-talkin’ men, nothin’ but poison!” But she patted his arm and looked pleased at his words.

  Robie figured they had been making this same exchange for the last thirty years, maybe longer. They were evidently practiced at it. He pointed to the gap.

  “So it burned to the ground. When?”

  “Oh, ’bout, what Eugenia, say ten years ago?”

  “’Bout that, yes. Lightnin’, they say.” She let her voice sink. “But I always said it was mor’n that.”

  “Insurance money,” added Monroe with a knowing look.

  She jabbed him in the arm with her finger. “I was tellin’ the story.”

  “And they didn’t rebuild it?” asked Robie.

  The couple looked surprised by this. Monroe said, “Never saw the point, son. If they had mor’n two paying guests at any one time, they’d be considered full up and hang out the NO VACANCY sign.”

  Eugenia eyed Robie’s duffel. “You lookin’ for a place to stay, hon?”

  “I am.”

  “Rooms overtop’a Danby’s Tavern on Muley Road, you know where that is?”

  “I do.”

  Monroe squinted at him. “You from ’round here, son?”

  “Not anymore,” said Robie. He thanked them and headed to Muley Road.

  He reached it five minutes later.

  Eugenia Tussle had not been entirely accurate. There weren’t rooms above Danby’s Tavern; there was just one room. It was empty until Robie rented it, paying in cash so he did not have to reveal his name. However, he was sure that by now pretty much everyone in Cantrell knew who he was. The owner of Danby’s, a large man with a rough beard and thick, muscular hands, passed him the key.

  “Stayin’ long?” he asked.

  Robie shrugged. “Not sure.”

  He took his duffel up to the room, unpacked his few items into a rickety bureau, sat on the bed, and gazed out the window onto the street below.

  Part of Robie, perhaps most of him, wanted to drive to Jackson and climb on a plane and fly back to DC. His father didn’t want to see him. Robie didn’t see any reason to be here. Yet he wasn’t going to leave.

  He checked his watch. Nearly five.

  He washed up in the small bathroom, changed his clothes, and left his room, locking the door behind him. He hurried down the steps, and his shoes hit the planks of the first floor of Danby’s Tavern.

  There were three customers in the tavern now. They were all young men. And they were all looking at him from behind reddened eyes as their thick hands clasped nearly empty beer bottles. Behind the counter, a young woman glanced once at the men and then over at Robie. Her look told him all he needed to know.

  She was afraid. For him.

  Danby’s owner was nowhere to be seen.

  That figured.

  When he headed to the door, the three men rose as one and blocked his way.

  They were all Robie’s size or bigger. Youngish, in their early twenties. He would have been gone from Cantrell probably before they were born. They wore jeans and T-shirts and were broadly muscular, smelling of sweat and beer. And testosterone about to be unleashed.

  Robie looked at the one in the middle. His arrogant features and his positioning slightly forward of his two companions told Robie he was the designated leader, like the head wolf in a pack.

  “Can I help you?” he said.

  The man replied, “Will Robie?”

  Robie said nothing but he answered with a slight nod.

  “Your daddy is a killah.”

  “Not until the court says he is,” replied Robie.

  He had already positioned himself so that his angled silhouette provided less of a target and his weight was forward on the balls of his feet but still balanced enough to ward off an attack. As his gaze took in all three of his opponents, his hands and arms relaxed but his quads and calves were tightened, like a spring about to be released. If it came to it, he knew exactly how he would do this. The plan had formed in his mind without his really having to think about it.

  He could tell they were amateurs, with no time even in the military. Otherwise, they would not be lined up in front of him like tenpins.

  “He killed my daddy!” said the leader.

  “You’re Sherman Clancy’s son?” Robie replied in a calm, level tone. He never chose to fight, and if he could defuse the situation he would.

  “Damn right I am.”

  “I’m truly sorry for your loss.”

  The man snorted. “That’s right good comin’ from family of the man who killed him.”

  “I’ve been gone a long time. I knew nothing about this until recently. But we need to let the court decide what happens to my father. It’s just better all around. It’s how it has to be.”

  The man pointed a finger in Robie’s face. “You bein’ here ain’t welcome.”

  Robie felt his patience start to slip a bit. At this rate, he might be here all night.

  “I go to lots of places I’m not welcome.” This was one of the most honest statements Robie had uttered since being in the bar.

  This comment seemed to befuddle all three of them. And once the brain was taken aback, that left only one alternative for punks like these: They would try to accomplish with their fists what they couldn’t with their brains. And Robie had actually intended this, because he had an appointment to keep and just wanted to get this over with.

  Clancy’s son broke off his beer bottle against a table edge and brandished it in front of Robie.

  Only Robie was no longer there.

  He had moved to his right, knelt, gripped the inside leg of the man next to Clancy’s son, ripped it off the floor, and then propelled him sideways into the other two. As they were all going down to the floor Robie reached over and snagged the hand holding the beer bottle. He bent it backward until Clancy’s son screamed and let go. He threw the bottle to the side, stepped back, and prepared for what was coming next.

  Clancy’s son pushed off the floor and came at Robie. Another mistake. They should have regrouped and attacked him together from different flanks. But they were stupid and they couldn’t really fight.

  Robie was now sure he would not be late for his meeting with Taggert.

  One punch to the face, a shot drilled right into his nose with the base of Robie’s rigid palm torqued off a V-shaped arm for max power, followed by an elbow strike delivered directly to the right kidney sent the man to the floor. He did not get back up, because the blow to the face had knocked him out. The busted face and bruised kidney would be pains he would suffer later when he came to.

  The second man bull-charged Robie and managed to get his thick arms around Robie’s waist. His plan, no doubt, was to lift his opponent off the floor and smash him against the wall. The flaw in his strategy was leaving Robie’s arms free. Robie slammed both palms against the man’s ears, which are quite sensitive appendages of the body. The man screamed, let Robie go, and dropped to all fours. Robie gripped the back of the man’s neck and jerked the head down at the same time he delivered a brutal knee strike upward to the chin, which cost his opponent two teeth, and knocked him flat on his ass and out for the count.

  The third man did the smart thing—he ran for it. Robie could hear his boots clattering on the plank porch before they hit pavement and were gone.

  Robie looked down at the two unconscious, bleeding men and then over at the girl behind the bar. She was staring at him openmouthed, the glass-rag and beer mug clutched in her hand, but neither touching the other.

  He pointed to the leader. �
��It that Pete Clancy?”

  “Y-yes, s-sir,” she said in a trembling voice.

  “If they press charges will you be able to tell the truth?”