The Guilty

by David Baldacci

  As they were walking through the foyer toward the front door Priscilla came down the hall carrying Tyler. The boy looked like he’d just gotten up.

  “Nap time?” said Reel.

  Priscilla nodded. “He likes his sleep, this one. He climbs in my bed here, and sometimes when we’re traveling with Ms. Victoria. I think he just wants warmth like a little bear cub, and I got me lots of that.” She laughed and smacked her broad hip with her free hand. “Like a Crock-Pot. Keep you stewin’ all night long.”

  Tyler smiled and hugged her neck.

  “Well, it certainly gives Victoria a break,” said Reel. “Little kids are a handful.”

  “It does give me a break.”

  They all turned to see Victoria standing there. “I really don’t know what I’d do without Priscilla.”

  “You got kids, ma’am?” a smiling Priscilla asked Reel.

  She hesitated. “I did. But not anymore.”

  “I can understand that, honey,” said Priscilla, her smile gone.

  Outside, Robie and Reel got in their car.

  “So what’s up?” she asked.

  “The coroner found a mark on the back of Barksdale’s neck commensurate with a needle stick. She thinks that’s how the poison was administered.”

  “What else?”

  “While the tox screens aren’t back yet, when she cut him open she found evidence of cyanide-type poisoning in the organs. That would tie in with the bloody froth she found in his mouth and upper trachea.”

  Reel nodded. “So he was murdered, placed naked in a bathtub, and his penis was cut off.”

  “With a cryptic message left on the back of a photo with two family members ripped out.”

  “Father and daughter.”

  Robie said, “Right. Henry and Laura Barksdale.”

  “And the latter might be sitting in a mental institution thinking about a Big Mac and fries.”

  “And the former?” said Robie.

  “Who the hell knows? What about Henry Barksdale’s wife? It might have been a man and a woman who did this to Emmitt. His own parents maybe?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. If she’s even still alive. Or if he is.”

  “And the connection to Sherman Clancy could come from what they did with those little kids. And the Chisum girls maybe found out from Clancy, like you said. And they had to die, too. I guess that all makes sense. Preserving the Barksdale honor.”

  Robie nodded. “But if it is him, how do we find him? Or them? And stop another murder?”

  * * *

  They met with Taggert and Sheriff Monda at the police station. Taggert looked worn and depressed. Monda just looked angry, probably that something like this was happening in his town and he was pretty much powerless to stop it.

  “Another one dead. Well, at least it wasn’t in Cantrell,” he said, with some relief in his voice.

  “So, injection in the neck?” said Reel.

  Taggert nodded. “The condition of the internal organs showed that it was a really powerful compound. She said the person would have been dead in minutes.”

  “Without ever waking up?” said Robie. “Even when he felt the sting of the syringe?”

  “Doc said it was possible the poison would have incapacitated him right from the get-go. He might have thrashed around a bit when the needle stuck him but he probably wouldn’t have been able to defend himself.”

  “Have we found out anything else about this Jane Smith person?” asked Reel.

  “Workin’ on it,” said Taggert. “It’s not easy, though. Patient confidentiality. We had to apply for a court order. It’ll take some time.”

  “I’m not sure how much time we have left,” said Robie.

  “Meanin’ you think this person will kill again?” said Monda.

  “Well, he’s killed four people already, and if the FBI is right and our murderer and his serial killer are one and the same, then the body count is actually a lot higher.”

  “But how can that really be the case, Robie?” said Taggert. “That would be a helluva coincidence.”

  “Coincidences are often in the eye of the beholder,” retorted Robie.

  Taggert looked at him as though she had no idea what that meant.

  He said, “The other murders were an older man and a younger woman. There was a pattern. And here we have Clancy and two younger women being killed.”

  “But there were probably other reasons to kill Clancy,” said Reel. “And the Chisum girls as well. They might have been attempting to blackmail the killer.”

  “They could well have served two purposes,” said Robie. “Fulfilling the patterns but having other motivations to kill them.”

  “Whoever is doing this is seriously screwed in the head,” interjected Monda.

  “Did you find anything else in Emmitt Barksdale’s house that could be helpful?” asked Robie.

  “Not really. The killer presumably took his phone and/or his laptop because there might have been incriminating items on there.”

  “Did you dig up any family or friends who’d had contact with him?”

  “Not yet. He really didn’t seem to have anyone like that. And the neighbors saw and heard exactly nothin’. Whoever did this was pretty stealthy. And it might’ve been quite late at night, since Barksdale was already in bed.”

  “Anything on where his parents might be?”

  “No,” said Taggert. “We’re makin’ inquiries. But they’ve been gone from Cantrell for over twenty years. No tellin’ where they are, if they’re even still alive.”

  “Do you remember when they left?” asked Robie.

  “Not the exact day, no. It was like they were here one minute and gone the next. I remember not seein’ Laura or Emmitt for a long time. It was like they just stopped comin’ into town.”

  “I know Laura wanted to leave Cantrell and do something with her life.”

  “You mean leave with you?” asked Taggert, eyeing him closely.

  “Why do you say that?” asked Robie suspiciously.

  “Small town, Robie. Hard to keep things secret. You and Laura were in love, everybody knew that. And then you up and leave and she’s still here. Somethin’ was off.”

  “Maybe things just didn’t work out,” he said tersely.

  “So she didn’t go with you and now maybe she’s sittin’ in a mental institution. I think she might have made the wrong choice.”

  “That wasn’t Robie’s fault,” said Reel.

  “Not sayin’ it was,” replied Taggert. “Everybody needs to take responsibility for their own life and live with the choices they make.”

  “You sound like you speak from experience,” said Reel.

  “Hon, you live long enough, we all damn well speak from experience.”

  Chapter

  73

  THE DAY OF Billy Faulconer’s funeral was so hot that the flowers drooped precipitously, right along with the people. Many turned out for the graveside service, both blacks and whites.

  As Robie surveyed the crowd, he wasn’t sure why this was, until he saw that many of the whites were young people. And then he saw Little Bill Faulconer smack in their midst accepting their collective condolences.

  Maybe there was hope, Robie thought.

  Toni Moses came up to him before the service.

  “Sad thing when someone dies this young,” she said.

  “Noboby is guaranteed a tomorrow,” said Robie.

  And don’t I know that, he thought.

  “I don’t see the esteemed county prosecutor,” he observed.

  “He’s probably home lickin’ his wounds. He sees the case against your daddy evaporatin’ right before his eyes. And that means he can kiss his political career good-bye. And the winners on that score are everybody ’cept Aubrey Davis.”

  Robie had volunteered to be one of the pallbearers, and it was depressingly easy—even with his bad arm—to lift the coffin containing the remains of his old friend, who had once loomed so large on the gridiron.


  He glanced at Reel as he walked past bearing the coffin. They exchanged a telling look that might have been interpreted as:

  When our time comes, will we even get a funeral?

  A black minister spoke, and then Angie and Little Bill said a few words.

  The coffin was lowered into the dirt and folks started drifting away.

  That was the way it was, the burial ritual. You set them in the earth and walked away to keep living, until it was your turn to be left behind.

  Dr. Holloway was waiting for Robie at the line of cars parked along the quiet interior street of the cemetery.

  “It was a nice service,” said Holloway.

  “Yeah,” said Robie. “As nice as it can be, considering the purpose.”

  “Will you be stayin’ on much longer here?”

  “Unfinished business.”

  “Clancy and the Chisum girls?”

  Robie nodded as Reel joined them.

  “Anythin’ I can do to help?” asked Holloway.

  Robie was surprised by this but said, “Not unless you have a miracle or two up your sleeve.”

  Holloway smiled weakly. “I don’t think that I do, sorry.”

  Robie stared at him for a few moments and then decided it was worth a shot. Holloway was an educated man. “Does ‘L 18’ or ‘Calvin’ or ‘ROH’ mean anything to you?”

  Holloway frowned. “Not ‘Calvin’ or ‘ROH.’ But ‘L 18’? In what context?”

  “That’s the problem. We don’t know,” said Reel.

  Holloway thought about it for a few moments. “Well, it’s not normally referred to in such a shorthand way, but if the context, for instance, is religious it might mean Leviticus chapter eighteen.”

  Both Robie and Reel tensed. He said, “Leviticus—you mean from the Bible?”

  “The Hebrew Bible, yes.”

  “Do you know what it refers to?” asked Reel. “My biblical knowledge is a little rusty.”

  “To the commands given to Moses on Mount Sinai.”

  “Regarding what, exactly?”

  “Well, the Holiness Code. It lists certain sexual activities that are considered unclean and therefore prohibited. Verse twenty-two of the chapter has caused all the controversy regardin’ homosexuality, you know, that man shall not lie with mankind as with womankind.”

  “You don’t happen to have a Bible with you, do you?” asked Robie.

  “I have one in my car. You’re welcome to it.”

  They went to Holloway’s car, and he gave them the copy of his Bible.

  “I’ll bring it back to you,” promised Robie.

  “No, keep it. I try to give them out to people as often as I can. I consider it a way of payin’ it forward. I don’t agree with everythin’ in there. I mean we must all come into the twenty-first century. But just the golden rule and its progeny would certainly make the world a better place if more widely followed.”

  “Thanks,” said Robie.

  “And don’t forget about your arm, I was serious. You don’t want permanent damage.”

  Holloway drove off while Robie flipped to Leviticus chapter eighteen. He read down the passages.

  “Anything strike you?” asked Reel.

  “It deals with homosexuality, like he said. But it also talks about something else.”

  “What?”

  “Incest.”

  “Incest? What kind?”

  Robie read a bit more, then looked up at her. “Between brother and sister for one.”

  Reel gazed at him. “So do you think…?”

  “Emmitt and Laura?” Robie grimaced.

  Reel said, “He was older, she was younger. Her own brother having sex with her might make her depressed and confused and want to get the hell out of town.”

  “But I never would have thought that Emmitt—”

  “Robie, you said people can justify anything they do, whether it’s incest”—she paused for a moment—“or killing people.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “Are you talking about us with that last part?” he said quietly.

  “Maybe I am.”

  He looked back at Billy Faulconer’s grave and all the air seemed to go out of Robie. He turned back to Reel. “Then let’s go get a drink and get out of this damn heat before we wade too deeply into the crap inside our heads. We might never get back out.”

  They drove to a local bar, ordered beers, and sat at the back table where a wall AC unit was blasting away.

  People were staring at them from all corners of the place.

  “I love being in a place where I’m so popular,” Reel said dourly.

  “Cantrell is just that kind of place.”

  “What kind of place?”

  “One you don’t visit. But if you do people will stare at you until you get the hell out.”

  They each had another beer and the afternoon slowly gave way to evening.

  Reel pulled out her phone and started tapping keys.

  “What are you doing?” asked Robie.

  She held up a finger and then finished typing.

  “I just Googled incest and ROH, the term from the back of the photo we found.”

  “Did you get a hit?”

  She stared at the screen. “This one looks promising.” She read over the article. “Okay, ROH stands for ‘runs of homozygosity.’”

  “That explains a lot,” said Robie sarcastically. “What the hell is homozygosity?”

  Reel read some more. “It’s related to genetics. Inbreeding results in big upswings in homozygosity. The article says that means that identical chromosomal segments by descents are basically paired off together. That’s a bad thing, obviously. It leads to lots of undesirable things happening to any offspring of an incestuous relationship.”

  “That’s what happened with the royals, right? Bluebloods and ‘mad kings’ syndrome? They kept marrying close relatives to keep their bloodlines pure, but they were really screwing them up. It’s why doing that’s now outlawed.”

  “Yes. And that ties in with Leviticus eighteen, which deals with those sorts of incestuous situations.”

  “And Jane Smith?”

  “Could be the result of that,” answered Reel. “Not that she was the product of an incestuous relationship, of course, which is what ROH refers to. But if Jane is Laura, twenty-plus years of shame and loathing and emotional scarring could change anyone, Robie. Anyone. Even damage their minds. I’m surprised she’s not even more screwed up.”

  Robie looked confused. “Okay, But ROH comes from the product of an incestuous relationship, like you just said. The offspring. So why would someone have written ROH on the back of a family photo if it didn’t have some relevance?”

  Reel said, “You’re right. But Jane Smith is forty. She can’t be Laura and her brother’s child. She has to be Laura.”