The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

by C. J. Box

  “I thought I said, pretty clear, that I wasn’t looking,” William said. “I reckon she’ll die soon enough without coming around me. I’ve killed one already, seems like that’s enough for a while.”

  “You stupid fool,” Josh said with feeling but no malice. “If you figure on calling yourself a murderer, I reckon that little baby boy is a killer too. Killed his mama and himself. You reckon that’s the way of it, Will?”

  “I reckon some folks need to tend to their own business and keep out of mine. Don’t you have another subject, Josh?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Josh said. “Talking about killing, there was a killing over near your place last night. Ben Pierce was riding early this morning down the Raleigh Road and nearly stumbled over poor old Johnny Grant lying sprawled out beside the road with his throat cut. Been robbed, it looked like. You know that pouch of money he always wore around his neck?”

  “Yep,” William said, fighting a numbness that was starting at the tips of his fingers and working up.

  “Well, that was gone, and you know he never went nowhere without it, even wore it to bed, they say. That was gone and his old daddy’s pocket watch was gone and that locket that had his mama’s likeness, they took that off him too. I don’t reckon he had much more than that, being an idiot and all. And you know them dogs he always kept running around at his feet?”

  William nodded.

  “Caught one of ’em with a knife. Ben carried that one home but figured the other one must have got away or crawled off to die, since it wasn’t around nowhere. A damn shame, is what it is. You hear anything at your place last night?”

  “Yep. Dogs barking, pitching a fit—​late, after ten o’clock. Then a couple of horses running full chisel a few minutes later. I reckon I heard the whole thing.” He had gotten up from his bed to look for peace, to be with Hannah, and had heard a murder. A tiny ember that had been smoldering in his brain sprang to life. “Who do you reckon would kill an idiot boy like that?”

  Josh looked at him and tipped his head toward the circle of young people across the room.

  William let the gesture lie. “Could have been anybody. Lots of folks knew Johnny took that road home from the sawmill every night. Being the way he was, he’d be easy pickin’s. A stranger could have done it, would have known once he had a word or two with the boy that he wasn’t right in the head.”

  “Could have, but didn’t,” Josh said, and with the words came a chill that William sensed in spite of the flames at the tavern’s hearth and the bursts of laughter and easy talk that hummed around them.

  “So what are you saying, Josh?” William asked, and then was distracted by Louisa tugging on his sleeve. Her doll, she explained, had suffered a hurt leg when Callie had deliberately dropped her from a dangerous height. William took out his handkerchief and dried Louisa’s tears and then wrapped the doll leg, glancing at Josh and at the rag leg he was tending and then across the room where he’d seen Josh look. Finishing the job, he handed Louisa the doll and told her to run along, but instead she climbed into his lap and lay against him, sucking her thumb and stroking the wounded doll.

  “You’re saying it’s somebody we know,” William continued when Josh showed no sign of answering his question. “You’re saying it’s somebody in this taproom, if I’m reading you right.”

  “You see that group over yonder?” Josh asked, and dipped his head in their direction again. “Wendell Pike, Jimmy Galton, Eddie Bishop, and all them boys around Mary Ann Graves?”

  “I see ’em,” William said. “I’d be blind and deaf not to, the way they’ve been cutting up all night.”

  “Well, I been watching them, both before you got here and since. They been cutting up all right, trying to impress that girl, mainly with fancy talk. But some of that fancy talk, a lot of it, I’d say, has centered around Eddie and Wendell and something Eddie keeps bringing out and dangling around to show everybody. I got a good look at it once, when I went out back. It’s a watch.”

  “Lots of folks have watches, Josh.”

  “That’s so. But what’s so dang funny about that one? He’s showing it off like a square nickel.”

  “Could be new to him. Could be his daddy’s or his granddaddy’s or he just bought it himself.”

  “It’s new to him, all right. Newly filched off of Johnny Grant’s body. You know and I know that his daddy, being both a drunkard and poor as Job’s turkey, didn’t buy that boy no new watch to show off like that.”

  “Maybe the boy bought it himself. He works at the sawmill, doesn’t he?”

  “He turns up at the sawmill now and again and Wendell’s daddy might give him a day or two of work if he has it, but that’s hardly enough to go buying a fancy watch when your daddy barely makes enough to keep his own body and soul together, let alone his children’s. That’s Johnny’s watch, I’d bet my head on it.”

  “Rather than bet your head, why not talk to the sheriff ?” William said. He felt Louisa flinch in his lap when the group in the corner burst into laughter. When she put both fists over her ears and began to whimper, he knew his time at the tavern was almost over.

  “I intend to tell him,” Josh said. “Trouble is, that’ll likely be the end of it. Like you said, lots of folks have watches, and who’s around to testify to that one being Johnny’s? The boy didn’t have no family and hardly any friends. Just them two dogs, and they’re good as gone too.”

  “He went to the sawmill nearly every day of his life,” William said. “Some of them must have known him.”

  “He did do that. He was a pest they tried to run off, and when he came back, they ignored him best they could.”

  “Still, some of them must have seen that watch.”

  “’Course they did. That’s why they figured on robbing him. They saw the watch and they saw the money pouch and then went through the poor boy’s pockets after they’d finished their handiwork on him and took his mama’s locket as well. It’s just a wonder they didn’t open his mouth and check for gold teeth.”

  “So tell the sheriff,” William said, and set Louisa down on her feet. Finishing the last of his gin, he gestured to Callie, who studiously ignored him. “That Grant boy is entitled to justice same as any man under this roof. More so, since he was soft in the head and couldn’t defend himself.”

  “I agree with you, friend,” Josh said, and after one long last look, he turned his back on the group of young people. “And I will talk to Clayton about it. But the fact is, Wendell Pike’s daddy owns the sawmill and Eddie’s his best friend and Johnny Grant was just an idiot boy who had nothing and no ties and nobody’s going to care much that he’s gone. I reckon he’ll find justice in the end, like the rest of us. Trouble is, he’s going to have to wait till then to get it. Till then, he’s just dead and that’s the end of it.”

  “That’s never the end of it, Josh,” William said, adding a goodbye before going to the corner to gather Callie and an ever-widening circle of marbles.

  * * *

  Never the end of it, he thought again when Louisa woke up a few nights later crying for her mama and inconsolable. He would have preferred a knife in the ribs to the child’s pitiful cries, but there was no one to give it to him, so he simply held her until she went back to sleep, a rough and clumsy substitute for someone who had been silken and soft and warm. He slept no more that night but went about the cabin waiting for dawn, from the hearth to the stoop to the stairs, there to listen for the girls’ soft breathing. Place made no difference now, for everywhere was the same—​a place without Hannah.

  Finally seeing the sky lightening in the east, he made himself think about the coming day. He had chores to do. He had turned the soil in both cornfields but not yet put in the first seed. March was creeping into April and he had not planted a salad garden. He would work on that, turn the old bed near the cabin, work in some leaves and manure, and get the soil ready to set in seed. He could do that; in fact, had to. In spite of his soul rending in two, they still had
to eat. The salad garden was nearby, so he could watch the girls playing around the cabin, maybe even set Callie to work with a spade, helping him. With a plan in mind, he turned to breakfast.

  The plan worked for half the morning and then went sour. The girls played house on the stoop, bringing out dishes and pans and the churn, and things went well until Callie appeared in the doorway with an armful of linen. Picturing himself washing bedsheets for days, William put a stop to that and set off a string of misbehavior that climaxed with one arm being torn off Louisa’s doll when his back was turned, a crisis no amount of lemon drops could set right. Putting his plow in the toolshed, he rinsed his hands and spent a half hour working with needle and thread. After finally reattaching the severed limb, he hitched up the horse, tidied both girls and himself, and set off down the road for the Methodist church. It was time to visit Mama.

  Tying up in front of the church, he lifted the girls out of the wagon and watched them run around to the back as if their mother would be there waiting to welcome them to a picnic or a game of jacks. Instead there would be silence and a stone and that would be their mother for the rest of their lives. William walked around the church slowly, dreading the sight of the stone and the mound of earth, always dreading it, as if each time he saw these terrible objects, Hannah was lost to him anew. Coming to the corner, he braced himself and moved quickly, wanting to get it over with, to let the gouge in his soul bleed a little more until perhaps, one day, it would begin to heal.

  He was surprised to find the girls talking not to their mother, as they usually did, but to Henry Cobb. The man was standing on Hannah’s grave, shirtsleeves rolled up, leaning on his shovel. As William reached them, he heard Callie imploring the gravedigger to start lifting the dirt off her mama.

  “Hush, Callie,” he said, pulling her up to hold against him. “I’m sorry to see you back at work so soon after just laying Matt Avery to rest last week.”

  “Yes, sir,” Henry said, and lifting his shovel in the air, he plunged it into the earth that was Hannah’s grave. William winced slightly, as if the action could hurt her. Turning his mind from his own foolishness, he set Callie down and nodded toward a freshly turned plot in the far corner of the burial ground.

  “Who’d you put way down yonder, Henry, in that swampy ground down there? Water stands like the devil there when we get a rainy spell.”

  “Yep, I know,” Henry said, reaching around for a flask hanging from his belt. He took a long drink and sighed with satisfaction. “It was that idiot boy that got himself killed over near your place, the one with them dogs.”

  “That was a week ago,” William said, and smelling whiskey fumes coming from the man, he reckoned that was what it took to do such a job as covering people with earth. “He’s just now getting buried?”

  “Yep. Nobody claimed him, nor any interest in him. Some of the women laid him out for a day or two and waited, but no one turned up to see him or take him, and you can’t wait forever, not with it warming up soon. Millie came by a while ago and we said some words over him and then I got to work.”

  “But why’d you put him down there, Henry, away from all the folks and in that soggy ground?”

  “What’s the difference?” the gravedigger said, and shrugged. He took a cloth sack off his belt and pulled a piece of cornbread out of it. “Been a long time since breakfast,” he said, and started eating, dropping crumbs on the ground around him. “Nobody’ll be coming to see him, so nobody’s going to get their feet wet. What’s the use of wasting good space on a boy like that, as long as he’s put down good and proper like everybody else? Sorry, William,” he said, and stepped away from Hannah’s grave with his johnnycake. “I didn’t mean no disrespect. Guess I forgot myself for a minute.”

  “Guess you did,” William said, wanting to knock the man flat to the ground with his fist. Instead he took the shovel away from Callie, who had started scraping it across the raw earth, and handed it back to the gravedigger. “If it’s all the same to you, Henry, the girls and I would like to visit with their mama for a bit.”

  “Sure enough, Will,” the man said, and shoving the rest of the corn cake into his mouth, he threw the shovel over his shoulder and headed for a fat pine tree at the edge of the cemetery.

  William kicked the crumbs off the grave and told the girls it was time to say a prayer for their mama and go. Callie questioned the haste of it and Louisa whined. William had in fact planned to stay longer, but the gravedigger was sitting under the old pine watching them, and William felt the intrusion keenly.

  After speaking his own empty words to the sky, he waited while the girls each spoke a prayer, with Callie’s being a jumble of lamentations and requests addressed to God and her mama in turn, and Louisa’s a suggestion that Mama come down for a visit. William tried to listen to the phrases like he always did, to see what was in each girl’s heart, but his mind kept slipping away, to the fresh mound of earth in the swampy ground that no one would be coming to visit.

  * * *

  It started a few days later, without William even realizing anything had begun. He had not left the farm for several days, doing man’s work in the daytime, woman’s work in the evening, and the devil’s work at night, sitting on the stoop and longing for Hannah to come back to him. Sleep, which had become a matter of three or four hours a night, was something he longed for during the day, when it was impossible. So it had been with a foggy brain that he had gone to the feed and seed store and bought exactly half as much corn seed as he needed for his southern and most productive cornfield. Getting the girls ready for another trip to town to buy more, he wondered if they were even safe with him as a caretaker. Perhaps he would confuse Louisa for a barrel of pickles and leave her standing beside the counter in the store or forget he had children altogether and ride off with a couple of feed sacks in their places. Nothing anymore would surprise him.

  For this reason he spoke to the girls quietly after lifting them from the wagon in front of the store, asking them to remain in his sight at all times and to hold hands and never lose sight of each other. Even Callie was sobered by something in his demeanor, and the two followed William into the seed store like a pair of tiny ghosts and stood quietly behind him, moving as he did and never uttering a sound. And so it was that William, who had been living a life of nothing but distraction for weeks, was able to take note of his surroundings in the seed store. And what he noted was that the man leaning on the far end of the counter, waiting for his order to be filled, was Eddie Bishop.

  William could not have sworn it was the Bishop boy; he had never spoken to him that he could recall and had no more than a nodding acquaintance with his father. On getting closer, however, he saw what he needed to see. An old scar, running from the boy’s left ear to his upper lip, marked him as Eddie Bishop, the Eddie Bishop who had gotten his face half cut off in a drunken brawl one night after work.

  Sending Callie and Louisa over to warm themselves by the stove, William walked down to the end of the counter where Eddie stood.

  “Morning, Eddie,” he said. The boy looked at him briefly before returning his attention to the door of the storeroom.

  “Morning,” he muttered almost inaudibly, dropping one arm onto the countertop and stretching to see as far into the back as he could. After a moment or two, he fell back on his heels and began drumming his fingers on the countertop.

  “I was wondering what the time is, Eddie,” William said, not bothering to conceal the chain of his own watch. “Would you happen to have the time?”

  “What?” Eddie asked. He stopped drumming his nails on the glass and stared at William as if he’d asked for a ride to the moon.

  “The time,” William repeated, putting his hands into his pockets in such a way as to leave the watch chain draped over the flesh of his arm. “I know you’ve got yourself a new watch. I saw it the other night at the tavern. I was wondering if you could give me the time.”

  “What’s wrong with your watch?” Eddie asked, turning
to face him for the first time.

  “Not a thing,” William said, and in that moment they locked eyes and William knew he had achieved his purpose, which was to do nothing more than needle the boy, to nudge him into a state of unease.

  “The time, Eddie,” William said again. “I really need to know the time.”

  Eddie scowled and looked away, then fumbled at his pants pocket and pulled out a watch. “Half past eleven,” he said, fumbling again to replace it and nearly missing the pocket when the storekeeper suddenly appeared with his order. The boy slung the two feed sacks over his shoulders and left the store without giving William another glance.

  Walking to the other end of the counter to place his own order, William counted the first skirmish as his, although the victory had no practical merit in the course of the war.

  * * *

  Two more days passed, and in those days William tended the children and worked to keep up with his chores but no longer as a sleepwalker stumbling through an endless succession of hours. The tiny flame in his brain that had sparked to life on hearing of the murder now bore a steady light, neither flickering nor dancing but glowing brighter and stronger with each passing day. On the third day he determined it was time, or well past time, to talk to the sheriff. The boy had already been dead for two weeks and William had heard nothing more about it.

  He dropped the girls off at Lottie Calvin’s place, partly because she had been pestering him for weeks to accept some help and partly because he did not want them to hear his conversation with the sheriff. Louisa screamed as if she was being thrown to the devil and Callie attached herself to his leg, but he had to let them out of his sight sometime, so he passed them over to Lottie, waited till she had hold of them, and left. There was nothing for it but to close his heart as best he could, though Louisa’s screams echoed in his brain all the way to the county jail.