A Little Sin

by Sionnach Wintergreen

Delton nodded. “Amen.”

  “But the doctor was the baby’s real father, wasn’t he? And you couldn’t handle it, could you?”

  Delton looked more defeated now than angry. “I didn’t kill him. I told you, I was with Myrtle all night. I won’t lie, I’m not sorry he’s dead, but I’ve wanted a son ever since me and Myrtle got hitched.”

  “Could be a daughter.”

  Delton chewed his lower lip. “I can’t….” He looked away. “I was wounded….Myrtle and me can’t have babies. This isn’t the way I wanted it, but you don’t always get things the way you want in life.”

  He was putting up a good act, but Avery had grown weary of it. He took out his handcuffs. “Delton Johnson, I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Dr. Hiram Watkins.”

  “But I didn’t do it!” The big man pulled away, but stopped struggling once Avery held him fast. “I swear! I didn’t kill nobody!”

  ***

  After getting Delton Johnson situated in his cell in the county jailhouse, Avery went across the street to the County Courthouse. An arrest always meant paperwork. When he opened the door of the Sheriff’s Office, he found a scattering of notes on the floor, shoved through the flap by the clerk who took his calls when he wasn’t there.

  He sifted through them as he made his way to his desk. One made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. It was from Garland. He reported a dead body in Crooked Creek in the back pasture of the Henry Ranch.

  ***

  Henry Ranch

  Avery felt bad for Bluebird. He had lathered the gelding racing to the crime scene in the August heat. He unhitched him from the wagon, and walked his horse through the pasture to cool him off. Bluebird whinnied as they approached the creek and a sorrel horse. Clyde Henry held the sorrel. They both stood in the creek looking dejected. On down the creek, on the near bank, he saw a blue and white checkered picnic blanket with a body spread out on it. Garland, wearing a gray flat cap, squatted on the picnic blanket beside the body, hunched over it.

  Garland sat up on his heels and pointed to the creek when Avery walked up. “She was caught on that fence down there. She was in the creek. I think maybe someone dumped her from upstream.”

  Avery scrubbed his beard. “Tarnation. He cut off her breasts. What’s the world coming to?”

  Garland’s gray eyes couldn’t have looked more somber. “It gets worse, Avery.”

  “How’s that?”

  “He cut out her tongue.”

  ***

  Sands’ Farm

  Avery stood in one of Garland’s stalls, watching him smear medicine on the sorrel gelding’s wounds. They had made a strange parade to Garland’s house—a wagon with a body in it and Garland on his paint with the wounded sorrel in tow. Straightaway, Garland had dismissed Lucinda for the night. Although she usually left before sundown, she had offered to stay on and cook them supper—something Avery thought was a good idea—but Garland would have none of it.

  “I can’t believe you’re leaving him in jail overnight,” said Garland. “You know he didn’t do it.”

  “I don’t know that. He murdered the doctor, why not this woman?”

  “Whoa,” Garland told the horse. “Easy boy. I know it burns. I still have to do it.” He applied some more ointment. “What’s his motive for killing the woman? Who is she? Who is she to him? Myrtle swears he was with her. Maybe she’s telling the truth.”

  The horse pulled away from Garland, leaving him holding one of its hind legs in the air. Avery stepped up and took its halter. “Easy. Easy. There now. Good boy.” He wanted Garland to further examine the body, but the vet insisted he had to mess with the horse first.

  “This conversation isn’t conducive to healing. Let’s talk after I’ve finished.”

  Avery scoffed. “Two murders are more important than one horse.”

  “Not to me. I’m a veterinarian before I’m coroner.”

  Avery heaved a sigh. Garland was hard-headed. He was hard-headed, too, maybe more so, but he didn’t feel like locking horns with the tall blond at the moment. He decided to let Garland play with his horse for a while. When he looked at the horse’s legs, however, the injuries reminded him that this wasn’t play. “Where did Clyde say he found this horse, again?”

  “On the side of the road out by his place.”

  “Huh. It’s a good horse. Or it was.”

  Garland rose up and looked at him with pained eyes. “He’s still a good horse.” He patted the horse’s side. “Hopefully, I can pull him through this.”

  “He’s a saddle horse, right?”

  “He looks like a morgan to me. He’s breedy, that’s for sure.” Garland daubed iodine on the wounds on the horse’s chest. “Somebody has to be missing him.”

  “You’ve never seen him before?”

  “No. I would’ve remembered him. He’s probably never been sick a day. All these muscles…. You’re a handsome fella.”

  “Does he have shoes?”

  “He does.”

  “You think Shorty McGee might remember him?”

  Garland looked over at Avery with a grin. “The farrier. He might. I would. Not only is he an expensive-looking horse, he’s a good patient. I bet he’s a breeze to shoe. A lot of horses aren’t. It would stick out.”

  “Well, I guess I solved your horse mystery. That’ll cost you a nickel.”

  Garland snorted. He straightened and stretched, then gathered his supplies. “Onto the next mystery.”

  Avery followed Garland as he put away the ointment and washed his hands with antiseptic. They stopped for a cigarette before going into the barn. He couldn’t shake the idea that Garland might have been right about Delton. Putting the murder on him didn’t feel right anymore. But it had made so much sense. He had a motive…. Who else would want to kill Doc Watkins? And who would want to kill the woman in the barn?

  The sun was going down, turning the sky rosy and painting long shadows on the ground. Cicadas chimed in the trees overhead. Crickets had started chirping.

  “Rigor mortis starts with the neck and jaw and sets in about four to six hours after death.” Garland blew smoke. “She was just going into rigor when we found her. Find out what time Mr. Johnson showed up for work. I doubt he could have killed her. This was someone else.”

  “Are you sure both crimes are related? Maybe it’s coincidence.”

  Garland sucked his cigarette, the cherry brightening. He gave Avery a withering look. “I probably believe in coincidence more than you do, but this is ridiculous. We have two murders, one right after the other, and in both cases the tongues are cut out. That’s no coincidence—and you know it.”

  Avery liked the way Garland’s lips moved when he blew smoke. He found himself fascinated by Garland’s jaw, Garland’s neck. His Adam’s apple. Avery wanted to touch him, wanted to feel his muscles move beneath his skin. “He’s in a jail cell by himself. He’s probably safer there tonight. I’m sure word is out that he’s the murderer.”

  Garland groaned. The sound rippled through Avery’s stomach. “We’re on the clock. Let’s get this done.” He ground out his cigarette and started for the barn. Avery followed him.

  Chapter Five

  Avery helped Garland move the body, wrapped in a tarp, to the table set up in the middle of the barn. They lit lanterns around the barn and left the barn doors open to let the fading light inside. Avery thought they should have examined the body more when the sun was out and left the horse for later, but Garland had insisted that the living come first.

  He saw Garland shudder as they unwrapped the body, and wondered if Garland had put if off for other reasons, as well. “You all right?”

  Garland’s brows knitted. “This isn’t my usual line of work.” He swept the woman’s long brown hair away from her face with an almost tender gesture. “I’m sorry about the indignity of all of this. We’ll find out who did this to you.”

  “She’s not there,” said Avery. “This is an empty shell.”

  Garland
grunted. Avery didn’t think he appreciated the input. She was a young woman, in her early twenties. She had blue eyes that stared out of her pale face at nothing. He wasn’t attracted to women, but he recognized that this one was pretty. She had smooth skin like a porcelain doll, a small chin, and a wide forehead. Her thin nose reminded him of a hawk’s beak. It gave her a regal appearance. Her lips were gray and chapped. A dark bruise shadowed one high cheekbone.

  Garland forced her jaw open and showed Avery her mouth. He was right. She was maimed just like the doctor. Garland searched her head, turning it to one side, then the other, running his fingers over her scalp. Avery couldn’t help watching his face. He felt guilty about the way Garland’s brow furrowed. This wasn’t easy for him.

  “He didn’t have to subdue her with a blow to the head. It wasn’t necessary.” He directed Avery’s gaze to the woman’s long neck. “See the dark pattern on her throat?” He put his hands over the marks. “Someone choked her with his bare hands.”

  He pointed to her eyes. “See the flecks of blood in the whites of her eyes? That’s called patechial hemorrhaging. Pressure caused the tiny blood vessels to burst. I think she was strangled. That’s what killed her.” He glanced down the length of the body. “I hope to God that’s what killed her and she wasn’t alive for the rest of it.”

  “He cut off her breasts. I can see that for myself.”

  “And cut her open.” Garland shook his head. He examined the skin at the edges of the chest wounds. “A serrated edge, I think.”

  “So…we’re talking a kitchen knife? You think this happened in the kitchen?”

  “Maybe. Maybe she was doing something in the kitchen, and he hit her, strangled her, then…. Maybe. Or he carried a kitchen knife with him.”

  Avery sighed. He wanted the pieces to fit into something he could recognize. He watched Garland smooth his big hands down her arms. Garland held up each of her hands and looked at them carefully.

  “She had a bit of dirt under her nails. Some peck marks. Maybe she had chickens?”

  Avery rolled his eyes. “Nice detective work. Who doesn’t have chickens around here?”

  “Look,” snapped Garland, “I’m trying.”

  Avery backed off. “I know. I didn’t mean nothing.”

  “I’m not trained to look at dead bodies. I’m trained to look at live animals. You don’t know what this does to me. You don’t know what I’ve seen—” He drew a deep breath. “You don’t know,” he said quietly, exhaling, resigned. “That’s the truth of it.”

  Avery wanted to say he was sorry, but he said nothing. “She’s had children,” said Garland. “See the stretch marks?”

  That wasn’t much help. “Most women her age have had kids.”

  Garland finally came to the wound beneath the woman’s navel. Her viscera had spilled out in the creek. They had gathered it up and wound it up in the tarp with her. Garland went over the organs. “Small intestine. Large intestine. Urinary bladder.”

  With a puzzled look, he felt around in her organs for a while. “What’s wrong?” Avery asked finally.

  “Her uterus is missing. I found her ovaries….”

  “Could it have fallen out in the creek?”

  “I don’t think so. I think this was purposeful. It means something.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m not sure. But look down here.” He directed Avery’s gaze to the woman’s grisly nether region. “Her vagina was mutilated.”

  Avery didn’t like it when Garland used words like ‘vagina.’ “Someone hated women.”

  “Or this woman’s womanliness.” Garland stared at the corpse in obvious dismay. “Evil,” he said softly. “Whoever did this was pure evil.”

  Moved, Avery took off his hat and held it over his heart. “This is like Jack the Ripper or something. We don’t have this sort of thing around here.”

  Garland folded the picnic blanket back over the body. “Rest in the arms of our Savior.” He wrapped the tarp around her, then washed his hands with antiseptic. Before Avery knew it, Garland had a cigarette out in one shaky hand and was puffing away on it.

  Avery returned his hat to his head, took out a cigarette and match. He struck the match and lit the cigarette. A smoking man liked company. Garland had closed his eyes. “Evil world,” he said softly. His hands continued to shake.

  “What you saw,” Avery began, ginger. “Was it in the war?”

  Garland’s eyes found his. “I saw things in the war. This is something else.” He exhaled slowly. “The war haunts me when I sleep. Philippe haunts me during the day.”

  Avery had to look down. “Philippe…uh…was…uh…your—”

  “Lover. I settled down in Toulouse after the war. I enrolled in the Ecole nationale veterinaire de Toulouse to finish the degree I started at Texas A&M. And I met Philippe.” A sad smile played on his lips. “He was wonderful—sweet, full of life. But his shellshock was worse than mine. He would go into these—I don’t know exactly—these trenches of despair. Days would pass where he couldn’t seem to move from the window. He would stare out and smoke. It was like he was gone.”

  Avery didn’t say anything when Garland paused. He felt like Garland had more to say. He wanted to touch Garland, to connect in some concrete way. The war lay like a shadow over so many of them. Avery had been lucky to avoid shellshock, but he had seen this mysterious disorder afflict other men.

  “One day while I was out, he took his service revolver and killed himself. I cleaned up after the police came. Picked pieces of his brain out of the rug, off the walls. Gray matter, white matter, corpus callosum….” In the lantern light, tears shone in Garland’s eyes.

  Avery had thought he was so merry, yet Garland hid all kinds of things beneath that boyish smile. He didn’t know what to say. He ground out his cigarette and wrapped his arms around the vet. Garland’s back stiffened in surprise. Avery gave him a squeeze. He rested his chin on one of Garland’s broad shoulders. The rim of his Stetson brushed Garland’s head. He took his hat off and held it against the small of Garland’s back. He wanted to pull all of the sadness from Garland’s body.

  Garland’s hot breath brushed his neck. He nuzzled his face against Avery’s ear and hugged him back. They held still, embracing for a long time. Avery closed his eyes and basked in the feeling of closeness and warmth. He had never felt this with anyone. He had, after realizing Garland was queer, wanted to couple with him, but this was something else—something he hadn’t expected.

  Suddenly, Avery felt the openness of the barn door behind his back. He doubted anyone passing by would be able to see them this far from the road, but he didn’t want to take the chance.

  He released Garland and backed away, holding his hat in front of him with both hands. He still didn’t know what to say. He stared at Garland and wished his eyes would say all of the complicated things he felt.

  Garland wiped one of his eyes with the back of his hand. He cleared his throat. “Do you like breakfast for supper?”

  Avery blinked at him.

  “What about some fried eggs with biscuits and gravy?”

  ***

  Garland’s head felt light as he stomped up his front porch. What the hell was he doing? His stomach fluttered as he heard the sheriff, in his cowboy boots, clomping behind him. Avery seemed like the sort who would have regrets as soon as they did anything. He had been with men like that before. One had even been violent afterward.

  He hung his cap at the door and took off his rubber Wellingtons. He had come back to Wakeforest County to heal, to lose himself in his work and the fresh country air. His father’s death had rung a great bell inside him. It had woken him from the stupor of his mourning for Philippe and brought him back home. He had told people he had been married to a French girl, but she had died of influenza. Since the massive outbreak of Spanish Flu in 1918 through 1919, people understood how deadly the flu could be. So the women kept a respectful distance, letting him mourn his poor dead wife.

  He
didn’t think there was another one of his kind for miles, and he had been all right with that. He had been in love once. Some people couldn’t even say that. He had accepted his broken heart and the empty feeling inside. He finally accepted being alone.

  And then Avery showed up.

  He stopped in the kitchen and turned to Avery. “I’m going to wash up out back. Then you can wash yourself while I cook supper.”

  Avery clutched his hat. “It’s only Wednesday.”

  Garland chuckled. “If you want to pitch a little woo after supper, you’d better get clean. I don’t consort with grubby men.”

  A muscle on Avery’s jaw twitched. His blue eyes looked dark. He stared at Garland as if frozen in place, unable to speak.

  Garland regretted his quip. “I thought that’s what you wanted…. I don’t mind if you just want to eat.” He searched Avery’s handsome face. “I liked that…back there. If that’s all you wanted to do, I would like that.” It was the truth. No one had held him like that since Philippe died. Avery’s arms had felt healing and magical. For a few minutes, he had almost forgotten how much he hurt.

  “Can I hang my hat up there?” Avery motioned to the hat rack.

  “Why it’s there.”

  With some dismay, he watched Avery hang his hat. Avery turned back to him. His hands dove in his pockets, and he looked at the floor. “I liked it, too.” He practically whispered. “It’s a sin. But I—” He glanced up at Garland. “I want to do it again.”

  Garland stepped toward him, longing to take him in his arms. “They say it’s a sin.”

  “The Bible says.”

  Garland rolled his eyes. “Leviticus says eating shellfish is a sin. The Bible was written by humans. It’s flawed in parts like they are.”

  Avery’s mouth tightened. “It was written by humans filled with the Holy Spirit.”

  Garland deflated. “Are we going to have Bible study now? I was hoping for other things.”

  Avery looked on the verge of trembling. “I want you. I want you so badly.” His hands balled into fists. “How can that be so wrong?”