‘Material witness to what?’ Nick yelled. ‘Y’all keep saying that but I ain’t seen nothing! I ain’t witness to nothing!’
‘Sit down!’ Anthony said, his hand on the revolver at his hip.
Nick sat down.
‘Now, where were you at ten yesterday morning?’ Anthony asked.
‘What the hell happened yesterday morning? I was doing what I do. Milking cows and slopping hogs. The usual shit.’
‘Got any witnesses?’
‘Yeah. You think I milk them cows and slop them hogs my own self? I see myself in a mostly supervisory role. The boys do the work and I tell ’em how bad they’re doing it.’
‘Man, you are a role model, aren’t you, Nick?’ Anthony said.
‘I do what I can,’ Nick said.
‘So those three out there are your alibis?’
‘Jason and Tim. Not Randy. Randy’s still in school. He helps in the afternoons.’
‘Jason and Tim. They’re the two older ones?’
‘Yeah, genius. You figured that out all on your own?’
‘I can still arrest you, you know,’ Anthony said.
‘For what?’
‘Smartin’ off to a deputy. There’s a law.’
‘Show me!’
‘In a minute. Now, where were you at noon today?’
‘Same damn place, asshole! What’s your problem?’
‘So you were at your farm around noon?’
‘Didn’t I just say that?’
‘So you heard the shots?’
‘What shots?’ Nick asked, frowning.
‘The shots that took out a deputy’s car less than half a mile from your place.’
‘I didn’t hear no shots.’
‘Maybe that’s because you’re the one who was doing the shooting!’ Anthony said.
Nick Permeter laughed. ‘If I was doing any shooting, I’d have heard the shots, dumbass!’
‘What I was implying is that you’re lying.’
‘At noon I was having lunch with my wife, my mother and my two older boys. Ask them.’
‘You saying that your family wouldn’t lie for you?’
‘I’m not saying another word,’ Nick Permeter said.
‘Fine. You’re a material witness. Gonna put you back in the cells with your brother,’ Anthony said, standing up.
‘Like hell you are! And you got Joe in there again? What the hell is this? Are you people stupid or something?’
‘Guess I’m gonna have to cuff you, Nick. You don’t seem to be cooperating.’
‘I’m gonna sue your asses off! Hide and watch if I don’t!’
‘That’s nice,’ Anthony said, cuffed him and hauled him out of the interrogation room, headed for the cells.
‘Jason!’ Nick yelled to his eldest. ‘Go home and get your gramma to call Cousin Sarah! Me and Joe both need a lawyer! Go!’
The three boys hightailed it out of the sheriff’s department.
Dalton got back to Prophesy County in record time, but instead of going straight to the sheriff’s office he detoured to the county hospital. When he found Jasmine’s room, he also found Emmett and Milt.
‘Hey,’ Dalton said from the open door to her room. Both men’s heads turned toward the sound.
‘Hey, Dalton,’ Milt said, going up to him and shaking his hand. ‘How’s your mama?’
‘OK, I guess. Still out. How’s Jasmine?’
Emmett walked up and shook Dalton’s hand also. ‘’Bout the same,’ he said. ‘They got her in one of those induced comas while they do some medical crap.’ He shrugged. ‘You know.’
‘Yeah.’ Turning to Milt, Dalton asked, ‘So who’s doing this?’
‘We don’t know, but we’re gonna find out. I’m glad you’re back.’ Milt turned to Emmett and said, ‘If you don’t need me any more, I’m gonna go with Dalton back to the shop. We need to start doing something about this.’
Emmett nodded, patted both men on the back and went to sit with his wife.
TEN
I was so mad I could spit nails. Who was doing this shit? And why? I wasn’t much closer to this than when I first read that message taped to the front door of the shop: I’m going to start by killing your entire family. That’s what it said. But so far the only people killed have been outsiders. Except maybe Judge Norman. Somehow he was involved in all this, and since he was one of only three judges that served Prophesy County, it was a pretty sure bet that he’d presided over some of the cases we’d been dealing with.
I found Anna, told her to call the bailiff, Bob Huntley, at the county courthouse and see if we could get into Judge Norman’s files. I wanted to see if there was a crossover. Then I went to my office to study on all this.
My studying came to naught, and when Anna came to my office door I was thrilled for the interruption.
‘Whatja got?’ I asked.
‘Mr Huntley really wants to help,’ she said. ‘He seemed pretty upset at the thought that the judge had been murdered.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I kinda got that when I talked to him.’
‘He said we couldn’t get access to the judge’s files from this computer but I can come over there and look at theirs. Is it OK if I bring up our files on their computer?’ Anna asked.
‘If you do will they be able to see our stuff?’ I asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said.
‘Is that a good or a bad thing?’ I asked.
‘Well, they’ll only be able to see it the little bit of time I have ours up on their computers. As soon as I get through a comparison, I’ll delete our stuff.’
That sounded reasonable to me. ‘OK, then let’s do it. Want me to come along?’
‘I think you’re needed here more,’ she said. ‘Besides, Mr Huntley seemed real eager to help out. Also, he wants you to call him.’
I was sure he was eager to help out. And Anna was right in a way about me being needed more here, but as my studying the situation was getting me nowhere I thought I’d be more help looking over her shoulder and wondering what the hell she was doing. But I sighed and agreed and she left for the courthouse. And I wondered why the hell Huntley wanted me to call him. I’d only met the man a couple of times and talked to him that one time on the phone. As far as I was concerned, that was enough interaction for me. But I called him anyway.
‘Bob, Milt Kovak,’ I said when he answered the phone.
‘Sheriff, glad you called. Gotta ask you a question.’
‘Shoot – and call me Milt.’
‘OK, Milt. Here it is: your girl Anna better at computers than she is at testifying?’ he asked.
Well, he had me there. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I asked.
‘She was in court the other day, testifying on the Hanson case – that guy that hit that kid in the crosswalk?’
‘Yeah, right. How’d that turn out anyway? She never said.’
‘Well, I know why she didn’t say. She blew it big time.’
‘How so?’ I asked, getting a little pissed off at where this guy was going. Who was he to say crap about my deputies?
‘She was on the scene, wrote the guy a ticket, got the kid an ambulance and all but she wrote down the wrong date on the ticket and the wrong street address, and when she was testifying the biggest words to come out of her mouth were “ah” and “huh,”’ he said.
Uh oh. ‘Let me check into that—’ I started, but he interrupted me.
‘Nothing to check into, Sheriff. The girl screwed up big time. The case got thrown out. The asshole walked. And it was all her fault! What you teaching your people over there anyway?’
OK, so now I was getting huffy my own self. ‘The girl’s from out of state. Probably just got nervous her first time in our court. But to answer your first question, she’s real good at computers. Better than anybody you got over there! So I’d be nice if I were you.’
‘I’m being nice, Sheriff,’ he said, and I noticed he’d given up on calling me by my first name. I thought I’d still call him by his, t
hough. Hoping maybe it would piss him off.
‘Bob, all I can tell you is this: it is what it is and if you want to help us find out what happened to Judge Norman, let Anna Alvarez check out his cases to see if they connect to any of the ones we got. Is that clear enough for you?’
‘Well, I hope she’s as good at the computer as you say she is ’cause she’s a piss-poor witness, I can tell you that.’ And he hung up.
I slammed the phone down, madder than I’d been in a while. Asshole, I thought. I took a couple of deep breaths, trying that yoga breathing my wife had taught me, and calmed myself down. Too much was going on around the county to let myself be sidetracked by an uptight bailiff.
I always did better thinking when I had Emmett to bounce ideas off, but he was pretty much occupied, waiting for his wife to come out of a coma. I thought of bouncing things off Dalton but they’d pretty much just hit him and get stuck. Anthony could work, I thought.
I wandered out to the bullpen and found Anthony at his desk, looking at the computer.
‘Got anything?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘No. Just verifying that both of the Permeter brothers’ alibis are solid as a rock.’ He sighed. ‘Hell, Milt, I really wanted to send those boys up for this.’
‘I thought Joe was asleep, alone?’ I said.
‘You’re gonna love this. He may have slept alone but Loretta, your favorite waitress at the Longbranch Inn, says he was sitting at one of her tables yesterday morning barely after ten a.m., eating biscuits and gravy when Dalton got shot at, and he was with the Budweiser guy bringing in cases of beer to the pool hall when Jasmine got shot. No way he could be that far up north when Dalton’s tire got shot out and get back to the Longbranch Inn that quick.’
I sighed my own sigh. ‘Well, damnation. I really wanted to stick it to them boys, too. Wanna come in my office and we can throw this stuff around, see if anything sticks?’ I asked.
‘Beats staring at the computer,’ Anthony said and followed me to my office.
‘Well, shit,’ I said once we’d both sat down. ‘So what about the Evanses? JR may be off in Texas somewhere being born-again but the younger one’s right here in town. Has he got an alibi? And the mama! I wouldn’t put anything past that woman.’
‘Tyler was talking to Will Freznoe about his Prius today from like eleven until after noon, which covers the time for Jasmine, and as for yesterday he was working all day, had a bunch of cars and had to call him some part-time help. And both those guys – and his mama, of course – vouched for him.’
‘And the mama?’ I asked, still hoping for something – anything.
‘The part-time boys say they saw her off and on all day yesterday but the only one to vouch for her today is her son. Will said he didn’t notice if she was there or not.’
I sighed. ‘Well, thank you, Anthony. You did a real good job making sure none of our suspects are guilty.’
Anthony shrugged. ‘Just doing what I can for justice, sir.’
‘And the American way?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Mind if I yell and start throwing things at the walls?’ I asked.
‘Only if you won’t let me help.’
Again, I sighed. ‘I suppose we need to be grown-up about this.’
‘Do we have to?’ Anthony asked, a decided whine in his voice.
‘OK,’ I said, sitting up and straightening my shoulders. ‘We’ve got the Connors left. We’ve pretty much excluded both John and Reba—’
‘Wait, now. Reba says she’s got agoraphobia but how do we know that’s true? Anybody can say they’re scared to leave the house, or scared of heights, or whatever, but that doesn’t make it true.’
‘Yeah, you got a point,’ I conceded. Half to myself, I asked, ‘I wonder if she ever tried to get help?’ And picked up the phone, knowing the only help for this kind of thing in a fifty-mile radius was my wife.
I called Jean’s cell phone since she was in the city and asked her if she’d ever had Reba Connors as a patient.
But I might as well have saved the minutes. Jean said, ‘You know I can’t answer that.’ She sighed. ‘How many times do we have to go through this?’
‘Maybe a hundred and eleven more times?’ I said, smiling big enough that she should be able to hear it.
‘Not funny,’ she said and hung up on me. I told myself that was because she had somewhere to be and not because she thought I was an irritating asshole.
I thought of ways to double-check Reba Connors’ agoraphobia. Set fire to the house and see if she runs out? Not a good idea. Do a Noriega and blast loud rock and roll outside their house until she came out? Probably would accomplish just the opposite. Set someone on the house to watch her twenty-four-seven to see if she left? I didn’t have the time or manpower for that.
Which basically just left me with John Connors’ son from that former marriage. And the DNA on the blood found at Miz Pettigrew’s house. Neither of those things could be dealt with unless I was in Oklahoma City.
I called up Charlie Smith and said only two words: ‘Road trip!’
Anthony Dobbins had nowhere to go but home. He wasn’t much of a drinking man, so going to sit in a bar for a while didn’t seem like his idea of fun, although nothing much seemed like fun nowadays. He drove home like he was supposed to but just sat there in his truck, looking at his house. He had to park in the street due to all the cars in the driveway. His mama’s Lincoln, his mother-in-law’s Ford Escort and one of his sister’s cars. All the women converging because he wasn’t man enough to take care of his wife and child.
Anthony steeled himself. It was time. He got out of the truck and walked up to the front door, opening it boldly like it wasn’t something he did every day. So many pairs of brown eyes stared at him as he walked in. Finally, his mother stood up and came to him.
‘Hey, boy,’ she said, kissing him on the cheek and giving him a hug. ‘Was wondering when you’d be getting home.’
‘’Bout the same time every night,’ Anthony said, which used to be true, before his mistake had almost killed his wife and child.
His mama looked at him with a skeptical eye, knowing his statement hadn’t been all that truthful.
With his hand on his mama’s shoulder and his eyes on the rest of the room, he said, ‘Ladies, if you don’t mind, me and Maryanne need some time alone. Y’all can come back tomorrow if you’ve a mind to.’
The women looked at each other. Anthony’s mother looked at him, then at the women. ‘So y’all come on,’ she said. ‘We need to be fixing dinners at our own homes.’
She walked to the front door and opened it, standing there like a doorman, waiting for the others to vacate the premises. Still looking at each other, then covertly at Maryanne and then Anthony, the others, his sisters and his mother-in-law, slowly stood up and headed for the door.
‘Maryanne, honey,’ his mother-in-law started, but Mrs Dobbins took her by the arm.
‘Let ’em be, Marvella, just let ’em be,’ and ushered the last of them out.
Then Anthony just stood there, looking at his wife of twelve years, holding their three-month-old daughter asleep in her arms.
Finally, he said, ‘We gotta talk.’
Maryanne said, ‘OK.’
Anthony sighed and moved to the sofa, sitting down beside her and taking his sleeping baby in his arms. He looked into her beautiful face, then up at his wife. ‘I’ve got something to tell you. Something I’ve never told you.’
She cocked her head, a frightened look in her eye. And he began, starting with getting lost on his way to the Connors’ home.
When he finished, Maryanne took the baby from his arms and laid her gently in the cradle she kept in the living room. Then she sat back down and took her husband in her arms.
‘Oh, baby,’ she whispered.
‘So, you see, it’s all my fault. You and Melinda getting hurt. It’s all my fault.’ And for the first time since he broke his knee in freshman football, Ant
hony Dobbins cried.
I got sorta lonely that night, all alone in my house, with the wind blowing the plastic sheets at the back of the house and the cold seeping in. I started a fire and sat close to it, thinking I might just sleep on the sofa that night.
I used to live in that house all by myself for a couple of years, then my sister and her kids moved in, and right after Jewel Anne married Harmon and the bunch of ’em moved out, Jean and I got married and, well, I’ll admit it, six months later we had Johnny Mac. But now it was lonely, and the wind had picked up, it being March and all, and it wasn’t just blowing the plastic sheeting but seeping through some of the windows, making a howling sound that made me even lonelier. I thought maybe I’d have whoever we hired to fix the back door check for cracks and stuff, what with the long summer coming up and the cost of electricity when the a/c was going full blast. That thought didn’t take long, and my loneliness just came crawling back.
My kid is my best pal, although don’t tell him that, it would just embarrass him. I’d given up hunting and fishing years ago but me and Johnny Mac had taken it up recently, this past deer season. We never got anything but enjoyed walking around in the woods carrying our shotguns and acting like big shots. And we’d borrowed a boat a couple of times to go out on Lake Blue with newly bought fishing gear. We didn’t catch anything but we had fun. If lots of laughing and dirty looks from other fishermen could constitute fun – which Johnny Mac and I deemed righteous. And on a daily basis, it was just great to come home and see him – whether he was shooting hoops in the yard or working on math problems with his tongue sticking halfway out and his hair all messed up from scratching his head over a problem. I’d always wanted to have a kid – my first wife and I could never conceive – but even though I’d wanted one, I’d never known just how plain great it could be.
Not that he wasn’t a pain in the ass half the time. You could tell him to clean his room a hundred times a day and threaten all sorts of recriminations – including bodily harm – and it would still be a mess the next day. You could make him a superior lunch and come home to find the lunch box still on the table because he forgot it – or pick him up from school only to find he didn’t have on his coat – or gloves, or hat, or once even his shoes – because he forgot them and left them in the classroom. He could talk a mile a minute about anything but then be real closed-mouthed when it came to something you deemed important. But, after talking to other parents – and my wife who knows this stuff because she’s a psychiatrist – I’ve come to realize that’s just the way kids are. And, to tell you the truth – and again, don’t tell him because it would give him the upper hand – I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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