Zion

by Dayne Sherman

  “I’m sorry,” the marshal said as he walked in.

  “I thank you,” Tom said.

  Reverend Poole stood and shook the marshal’s hand absently.

  “Are you up to seeing the body?” the marshal asked.

  “Not really, but I don’t guess it’s right not to,” Tom said.

  “No,” Brownlow said. “I don’t guess it’s much of an option.”

  Tom claimed the body. The head trauma had swelled, and the face only half resembled his son. He could recognize the left side of the face, which was unharmed. The big bullet had hit the right side of the forehead with explosive force and disfigured it beyond natural recognition.

  He did not linger long while Coroner Wallace pulled the cover back over the body. The veterinarian casually noted that Charity was in the cooler, too.

  “The loss of a son is the greatest of all losses,” Tom remembered reading in his world literature class at the junior college. It could have been the words of Professor John Coumes or the writings of Heraclitus, though he could not recall which one. But now the words belonged to Tom Hardin, and they were purchased like an oath.

  Reverend Poole went home. Just the marshal and Tom sat in a City Hall interview room drinking coffee. The building was empty except for a night dispatcher. The marshal had said he’d take Tom back to his house. He updated Tom on how the dogs closed in on the trail, losing the track and the scent two blocks over on North Spruce. He told Tom about finding the bloody Bible with James Luke’s name written on it. He mentioned the Presbyterian preacher said he saw a vehicle.

  “Are there any fingerprints?” Tom asked. It was as if he’d been crushed by a giant weight, his body drawn into itself like a turtle in a shell as he sat in the chair.

  “I don’t know,” the marshal said. “You’ll have to ask the chief. But your name was written in front of the book.”

  “That’s the Bible I gave James Luke, that no-good bastard. You know he did it. I guess what Charity said about my wife must have been true,” Tom said.

  “Is there any chance that Wesley’d have the Bible you gave James Luke in ’62?” Brownlow asked.

  “None, no chance,” Tom said.

  “Well, I’ll have to get a warrant, and Bruce Nesom is working in it. Cate’s surely wounded, shot by either Charity or Wesley. I don’t know which at this point.”

  “Did my boy suffer?”

  “No, Tom, not from the looks of things.” The marshal took off his cowboy hat and wiped sweat from his forehead. He sipped the coffee trying to stay awake.

  “We need to find him,” Tom said. “Or I need to find him. I’ll damn well find him.”

  “Best to let the law handle this.”

  Tom made a fist. “I’ve got a dead son here. Where was the law for him when he needed it?”

  The marshal was worried the time was short before there would be vengeance. He decided to take Tom home immediately and get Freddy Wentworth to watch the house to be sure Tom didn’t leave. When he got back to the office after dropping Tom off at home, Mrs. Lott was waiting for him, where she’d kept her post since he called earlier in the night. She had phoned every hospital between Pickleyville and Vicksburg, and no patient fitting James Luke’s description or name had staggered in needing treatment. This fact did not make finding the man any easier.

  He called James Luke’s house in Natchez and woke his wife, who said he was on a fishing trip to Arkansas. The marshal asked about the make and model of the truck. She said he owned a blue Chevrolet Suburban and that he’d been gone for a couple of days now. No, she didn’t have the license plate number on the truck off hand, nor did she expect him to be home until Monday. She said there was no way to reach him. The marshal asked her to call him the minute he arrived.

  “Is he in some kind of trouble?” she asked.

  “I just need to talk to him as soon as possible,” he answered.

  Brownlow was caught up in the case because of the hounds, or so he had told himself, even though the primary reason was that he was deeply involved in the Zion community and everyone who lived there. He was able to assist in the investigation with Chief Nesom’s permission, and the bloodhounds had raised his status. He’d gotten to be a major player in the region’s law enforcement activities because of his dogs and his decades-long connections to area lawmen. Some local folks wanted him to run for the state legislature in Baton Rouge, but the heart attack was slowing his ambitions, not that he’d ever had much ambition to begin with. His dogs were the only trained tracking bloodhounds east of Angola Penitentiary in Louisiana, and recently he’d been called out to a county on the Mississippi Gulf Coast to help find a lost child.

  Brownlow felt responsible for this disaster in many ways. By talking to James Luke Cate in the first place, he had allowed the man to connect the dots back to Charity, and this led directly to the deaths of two people. But even if it was inevitable, Charity was the one digging up trouble like a dog after a long-buried bone, causing anguish for others and even herself. The first level of culpability was attached to her.

  He was worn down by the long day that had spread into the night. The only time he had any real energy was when he was with his hounds, and having them in the truck box buoyed his strength. After the long night, his wits were not slowed, even if his body was anything but spry. He had succeeded in getting Tom sequestered for a couple of more hours, at least until he could figure out a plan to do something with him.

  Deputy Marshal Freddy Wentworth waited at the Hardin family’s driveway with instructions not to let Tom leave until the marshal arrived. Brownlow was worried about Tom going off the reservation, taking justice the old way, and he did not want another murder to deal with inside his district or anywhere else if it could be prevented.

  At eight-thirty on Monday morning, Marshal Brownlow awoke from a few hours of sleep. He had a solid plan worked out in his mind. He placed an all-points bulletin on the Suburban after getting the license number from the Adams County Sheriff’s Office. He spoke to the Natchez chief by phone.

  He then called Chief Bruce Nesom at his house at nine o’clock. “How are you?” he asked.

  “Donald, must you harass me? I just fell asleep a couple of hours ago, and I’m not going to work till noon. Lest you forget, I was up all night.”

  “Brother-in-law, I needed to wake you,” Brownlow said. “I have a plan to deal with Tom Hardin. I’ve got a reasonable feeling he might try to go after Jim Cate, and that would mean more trouble by far.”

  “He’d be mostly justified. No jury’d ever convict him in Louisiana. Mississippi maybe, because Cate lives up yonder and not here. How’s Tom doing now?”

  “I don’t know. He was pretty shook up. Freddy is at Tom’s house parked in his driveway making sure he doesn’t leave—assuming Freddy ain’t asleep on the job.”

  “At least somebody’d be getting a little sleep. I’m for that. You can’t keep him boxed in forever,” Nesom said.

  “I have a plan to handle it. I want to take Tom with me to find Jim Cate, keep him close to the breast. Otherwise, like I said, I’ll be chasing two people, and one is plenty hard enough to deal with.”

  “So, why’d you call me? To ask my permission? I ain’t your boss. Besides, you’re overstretched plenty with the heart trouble, Donald. It’s not even your jurisdiction. It’s nine in the morning, and I’m trying to sleep. You see how important it is to me, don’t you?”

  “Well, I’m looking for sound advice from a friend and fellow peace officer. And yes, it’s your jurisdiction, not mine.”

  “They say Cate’s old lady’s daddy’s got big money. I asked one of my officers who just come here from working up at the Natchez P.D., and he said James Luke Cate married into the Tartt family, and his wife’s daddy’s the president of the biggest bank in Natchez. You’ll be up against some old money in Mississippi. Liable to get your ass in a hard pinch, and you well know the man has left the parish.”

  “But I can’t rest till I lock him in jai
l. Then they’ll lawyer the hell out of us. That’s okay, I guess. We always have to deal with that. I need to help old Tom out.”

  “Can Hardin be trusted? Because it’s a pure-d risk having him along. The fellow’s a common citizen with no law enforcement background at all as far as I know.”

  “Yes, he can be trusted. He’s a good man.”

  “Can anybody really be trusted?”

  “You’ve been in politics too long, Bruce.”

  “Damn, you’re the one that got me into politics, and you’ve been elected even longer than me.”

  “I know, I know. To hell with it. Glad you answered the phone. Go on back to bed.”

  “I will, Donald.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Tom went outside and talked to the deputy marshal at the end of the driveway. Wentworth radioed and relayed to Brownlow that the cat had climbed out of the sack. Brownlow drove over immediately in his pickup truck.

  The marshal and Tom sat on the front porch.

  “Look, Tom, this is just a real heartbreaking thing that’s happened to your family. And I’d understand if you were not agreeable, but I have a plan on how to go after Jim Cate. I want to make you my deputy marshal, unpaid, of course, so we can apprehend the man together. I really need your help.”

  Tom was surprised. He was silent, unsure what to say. His wife was in shock where she lay inside the old farm house. He had his son’s services to plan, and his own grief to bear.

  The marshal stared at Tom. “I hate to be direct, but I need your answer now and not later. Yes or no? If you want to help me, I need you to follow my lead. Categorically, I don’t want no mavericks going off the reservation. We’ll need to go hunt him down today. Hell, I need you to help me find him.”

  “I’ll do it,” Tom said.

  The marshal drove Tom to get a late breakfast at Pete’s Café in Milltown. He went inside and brought back two bags of egg, bacon, and sausage biscuits, and two paper cups of coffee. They ate the meals in the truck.

  By the time they returned to Zion and finished loading the truck for the trip to Mississippi, it was already noon. The marshal put the hounds in the cage-like dog kennel in the truck bed. He warned Tom about Dixie. “Tom, the gyp’ll bite. Be careful around her,” he said.

  They returned to Tom’s house a mile away. The truck had a siren, lights, and NINTH WARD MARSHAL stenciled on both doors. Brownlow sat in the cab and waited for Tom to gather his things.

  Tom put his Savage 99 lever action rifle in the gun rack in the marshal’s truck glass, and he carried his Smith and Wesson .38 pistol strapped to his side in a leather holster. This was his old hog hunting sidearm, and it was loaded with copper jackets.

  Inside the Hardin home, Sara was on tranquilizers. She had been visited by Dr. Carl Roswell, the only doctor left in the parish who still made house calls.

  Tom walked into the bedroom. He was restless, barely coherent. He gazed at his wife for a few moments. She sat in a chair and either couldn’t or wouldn’t speak to him, so he left the room.

  He talked to Corrine in the living room. “I’m going to go with the marshal to help find James Luke. He’s the main suspect, and when I get back, I’ll plan the funeral,” Tom said.

  She clenched her teeth, shook her head. “Tom, you couldn’t have stopped it.”

  “You might be right, but I could have tried a little harder than I did.”

  “Wesley was completely sold on staying at that house with that damned woman. That’s what Sara said to me. She says she doesn’t blame you. It’s not your fault.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You believe James Luke is the one that did this, Tom?”

  “Yeah, he’s the killer. And a lot of things make sense now that haven’t made any sense to me for twenty years or longer.”

  “He was more or less family.”

  “Yeah, that’s the worst of it.”

  Out at the truck, the marshal made Tom raise his right hand. He said he was a duly commissioned deputy marshal of the Ninth Ward. He gave Tom a tin badge, and he told him to clip it to his shirt.

  “Look, if you have to shoot Jim, be sure he has a gun on him somewhere,” Brownlow said.

  “Okay,” Tom said.

  “If not, I’ve got a throw down weapon in the truck, but you’ve got to be careful with such things.”

  Outside of the Ninth Ward of Baxter Parish, they were both on thin legal grounds, especially in Mississippi, where they’d be foreigners at best and would have no rights to arrest James Luke. The marshal explained to Tom that three-fourths of their job consisted of trying to get the local authorities interested and involved, motivated to arrest Jim Cate, just to help locate him. The other part was finding him. However, he wasn’t particularly confident they’d even find the man anyway.

  They left out from Zion in the marshal’s pickup truck and headed north toward Natchez. The hounds were riding in the big cage behind the cab, occasionally letting out a stray howl. It was warm and sunny, a beautiful day.

  Tom was feeling an acute sense of grief that grew worse with each mile he traveled north away from Baxter Parish. He kept pushing it down into his gut. His regret overwhelmed him like a growing cancer, and he wondered what he had done to deserve this pain. He could not find an answer in the short time he had to contemplate it, and he doubted he’d ever have enough time in this life to understand why the events came to pass. The catastrophe of the past twenty-four hours had left the most important person in his life dead and gone in his youth.

  They checked into a room on the sixth floor of the Rosalie Hotel overlooking the Mississippi River, which was higher than normal with Midwestern floodwaters coming down like an avalanche of wasted history. The room had two double beds and was charged to the marshal’s office. The two men ate an early supper downstairs in the hotel restaurant. They had not eaten since breakfast. Tom was having trouble talking. He didn’t care to say much, and he was choking up, trying hard to get his words out. He could hear the dogs barking outside where the truck was parked on a side street underneath a shady oak.

  Marshal Brownlow and Tom met with the Natchez chief at his office on D’Evereaux Drive. Brownlow was careful not to stir the hornet’s nest with local Mississippi politicians, so he asked up front to assist the Mississippi officials in finding Cate. He said repeatedly that they were there only to assist, especially since he had the dogs, if tracking dogs were ever needed, and he’d be there any time in the future for manhunts that came up in the environs around Adams County. He carried with him a warrant for James Luke’s arrest for capital murder.

  At the Slocum Cottage on South Pearl Street, they met with James Luke’s wife, Heloise. She said little other than to deny any knowledge of his exact whereabouts or what he might be doing. As far as she knew, he was fishing near Hot Springs, Arkansas, with a bunch of Army Corps managers. Her father’s attorney, Theodore Barnett, a respectable ambulance chaser, sat with Heloise at the dining room table. He wore a pinstriped seersucker suit, and the edges of his bowtie were as sharp as glass. The lawyer drank milk from a coffee cup and interjected from time to time to reinforce the denial. James Luke had given no phone number due to the remoteness of the lake, she said. Her husband was staying at a park owned by the Corps of Engineers somewhere near a reservoir, he’d told her. He had some new business associates to get to know in the upper echelons of the agency.

  “It’s just a bunch of good old boys doing what good ol’ boys always do,” Heloise said. “That’s all James Luke is about anyhow. He’s just a fun-loving good ol’ boy.”

  The Natchez chief had said earlier that his office would telephone the Corps and the Hot Springs sheriff.

  “Ma’am, does Jim have some place he might try to stay here in Mississippi?” asked the marshal.

  “My husband has more than thirty properties, most of them in North Natchez, but they’re all occupied, as far as I know. You’re quite welcome to check any place if you like, but we’ll have to go to the business
office to get a list of rentals and addresses,” she said.

  Lawyer Barnett agreed with the offer though he said it was pointless.

  “Does he have a hunting or fishing camp?” Brownlow asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “He doesn’t hunt anymore?” asked Tom, speaking for the first time.

  “He hunts. He either hunts in the swamps up in the Delta near Greenville, or he hunts at my daddy’s old camp in the Homochitto National Forest. But Daddy never hunts anymore. All he does is play golf, but James Luke uses it every deer season,” she said.

  “Where is the place in the Homochitto?” Brownlow asked.

  “It’s on Union Church Road near Meadville,” she said.

  “You ever been there?” the marshal wanted to know.

  “A number of times, but not in years. It is, shall we say, ‘primitive,’ with no electricity and an outhouse. I don’t desire to spend much time in such a place,” she said, her nose turned up slightly.

  “Can you give us directions on how to get there?” the marshal said.

  “I believe so,” she said.

  The marshal had a hunch, a burning in his gut when he heard about the camp. At the hotel, the marshal phoned the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office and spoke to the first deputy, the only person on duty for the entire county, and also the dispatcher on duty at the moment. His name was Chesterton Lewis, and he said he would go see if anyone was out at the property. The marshal warned Deputy Lewis how dangerous the man was. The deputy said he’d meet them over at the national forest in an hour. Brownlow gave him directions, sending him there from what Heloise Cate had offered as the easiest route to the camp.

  Brownlow had already paid for their room at the Rosalie, a room they’d never sleep in. It was almost six o’clock when they drove southeast toward Franklin County through the piney woods. “I’ve barely heard of a faster room check at a hot-pillow joint,” the marshal said, smiling.