“Was there a real police call that night?”
“We haven’t been able to confirm one. They found his car in the middle of the forest. None of your fingerprints so far.”
“So he was out cavorting in the countryside at all hours on any given night.”
“Sometimes there really was police business to do.”
“And I’m the Easter bunny.”
“I thought you were the good fairy.” The man had a little bit of a sense of humor.
“Has anybody tried to figure out what he was doing or where he went that night?”
“I haven’t heard anything.”
“Nobody’s asked. Somebody must have seen him.”
“If they did, they haven’t come forward.”
“Jasper talked like he was best buddies with at least one person in the police department.”
“That’s hard for me to believe.”
“Not for me. I’d suspect the police department would be a good place to find Klan members, or Nazis, or skinheads.”
“The guys are okay. Jasper was too crazy. Nobody would hang around with him.”
“Who on the department would be most likely to want to join Jasper in a group?”
“Nobody.” I couldn’t tell if he was covering up or just being loyal to his own, which could have been the same thing.
“What killed him, officially?”
“A dull and rusty razor blade. Whoever did it kept cutting after he was dead. Report said it wasn’t just a quick slit. Somebody had to saw away for at least a little while.”
“Somebody was very angry. Did he struggle?”
“No evidence of it. You saw the body. No tissue under his nails. Gun with bullets in it just sitting there on his hip.”
“He must have made a lot of people very angry.” I thought I knew the names of some of them. I wanted to talk to the people Jasper had mentioned as soon as possible.
On the outskirts of Brinard I said, “I know you don’t have to answer this, and I’m not trying to make you angry, but why do you dance in front of guys? It can’t be just the money. As a cop in this town, wouldn’t you be able to get a reasonably decent part-time job?”
He rubbed his chin and shifted in his seat. “I’m straight.”
“I’m not disputing that.”
“The money is unbelievably good. I’m in good shape. I work out a lot at home. I feel like a stud when I do a strip. It’s a trip to have people watch me naked.”
“Why not work in front of women in one of those exotic places I saw signs for on the highway?”
“Our good southern women can take their clothes off in them, but they can’t go there to watch a man take off his.”
“What about afterwards, when you leave with guys?”
He looked at me carefully. We were a block away from the hospital parking lot. He said, “I just lay there. I let them do what they want, but they know the rules. No kissing. I don’t touch them.”
“You don’t enjoy it even a little?”
“I lay there and think about women and having an orgasm. I concentrate on that.”
If it worked for him, who was I to disagree? He had his reality all rationalized and in comfortable pigeonholes in his mind.
At the emergency-room entrance, they rushed Dennis in.
A small cluster of reporters, including one television minicam, formed a crowd around me. When Cody called the hospital, someone must have been listening to the police band on the radio and tipped them off.
The reporters flung questions at me. I marched to the doors leading to the emergency room and followed Dennis in. Cody kept the reporters out of the unit.
I called up to the CCU. Mary, Shannon, and Mrs. Carpenter were there. Scott had left to find Violet and to hunt for me. The hospital personnel brought me some dry clothes. Taking off my wet garments was a joy. Drying off was heavenly. I put on white hospital orderly pants and a letterman’s jacket from the lost and found. I’d had a choice of that or a Bullwinkle sweatshirt, which I’d have taken except it was three sizes too small.
They rushed Dennis into surgery. They insisted I lie on a gurney and be examined in the emergency room. The nurse took my temperature and blood pressure. I was exhausted, desperately in need of sleep and a warm blanket. If somebody suggested a trip across the Sahara for our next vacation, I’d have leapt at the idea. A heaping gallon of chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream smothered in tons of hot chocolate syrup would not have been amiss, either. I was too keyed up to rest. I had the goods on half the county. I wasn’t planning to rest until several people gave satisfactory answers.
Dr. McLarty came in to examine me. Good. One of the people on my list. He poked, prodded, asked me where it hurt, and declared me to be fine. He seemed clinical and distant, not like the kindly local practitioner who’d spoken softly and at great length with the Carpenter family about their father.
He did ask what happened. Telling him the physical stuff in this antiseptic surrounding caused me to begin shaking again. Not enough time and distance had passed to begin to diminish the horror of the situation. He saw me shivering, called for the nurse, and directed her to bring me a blanket.
The nurse brought in several. She and McLarty gently wrapped me in three layers of warmth. The nurse left.
I felt myself stop shaking. I eyed McLarty as he made notes on my chart. He sat on a stool with four legs with wheels on the ends.
“How’s Dennis?” I asked.
“They’re still working on him,” McLarty said. “They think the eye should be fine. The lid got sliced, but that’s all.”
“He’s a great kid.”
McLarty sat at a small desk and finished filling out hospital forms.
I said, “Dennis said you wanted to talk to me. Do you have information about the sheriff that might help me find his murderer?”
He put down his pen and rotated the chair so that he faced me. He folded his arms across his chest and crossed his ankles.
“It must be nice,” he said. “Living in Chicago, prancing around in the gay pride parade …”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything? That does it! Nobody else in this town gets to say another nasty thing about my being gay. Not you. Not anybody. If you have something useful to say that will help me discover who killed the sheriff, fine. Otherwise shut the fuck up and keep your bigoted opinions to yourself.”
“I’m gay,” he said.
What was I supposed to say to that: “Okay, since you’re gay you can have bigoted opinions”?
“Then why start out with an attack on me?”
“Because I’m envious and jealous. You’ve got a beautiful lover, a famous baseball player, and every gay man on the planet would give anything to be in your position. Yet you two come down here and stir things up. The rest of us have to live here.”
“I didn’t ‘stir things up.’ They were pretty well boiling when I got here. I still don’t get your problem.”
“I just want to live a quiet life. Not bother anybody. My mother and aunt are here. I can’t leave. I have to stay here to care for them. You running around town flaunting the fact that you’re gay just upsets everybody. I’m the ‘bachelor’ in town. I know they whisper about me, but I don’t want my mother to know.”
“You really don’t think she knows you’re gay?”
“I never press the issue.”
I shook my head. “You told Dennis you wanted to talk to me.”
“I don’t usually work in the ER, but with the rain we’ve had a lot of accidents. However, I took your case deliberately. I wanted to ask you to tone down your behavior, if not for the sake of the few gay people in town, then to warn you that bad things could happen.”
I glanced down at the blankets I was wrapped in. “Gosh, you were right. Congratulations.”
He frowned. “I don’t think sarcasm helps.”
“Do you have information that might help me find out who killed the sheriff?”
“If I tell
you anything, I cannot have my name associated with you in the paper. Talking in here this long could begin to look suspicious.”
“Somebody has a stopwatch timing visits with each patient? This is absurd. What do you know?”
“If this got out, I could be drummed out of the profession.”
I waited.
“The sheriff came to me four times in the past five years to be treated for sexually transmitted diseases.”
“Did he have AIDS?”
“He was tested. No. These were the run-of-the-mill, garden-variety, cheating-on-your-wife kind.”
“She never knew?”
He shrugged.
“Why didn’t he go out of town to be tested?”
“He knew I’d keep quiet. He figured out I was gay and threatened to expose me.”
“How can you live like that?”
He unfolded his arms from his chest, reached a hand up under his glasses, and began to massage the bridge of his nose. When done, he said, “I just do.”
“If you’re the ‘bachelor’ in town, what difference does it make if he tells everybody you’re gay?”
“You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t.”
“People might think I’m gay, but unless I have naked lovers dancing in my front yard, they can ignore it. I can be friendly Dr. McLarty. If it’s out in the open, then something has to be done about it. Preachers have to make statements, the bigots in town have to fling slurs and become physically violent. Silence equals survival.”
He gazed at me evenly. His life was a chilling one that I would never want to live, but I suspected it was all too common among too many gays and lesbians. I wasn’t going to change him or the people with narrow minds by berating the compromises he’d made to live his life. I switched topics.
“From whom did the sheriff catch the diseases?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. I always guessed it was women he picked up at the Rebel Hell.”
“Did his wife catch any of the infections?”
“He claimed they never had sex after he slept with other women and before he got tested.”
“You believed that?”
“I wasn’t in a position to challenge what he said. If she was ill, she never came to me for treatment. The gossip in town never included them having fights in public.”
“Where were you the night he was killed?”
“Home, alone, in bed, asleep.”
“Any other gay people in town it would do me any good to talk to? Any that might have been afraid of him and could have information? Maybe had a temper and might have wanted to kill him?”
“I’ll question people, not you. There aren’t many of us, and we have to be very careful. If anybody knows anything, I’ll let you know.”
I thanked him. I felt warmer, so I took off the blankets. Now, I wanted to see Scott more than anything else. I also wanted to find some food.
I found Scott pacing the floor in the CCU. “I just got here,” he said after he hugged me. “Are you all right? What’s happened? Where are your clothes?”
“Doctor says I’m okay. We went out to see loony Jasper in his swamp. The reporter I was with is in surgery.”
Violet walked off the elevator. “You’re safe!” she said. “What about Dennis?”
“They’re operating. I’m hungry. I’ll give you both all the details over a hot meal.”
On the way out of the hospital I asked Scott, “Is your dad okay?”
“Yes. He might be able to walk a little tomorrow. We’re very hopeful. What happened?”
I insisted on Della’s Bar-b-que. Violet found out which door of the hospital the reporters were clustered around and we left by another exit. Outside, the rain continued to pelt down. With any luck the entire state would wash away.
The restaurant was nearly empty, but we sat in a booth far in the back, partly to be as unseen as possible, certainly to be unheard. Sometimes paranoids do have enemies, and we had a shitload of them.
I told the whole story as we ate. Food had never tasted so good to me. The streetlights came on and total dark fell before I finished relating all of the horrors of the afternoon.
Scott sat on the same side of the booth as me. He put his arm around me to comfort me. I didn’t care if the whole goddamn town was staring and taking pictures.
“I can believe that hypocrite Hollis is molesting kids,” Scott said. “I can’t believe he gets away with it.”
“If he really did it,” Violet said. “You only have Jasper’s word for any of this.”
“But I’m going to try and prove all of it,” I said.
“Poor Dennis,” Violet said.
“We should do something for him,” I said.
Scott said, “I probably have a few friends left in the media. There’s got to be a job somewhere other than around here. When all this is over, I’ll try talking to a few people.”
“Good idea,” Violet said.
“And we’re leaving town,” Scott said.
“I can’t,” I said. “I’m still a suspect in the sheriff’s murder.”
“I’m calling our lawyer. Todd must know some way to get you out of here.”
“I’m going to want to talk to everybody that Jasper told me about, including your family.”
“None of my brothers or sisters would do anything to hurt me.”
Violet said, “Maybe I can speak subtly with Hiram and Shannon. Not get them upset. I can at least try. We have to find out what Jasper was talking about.”
“They wouldn’t do anything,” Scott insisted. “I’ll go with you to do the other questioning. Dad’s doing much better and I can get away for a while.”
I told them about the police reports that Cody had told me about. Violet had also talked to him, and he had given her the same information.
“Why a rusty razor blade?”
“Wouldn’t killing him that way take longer?” Scott asked.
“It makes it more vicious and angry. Jasper fits that mold. This is a very unhappy person,” Violet said.
“I wouldn’t call Jasper unhappy,” I said. “He was a raving loony.”
“What’s wrong with him must have started somewhere,” Scott said.
Violet shook her head, “Some people are just plain crazy from the day they’re born. No reason for it. Nothing anybody can do. Maybe Jasper’s parents were kind and loving; maybe they beat him every night. We’ll probably never know. There isn’t always a rational explanation for everything.”
“Hard to picture a killer coming out of a stable and loving home,” Scott said.
I thought of his siblings and kept my mouth shut.
“What if the things Jasper told you aren’t true?” Violet asked. “Maybe the preacher doesn’t molest children. Certainly I’ve never heard of such a thing. A whole town couldn’t keep that quiet. I don’t think they’d want to. I hope they wouldn’t.”
“I’m going to work on the basis that what he said was true. Somebody had to have a reason to kill the sheriff, and these are good ones.”
“Is Jasper still alive?” Violet asked.
“Cops said they’d look for him,” I said, “but I guess they’ll wait for the rain to stop before going into the swamp.”
“From what you said he sounds pretty resourceful,” Scott said. “Maybe we should take precautions.”
“Like call the police?” I asked. “Excuse me, you’re both from here, and I don’t mean to be insulting, but I don’t trust the local cops in the least. We’ve got one who is less than happy with us because we’re blackmailing him for information, and one of them who was at least as much of a Nazi as Jasper. I think we’d best just be extremely careful.”
Violet said, “I talked with Leota, Peter’s wife. She hasn’t got a clue about why her husband died. You can cross her off the list.”
“We’ve got to get some answers,” Scott said. “You’ve been through enough, Tom.”
“Don’t do something foolish,” Violet said.
“I’m going to do what is necessary to clear Tom’s name.”
As we got ready to leave, Violet said, “I can’t go with you. I’ve got to get back to the library. The water in Johnson Creek is starting to rise pretty rapidly. We’re moving some of the books and audiovisual equipment to higher ground.”
“Is it going to flood?” I asked.
“Weather report said it had been raining about an inch every two hours,” Violet said. “We’ve had over three inches. They claim it will stop some time tonight, but I’m not going to take any chances. Low-lying areas are going to be swamped. Good thing it’s been so dry this year. I’ve got all the employees and lots of volunteers over at the library, and I want to be on hand to give directions.”
Thunder, lightning, and pouring rain met us outside. Violet gave us directions to all the people we were supposed to see.
“I want to talk to Preacher Hollis first,” I said. “If he’s diddling little girls, we’ve got a powerful tool to hold over his head.”
“He has to be reported and stopped,” Scott said.
“We’ll hold it over his head tonight and report it first chance we get after that.”
Scott still had his rented BMW.
As we got in, we saw the television truck go by with the letters WRIS and a smiling peach as a logo on the side. We ducked down until it passed us.
We drove past the jail and the police department. We crossed over a bridge about forty feet long. The street lights glinted off the surface of the swollen river. It still looked like it had quite a way to go before it reached the level of the bridge. A slight slope led from the banks of the stream on both sides. It would have to rise at least fifteen feet above the banks to get to the jail. I looked around. If it got that high, a sizable chunk of the town would be under water.
Preacher Hollis and his family lived next to his church about a mile from downtown. A light shone through a stained-glass window in the nave of the church that soared above the towering trees around it. Bright lights lit up the empty parking lot, and a covered breezeway that led to a two-story school behind the church. Their house was behind this. All the buildings were built of dark red brick. As we pulled up to the house, I looked back and saw a streak of lightning illuminate the cross on top of the spire.
Rust on the Razor Page 14