'That's not uncommon for teenagers.'
'It was more than that,' Nell said. 'If Jeffrey got into trouble, Robert would take the blame. He was like Jeffrey's safety net and Jeffrey let him do it.' She looked at Sara. 'The minute Jeffrey left, Robert did the same thing with Hoss. He'd take a bullet for either one of them, and I'm not exaggerating.'
Sara debated before telling her, 'Robert is saying that he killed Julia.'
Something in Nell's face shifted, though Sara could not pin down what. Her voice had changed, too. 'I don't know about that.'
'No,' Sara said. 'Me neither.'
TWENTY
Jeffrey found his mother's Impala parked in her usual space in front of the hospital. She could have easily walked to work and back, but May Tolliver would never add more minutes to the time it took for her to get that first drink after her shift in the hospital cafeteria ended.
As usual, she had left the windows down to keep the car from turning into an oven. Jeffrey smelled stale cigarette smoke wafting through the air as he opened the door. She always kept a spare key in the glove compartment, and he found it underneath a bunch of religious tracts and brightly colored pamphlets that must have been stuck under the windshield wiper of the car at some point. She might have been a chain-smoking drunk, but May never littered.
The engine turned over after he pumped the gas several times, and Jeffrey brushed cigarette ash off the gear console as he shifted the car into drive. The windows were foggy from nicotine, and he took out his handkerchief, wiping the windshield as he drove out of the parking lot. If his mother left the hospital before he got back with the car, she would easily put two and two together and realize that with Jeffrey in town he had probably borrowed her car. He had 'borrowed' it often enough as a teenager, and May had never mentioned it to a soul. The two times Jeffrey had been pulled over by sheriff's deputies, May had insisted she had loaned the car to her son.
Jeffrey drove aimlessly through downtown, not heading in any particular direction. He felt sick in his gut, like someone had died. Maybe someone had. He was sinking back into that old feeling that his life was totally out of control. He was the eye of a storm that caused nothing but destruction.
He could not get over the fact that all these years Robert had even for a minute entertained the thought that Jeffrey had killed Julia Kendall. Back in Hoss's office, when Robert had asked the question, Jeffrey had been too shocked to show anything but anger. Even when he denied it, tried to tell Robert what had really happened, the other man had simply shaken his head, like he did not want to hear whatever yarn Jeffrey had concocted to explain his actions.
'It doesn't matter,' Robert had kept saying. 'I'll take the rap.'
Jeffrey realized he was close to the funeral home, and he took a last-minute turn across the highway, pulling into the lot. He parked in the back, hoping Deacon White would not have the car towed. Jeffrey was sick of borrowing people's cars and shoes and whatever else he'd taken these last few days. He wanted to be in his own home in his own bed. He wanted to be alone. The cave was the closest thing he could think of that might bring him some peace.
No one came out of the building to warn him off, so Jeffrey got out of the car and walked the back way to the cemetery. He had a grandfather buried somewhere on the hill, but Jimmy Tolliver had never mentioned the man's name. Knowing how these things worked, Jeffrey guessed that Jimmy's old man had taught him everything about parenting that he knew; which was to say, not a lot. Jeffrey had never felt that genetic urge that some men feel, like they had to get a woman pregnant and pass on their heritage. Maybe nature was correcting an error. Some people were not meant to pass on their blood.
As he walked into the woods, Jeffrey could not help but think of Sara and the way she had talked to him. She obviously believed everything Lane Kendall had said, no matter the fact that the woman was lying trash. Jeffrey still felt the burn of shame Lane had brought him all those years ago, the way she had talked around town, letting everyone know that she was sure Jeffrey had raped her daughter, even though Julia's story had changed so many times even she could not keep up with it.
But what was rape? People always thought of it as something violent and vicious, some deranged psychopath forcing a woman to spread her legs under threat of harm. Julia had been with plenty of boys, and Jeffrey was certain she had not wanted any of them. She had been looking for love and acceptance, and seen sex as a way to get that. Probably most of the guys who went with her knew that, but at that age, it was hard to care. If a girl was more than half willing, you were halfway there. Being sweet to Julia before she lifted her skirt or holding her for a few minutes afterward was the price you paid to get laid. Some of the boys even joked about it, trying to guess who had done what to get in her pants. The jokes had flown the day Julia had shown up with that damn necklace, acting like she had finally convinced someone to love her. The poor fuck who'd given it to her had probably been shitting in his pants when she started showing that thing off.
Maybe some guy had felt guilty for taking advantage of her, figured out after coming in her mouth that maybe she wasn't exactly enjoying it. Of course, what man hadn't had sex with a woman who wasn't exactly into it? Drunk as he was the other night, Jeffrey had known Sara wasn't in the mood, but he had somehow managed to get her to say yes. He had been so desperate for that release, for that moment when everything seemed okay, that he had ignored the fact that she was doing him a favor.
Julia Kendall had called it doing a guy a favor. Jeffrey could still remember the way she looked at him, twirling that stupid cheap necklace around her finger, saying, 'Hey, Slick, you want me to do you a favor?'
In the forest, Jeffrey stopped at the mouth of the cave. The boards had been broken away, probably where Hoss had come in to get the bones. Julia's bones. Jeffrey hesitated before going in, thinking this was a grave, no longer his boyhood hideout. Still, he went in, thinking there was no better place for him to be right now.
He sat on the bench, his mind again going back to Sara. She thought he was guilty, and why not? The things people had been telling her were horrible – and some of it was true. God only knew what Nell was putting into her head right now. Back when Julia disappeared, Nell had started acting differently around him. She had started to pull away, like she did not quite trust him anymore. Three weeks before graduation, she had broken up with him in the gymnasium, yelling at him like he was a dog. God, she had hated him that day, and Jeffrey still did not know what he had done.
He had left the gym and run into Julia. She was back from wherever she had run off to, come home to help her mother with the new baby. Lane Kendall's husband was dead and she needed all the help she could get. Even with the false charges Julia had made against Jeffrey and Robert, when he ran into her – and he had literally run into her, she had been standing right outside the gym doors – and she asked if he wanted her to do him a favor, he had said, 'Sure.'
The rape allegations had died down when Julia left town the first time. No one really believed her, anyway. She had slept around too much for people to think she was not a willing participant, and why the hell would a man rape her when she was giving it up easily enough?
'I'm sorry about what I said,' Julia had told him, following him through the woods, the back way to the cave. 'I didn't mean to get y'all in trouble.'
'You didn't get us in trouble.'
She laughed. 'I bet not,' she said. 'That old Hoss can't abide anybody doing you wrong.'
Jeffrey had not responded. They had reached the cave, and he held back the vines.
'It's dark in there.'
'You gonna do this or not?' he said, giving her a push toward the cave. At seventeen, Jeffrey had not yet learned the fine art of seduction. Hell, he hadn't even learned how to keep his brain working when all the blood in his body rushed to that one place. Standing outside the cave, knowing that in a few minutes Julia was going to be doing the one thing Nell refused to do, his pants had been so tight across the front that he c
ould barely move.
'You still mad at me?' she asked, a curious smile at her lips as she glanced down at his crotch. 'Maybe I shouldn't go in there.'
'Suit yourself,' he said, going into the cave ahead of her, his erection so painful he was surprised he could speak.
Jeffrey looked around the cave now, trying to remember what it felt like to have Sara in here. Certainly, better than when Julia was there. She had finally followed him inside and within minutes she had started crying, telling him she had made a mess of her life, apologizing for what she had said about Robert and Jeffrey. He had gotten angry because all he wanted was a blow job, not her fucking life story.
Julia had wanted him to kiss her, but Jeffrey had refused. There was something ugly about the shape of her mouth, and all he could think about was how many other guys had been there. In the end, he had told her to go away. When she would not go, he left the cave. The next time he saw Julia Kendall, Sara was there and Julia was nothing but a skeleton, laid out on the rocks as if she had gone to sleep that day, waiting for Jeffrey to come back.
The question was, did Robert really kill her? God knew he hated the girl for spreading that rumor that they had raped her. Unlike Jeffrey, who just chalked it up to Julia trying to get attention, Robert had seethed with the kind of hatred that burns you from the inside. Maybe it was because Jeffrey knew that he would be going away to Auburn in the fall, or maybe it was because he knew how baseless the allegations were, but he had not taken Julia's charges to heart the way Robert had. In retrospect, Robert could have been angry because he felt guilty. Someone had made that baby.
Jeffrey took a deep breath and slowly let it go. Robert could not have killed her. He did not even know how she had died. Someone out there did, though. Someone had been in this cave with Julia. An argument had sparked or maybe whoever did it had just had enough of her. Jeffrey had seen this kind of thing all the time when he was a cop in Birmingham. It was depressing when you heard firsthand the stupid excuses people could come up with to try to justify the fact that they took another life. Was there a man out there right now, going to church on Sundays, playing ball in the yard with his kids after work, telling himself he was still a good guy because Julia Kendall had asked for it? The thought made him sick.
He rested his foot on the coffee table and looked around the dank cave. The first time they had found this spot, he had thought it was the best place in the world. Now it just looked like a damp hole in the ground. More than that, it was a tomb.
He stood as best he could and walked out into the sunlight. Slowly, he made his way back toward the funeral home, trying to think about what to do next. He wanted answers to all of this, wanted it solved once and for all. Robert was not going to help him with anything, but being a cop, Jeffrey was used to non cooperation from the chief suspect. Maybe that's what Jeffrey needed to do now, think about this case like a cop instead of as Robert's friend. Looking at it that way, he had forgotten an important step: talking to the victim's family.
A few years before he moved to Grant County, Jeffrey had spent two weeks driving around the South, looking at all the historic homes he could only read about when he was growing up. The trip was born of impulse and the need to get out of Birmingham while a certain assistant district attorney he had been dating cooled her heels over Jeffrey telling her there was no way in hell they were going to get married. Looking back, it had been one of the best times of his life.
Among other sights on the trip, he saw the Biltmore House, Belle Monte, and Jefferson's Monticello. He toured battleships and historic battlefields and walked the same path Grant took to Atlanta. Wandering through downtown after viewing The Dump, an old apartment building that really was a dump yet held the distinction of being where Margaret Mitchell had written most of Gone with the Wind, he happened upon a classically designed mansion called the Swan House.
Like everyone else of any rank in Georgia, the Inman family had got its money from cotton and decided to build a house that celebrated their wealth. They had hired a local architect named Philip Trammell Shutze to design their mansion, and he had come up with nothing short of a masterpiece. The Swan House had some of the most beautiful rooms Jeffrey had ever seen, including a bathroom with floor-to-ceiling pink marble that had been painted over to look like white marble; the lady of the house had not liked the original color. Long after the tour had ended, he had managed to sneak into the opulent library and just stare at the old books on the shelves. Jeffrey had never stood in such a room in his life, and he felt at once in awe and humbled.
In great contrast, Luke Swan's house was the kind of shack even Jeffrey had looked down on when he was a kid. As a matter of fact, the house was so bad that somewhere along the way the Swan family had simply abandoned it and moved into a trailer home parked in the driveway. Stacks of newspapers and magazines stood on the porch, just waiting for a stray cigarette or match to bring the whole place down. It stank of poverty and hopelessness, and Jeffrey thought not for the first time that there were still large chunks of the rural South that had not yet fully recovered from Reconstruction.
As Jeffrey parked on the dirt road in front of the house, six or seven dogs ran out to the car – the standard redneck house alarm. A majestic-looking mailbox stood at least four feet high in front of the driveway, fancy script giving the street numbers. Just to be certain, Jeffrey checked the numbers against the page he had ripped out of the phone book he had found dangling from a wire by the pay phones outside Yonders Blossom. The book was at least ten years old, but people in Sylacauga did not tend to move around much. There were only two Swans listed in town, and Jeffrey had taken the wild guess that Luke was not associated with the ones who lived near the country club.
'Git back!' a woman yelled at the dogs as Jeffrey got out of the car. The animals scattered and the old woman stood on the cinder block porch outside the trailer, leaning heavily on a wooden cane. Her cheeks were sunken in, and Jeffrey guessed she had left her teeth in a glass somewhere inside the trailer.
She asked, 'You come about the cable?'
'Uh . . .' He looked back at his mother's car, wondering what she must have been thinking. 'No, ma'am. I came to talk to you about Luke.'
She clasped her housedress together with a gnarled old hand. He walked closer and he could see her rheumy eyes were having trouble focusing.
As if she knew what he was thinking, she said, 'I got the cataracts.'
Her accent was so heavy that he had trouble understanding her. 'I'm sorry.'
'Not your fault, is it?' she asked, no menace in her tone. 'Come on in,' she said. 'Mind that first step. My grandson was gonna fix it for me, but then, well, I guess you know what happened.'
'Yes, ma'am,' Jeffrey said, testing the bottom step. The cinder block shifted, and he could see where rain runoff from the trailer had eroded the soil underneath. He kicked some dirt and stones under it, making it a bit more level, before following her into the trailer.
'Not much,' the old woman said, the understatement of the century. The place was a pigsty, the narrow design making it seem like the walls were closing in. More newspapers and magazines were piled around the room, and Jeffrey wondered what she was doing holding on to all this stuff.
'My late husband was quite the reader.' She indicated the piles of magazines. 'Couldn't bear to part with his things when he passed.' She added, 'The emphysema got him. Don't smoke, do you?'
'No, ma'am,' he said, trying to follow her into the main room, a combination kitchen/dining room/living room that was little more than ten feet square. The trailer smelled of chicken fat and sweat, with a slightly medicinal undertone that older people got when they stopped taking care of themselves.
'That's good,' she said, putting her hands out in front of her to feel her way toward her chair. 'Smoking's horrible. Kills you something bad in the end.'
Beside him, Jeffrey saw a stack of Guns & Ammo along with magazines of a considerably more adult nature. He glanced at the old woman, wondering if she wa
s aware that a copy of the 1978 Christmas edition of Penthouse sat less than three feet from where she stood.
She said, 'Go on and sit if you can find a place. Just move that stuff aside. My Luke used to sit there and read to me.' She put her hand behind her, feeling for the chair. Jeffrey took her elbow and helped her sit. 'I like the National Geographic, but the Reader's Digest is getting a little too liberal for my liking.'
He asked, 'Do you have someone who comes in to take care of you?'
'It was just Luke,' she told him. 'His mama done run off with a door-to-door salesman. His daddy, that was my youngest boy, Ernest, well, he never amounted to much. Died in the penitentiary.'
'I'm sorry,' Jeffrey said, walking across the sticky carpet. He considered the chair, but remained standing.
'You sure do apologize a lot for things that ain't got nothing to do with you,' the woman said, feeling around on the table beside her. He saw a plate of crackers, and wondered how she chewed them. She put one in her mouth and he saw that she didn't chew them so much as let them melt on her tongue while she talked.
She told him amidst a spray of crumbs, 'Cable's been out for two days now. I liked to had a fit when it went off – right in the middle of my program.'
Jeffrey started to say he was sorry again, but he caught himself. 'Can you tell me about your grandson?'
'Oh, he was a good boy,' she said, her whiskered mouth trembling for a moment. 'They got him down at the funeral home still?'
'I don't know. I guess.'
'I don't know where I'm gonna get the money to bury him. All I got is my social security and the little bit I get from the mill.'
'You worked there?'
'Up until I couldn't see no more,' she said, smacking her lips. She paused a beat as she swallowed the soggy cracker in her mouth. 'That was four, five years ago, I'd say.'
She looked about a hundred, but she could not be that old if she was able to work in the mill that recently.
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