“Oh, I’d love to see you in uniform.” Tamara gave him a wink.
“I’m a detective. We don’t wear uniforms.”
“You could, just for me.” She grinned and nudged a playful shoulder into him. “How long will you stay in town?”
“Until I find out what happened to Charlie.”
Tamara looked at him with a quizzical expression. “But…I-I thought he drowned.”
“I don’t think so.”
“They called off the search.”
Spence shook his head and tapped a fist against his thigh. The look he gave Tamara caused her head to rock back.
“I think someone murdered Charlie.”
“What? Why would you think that? Everyone loved Charlie.” Tamara tilted her head, an expression of disbelief raising her brows.
“I keep hearing that, but someone didn’t.”
Tamara recovered from the shock and took his hand. “Tell me.”
“I don’t have much. I found his medallion. Charlie never took it off for anything. I think he left it for me to find. A stretch, I know, but I feel it…I know it.”
“I don’t doubt you, but I can’t imagine anyone who would want to hurt Charlie. Seriously, your brother crossed every line—black, white, rich, poor—didn’t matter. Everyone respected him.”
Spence leaned back, his eyes fixed on the night sky. “I’ve been asking around. Can’t get a straight answer. I get the feeling people are holding something back. I got a hint of why from Betty. She claims there’s a rumor drifting around…” The detective in Spence paused, watching Tamara’s reaction. “Charlie was seeing someone. Some mystery woman.”
Tamara chuckled.
Spence eyed her. “Something funny?”
“No, I’m sorry. It’s just Betty saying a rumor’s floating around. Yeah, because she started it.”
“What?” Spence straightened, his back stiff.
“Betty and my mom are best friends. Both of them old hens with the gossip. I happened to be at Mom’s the morning Betty called and told her. Apparently, she saw a woman show up at Charlie’s house pretty late the night before.”
Spence bolted off the concrete bleachers. “Did she say who?”
“No, at least not to Mom. And she would have.”
“I think I need to have another talk with dear Aunt Betty.”
* * *
Spence marched across Aunt Betty’s living room, his blood boiling. He had the woman in tears seconds after pushing past her into the house. Guilt would come once the anger subsided, but for now, the lies colored his vision red.
“I’m sorry, Spencer. I didn’t want to hurt you worse. You and Stace are suffering enough, no need to add salt on the wound. What would it help?” Betty wiped tears from puffy cheeks and fluttered innocent eyes at him, serving only to annoy Spence further.
“Try to come clean, Betty. Tell me what you know.”
“I-I might have said something to someone ‘bout seeing a woman on a night or two. But I never said nothing ‘bout who it was, not to no one.”
“Why? If you spread the word Charlie’s seeing someone, what difference would ‘the who’ make?”
Betty recoiled from his glare, wringing chubby hands in her lap. “Adultery would’ve cost Charlie the church, but if’n folks knew who with, he’d never’ve lived it down.”
“I’m losing patience here, Betty. Stop with the evasive bullshit and tell me.”
“Name’s Laticia Gibbs. Poor woman.” Betty straightened and put on a brave face. “Lives in the trailer park just down from the church. Husband’s Jake Gibbs…w-white man.”
Interracial marriages had existed for ages, but along with gay marriage, would never find acceptance from many in the Deep South. Such relationships carried a stigma, staining the couple, marking them. The addition of poverty placed the Gibbs at the bottom of the social order, ignored at best, ridiculed at worst.
“What do you know about Jake?” Wheels in Spence’s mind spun at light speed as he tried to make sense of how this new information affected Charlie’s disappearance.
“He don’t come to church, so I never knew him. Hear he’s got a temper. Gets himself thrown in the drunk tank on occasion.”
Spence sighed; his shoulders slumped. “Thank you, Aunt Betty. Sorry for getting angry with you.”
“No, child, it’s me who’s sorry. Should’ve told you right off.” She gave him a gentle hug and sniffled.
Spence drove away trying to place the pieces into something recognizable. If Jake thought Charlie and Laticia were having affair it would give him a motive for murder. Even so, not a shred of evidence to prove it. Time to have a chat with the Gibbs.
CHAPTER
17
“Zip me up, Babe.”
Evan stepped behind Julie and drew up the zipper. She looked beautiful in a blue dress sprinkled with tiny paisley designs, knee length, a white collar touching the hollow of her neck. With sensuality the norm, women clothed in barely enough to cover their privates, Julie retained modesty and shunned vanity. Evan could not be more proud of her, and of Jenny, for she followed her mother’s influence.
“We won’t be long. Martha wants to spend some time on the prayer list after our bridge game’s over. It’s a long one.” Julie shook her head. “So many having troubles lately.”
“You ladies are God’s own angels.” Evan smiled and handed her the leather pouch containing her Bible. “Jenny going with you?”
“Yeah, she wants to play with Kathy. You should see them. They set Kathy’s dolls up as if they are in pews and pretend to have church. Kathy is the choir director, and of course Jenny’s the preacher.”
Evan chuckled. “Of course she is.”
He walked with them to the front door and glanced out at the rain falling steadily in the gray dusk. He wasn’t fond of Julie driving in the rain, or going out without him. Normally, they were inseparable, but even couples as much in love as they were needed space on occasion. Julie had her bridge night with some ladies from church, and she enjoyed preparing dishes to serve at the Sunday afternoon brunches. Evan sometimes went fishing with Matthew, a fellow professor at the college, but those times were rare. They did visitation together twice a week, traveling the roads through the county and neighboring towns to witness and share their testimonies with unbelievers. Rounds at the hospital and nursing home every Saturday allowed them time to spend with the elderly and sick. A good life full of love and service.
“Be careful, okay?”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be back in a jiffy.” She kissed him on the cheek, and Jenny gave him a hug. Evan nodded with a tight smile.
The Camry pulled away and disappeared behind the downpour. Evan returned inside the house, but the living room had vanished. He stood next to a massive oak positioned just off the road, the forest at his back. A black arrow curved hard to the right on a yellow sign a few feet away. Headlights shone in the distance, dim in the rain, pinpricks in the fallen night. Closer and closer, too fast. A screech of tires, a slide on wet pavement. The car headed right for him…and the tree. Evan pushed to the side, but could not move, his feet anchored to the muddy ground by some unseen force. Frozen, horror parted his lips in a silent ‘no’ as the vehicle bore down.
Now the tree itself, or trapped inside it…the impending impact tightened his muscles. He braced and closed his eyes. The collision did not come. Minutes ticked by. He opened his eyes to find the scene slowed to near still frames, a miniscule progression over seconds. The front bumper twisted around the tree’s trunk with a horrible elongated metallic groan. Jenny’s inaudible scream held open her gapping mouth as she disappeared from his view in the back seat. Julie, behind the steering wheel, went pale, the whites of her eyes expanding to impossibly wide ovals. The windshield splintered into a web, crawling outward in concentric ripples as her nose seemed to merely touch the clear surface. Cheeks shoved through the crushed glass, glistening tissue leaving behind flesh in strips like cheese through a grater. Droplets
of blood fell to explode in crimson blossoms on the car’s hood. With her mouth agape in a scream, Julie flew toward the waiting tree.
Bones crunched as skinless muscle smacked wet against the bark. Vertebrae jammed together and detonated into dust as her head snapped to the side at a sickening angle. Clavicles jutted from her shoulders and stabbed deep into a neck stretched to agonizing length. Her body collapsed onto the car’s hood and lay still.
Evan could not breathe, shock constricting around his heart. He reached for Julie, but she remained distant from his touch.
Her eyes opened to slits and darted back and forth.
Still alive. Oh my God, she’s still alive!
Trapped in this slow motion reel, Evan watched as Julie mouthed at the air like a guppy out of water. Pain registered in her eyes, a prayer unanswered filling contracting pupils. Her head lolled on a broken neck, rocking in pendulum swings as the force of the impact receded. Twitches and jerks raced down her body in spastic seizures. An eternity of pain…until she went still. Julie stared at him without recognition, a question hanging in the raindrops between them.
What? What were those last unspoken words she desperately needed to say?
Too much. It’s too much.
Evan bellowed the scream Julie could not sound. Free of his paralysis, he fell to his knees, racked with sobs. When he mustered the strength to lift his head, the scene had changed. He knelt in the filthy room at the rear of Jose Ramirez’s house. Jenny sat on the dingy mattress a few feet away, surrounded by empty beer cans, liquor bottles, soiled clothes, and drug paraphernalia. With a rubber hose taut around her bicep, the syringe hovered above the crook of her arm. Black-ringed, bloodshot eyes stared down at the ochre liquid. Her body, so frail, a skeleton with skin draped over it, shuddered as her thumb poised on the plunger.
The syringe grew larger and larger in Evan’s vision until nothing else remained. A blink, and golden narcotic swirled around him, a backwash of crimson mingling to turn his environment a disgusting brown. Force shoved him hard forward as the plunger depressed, and Evan’s consciousness raced into his daughter’s waiting vein. He careened down the chute in a wash of blood and heroin like a nightmarish water slide. Hurled up and down, dashed side to side, even his incorporeal form churned with nausea. The swish of blood flow roared in his ears, soft tissue squishing at his contact. Ahead, a flap opened and closed in chaotic rhythm, its thump thump thundering all around. A pulpy mass received him. Jenny’s heart fought with spasmodic beats against the sedative effects seeking to slow its pulse.
A surge jettisoned him from the heart, rushing upward. He glimpsed a moment as he passed her eyes—a room familiar and strange, not home—the thought wasn’t his own. Evan spilled out into a vast chasm, bitter cold. All around him snaked electrified threads, weaving through the black and carrying pulses of white-hot brilliance. He floated amidst the wirework of nerves, which dimmed with each flicker as they traversed the wide expanse.
Jenny was dying.
A voice, faint and distant, echoed off obscured walls.
Help me. Daddy, help me.
“Where? Jenny, Baby, where are you?”
I can’t see you, Daddy. I’m scared.
“Keep talking, Sweetie. I’ll find you. Daddy’s coming.”
“I’m cold. So cold…”
Jenny’s voice trailed off like she was falling from a lofty precipice. Fear and loss gripped Evan’s mind and twisted. He searched the darkness, his consciousness darting one way and then the other. The maze led him everywhere and nowhere. Direction seemed lost, up and down, left and right, meaningless terms in the void. Rocked on a torrent of fearful emotion, both his own and his daughter’s, terror filled the abyss as a palpable energy.
“No, Jenny. Hold on. Hold on, Baby. I’m here. I’m here.”
One by one, the lights dimmed and vanished. The interior of his daughter’s skull glazed over with ice, frozen and dead. Evan screamed into the vacuous space, his voice bouncing back to strike him in physical blows, until beaten and broken, his consciousness winked out.
He opened his eyes to the junk room in the rear of his parents’ house. The place where they had sequestered him, forgotten him. His mother stood over him, her devil face glaring down.
“You hush. Keep quiet or ya know what y’all get.” She leaned forward and rapped a reminder on the back of his head. Something fell from her pocket and clicked across the floor. Drunk and wobbling, she didn’t appear to notice, but stomped out the door, locking it behind her.
Dusk shone a purple hue through a narrow slit in the curtains. Black, barely discernible shadows flitted in the corners. Evan felt along the floor and found the cigarette lighter his mother had dropped. He flicked it alight to illuminate a two-foot radius around him. Comforted by the promise of light in the darkness, he pushed against the wall and busied his mind envisioning scenes from the Bible stories his grandma taught him—the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, kept safe by a vague presence bathed in the flames.
As night fell, the room faded to black. No moon, no stars, shadows fled into the pitch. Musty smells he had long ago grown used to seemed to find new strength and filled his nostrils. The dreaded scrapes and scratches from far corners rose in a stampede of vile creatures. Terrified, Evan clutched the lighter and flicked it to a flame. Bright on his face, but its light failed to reach the boxes feet away. The clawing and climbing grew louder…closer. He extended the lighter, but no use, nothing beyond his sanctuary space fell under the glow. The metal at the top of the lighter grew hot and burned his fingers. He dropped it, clack, and on his knees he felt along the floor with frantic hands. There. Evan gripped the lighter tight in his hand, brought up the flame, and apprehensively edged toward the boxes. A magazine protruded from one; he grabbed it, and lit one end. The paper blazed, giving off greater light.
The sound again. Evan fanned the torch in a wide arc.
There? No, over there.
His eyes flitted back and forth, desperate to locate the origin of that horrible sound. Perched on the rim of a cracked and broken table, his nemesis! The fat, gray monster stared at him with those yellow eyes. He eased a step away, his hand trembling, shaking the dancing flame. The rat leapt from the table toward him. Evan squealed, stumbled, and fell backward, his torch flying from his hand.
Boxes filled with old, dried paper and frayed clothes received the fire and nursed it to a blaze. In seconds, the rear half of the room ignited in an inferno. Evan yanked at the doorknob, screaming for his momma and daddy. No one came. A last tug with all the strength his eight-year-old arms could muster and the rusted lock broke with a snap, the door flying open.
Evan raced down the hall and into his parents’ bedroom. Both lay passed out on the bed, arms and legs flung this way and that. Evan shook his mother, screaming for her to wake. Her eyes fluttered; she weakly pushed him away and lay still. He dashed to his daddy’s side. Reaching for his shoulder, Evan’s arm raked against an open bottle of vodka on the nightstand. It tumbled onto the bed, pouring its contents onto the sheets, and dripping down to the carpet.
He could not wake them. Smoke billowed all around, swirling in a ghostly mass on the floor and rising in vaporous tendrils up the walls. It filled his lungs, the acrid stench stinging and blurring his vision. Evan backed away, tears in his eyes, cries for mommy and daddy issuing from his constricted throat.
The fire’s roar and intense heat chased him from the house. Evan stood in the yard, watching the red-orange glow bloom beyond the windows. The flames had woken his parents. Their tormented wails drifted through the walls and shoved Evan to his knees. With palms pressed to his ears, he tried to shut out the terrible shrieks. Walls collapsed, beams crashed to the ground, the old house disintegrated.
Only a shell remained awash in fire. A bellow like a wounded beast erupted from inside the house. The front door exploded outward and a vaguely human form, encased in a ball of flame, surged onto the crumbling porch. Arms flailed as t
he figure staggered into the yard. Evan ran from the thing that might have been his mother? His father? Impossible to tell. The scent of charred flesh would never leave him, the image of the thing on fire forever scorched into his mind.
* * *
Evan woke huddled in a fetal position on the Redwine shack’s splintery hard floor. His body quaked, rattling his teeth, jarring his bones. Insects crawled over his arms and legs, tiny appendages tickling at his skin. The end drew near—a personal Armageddon devoid of the promise of rapture. The dream’s images remained impressed on his mind, but unlike before, angst receded, replaced by cold resolve. God’s laughter fell away—a prick at the base of his skull. The chattering voices, a constant irritant, urged him on.
He rose and dusted himself off. The house did not provide the optimal workspace, but it would have to do. Fortunately, he’d brought along the generator; sawing the two by fours would have taken too long by hand. Without his full array of tools, he would craft the chair for function rather than elegance. Still, Evan was nothing if not a perfectionist, and refused to skimp on even this construction. Fashioned from the boards, the finished product appeared far bulkier than he had hoped. A simple design, plain and without ornate carving, its distinguishing features were a U-shaped seat and other special requirements. After pounding five hundred, twenty-penny nails through the armrests, seat, legs, and back—each jutting almost two inches above the wood—Evan’s arms throbbed and burned from the effort. Straps at the arms and legs would hold the occupant in place, while others fixed to the seat and back could be tightened to drive the nails deeper into the flesh. A coat of dark stain, followed a few hours later by a clear lacquer, and the piece was done…almost.
Evan knelt and meticulously carved an inverted cross into the back of the chair. No longer a symbol of irreverence, but a gauntlet thrown down.
Dawn peeked through bare windows, piercing the small room with a dozen brilliant lances amidst floating dust. Evan had worked the night through and still needed to create one last item. The implement would be a crude approximation of the original, but again, function trumped style under present circumstances. The finished instrument resembled a pear, hence its name Pear of Anguish. Its four metal leaves separated from each other as a screw on the end turned.
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