“Who do you think killed him?” I asked.
“Whoever he was involved with,” he said.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Don Hall.”
“Is there a number I can reach you at if I find something out or need to ask you some questions?”
He shook his head and walked away. After taking about five steps, he stopped, nearly turned around, but then continued walking. Laura was waiting for me in the back near the door.
“Do you believe all that?” Laura asked when we were back in the car.
“Believe all what?” I asked.
“All those things that you said in your sermon, which, by the way, was excellent.”
“Yes, I do.”
“How can you believe such hopeful things when the world is such a hopeless place?”
“How can I not? Besides, the world is filled with hope as well. Grace shows up all the time; we just usually miss it when it does.”
“What grace?”
“Dancing with you last night, that was a grace. And your peach perfume, that was a grace, too. A good night’s rest is a grace, a rainy night, the weekend, the love of a parent, the loyalty of a friend. God speaks through all of these things and more. In fact, she speaks through the bad things as well—it’s just usually things we don’t want to hear.”
“But how can you know all of this has meaning?” she asked. Her voice said she wanted to believe.
“I admit that it’s wishful thinking,” I said. “But certainly it is not blind faith—there is evidence. However, the fact that I find meaning in them says something, doesn’t it?”
“I guess it does,” she said. She shook her head slowly. “I’ve never met anyone quite like you.” She reached over to the armrest where my right arm was and took my hand. “You did a good thing back there. You’re a good man.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t have the heart to tell her how badly she was mistaken.
For the rest of the afternoon, we clung to each other, savoring every moment. I could tell that the crisis dynamic of the funeral had had a profound effect on us. We were grasping for life, hoping to find something within each other. We were moving too fast, and I knew it, but I lacked the will to do anything about it.
Chapter 24
Under cover of a small oak grove, I parked on an old twin-path logging road in my dad’s Explorer. Dan Fogelberg sounded rich and full on compact disc played on the vehicle’s expensive stereo system. One of the few things I was left with after the divorce was a rather nice collection of CDs. Susan was never into music much, which was a downer while we were married but turned out to be most beneficial when we divorced. The only other thing that I escaped life with Susan with was my stereo system, which, combined with my CD collection, was worth more than the trailer in which I kept them.
I had taken Laura home after our day in Tallahassee, and now I was parked on the old logging road because it gave me a good view of the prison without being observed by Tower One. If I had been observed, the roving patrol would have driven out to investigate. If an officer had driven out, I would have been in trouble in more ways than one. There was, I discovered, a firearm in the vehicle, a fact I had just uncovered after searching underneath the seat for a flashlight. Firearms on state prison property were against the law. In addition to the Smith .38, Dad also had an expensive pair of binoculars. For the latter I was grateful. Without them, I would have seen nothing. As it turned out, because of them, I saw everything.
I sat there in the dark listening to Dan and thinking. My window was open slightly, and the woods all around me were alive. The bitter sweet smells of oak, pine, gopher apple, and honeysuckle wafted into the vehicle. I could hear a cricket symphony, the occasional bark of a dog, and the hum of mosquitoes. The last made me roll the window back up. I had done very few stakeouts in my time, but on each of them, amidst all the waiting and watching, I found myself doing a lot of thinking. I thought about my life up until this point—all the wasted time and money and all the pain, felt and inflicted. Of all the evil in all the world, addiction topped any list I would make.
The mood that my thoughts led me into was in sync with the music that was playing. Dan’s album of lost love and deep wounds, Exiles, played softly in the background. I was usually thoroughly depressed when I finished listening to it, but it was a comfortable, soothing depression that never lasted too long—or long enough. I couldn’t listen to it without thinking of Susan.
I thought of Laura, too. At times she tired me out, making me feel as if I were swimming upstream. At times she refreshed me like floating down that same stream on a soft inner tube. My thoughts turned to Anna, the woman by whom all women in my life were judged. It was not fair to compare other women to Anna, but, then, who said life was fair? Besides, Laura didn’t do too badly against her.
Dan was depressing the hell out of me when I saw Captain Skipper near the front of the institution.
I could see Skipper walking an inmate into the sally port and getting into a van. Totally contrary to DOC policy, the inmate was not cuffed or shackled, and there was no armed officer accompanying them. The van pulled out of the institution heading down the two-mile county road to the main highway into town.
I followed.
Following someone was always very tricky for me, even if they didn’t expect it. If they expected it, it was impossible. This was true anywhere, but especially in Pottersville, where there was very little traffic most of the time, and virtually no traffic at one in the morning. However, I had the advantage of being in my dad’s vehicle, which would be unknown to the captain.
Nevertheless, I kept a safe distance.
The night, several degrees cooler than the day, was pleasant. The moon was nearly full, the sky clear, and the stars out. Dan continued to sing to me as I followed a full mile behind the van with my lights off. When the van reached the main highway, it turned toward town. About a quarter mile before I reached it, I turned my headlights on. As I came to a stop at the intersection, a car passed me. I followed closely behind the car that had fallen in right behind the van.
At the next intersection, which was two miles from Pottersville, the van turned left and the car between us continued straight.
When the van had a sufficient lead again, I turned and followed. The highway was desolate, with only the occasional house or trailer, most of which sat a good distance off the road under the cover of pine trees.
Unlike most places, there were no zoning laws in Pottersville, which meant that houses and trailers and even businesses were often side by side. On some streets, you would pass a hundred-and-fiftythousand-dollar brick home with a fifteen-thousand-dollar single-wide house trailer next door. This road was such a place.
I gave the van as much of a lead as I possibly could, which forced me to use the binoculars. Maybe a mile and a half up on the right, the van signaled and then turned. It was a residence, and from the road only the mailbox and the first thirty feet of the driveway could be seen. However, this was Pottersville, and I knew who lived there, and it didn’t make me happy.
The mailbox had small, neat letters reflecting in my headlights the name R. Maddox. The home belonged to Russ Maddox, the president of Potter State Bank and the wealthiest man in Potter County. He was also Laura’s uncle.
Russ Maddox, as far as I knew, was a finicky, middle-aged bachelor. He had lived alone for as long as I had lived in Pottersville. He had more dollars than sense and a slightly feminine way about him, which certainly gave rise to more than one small-town rumor. He was rich, though, and from what I remembered, a pretty fair banker, as bankers go.
By the time I reached the driveway, the van had disappeared into the woods that served as Russ’s front yard. I pulled the Explorer off the road about a half mile down from the driveway and moved through the woods towards the Maddox mansion, as it was known.
The light from the moon and the stars shown down so brightly that the pines almost cast shadows. There was no breez
e, no visible movement of any kind. Moss hung still from the few tall cypress trees standing in the midst of the pines. The wire grass and weed undergrowth was thick and green in its summer prime. It came to just below my knees and made a swooshing sound as I trudged through it.
The undergrowth was so thick, in fact, that it camouflaged a fallen scrub oak tree. My right shin struck the tree full on, and I fell over it, suppressing a yelp of pain as I did. The ground was damp and the grass moist and much cooler than I had expected it to be.
When I reached the edge of the yard and the end of the woods, I could plainly see the front of the house. The interior of the house was dark, and the only illumination of the exterior was provided by a security light near the garage. The garage doors were closed. In front of them, I recognized Maddox’s dusty-rose Lincoln. Parked beside it was a car I didn’t recognize: a gray Toyota Tercel.
From where the yard began to the porch where Captain Skipper and the inmate stood was a hundred feet. Skipper looked frustrated and angry as he continued banging on the imposing solid oak door with no response. From the distance that separated us, it took the sound of the knock about a second to travel to my ears. The inmate, who was in his prison uniform, looked from the back like nearly every other average-height, average-weight white inmate. Something, possibly the Holy Spirit—she speaks to me on the odd occasion— told me it was Anthony Thomas.
After about five minutes of banging on the door of the dark house, Skipper and the inmate turned to leave. When they did, I saw that it was indeed Anthony Thomas, which meant that it must have indeed been the Holy Spirit. Thomas walked like a drunk man.
Skipper helped him into the van and then jumped in himself. In another few seconds, the ignition started, the lights came on, and the van began to turn around in the massive driveway. I glanced at my watch. It was one forty-six.
I ran toward the Explorer, though not as quickly as I could have, remembering the tree my shin had kissed on the way to the house. I was running for two reasons: one, I wanted to follow the van; and two, if the captain turned left out of the driveway, he would pass the Explorer, which might make him suspicious.
And, if he was doing all of the things I thought he was doing, then he had good reason to be suspicious. It took me three minutes to reach the Explorer—far longer than Skipper needed to reach the end of the driveway. I paused at the edge of the woods to see if Skipper was passing by. I saw no sign of him. I heard nothing. I jumped in the Explorer, turned it around and drove back the way he had come.
He was gone.
Chapter 25
Rarely is witnessing an event, even an event that was supposed to be secret, as revelatory as it seems at the time it is witnessed. People who have witnessed plane crashes, automobile accidents, even assassinations, often know little more than those who were not there at all. I had seen Skipper take Thomas to Maddox’s house last night and I had no idea what it meant. I had seen one isolated incident out of context. Of the several things it could mean, I had no way of knowing what it actually meant.
Under the clear blue skies that had appeared again when the sun rose Sunday morning, I was returning Dad’s Explorer. He lived about fifteen minutes from me on a secluded five-acre farm. I tried to enjoy and appreciate the beautiful creations all around me as well as interact with the creator, but I could think of little else besides the events of the preceding night. I thought maybe I should tell Dad what was going on, but then again, I thought I probably should find out what was going on first. It seemed reasonable.
As I rounded the last curve and put my left blinker on, preparing to turn into Dad’s driveway, the phone rang. At first I didn’t know what it was. I thought maybe a bird had somehow gotten in the vehicle, because of the chirping sound. After the third ring, I deduced that it was a car phone—I’m nothing if not quick. I answered it as I came to a stop in front of my Dad’s little red farm house.
“Hello,” I said into the small phone.
“John,” Dad said, “we need to talk. How long will take you to get over here?”
“Not long,” I said.
“Well, that’s too long. Come as quick as you can.”
“Sure, Dad, I’ll be right there,” I said.
I hung up the phone, got out of the car, and walked over and knocked on the front door.
He looked puzzled when he opened the door. He was wearing a red flannel shirt and a pair of blue jeans that were no longer very blue. His white tube socks matched his jeans—his laundry skills had never been his strong suit. His salt-and-pepper hair, which was receding only slightly, looked to have not seen a brush this morning. His brown eyes, which almost always looked sad, looked especially sad today.
“How the hell did you get here so fast?” he asked.
“I was in your driveway when you called. I’m returning your truck. It made the trip to Tallahassee seem like a vacation. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Come in. We need to talk,” he said as he turned and walked down the short hallway that led to his den.
His den was actually a great room with very little furniture, the first clue that this was a bachelor’s pad. There was a large stacked-stone fireplace on the back wall, which we faced as we entered the room. It had an unvarnished wood hearth that was filled with pictures and marksman trophies. Above the fireplace on the dark paneling wall, the head of a large elk was mounted. On the other wall to the left, where the TV sat on a built-in shelf, hung other animal heads—deer, bear, boar, and moose. Dad was a real man’s man. I was a real disappointment to him in this regard.
He took a seat in an old gray recliner that was positioned in front of the TV. It creaked when he plopped down in it. The only other place to sit was a dark gray couch in front of the wall opposite the fireplace, but to sit there was to sit behind him, so I stood.
The house smelled as it always smelled—dusty, slightly mildewed, and like a pack of wild dogs lived there. The pack-of-wilddogs smell came from Wallace, an Irish setter who was currently occupying the couch—another reason I stood.
I glanced over my shoulder toward the kitchen, where I could see food on the small yellow table and dishes piled in the sink, a look not unfamiliar to me. I looked back at Dad. He was staring at the TV, which showed two boxers—a white one and a black one. The black one was being cruel and unusually punishing to the white one. Dad leaned forward slightly as if to hear what the announcers were saying, but the sound was muted.
“Dad, you okay?” I asked. He was always quiet, but now he seemed depressed, preoccupied. As always, his expressions and gestures were small and understated. He was the kind of man who would walk not run out of a burning building.
“Yes, I’m fine, but your mother’s not,” he said without his usual disgust when she was the topic of conversation.
They were divorced when I was fourteen, when her drinking had progressed to the point that it was no longer safe to leave my brother and me with her. He divorced her after almost eighteen years and about a million second chances. The patience of Job comes to mind. It was at this time that my sister Nancy divorced herself from our entire family and moved to Chicago. My brother Jake and I lived with Dad until, at seventeen, I started drinking, at which time I lived with Mom for a short time. It was during that time that I discovered that I didn’t like her any better when I was drunk.
“I know that,” I said. “I’ve never seen her when she was fine. Why are you telling me what I know so well?”
“She needs someone, and it needs to be you,” he said, only looking away from the boxing and up at me momentarily.
“Dad, we’ve been over this. I’m a recovering alcoholic. That comes first. I have a difficult enough time staying sober myself. I cannot keep her sober as well. I’m sorry, but I’m not responsible for her sobriety, and I do not hold her responsible for mine.”
“I’m not asking you to keep her sober,” he said, his voice cracking a little. “I’m asking you to comfort her. She’s dying, John.”
“She’
s not dying,” I said. “She’s manipulating you, Dad.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not like before. She really is dying. I talked to her doctor. She has cirrhosis of the liver and kidney failure. She won’t last long.”
“What?” I asked in shock, waves of guilt beginning to roll over me.
“She’s dying,” he whispered. “She doesn’t have too much longer, though the doctor doesn’t know for sure how long.”
God forgive me, I’m a heartless son. She was reaching out for me on the phone the other night, and I was so hateful to her.
“Are you sure?” I asked again. “She called me the other night, but she sounded drunk, not sick.”
“It’s her medication. She’s in the hospital. It makes her sound drunk, but she’s really not.”
“I can’t believe it,” I said. “I was so mean to her. She’s dying.”
Suddenly my dad stood up. He was still an imposing man, with a large frame that was agile for his age.
“Listen to me, Son,” he said forcefully. “You are not to feel guilty for the other night. She told me what happened, but I told her that it was her fault. She’s cried wolf too many times for any of us to believe her. Hell, I wouldn’t have believed her if I hadn’t talked to the doctor. It’s not your fault, understand?”
That was a classic Jack Jordan statement. He said I was not to feel guilty, so that was that—I was not to feel guilty, as if I could just turn it off. However, it was classic also because he did his best to make sure that Jake and I were not manipulated by her when we were kids. He said not to feel guilty, and I didn’t, and that’s what bothered me the most. I felt guilty in my head. I knew I had been too harsh on the phone the other night. But in my heart I felt no guilt. I felt nothing.
“She needs someone right now,” Dad said, “and that can’t be me. Jake’s not cut out for it, and the only thing Nancy’s going to do is dance when she’s dead. It can only be you. You’re a minister, for God’s sake.”
MICHAEL LISTER'S FIRST THREE SERIES NOVELS: POWER IN THE BLOOD, THE BIG GOODBYE, THUNDER BEACH Page 16