The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  “I will help get Blake out of here, help him find Brad Falon, help him force Falon to confess. That is exactly what you are planning, so, you see, I simply want to assist in your venture.”

  Morgan’s escape was what he’d planned, ever since Becky came to visiting day so excited she could hardly get it out fast enough, that there was a warrant for Falon. That as soon as Falon was found he’d be shipped off to L.A. for arraignment and trial, with a good chance he’d go to prison out there.

  IN THE VISITING room, Becky had spoken in heated whispers, sitting in the far corner on an isolated couch close between Morgan and Lee. She hadn’t brought Sammie; she said Anne had taken the child to a movie. This was a different kind of visit, she was all business, was strung tight with her news and seemed to want no distraction.

  But still she’d left a lot unsaid, questions to which Lee still wanted answers. Who had shot Falon? She said she didn’t know but Lee thought she did know. Maybe, if Becky had shot him herself, she didn’t want to upset Morgan? Maybe that was why she hadn’t brought Sammie, because Sammie would say too much?

  But Lee sensed, as well, something more left unrevealed. The way Becky looked at him puzzled and embarrassed him; she was holding something back. Yet how could it affect him, when he hardly knew her? Whatever it was, it left him with questions that, he thought, he might not want to ask.

  Morgan had sat stone-faced, saying nothing. Lee hadn’t been able to tell what either one was thinking. But questions or not, with a warrant out for Falon, Lee’s plan had begun to take shape. If Falon was arrested, was out on the West Coast—if Lee and Morgan could get to him, could break out of prison, hightail it out there, get themselves arrested and locked in the same institution, they’d have Falon where he couldn’t escape. Could force a confession from him, make him reveal where the bank money was hidden. Once the money was found, and maybe the murder weapon, Morgan should have more than enough to clear him.

  A lot of ifs and maybes, Lee thought. But that was what life was made of.

  But it was not the devil’s plan that they force information from Falon. Now, standing there on the wet walkway, the wraith kept pressing at Lee. “Once you’ve broken out of here, Fontana, and Blake thinks you’re helping him, you will be in a position to crush him. You will raise his hopes high. Then you will destroy him.”

  Lee glanced along the walks again, and now they were alone.

  “With my help,” Lucifer said, “you will arrange that Blake kills Falon. That a number of reliable witnesses are present, and that Blake is arrested. The prosecuting attorney will easily prove that Blake broke out of prison with the intention of killing Falon. This,” Satan said, smiling, “will put an end to Morgan’s bid for an appeal. When he attacks Falon, he destroys whatever chance he might have had.”

  “Why would you want him to kill Falon? Falon’s one of yours.”

  “Falon has been useful. Now, when all is finished, he will join my ranks. He will work the game from the other side, and that should please him.”

  “And when Blake goes down, I would be arrested as his accomplice.”

  “Oh, no,” the devil said. “I will see that you conveniently vanish, into any kind of life you choose. Healthy again, with wealth, with bawdy women, the finest horses, gold, whatever is your pleasure.”

  “If Morgan and I got out of here, if that was even possible—and if I didn’t double-cross him, if I continued to help him and kept him out of trouble, what would you do then?”

  “I would destroy you both.”

  “You haven’t destroyed me so far. What makes you think you can take down Blake, either? The truth is,” Lee said, “you’re more bluff than substance.”

  Though, in fact, he knew better. He knew too well how Lucifer could twist human thought. If he and Morgan did escape, it might be more than they could do to fight off whatever influence Satan brought to bear. It might be more than they could handle, not to follow the dark’s lead.

  “Once I’ve helped you escape, if you are capable of that feat, and if then you tried to double-cross me and save Blake, tried to make Falon reveal the evidence, it will be easy enough to twist your plan to my own design.”

  “If you’re that powerful, you don’t need my help to destroy Blake.”

  “I need you to encourage Blake. He is—not an easy subject,” said the dark spirit. “Too religious, for one thing, and what a waste that is. It is you who must show him the broader way, who must lay out the plan. But first, you must inflame his desire to break out. Blake would never have the courage on his own.”

  Lee looked hard at him. “Why Blake? What the hell do you have against Blake?”

  The devil didn’t answer. The tall inmate grew indistinct, blending into the building behind him, and he vanished on the rain-sodden wind. It was in that moment that Lee thought about Becky, about her secrecy in the visiting room and her shuttered looks, and he wondered what had made him think of that.

  24

  BECKY WOKE TO rain pounding at the windows, and to a residue of fear. In the night she had experienced again Falon’s car careening at hers, had fought the wheel again to avoid going off the bridge. Now, waking fully, she lay listening to the comforting clatter from the kitchen, smelling the aromas of baking bread and pies and, this morning, the scent of bacon as Caroline made their breakfast. Rising, she showered and dressed quickly, then woke Sammie, watched as Sammie sleepily pulled her on clothes and ran a brush through her hair.

  In the big kitchen Caroline and her assistant, redheaded Nettie Parks, were lifting pecan pies and fresh bread from the two big ovens. Nettie was a neighbor, a widow whose five children had left the nest. She liked getting up early, she liked the extra money, and most of all, she and Caroline enjoyed working together. Nettie was among the few who had stood by them during the trial. Nettie set their breakfast on a corner of the long, crowded table and hugged Becky. “I hope Brad Falon burns in hell.”

  That made Becky smile. Sitting down, she cupped her hands around the warm coffee cup while listening to the rain, watched her mother turn out muffins from their tins and ease them into the familiar bakery boxes stamped CAROLINE’S. They ate quickly this morning and didn’t linger; it would take a while at the police station to file the complaints and go over the details of Falon’s attacks. Their overnight stay with Caroline was too short, but they’d had a cozy visit after Sergeant Trevis left.

  She had called Quaker Lowe last night, too, on the after-hours number he’d given her. He said, “I tried to call you, at your aunt’s, Becky. Good news! There’s a warrant out for Falon, he’s wanted in California.”

  She laughed. “I know. I’m in Rome, Sergeant Trevis told me.” She told Lowe about Falon’s attack on the bridge, and that she was on her way to the station.

  “But you’re both all right?”

  “We’re fine. Sammie’s a soldier.”

  “I’m glad you changed your mind about naming Falon, glad the police have a record of his attacks. This will be a big help if . . . if there are complaints on file against Falon,” Lowe said quietly. His unspoken words If we lose the appeal resonated in silence between them. If we lose the appeal and have to start over . . .

  Now, rising from the table, promising Caroline she’d call when they were safely home, she hugged her mother, hugged Nettie, and went to get her car from the garage—leaving Caroline to deal with her own poor, damaged vehicle.

  Getting Sammie settled in the front seat with her books, they headed along the rain-sloughed streets for the station. Becky missed Caroline already. Sometimes she felt as needful of mothering as was Sammie. That amused and annoyed her.

  At the station she filed a complaint for each offense: the highway assault, the break-in at Anne’s, Falon’s attack on her behind the drugstore, and the break-in at her house in Rome when Sergeant Leonard had refused to make a written report.

  Detective Palmer, a thin, dark-haired officer of Cherokee background, asked that Caroline bring in her car. “Will you call h
er? I want to take paint samples. With luck, I can lift chips from it, left by Falon’s car. And if we pick up his car, we should find scrapes there from Caroline’s vehicle. One more piece of evidence,” Palmer said. “Every small thing counts.”

  He stood looking down at her. “The FBI will want to talk with you, as part of the federal investigation on Falon’s land scam. The Atlanta bureau will call you at your aunt’s if you’ll give me the number.”

  Becky wrote down both numbers, Anne’s and her private one. She saw no animosity in Palmer, she didn’t think he’d been among the many officers who’d turned against Morgan. She found it comforting that the FBI wanted to question her about Falon; that made her feel more in control. As she and Sammie headed for Atlanta she drove the narrow, rainy highway filled only with positive thoughts, with new hope. She wasn’t in the habit of saying prayers to ask for special favors; such begging was, in her mind, self-serving. Her prayers were more often of thanks, for the many blessings they did have. But last night and now, this morning, she prayed hard that Falon would be found and sent to L.A., that a California judge or jury would convict him for the land scam, that he would be locked up for the maximum time. And that maybe, in prison, someone would kill him. If her prayers were a sin, so be it, that was what he deserved.

  It rained all the way to Atlanta, harsh rain slanting across the road in gusts so sharp they rocked the car. They were home at Anne’s just before noon. Mariol had made hot vegetable soup and a plate of cornbread.

  “I’m just going to grab a bite,” Becky said, “and go on to work, it’s payroll time.”

  Mariol nodded. “Go in the dining room first, take a look at what was in the attic.”

  Becky found Anne at the dining table leafing carefully through the pages of a black leather album, a thin folder so ancient and ragged that the disintegrating covers had shed bits of rotting leather onto the white runner.

  “Mariol found it,” Anne said. “I’d forgotten about those few boxes we’d stored away. We cleaned out most of the relics a couple of years ago, left a few family papers, this album, and a small trunk of antique clothes. I forgot, but Mariol remembered.”

  The faded pictures were all in sepia tones, some of men in coveralls standing by their teams of horses, or women in long dresses over laced-up boots, women with serious, unsmiling faces beneath hand-tucked sunbonnets. Becky touched the old pictures gently, thinking how it would be to live in that time when life was so hard. Raising and canning or curing all your food or going without, doing the laundry over a corrugated washboard, traveling on foot or in a horse-dawn wagon or by horseback, maybe sometimes by train. No telephone to call for the sheriff, if there even was one, only your own firearms and your courage to protect your children.

  When Sammie came to stand beside them, Anne said, “This is our family, your family.”

  Sammie stood looking as Anne turned the pages, then excitedly she pointed. “Wait. That’s the cowboy. That’s Lee.”

  The boy was maybe fourteen. He did look like Lee, the same long bony face, same challenging look in his eyes, even at that young age. Sammie looked up at Becky, her dark eyes deep with pleasure. “I dream of him, Mama, we’re family. Lee’s part of our family.”

  Gently Becky touched the picture. All along, was this what Sammie’s dreams had been about?

  “Here’s another of the boy,” Anne said, turning the page. “And that’s your great-aunt Mae.”

  The woman in the picture was maybe thirty, but Becky could see the resemblance to Sammie. “Mae . . . Mae was Lee’s sister,” she said.

  Anne turned back several pages. “Here . . . here’s Mae as a child.” She looked from the picture to Sammie, looked at Becky, but said nothing more. The child was about ten. Becky studied her for a long while, as did Sammie. They were looking at Sammie’s twin, except for Mae’s long, old-fashioned skirt and laced boots. Sammie reached out a hesitant hand, gently touching the faded likeness just as Becky had touched the picture of Lee. Mae’s mirror image of Sammie made Becky shiver. How could any child be so like her own little girl?

  She left Anne and Sammie at last, numb with putting the pieces together, with accepting the reality of a family she had never known. Sammie was doing a better job of it, seemed to have accepted it all: her great-uncle Lee, stepping out of a formless past; her great-aunt Mae, who had dreamed just as Sammie dreamed.

  Returning to the kitchen, Becky ate her lunch quickly, then hurried downstairs to call Caroline, to tell her they’d arrived home safely, that they had seen no more of Falon. Upstairs again she pulled on her coat and was out the door into the rain ducking into her car. But, heading for work, she felt tired and worn out. She told herself she’d be better once she got into the books, began writing checks and adding up bills and charges. The neatness and logic of bookkeeping always eased her. She wished life could be as ordered, its problems as readily untangled and made right.

  By five that afternoon she’d finished the payroll and billing for the five stores. Only in the car heading home did the tiredness hit her again, leave her longing for sleep. She found Sammie and Mariol in the kitchen, Mariol ironing, Sammie standing at the table folding and stacking towels. Mariol took one look at Becky and set down her iron. “Go take a nap. Take a couple of aspirin and cover up, you’re white as these sheets. You don’t want to be sick.”

  “I can’t afford to be sick.” She did as Mariol told her, headed obediently downstairs, took the aspirins, and collapsed on the bed, pulling the heavy quilt over her.

  She didn’t mean to sleep long. She was deep under when the ringing phone woke her, cutting harshly through the pounding of the rain. Reaching for the phone, she hesitated, frightened suddenly. This was a private line, no one had this number but Caroline and Quaker Lowe. And the prison.

  The bedside clock said six-thirty. She could smell supper cooking, the aroma of frying onions and browned beef. She picked up the phone. Lowe’s voice brought her wide awake. “What’s wrong?” she said, sitting up, her heart pounding.

  “Nothing’s wrong. I—”

  “The appeal . . .” Becky said. She didn’t want to hear this, she didn’t want to hear what was coming.

  There was a long pause. Lowe said, “I have never found it so hard to give anyone bad news, as I find it now.”

  “Denied,” she said woodenly. “It was denied.”

  “Insufficient new evidence. Of course I’ll keep trying. Now, with the federal warrant, and the complaints you filed, we’ll have a better chance. Neither is direct evidence of the robbery and murder, but they are evidence of Falon’s destructive intent toward your family. I’m going up to Rome in the morning to dig some more, do some more interviewing.”

  “You’ve talked to everyone. What good—”

  “It’s possible, now that Falon is wanted by the feds, that Natalie Hooper will be less inclined to lie for him.”

  Becky didn’t think Natalie would ever testify against Falon. The appeal had been denied, they were beaten, everything was over.

  “We’re not giving up,” Lowe said.

  Mutely she shook her head. Quaker was grasping at straws, they would never get an appeal, his continued effort would only lead Morgan on uselessly. And the added cost would be more than she could ever pay.

  “I mean to charge only half the hourly rates,” Lowe said, “for whatever time it takes to file again. Now, if Falon is picked up, I think Natalie will talk rather than getting crosswise with the bureau. I wish we could find the money or the gun,” he said dryly. “I’ll pick up copies of the complaints when I get to Rome. I don’t mean to quit on this, Becky.”

  Becky ended up crying into the phone. The disappointment of the denial and then Lowe’s kindness undid her. She wept so hard she couldn’t talk and had to hang up. Shutting herself in the bathroom she gave over to painful sobs, she cried until she was limp, all the weeks of worry and stress shaking her. Her whole body felt drained, her eyes red and swollen. Her helplessness enraged her. She wanted to call Lo
we back and apologize but what could she say? She didn’t let herself think about visiting day, about telling Morgan tomorrow that they’d have to start over, that the appeal had been shot down.

  DRIVING DOWN PEACHTREE headed for the prison, Sammie sitting quietly in the seat beside her, Becky dreaded this visit. She’d wanted to leave Sammie home again, had wanted to tell Morgan alone about the appeal, not force him to deal with his rage in front of Sammie. But Sammie had been so insistent, wanting to see Lee, to show him the album. Becky wished Lee wouldn’t come to visiting day either; she wanted only to be alone with Morgan. But, in the end, it was the album that saved her.

  In the sally port, she cautioned the guard that the thin black folder was very old and fragile. She watched him page through it, making only a small show of being careful. When she and Sammie entered the visiting room, Becky handed Lee the album and glanced across to an unoccupied corner.

  Lee accepted the disintegrating book, watching her face. Cradling the album, he took Sammie’s hand and moved to the far lounge chair. With Sammie on his lap he sat turning the pages, looking at the pictures as Sammie pointed to various relatives and recited the names and what she could remember of the family relationships as Anne had told her. Becky, sitting quietly with Morgan, watched Lee’s expression change as he pored over the old photos: at first he was startled, then his look turned vulnerable and uncertain. From across the room, Becky gave him a smile and a thumbs-up. Lee looked back at her and grinned, shy and embarrassed. She smiled, then turned away, took Morgan’s hand, snuggling against him.

  She told him she loved him, she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face into his shoulder. He sat quietly, waiting. When she didn’t speak, he said, “The appeal was denied.”

  “Quaker called last night,” she said softly. When she looked up at Morgan, his eyes were hard and rage sculpted his face. He turned away, didn’t want her to comfort him. She felt that the denial was her fault, felt that again she had chosen the wrong lawyer.