Even with all this, if truth be told, Sylvie was still upset when he disappeared that night, especially with him leaving her three months pregnant and all when it happened. She didn’t much like being yelled at, but she took it. It was part of her lot in life. And she did love him. When he wasn’t yelling and things were good, she was almost happy. As happy as she could be, given all that was going on inside that head of hers. She knew, deep in his heart, Orwin Thomas was a good man. He may have yelled a lot, but he did treat her well. In her heart back then, she figured he’d never hit her. And if any man ever had, she would pity him, for Orwin Thomas would hunt that man down and kill him to his last breath.
That, Sylvie Carson was certain of.
She suffered through these thoughts late into the night until the light outside her window began to grow to a light pink. Then she managed to fall asleep for a little bit until the baby woke her up just a short while later, wanting to be fed.
CHAPTER 14
My memory of visiting Preacher Eli that day with my mother continued to dig a great big hole in my stomach through the days that followed. I did not trust that man, nor did I like him living in my town. I decided something had to be done about it and, if my mother wasn’t going to do anything, it was up to me and Dewey to.
I called Dewey on the phone and told him all about the meeting we had on the preacher man’s doorstep and how he was crying those crocodile tears and all.
“I ain’t never seen no croc cry,” Dewey said.
“That’s what I mean,” I said. “I mean they wasn’t real tears. He was just makin’ ’em up to make my mom think he was sorry for everythin’ he done.”
“Then why don’t you just say that?”
“It’s an expression.”
“I ain’t never heard it before.”
“You ain’t never heard a lot of stuff before,” I said.
“So you think he’s up to no good?”
“No, I know he’s up to no good.”
There was silence for a second or two and then Dewey said something dumb. “You know, this reminds me of somethin’.”
“What’s that?”
“Your neighbor. Remember? You was sure he was up to no good. Turned out he wasn’t.”
“Dewey, you was sure too, remember? And this is completely different. Preacher Eli was in prison for near on twenty years for killin’ a little kid. Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow is just a carpenter.”
“Still, parts of it feel the same to me.”
“Well, it’s different enough to me.” I was getting frustrated, wrapping the telephone cord around my finger, wishing he’d let me get to the part where I told him my plan.
“So, what do you want to do?” he asked finally.
“I say we go watch his house.”
“Again—” Dewey started, “this is soundin’ like—”
“Dewey. The man was in prison.”
“So you want to go spy on a man who killed a kid? What if he catches us?”
“He ain’t gonna catch us,” I said, now wrapping the telephone cord the other way.
“Why’s that?”
“Cuz I’ll have you with me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, you’re the great inventor,” I said. “You’re gonna invent a way for us not to be seen.”
There was another pause on the other end of the phone until Dewey came back with, “Okay, give me a few minutes to think of somethin’. Then I’ll ride my bike over to your place.”
Dewey showed up about twenty minutes later on his bike with his inventor’s notebook tucked in his pocket and a pair of garden shears and a roll of kite string in a small box in his carrier. “What are them for?” I asked. He had his rope scabbard tied around his waist and his wooden sword hung down his side from the wire tie.
He flipped open the notebook. “My brilliant design for hiding out. You told me there ain’t nothin’ but woods round where Preacher Eli lives.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So, we’re gonna become part of the woods.”
In the notebook he’d drawn pictures of people with what looked like wings. Actually, to call them people were giving them far too much credit. They looked more like stick figures. “I don’t get it. Are they angels?”
“No, they ain’t angels. Those are branches of leaves tied to their arms. And down their bodies.”
“What’s that on this one’s head?”
“A branch.”
I stared at him, my eyes wide with disbelief. “You really are brilliant,” I said flatly.
He closed the book proudly and stuck out his chin. “I know. Let’s go.”
We took our bikes and rode the route down Cottonwood Lane, which was the road we both lived on. Then we turned up Hunter Road, which was the road Preacher Eli lived on. Cottonwood Lane is a nice ride. Before we left, I decided to bring my sword along, too. You never knew when a weapon might come in handy on a job like this, and we’d basically started taking our swords with us everywhere we went. Dewey’s design actually worked out really well—it didn’t even interfere with bike riding.
Cottonwood Lane was fairly flat, and on either side, pretty little houses were nestled among gardens and a wide assortment of trees that were planted on purpose, so they looked good. We rode past cherry trees, tulip trees, and magnolias Near the end of the road, we even passed an orange tree in the front yard of a small blue house.
The ride up Hunter Road was a different story completely. There were very few houses along the way, and the ones we did pass were spaced very far apart and surrounded by thick, quiet forest that seemed to close in on the road the farther up we went. Most of the ride was uphill, which was exhausting. There were a few flowering trees in the front of the woods that I didn’t know the names of, but mostly the trees were tall and dense, filling the edges of the street with oak, fir, birch, and pine. It seemed the higher we got, the darker the forest appeared, until we finally made the wooden bridge that passed over Blackberry Springs.
We pulled our bikes to a stop on the bridge. The water gurgled and sputtered beneath us. It ran a curved path splashing over and around rocks and stones, some of which looked almost as big as me. The smell of the water filled the air where I stood, leaning over the bridge. It tasted like nickels and pennies in my mouth.
“Preacher Eli’s place is only another block up,” I told Dewey. “It’s a shotgun shack on the left. There’s no other houses around it.”
“Then we’ll have to be extra careful when we get close. We can dump our bikes in there right before we reach it.” He indicated the deep ditch running along the right side of the road. “Then we’ll dip into the woods and make the rest of the way on foot just behind the tree line.”
Looking at the blackness of the forest made me swallow hard. The woods appeared ancient to me, like some evil thing out of a storybook filled with monstrous trees of every shape and size. I didn’t really want to go traipsing through those towering giants.
But I followed Dewey’s lead and, just before coming in sight of Preacher Eli’s house, we threw our bikes into the ditch as he suggested (but not before he removed the kite string and shears from his carrier), and began our trek into the woods. At first, I jumped at every creak and crack of leaf and branch breaking beneath my or Dewey’s feet, but soon I relaxed a little. After a while, it became not so bad. It really was just another forest, although this one hadn’t been walked through in some time, if ever. We had to cut our own path through vines, strangler fig, brambles, and briar as we went. It took quite a while to make the short distance from our bikes to where we could see Preacher Eli’s house peeking through the space between the massive tree trunks.
“Okay,” Dewey said. “Now you have to climb one of the fir trees and start cutting off branches.”
“I ain’t climbin’ no tree,” I said. I was a terrible tree climber, for one thing. Even though I wasn’t about to admit that.
“You have to. We need the branches.”
“You climb the tree. I’ll hold the string.”
With a deep exhale, Dewey gave into the inevitable. “Fine. I’ll need you to help me up to the first branch.”
It took us a while to get him into the tree, but once he was there, Dewey turned out to be not a bad tree climber at all. Over the years I had noticed this about Dewey. He had strange abilities at some things and then at other, normal things, a complete lack of ability.
At any rate, he was doing a fine job of scaling the tree and shearing off big branches of fir with lots of leaves along the way. Up he went, his sword dangling from his side with its tip pointing straight down at me. As each bough fell, it brought with it the fresh smell of sap. I collected them as they came down, inhaling the deep aroma of the leaves. All my senses were alive to the woods. Now that my eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, things no longer seemed so bleak and black. It all just looked very green. I placed all the boughs into a pile. Some did look like wings, much like the picture Dewey drew in his notebook. I wasn’t about to tell him that, though.
“I think that’s enough,” he whispered.
“Okay.”
He looked around beneath his feet. I immediately saw his problem. He’d cut off most of the branches he’d used to climb up the tree and now didn’t have them to use to get down with. “Um, I’m kinda stuck.”
“Can you slide down?” I asked.
He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Somewhere off in the distance the sound of a woodpecker echoed through the trees. It sounded like someone knocking two blocks of wood together.
“No,” he said. “Have you ever climbed a tree?”
“Not a lot. But I doubt if I did that I’d cut off my only way down as I went up. I think you’ll have to jump.”
“I’m way too high up to jump.” I had to agree, he was quite high up.
“There are knots in the trunk sticking out along the way for a while below you. Can you use those to step on?”
Dewey kept looking around below him, as if some magical branches were about to appear. His lower lip twisted between his teeth. “You know, I have an invention in my book for just this very thing, but we don’t have none of the stuff to build it.”
“Ain’t that always the way,” I said.
Finally, he gave into the inevitable and used my idea. Slowly and deliberately, he came down, putting his feet on the knobs extending from the trunk. A few times his foot slipped off and my breath caught in my throat. I thought for sure he was going to fall and wind up stabbing himself in the side with his own sword, but somehow he managed to hang on. Then he got low enough that it wasn’t so scary anymore.
“Okay, I think I can jump now. Can you catch me?”
“No.”
“You have to.”
“Okay,” I lied.
He jumped and I stepped back out of the way. He landed on the soft forest floor, right on his rear end. Looking up at me, he asked, “What happened to catching me?”
“I told you I wasn’t going to.”
“Then you said you would.”
“The second one’s always a lie,” I said.
He shook his head, wiping dirt from his shorts and his legs. “Whatever. Let’s just get these branches tied on so we can start our stakeout. I’ll tie yours on, then you tie mine.”
It took another twenty minutes or so to dress up as fir trees. When we were done, Dewey looked remarkably like the stick man he’d drawn and I kind of felt bad about laughing at his sketches earlier. We both had big branches of fir leaves on our arms like wings, one coming down the front of our body, and one drooping over our head like some weird bird. I had to say, we did blend in much better with the green of the tree leaves and bushes around us than we had before we tied all the branches on.
Quietly, we crept to the front of the tree line right along the roadside that looked directly across at Preacher Eli’s house. Both of us lay on the ground and propped up our heads with our hands on our elbows. We knew we were going to be here a long time, so we might as well get comfortable.
Well, as comfortable as we could be covered in itchy tree branches.
Leah felt odd pulling the Brown/Carson file from the archive drawer. She figured she must’ve been the first person to touch it since her pa put it there seventeen years or so ago. It made her remember her original days on the force, joining not because she wanted to, but because she had to. It was a year before she became pregnant with Abe and, with Billy’s work being so sporadic, they needed the extra income.
She had been at her pa’s house when he talked her into coming on board. It was right before his cancer got so bad. They had only gotten to spend barely two months working together before he had to quit.
“You’ll come work for the department,” he had said, but she’d only laughed.
“I ain’t no cop,” she’d said. “Remember that time you took me huntin’? It was the one and only time I ever shot a gun.” She was sitting on the flowered sofa that was more the size of a loveseat. Like everything in her folks’ home, it looked and felt brand-new. It was the way her ma had kept things, back while she was still here.
“You were bound to hit something. You were shakin’ so bad you were aimin’ at the entire forest,” he said, and smiled. “But bein’ a cop is different. We’ll train you. This ain’t a question, by the way.” Pa sat at an angle across the small coffee table from her in the Queen Anne chair. He had his large elbows resting on the curled armrests, but they barely stayed there. He was a man who liked to conduct while he spoke.
“What makes you think Chief Montgomery would even want me?” she asked. “It would be complete favoritism.”
“He’s big on favoritism.”
She rolled her eyes.
Her pa pointed at her. “I’ll tell you one thing. He’s big on you. And you can say this ’bout that man. If ever there was anyone whose heart was bigger than his brains, he’s the one.”
She threw a tasseled pillow at him. “You’re not very nice. I happen to like Chief Montgomery.”
“You won’t. He’s a son of a bitch when you work for him.”
“I’m not comin’ to work for the department. I ain’t no cop.”
Pa suddenly grew all concerned. He leaned forward, but before he could talk, Caroline went toddling down the hallway chasing her pa’s Irish setter, Putter, with a squeal. Leah’s pa waited for the noise to die down. “Leah, you have to start thinkin’ ’bout your next move. You can’t feed that kid on dreams, wishes, and stardust. I wish you could. Please. Take my offer.”
“Don’t you need to discuss this with Chief Montgomery?”
“Hang on.”
Picking up the phone beside him, he made a call into the station and right then and there told (not asked) Ethan Montgomery that his daughter was coming on board to work as an officer at the Alvin Police Department. The call barely lasted a moment.
He hung up and smiled. “Done. You start tomorrow at eight.”
“You’re serious.”
“Oh, honey, you’re gonna find police work is very serious business.” Six months later, she got her first big case when Ruby Mae Vickers disappeared from town and she discovered he hadn’t lied. You couldn’t get any more serious than that.
Shaking the memory from her mind, Leah laid the file folder on her desk. It was rather thick, thicker than most of the files she worked on. That usually meant the case wasn’t as clear-cut as everyone would’ve liked. It meant there was lots of information that had to be kept. Extra information. Complications.
She wondered what kind of complications she was about to uncover about Preacher Eli Brown and Tom Carson’s family.
Flipping the file open, the first thing she came to were the statements taken at the scene of the crime. They were in her pa’s handwriting and, once again, she had to fight off old memories. If this didn’t stop, she was never going to get anywhere with this case. She decided she had better strengthen her resolve and stop being so emotional. “Quit bein’ such
a goddamn girl,” she said softly to herself.
“You? Bein’ a girl?” said Chris from behind her, making her nearly jump clear out of the county. He had been in the restroom when she came inside.
“What you doin’ sneakin’ round?” she snapped.
“I wasn’t sneakin’ round . . . I was . . . well . . . that ain’t no business of yours. What are you doin’ is a better question. Ain’t this supposed to be your day off?”
She sighed. “I came in to check on somethin’. Sort of a personal project for the time bein’.”
Chris looked over her shoulder. “Preacher Eli Brown shootin’ Caleb Carson has become your ‘personal project’? I think you need to get out more. Miss Sylvie’s really gettin’ to you, huh?”
“I just want to check some things out.”
“Suit yourself.”
Grabbing a cup of coffee, Chris took his seat at his desk, picked up the newspaper, and began reading as though she wasn’t there. She half expected his feet to come up on his desktop he looked so relaxed and at home.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Chris said, noticing her staring. “Did you want a cup?”
“No, I’m good.”
“Okay.”
She went back to the statements in the file. Tom Carson’s account of the incident was this:
Eli Brown entered Carson house armed. He
mentioned his and Tom’s ongoing “land dispute” as
to which Mr. Carson replied, “There is no dispute,
the land is mine.” Mr. Carson said Mr. Brown
wanted the land to build some kind of “institution.”
To this, Eli Brown asked Mr. Carson to produce a
deed. Mr. Carson said production of said deed was
impossible as Mr. Brown had made sure the deed
was disposed of. Unsure at this point what is meant
by “disposed of” and why Mr. Carson cannot just get
the government document reissued. Mr. Carson
seemed unable to answer this when questioned. Mr.
Carson went on to say his boy, Caleb Carson, had
crawled under the supper table and into his lap
Close to the Broken Hearted Page 15