Jules and his wife Lily lived in a brightly trimmed shack at the outskirts of town. Long ago someone had given Jules some leftover watery paint. The window trim was blue and the door red.
“Who was it?” John asked.
“Well, I can’t rightly call his name in the open.”
“What makes you think it was The Skinner?”
Jules stayed inside by the fire and no one could see his expression. “’Cause it was. He’s one of your people.”
Tom forgot the scissors in his hand. “You saying he was black?”
“Nope. Y’all ain’t listening. You’re hearing my words, but not what I’m sayin’. I didn’t say one of our people. He’s one of John’s people…he’s a lawman.”
John felt cold all of a sudden. Like Ned Parker, he despised a crooked lawman. “Who is it then, Jules? Don’t keep pulling on us.”
There was a long pause inside the dim room. “It’s Sheriff Poole’s boy.”
After a silence longer than a year, John cleared his throat. The men exchanged glances.
“Who?”
“Poole’s boy, that Constable Chase.”
“Wait, I’m confused. Raymond Chase is Delbert Poole’s son?”
“Yessuh.”
“Jules, you sure for a fact?”
“Yessuh. Course the boy never carried his daddy’s name, because they never was married. I know because my cousin Corina kept their baby some and found out they was common-law. Everybody thought she’d married him, but she moved in his house ’cause she come up expecting, but she wouldn’t marry him. It was all jus’ for looks.”
“What makes you think it was him? Why would he be trying to get into your window in the middle of the night?”
“’Cause I found out about him one day when Raymond Chase had this young boy in handcuffs, Doak Looney’s boy, and he was bringing him up to Mr. O.C.’s office after they arrested him for making whiskey. The boy said he seen what was done out in the woods, and he knew who done it cause he’d watched it. Raymond Chase got that boy in a corner and whispered in his ear like I couldn’t hear.
“Y’all knows how it is. Sometimes white folks forget we’re standing there, or that we ain’t got good sense. I didn’t act like I heard, but I know what he whispered to that boy. He said, ‘Son, don’t you ever say a word about me or I’ll shove a hot screwdriver up yo’ ass and gut you like a dead coon.’ That’s what he said. He said ‘I’ve had experience with a knife and I know how to make you last fo’ days ’thout givin’ you the luxury a’dyin’.’ He said that to that poor scared boy.”
“Maybe he was trying to scare a confession out of him.” John suddenly realized the terrible truth. He could feel the blood drain from his face.
“Maybe you ain’t heard tell of that boy since that day.” Jules grunted out of his chair to shuffle into the open doorway. “He went to Blossom, but no one has seen him since he left. He’s in a shaller grave somewhere and there he’ll stay ’til the good Lord comes back. Maybe you think Jules ain’t got good sense, either. But I know for sho’ he was tryin’ to get in my house so’s he could kill me and my ’leventh wife, Lily, and he wouldn’t have to worry no more then about me tellin’ what I know. He told me. Jus’ the other day he got on my elevator and when I close the gate he told me to hold on, that he had something to say to me. I reckon he got to thinking back about me hearin’ him whispering them things after all.
“He got right in my face and told me he had punishment for Mister Ned and his family and once he was finished with him, if I ever said anything, he’d come and do the same thing to me. He looked at me and said you know how good I am at keeping things alive past when they want to go. He said, ‘You heard tell about the bottoms.’
“I don’t know what he has against Mister Ned, but I ain’t afraid to say I been scared ever since then and I keep my ol’ pistol primed and ready.”
He pulled his faded shirttail up to expose the butt of a worn revolver stuck in the belt around his skinny waist. The men on the porch exchanged uneasy glances. Now they had suddenly become part of whatever was going on in the bottoms and none of them liked it. The white Law wouldn’t take it very well to know folks on the colored side of the tracks was keeping information about The Skinner to themselves.
My god, John thought. There’s he’s killed and hidden bodies we don’t even know about. How many more could there be?
“Another thing.”
“What Mister Jules?”
“I reckon you got to handle this right.”
The yard was completely silent. John felt the hair on his neck tickle with goose bumps. “What are you saying, Mr. Jules.”
The old man snorted and held onto the door frame. “I tol’ you I lissen. I knew your daddy well, John. One-Arm George was a good friend and one day he came by the courthouse while I was eating my dinner out back there on the retainin’ wall and told me he’d learned Sheriff Poole was messin’ with his boy like men ought not do. But he was afraid Poole knew what he’d learned. George wanted to let somebody know the truth, in case something happened to him, and something did, and Poole did it.”
“So what do you mean handle this right?” John looked around the porch for help in understanding. He’d always known Poole had probably killed his father, and the confirmation was both a burden and a relief.
“So I mean this thing could tear the town apart. You got to deal with them people across the tracks there the right way. Handle it careful like, so none of it gets on us, like it did your daddy, so they knows fo’ sho’ Raymond Chase is The Skinner and not one of us. It’d be easy to blame on colored folks, so’s they won’t have to say the real killer is a white lawman. Now, I don’t know nothin’ else, and I’d not like to say any more.” Jules turned around and went back to his warm stove.
“Men, y’all listen to me now,” John rumbled in his deepest authoritative voice. “Mister Ned and Mr. O.C. needs to know this, and then they’ll tell Sheriff Griffin if they want to. But I won’t say for sure it was Jules who told me. Y’all need to keep it quiet, too.”
Tom went back to snipping at Reverend Sander’s hair in silence. They agreed without a vote, each man’s thoughts sinking in deep and true.
John crossed the yard and called Ned on the Motorola, but there was no answer. He had no idea Ned was breaking up Miss Becky’s vegetable patch with the garden plow, getting ready to plant. O.C. wasn’t in his office, either, compounding his frustration and sense of urgency. Close to a panic for the first time in his life, Big John drove to Frenchie’s café hoping to find O.C. having coffee.
The judge was there all right, straddling a stool at the counter. John saw him through the window when he parked his car in front of the building. Anxious to the point of carelessness, John nearly jerked the screen door off the hinges on his way in. Every white face in the café snapped toward his frantic entrance. Realizing the unwritten law he was breaking, even as a Deputy Sheriff, John stopped in momentary indecision.
He’d been through Frenchie’s door only once, as a child. A sharp memory flashed in his mind as he hesitated at the threshhold.
When John was six, he chose to enter the café through the front, instead of taking the longer route into the alley to where the colored folks ate in the back. He barely made it six steps inside when a strong, white hand grabbed his arm.
“What you doin’ in here boy? You know better than to come in the front door of this café.” The faceless man spun John around and sent him back through the door with a swift kick to the pants. “Don’t you come back in here no more. You take and get your greens in the back.”
His early humiliation finally submitted to the urgency of the situation when he saw O.C. Rains’ silver hair at the counter. He started toward the judge, knowing clear as day what was coming, when Wilbur Meyers slipped off his counter stool and put John’s hand in the middle of his chest to stop him.
“You know better than to come through the front door, Officer Washington.”
For th
e first time in his life Big John’s placid patience snapped. He grabbed the hand on his chest and his massive biceps bulged. Wilbur’s wrist snapped like a dry stick. He was a mechanic at the Ford house and considered himself the toughest man on the north side of town. He found in an instant that he wasn’t a patch on Big John’s shirt. His shriek echoed through the café. Clutching his injured wrist and sinking to the oiled wooden floor, Wilbur suddenly realized the raging black man in front of him represented more than skin color.
Big John was already reaching for the sap in his back pocket to deal with two other men rushing from the counter when O.C. slammed down his coffee cup and slid off his stool.
“You men stop! This is one of my deputies, and if anyone lays another finger on him, I’ll have y’all working the chain gang down in Huntsville before tomorrow evenin’. Now, y’all sit your asses back down.” He snapped his fingers loudly. “John…John, nobody’s messin’ with you. Settle down, now.”
Big John’s eyes cleared and his anger dissipated as quickly as it had materialized. He slipped the sap back into his pocket. The men pulled Wilbur from the floor and escorted him outside, giving John a wide berth as they passed.
With an effort, the big deputy focused on O.C.’s concerned face. “We need to talk somewhere, Mr. O.C. Right now.”
Realizing John would never consider entering Frenchie’s without a serious reason, O.C. grabbed his hat from the counter and took his arm. “Frenchie, put it on my tab. C’mon, let’s get outside.”
Stunned into silence, Frenchie simply nodded. She watched the two men leave through the front door. Once it slapped closed behind them, the café exploded in outrage.
Seeing John’s car parked at the curb, O.C. didn’t hesitate to open the door and sit in the front seat. John went around the front and settled behind the wheel. His eyes flicked to Wilbur getting into a nearby truck for a ride to the emergency room.
O.C. saw his glance. “Don’t you worry about Wilbur. He assaulted a peace officer and I’ll take care of the rest later on. Now, what’s wrong? How come you to bust through the door like that?”
John swallowed hard and rubbed his forehead. “I know who the feller is Mister Ned’s been chasing. I know who The Skinner is. I just heard for sure.”
“Heard from who?”
“Jules.” John told him the story he heard at the barber shop.
“Are you sure? You know what you’re saying is the truth?”
“Yessir. Jules told it for the truth and I believe him. I’ll stake my badge on it.”
“That would explain a lot of things. Did you tell Ned yet?” O.C.’s first indication was to call the FBI boys set up in a basement room at the courthouse, but then he changed his mind.
“Can’t raise him on the radio. I was gonna call him on the phone, but I wanted to tell you first. I’m about to drive out there now.”
“All right. Let’s get back to my office and I’ll call him from there. Then you light up this car and drive out there, in case I can’t get him on the phone. Now, carry me down to the courthouse and then get going.”
Half a dozen faces watched them leave through the flyspecked windows in front of Frenchie’s café.
John shifted into gear and in seconds O.C. got out of the car at the courthouse steps. John leaned over and spoke through the open passenger window.
“Jules, Mr. O.C.”
“Don’t worry, John. I won’t say where we heard. Now, git!”
Chapter Thirty
Ned had to know what John had discovered. With the big deputy on his way to Center Springs, O.C. hurried up the granite stairs to his office, since no one was there to operate the elevator. He was out of breath and had to sit for a moment after unearthing the black rotary phone from a pile of papers on his desk. He dialed the five numbers for Ned’s house.
It rang over eight times before Miss Becky finally picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Becky, this is O.C.”
“Well, hidy. I was just thinking about you. I’m churning right now and there’ll be fresh buttermilk tonight. You and Catherine oughta come out and visit for a while and get you a glass. How is she today?”
“She’s fine. Becky, is Ned around the house?”
The terse tone in his voice let her know the judge had something on his mind besides buttermilk. She became serious. “He’s up at the garden. You need him?”
“I do. Right quick.”
“All right.” He heard her put the receiver down on the telephone table. Her footsteps retreated into the distance and he heard her calling Ned from the porch in a shrill voice.
Frustrated and impatient, O.C. could do nothing but chew the inside of his cheek while he waited for Ned to leave the plow and walk the hundred or so yards back to the house. If he was using Jake to plow it would take even longer. O.C. thanked his lucky stars that Becky wasn’t the type of woman to come back on the line and try to engage him in small talk until Ned arrived.
When he could no longer stand it, O.C. finally heard the screen door slam and Becky tell Ned who was on the line. The receiver rattled as Ned fumbled with it. “O.C.?”
“Yep. Deputy Washington knows who’s been doing killing out there.”
Suddenly weak-kneed, Ned sat down on the hard wooden seat of the telephone table and clutched the phone with a white knuckled grip. “Who is it?”
O.C. told him.
“What makes you think Raymond’s The Skinner?”
O.C. told him the story he’d heard from John. Ned listened in silence until O.C. finished and then sighed. “It all makes sense then.” The pieces had fallen into place. “He started this meanness when he was a kid. Then he joined the army and went overseas to Vietnam. The trouble stopped for a couple of years, and it started again once he got back. I guess being over there finished doing something we can’t imagine. It must have swole black inside until he worked hisself up and took to killing people back over here.”
“That’s what I figger. Them FBI boys say it’s how the pattern works. Those newspaper ads were part of a plan, but I can’t figure out why he’s after your family.”
“He’s mad at me. There ain’t nobody knows it, but I caught him a time or two when he was a kid. Once he was messing with a heifer out at his granddaddy’s place, you know what I mean.”
“Yeah.”
“I chewed on his ass a while and turned him loose with a warning. Then I caught him racing down on the creek with one of them real young Miller girls in the car. I didn’t let that one go, and I took him to his mama’s house. She lived in a tarpaper shack out near Blossom. We struck a deal where Raymond worked off a kangaroo sentence I cooked up. After that he seemed to straighten up and fly right, so I never expected something like this.”
“Well, he’s stewed on it quite a while.” O.C. held the receiver and stared at the piles of papers on his desk, but not seeing them at all. “He’s been turned like that all his life.”
“How come?”
O.C. told him the remainder of the story and Poole’s involvement. The final piece was clear as a neon sign.
Ned took a deep breath over the phone. “Oh lord. I didn’t know who his mama was, or that he was Poole’s boy. By the time I met her life had about used her up. I should have probably done something else, or told you when he got elected, but I thought he’d outgrown all that and maybe he’d make a good lawman. It would have been different if I’d known he was Poole’s boy though, and what had been done to him.”
“Don’t go second-guessing yourself. You’ve had the opportunity to arrest half the boys in your precinct at one time or another, but you did what was right and either warned them off, or told their daddies. It ain’t your fault.”
“Well, now we got troubles. Have you told those FBI boys about this?”
“Nope. It’s been yours from the git-go. John’s on his way out there to your house and we decided not to use the radio, in case somebody heard. Y’all are gonna have to handle it from there. I’ll let them know tomorro
w, after y’all arrest him.”
“I’ll find him. He’s off today, so there’s no tellin’ where he is.”
“All right, then. Let me know what you find out,” O.C. hung up without another word.
Ned replaced the receiver, but he missed the second click as Miss Whitney gently hung up the party line. He wouldn’t have heard it anyway, because he was almost shaking with relief to find the suspect wasn’t Cody, who’d been at the top of his list for the past couple of weeks.
He turned to find Miss Becky standing beside him. “I’m fixin’ to go with John when he gets here.”
“You got time for supper?”
“Naw, he’ll be here in a few minutes and I need to clean up first. Where are the kids?”
“They’re somewhere here abouts. They lit out when I started cleaning, so I ‘magine they’re playing up at the barn.”
“I want them here.”
She studied Ned’s face for a moment. “I’ll call ’em.” She stepped out on the porch. “Yooouu! Top! Pepper!!! Come to the house!”
Thunder rumbled across the river. Ned glowered at the clouds building to the north and went to unharness Jake before it started raining.
Chapter Thirty-one
Ned stepped out on the porch with the .38 belted around his waist of his khakis as John slid to a dusty stop in the yard. The deputy noticed the heavier caliber pistol immediately.
The look on Ned’s face told of another problem afoot.
“John, we got more troubles. The kids are gone and we ain’t seen them since dinner.”
“They ain’t up at the barn, or at the store? Maybe they’re fooling around down at the pool?”
“Nope. James is on his way over here to help us find them, but we don’t even know where to look.”
John saw the scared look in Ned’s blue eyes and felt his stomach lurch. “You think they been took?”
“I hope not.”
“Did you tell James what we suspicion?”
“I had to. Here he comes now.”
The Rock Hole Page 24