Phantom Nights

by John Farris

  Still be there. Tonight. Waiting for L.H. Wants me to bring L.H. to her.

  "Let me understand. You believe that you saw—" Ramses suddenly lost his ability to breathe. He pressed a hand hard against his midsection. The pain like a white-hot iron stuck clear through him. Alex didn't notice his distress.

  Did see her! Underlining did.

  Ramses gripped the windowsill with one hand behind him until he could breathe again. Less than two hours had passed, and already he needed more of his dwindling supply of morphine. For only the second time since he had diagnosed his own terminal disease, Ramses felt desperately afraid.

  "Alex—you had a narrow escape last night. The fall you took easily might have killed you. Fortunately, you have a hard head. But the concussion you suffered may be responsible for—what you're imagining now."

  No! It's true!

  "Mally is dead, Alex. Now, you know that. We buried her yesterday at Little Grove."

  Alex let the notepad fall from his hands, which were shaking. Ink dotted the yellowed sheet drawn over the lower half of his body. Tears leaked from one eye and ran down the outside of his nose.

  Ramses wiped his own eyes. "You cared for Mally, and I appreciate that. But don't keep on with this fantasy, Alex. It could be very harmful to you. And now I—I must visit the 'colored' ward to see if I can find a doctor to write a prescription for me. I may lie down there for a while. But I'll come back to see you."

  Ramses was leaving by the main entrance when Leland Howard and his entourage, led by the Highway Patrol cruiser, pulled into the drive. Ramses paused on the brick walk beside a low boxwood hedge and watched as Leland and several other men, one of them huge but light on his feet, left a sedan and a limousine and walked quickly across the drive. A trooper joined them. Nobody but the trooper paid attention to Ramses; he gave Ramses the Look. Step aside boy. We have important people here. The walk was a good fifteen feet wide. Ramses might have just continued on his way, but he was hurting, and when he looked at Leland Howard's face he hurt even more.

  Then Leland popped a piece of hard candy into his mouth and tossed a wad of cellophane away.

  "Mr. Howard!"

  They all looked toward him, no one breaking stride. The trooper angling toward Ramses with a thumb tucked inside his gun belt and the other hand on the baton in its holster, ready to draw it.

  "I am Dr. Ramses Valjean. Mally Shaw was my daughter."

  Leland, opposite Ramses now and six feet away, fell out of step with the others, consternation and, possibly, fear in his bright blue eyes.

  "Oh, yes, I—I'm sorry for your loss."

  The huge man with the florid face and plentiful white hair that stuck out like a scarecrow's fright wig from beneath the brim of his Mississippi planter's straw hat put a hand on Leland's elbow as if to get him back in step. Leland grimaced slightly, the piece of candy bulging in one cheek.

  "Enjoy your candy, sir," Ramses said, raising his voice. "The next time you rape a woman, as you raped my daughter, you shouldn't leave the wrappers all over her house or in her car."

  Ramses was satisfied with Leland's gaping reaction, although he had only a moment to enjoy it. He knew what was coming next and didn't try to protect himself. The trooper left his baton on his belt and instead used his elbow, hitting Ramses in the breastbone over the heart, driving him backward over the three-foot-high hedge.

  By the time Ramses had recovered sufficiently to get to his knees in his grass-stained suit, Leland Howard and his lawyers had entered the hospital. The trooper who had knocked Ramses down had posted himself, arms folded, outside the entrance. He didn't give Ramses a glance. The rest of the entourage had left their sedans and were smoking on the oblong of lawn that contained three flagpoles. Old Glory, the Tennessee state flag, and the Stars and Bars. There were two women and two men, one of whom was a runt with a beaked nose. He wore a porkpie hat on the back of his head and looked around with a lively attitude. He was the only one who showed interest as Ramses picked himself up and limped off in the direction of the shabby, barracks-style Jim Crow infirmary on the far side of the parking lot.

  On Alex's first attempt to get out of bed he was able to take four steps before semicollapsing against the wall next to the window. His head was killing him; he felt faint. He made it back to the bed and lay down across it on his stomach until his heart stopped palpitating. Then he tried walking again, gaining a few more shuffling steps this time before he began to see skyrockets behind his eyes. He rested, gritted his teeth, persisted. He wasn't going to stay in the hospital. He had shopping to do, for one thing. A red dress for Mally.

  Alex was leaning buck-naked against the high bed going through the contents of the duffel bag when he heard a commotion on the floor, the voice of Mrs. India Breedlove in protest mode, two or three authoritative male voices. He pawed past a couple of his notebooks and pens, reading material—Weird Tales, Doc Savage, Dime Western, and the latest copy of Boy's Life—to select some clothing.

  He skipped underwear, pulled on a knit sports shirt and a pair of shorts. Then he went barefoot to crack open the door another couple of inches. Looked outside, blinking to sharpen his vision. They were all near the opposite end of the hall. Mrs. Breedlove, another nurse, and some well-dressed men.

  Even at that distance Alex easily recognized Leland Howard.

  He didn't feel any great surge of surprise. It had seemed inevitable to Alex, going back to last night when he and Mally had talked it over, that their paths would soon cross. As if the growing power invested in him the last few nights at Cole's Crossing had ordained Howard's coming.

  He's here, Mally. Now we can do it.

  The runt in the porkpie hat looked into the small room Ramses was occupying, lying on a simple iron bed with a thin mattress, his fingers laced over his sore breastbone as he stared at a watermarked ceiling.

  "How you doing?"

  Ramses lowered his eyes to take him in, didn't speak.

  "Floyd Smart, Memphis Commercial Appeal. I write a column. Could be you've heard of me."

  "No."

  "That's all right, my feelings aren't hurt. I respect your need for solitude in your time of grief. There's always been allegations where our boy Leland is concerned, but sounded to my old ears like you know more than you were given the opportunity to say. What kind of junk you on, Doc? You did say you were a doctor?"

  "Yes. Be good enough to leave me alone."

  "Sure. I can tell you don't feel so hot. I'll just leave my card. Home and work numbers. Reverse the charges if you like. That's if you'd appreciate a sympathetic ear later on. Something I can get in the paper, not more allegations. We're all up here to do a whitewash on the candidate, you understand. He'll leave Evening Shade tonight clean as a choirboy. Kinda like the guy, understand, but I dunno, rape? I like to believe I haven't lost all my juice should there be a good scoop around. Smart. Floyd Smart, in case you didn't catch my name the first time. So long, Doc."

  Jim Giles lay on his own bed of pain and got the bleak news straight from the shoulder, as Gipson Culverhouse, Jr. put it. He was going back for the rest of his twenty-year stretch, no parole hearings this time, and a possible ten more years for ADW.

  "Sorry, Jim, there's no authority under heaven can do a damn thing for you. But still, and you already know this: There's all manner of ways to do your time, and suitable arrangements can be made that will considerably lighten the load."

  "I ain't going back there," Giles said, loaded with opiates and looking, as they say, at everyone in the room as if through the wrong end of a telescope.

  "Or," Culverhouse said, his eyes narrowing, "it can become well-nigh intolerable. No man is made of iron."

  Giles licked dry lips. His tongue and his left hand, which was pressed against his forehead, were about the only parts of his body that he could move.

  "Goddamn that deputy," he muttered. "Six months in a Goddamned body cast."

  "Jim, I feel so terrible about this," Leland Howard said, looking ove
r Culverhouse's shoulder. The big lawyer from Memphis was astride a sturdy wooden chair only a couple of feet from the side of the wounded felon's bed.

  "What is it going to be, Jim?" Culverhouse said.

  "I don't have no feeling in my right hand at all."

  "We'll help you sign, Jim. All six copies." He looked sharply back at one of the young lawyers, who unbuckled his briefcase. Silence in the room except for the squeak of Leland Howard's shoes as he paced, sweating, sucking hard candy. Jim Giles breathed through his mouth.

  "All right. Give me the fucken thing."

  "You've made the right choice," Culverhouse assured him as he was handed the papers and a clipboard. He produced his own 18-carat-gold writing instrument for the occasion.

  "But I ain't goin' back," Giles repeated. His voice had fallen low along with his eyelids, so either the other men in the room didn't hear him or chose to ignore what he was trying to tell them.

  Cecily Gambier drove to the hospital in her Plymouth coupe, Rhoda beside her in the front seat holding Brendan on her shoulder; he was asleep after a cranky visit to his pediatrician in Jackson.

  On the second floor of the hospital, Cecily encountered a cross Mrs. Breedlove, who was continuing to have a bad day. Cecily's youth and freshness further aggravated her. They had looked everywhere, she curtly explained. Alex was missing with his duffel bag. Nobody around the hospital admitted having the slightest. Mrs. Breedlove saw fit to lecture Cecily about this folly of Alex's. Head injuries were nothing to trifle with. Serious consequences could arise. Cecily replied that common sense was never Alex's strong point. To get away from Mrs. Breedlove, she walked down to the semiprivate room to see if Alex had left anything behind. Like a message scrawled in blood on one of the walls. While she was looking in from the doorway, the fluorescent fixtures along the hall began to flicker.

  There was an elderly Negro porter at the far end. He looked up and around, leaning on his mop handle. Then he put the mop aside and ventured a few slow steps to the room occupied by Jim Giles. Cocked his head, listening, then pushed the door open. He was inside for several seconds while Cecily walked back to the nurses' station. Mrs. Breedlove was frowning as her desk lamp misbehaved.

  Then the old porter came out of Jim Giles's room gesturing, pointing back and saying Lawd Nuss Breedlove! Lawd God a'Mighty!

  There were extra chairs in Bobby's office. A pot of fresh coffee. A fan going. Bobby had changed his uniform blouse. He had Acting Chief Deputy J. B. Garretson with him and the departmental stenographer, Mary Wingfield, whom he had asked not to chew gum. He sat behind his desk with folded hands on the blotter. At two minutes past three by the clock over his door, he knew by the clamor of news people who had been gathering on the courthouse lawn for at least an hour that Leland Howard had arrived with his legal team.

  "Reckon how did they all know he was a-comin'?" Garretson said. He was leaning with folded arms against the high sill of the window, peering up and out at street level, not able to see much.

  Bobby shrugged. "He's news, that's all I know." But he wasn't happy. He felt something going wrong already, smelled it like old garbage, Leland Howard about to slip from his grasp. Those damn lawyers. Sledgehammers, and he was the peanut they'd come to crush.

  Another deputy brought four men to Bobby's office. Three lawyers—or more like four and a half considering Gipson Culverhouse's reputation, a weighty man with a weighty name in Southern legal circles. The other lawyers were there to carry things and learn from the sage himself. Leland Howard wasn't wearing his trademark ice-cream suit, looking more like the banker he once was in dark blue and pinstripes, high collar in spite of the heat, and a fat necktie.

  Introductions. Coffee, anyone? Sure. Three of his visitors took seats while Gipson Culverhouse remained standing behind Leland Howard's chair, which was squarely in front of Bobby's desk. He dominated the office, looking down on everyone.

  Bobby got started.

  "Mr. Howard, I greatly appreciate your taking time off from a busy campaign, sir, to be here today. I wanted to ask you a few questions relating to the death of Mally Shaw."

  "Well, I'm certainly—"

  Lawyer Culverhouse held up a hand to interrupt.

  "Are we proceeding here with the understandin', Deputy Gambier"—Culverhouse had placed a faint but slighting emphasis on "deputy"—"that this will not be a formal interrogation?"

  "That's right."

  "Then with due apologies to your charmin' stenographer"—Culverhouse beamed at Mary Wingfield—"I see no reason for her continuing presence."

  Bobby glanced at Mary. She packed up and left. Leland Howard stroked his upper lip with a forefinger and watched her go. Mary in polished cotton slacks was powerfully appealing.

  "And now if I may read a brief statement of Mr. Howard's that will be given to the members of the press gathered outside the courthouse this afternoon, it might save us a good deal of time. And none of us have eaten lunch."

  Bobby nodded. Culverhouse reached to his right without looking, and the typed one-paragraph statement was placed in his hand. He took his reading glasses from his shirt pocket and put them on.

  "'I knew Mally Shaw as a dedicated and tireless professional nurse who provided care and comfort for my beloved father, Priest Howard, during his last days. I spoke to her only on one occasion, which was the afternoon that my father passed away. I was deeply shocked to hear of her untimely death. Mally will always have a special place in my heart for what she meant to all of our family.'"

  Bobby held out a hand, and the statement was passed to him. He put it on his blotter, looked at Leland Howard for a few seconds, looked at Gipson Culverhouse, who was receiving another document.

  "What I have here, Deputy Gambier, is a full, voluntary confession by Mr. James Giles of his involvement in Mally Shaw's death. Giles has acknowledged complete responsibility for the unfortunate circumstances that led to her being mauled by the Catahoula hounds owned by Mr. Howard, hounds which you have impounded."

  "You must have done some good detective work," Leland commented. Culverhouse looked for a moment as if he wanted to swat his client on the back of the head.

  J. B. Garretson, still by the window, cleared his throat with a fist against his mouth, watching Bobby, who was smiling in disbelief.

  "When did you obtain this confession?"

  "Half an hour ago, in his room at the hospital."

  "If you please, sir."

  Bobby was handed a copy of the confession, which he read through carefully. Jim Giles stated that on Saturday night, August the first, he acted on an impulse to have a little fun and called on Mally Shaw at her home. There he forced her to have sex with him. Subsequently, he drove Mally to Leland Howard's farm, where she jumped out of the car and ran from him. He was well liquored up and not thinking clearly when he turned the Catahoulas loose to track her down. Just having a little more fun. By the time he caught up to the dogs, he was too late to help Mally. It had never occurred to him that bitches in heat could be a danger to a panicked female human being on the run. Thinking a little more clearly by then, he sought to cover up what he'd done by moving her body from a field south of the farmhouse to the Little Grove cemetery. After that he turned a hose on the dogs to wash off most of the blood and changed his clothes. By seven o'clock Sunday morning, he was driving the unsuspecting Leland Howard to Knoxville, as he was paid to do.

  Bobby put the two-page confession, duly signed by three witnesses and notarized, on top of Leland Howard's statement. As if he needed more time to think, he had a couple of sips of cooling coffee. He ignored Leland Howard and raised his eyes to Leland's lawyer, who was nodding almost imperceptibly with a look of savor and a twinkle in his eye.

  "You'll be giving this to the press too, I imagine," Bobby said.

  "Yes, they'll be eager to run it, along with those photos of the Catahoula hounds that somehow the Tri-State Defender got hold of early this morning. Quite a little scoop for them."

  Bobby leaned bac
k in his swivel chair. "Mr. Culverhouse, my father was high sheriff of Evening Shade for twenty-three years. I learned a lot from him. Learned more as a military policeman; and I have been a deputy in this department for almost five years. What I'm getting at, sir, I can smell a crock of shit when it's right under my nose."

  Culverhouse's nodding became more pronounced; he smiled amiably. Leland did some twisting in his chair. J. B. Garretson cleared his throat again.

  Bobby said to Leland Howard, "I suppose you'll have another statement about how terrible you feel, the way Giles betrayed your good faith and trust in his paroled ass."

  Culverhouse pulled a round gold watch from the front pocket of his trousers and opened the initialed cover.

  "If we have finished here—a good meal has long eluded us this day—"

  "Not quite finished," Bobby interrupted. "I still need to hear from Mr. Howard, a few questions on my mind."

  "As you wish." Culverhouse folded his arms over Leland's blond head, steadfast and stem as a personal god. Bobby smiled at the pose, softly cynical.

  "Mr. Howard, can you account for your whereabouts Saturday last?"

  "Yes. I was in Evening Shade, burying my father, sir."

  "After that?"

  "I didn't care to spend the night in my boyhood home, so I had Mr. Giles drive me to the farm."

  "When was the last time you saw Mr. Giles on Saturday night?"

  "He asked my permission to use the car. That was about nine o'clock."

  "Was Mr. Giles drinking before he left the farm?"

  "No."

  "Before he took your car, did you warn him that if he dropped into a juke to hoist a few beers he would be in violation of his parole?"

  "I never thought it was necessary. In the months he worked for me, James never gave reason for me to be concerned about his behavior."

  "So on this particular Saturday night he goes off the deep end, rapes a woman—"

  "I just can't account for it."