“I’ll go up to the house with you to talk to her, Bo. You know you’d rather I did.”
“I would, but it’s my duty, not yours.”
“Yes, it is. She’s my friend.”
* * *
Willa took the news of her last remaining son’s death stoically and declined our offer to have someone from the church come to stay with her. “It’s nothing more than I’ve been expecting for years,” she said. “I’ve lived through it a thousand times in my mind.”
“I wish it hadn’t ended this way, Willa,” I said.
“So do I, Bo. He could have made something of himself and given me grandchildren and been the comfort of my old age.” She leaned against the door facing and stared out across the yard. “My life sure hasn’t meant much,” she said to no one in particular in a voice that was barely louder than a whisper.
For just a moment I thought about telling her about the child Trina Newland was carrying, but I didn’t. I don’t know why not, but it just didn’t seem to be the right time and place. In the weeks and months since then I’ve gone over the moment a thousand times in my mind and wondered if the whole story would have ended differently if I had. But that’s something I will never know.
* * *
We returned to the cemetery and went through the grim litany once again—autopsies and ballistic examinations, blood tests and pathologists’ reports. We combed the site for physical evidence and found none. When the ambulance departed with the body, I drove Sheila back to the Caravan so she could get her car and go on to work and file her story. Then I had one more unpleasant chore to take care of.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I stopped by the new jail and had them bring Nobel Dennard into one of the interrogation rooms. I waved the jailers out, closed the door, and motioned for him to sit. He looked ratty and deflated. A few days in jail will do that to anybody.
“We need to talk,” I said.
“Bo, it’s like I told you the day after you brought me in. I haven’t got anything to say.”
“Scott’s dead, Nobel.”
His face froze. “What?… How?”
“He was found out at the cemetery this morning. Shot twice.”
“Do you know who did it? Or why?”
I shook my head. “Not a clue who killed him, but as to the why, considering the kind of people he ran with, what can you expect?”
He looked down at his hands where they were clasped on the dull gray metal of the table, and I thought for just a moment he was going to cry. Then he got control of himself.
“I know you didn’t kill the Raynes boy,” I said. “It was obvious, given what I’ve learned about the Twiller murder in the last few days. Scott called you and asked you to pick Doyle Raynes up and bring him out somewhere on the north side of town, didn’t he?”
“Yes, but how—”
“And you couldn’t say no, could you?”
He shook his head.
“Where did you and Doyle meet him?”
“That little crossroads store about five miles northwest of town.”
“What reason did he give you for not coming to get Doyle himself?” I asked.
“He said the city had a couple of traffic warrants out on him and he was afraid if he came near the jail he’d get picked up.”
“So you dropped what you were doing and drove thirty miles to run an errand for a kid most people didn’t even know you were acquainted with?”
He nodded. “Yeah,” he said, his voice almost inaudible.
“Because he knew you were the one person he could trust to help him, isn’t that right?”
He looked up at me with eyes that were infinitely sad. “You know, don’t you, Bo?”
“Yes, Nobel, I know. Willa told me years ago, back when Scott was just a baby. A man just can’t give up on his son, can he?”
He took a deep breath and sighed a long sigh. “No, a man can’t. But I wonder why she told you, of all people.”
I shrugged. “We’re old friends, and something like that is a heavy burden to bear alone. Did you ever let Scott know you were his father?”
“God, no. I would never have done that to Willa.”
“Good,” I said and gazed pointedly into his eyes. “And she’ll never know that you and I talked about it either, will she?”
“Absolutely not.” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “I know what I did was wrong. A young woman, lonely and mad at her husband because he’s been called to active duty. I took advantage of that.”
“It takes two, Nobel. Not that I’m in any position to condemn either of you. But you’ve never stopped. Amanda Twiller, remember? And how many others?”
He nodded bleakly. “It has its consequences, doesn’t it?”
“When did you first contact Scott?”
“Back when he was in high school, right about the time you nailed him and that other kid on those burglaries. Bob Kimball was dead by then, and I could see that Scott was starting to screw up pretty bad. Otherwise I never would have interfered even though it was pretty rough knowing I had a boy out there that I couldn’t acknowledge. At the time I thought maybe I could be an older friend and give him some guidance. I still think it was the right thing to have done.”
“Of course it was,” I said. “And I’ll admit that it proves you’re a better man than I ever thought you were. One thing baffles me, though. What were you going to do? Take the rap for him?”
“He would have eventually cleared me. I know he would. I don’t think for a minute that he killed that Raynes kid.”
“He did, Nobel,” I said gruffly. “Believe it. He killed Amanda Twiller too. And he killed two Mississippi drug dealers in a big shootout last night.”
He looked stunned. “Bo, are you sure?”
“Hell yes, I’m sure. He tried to shoot me too. He’s a stone killer, and there’s no doubt about it. It’s not your fault and it’s not Willa’s fault, and it’s not something I enjoy telling you. Now come on. I’m turning you loose. The DA is dropping the charges, but I’m not going to wait for the paperwork. I’ll have one of my deputies drive you home. I thought you might want to go to the funeral.”
* * *
Back at my office in the courthouse, I made some notes that were meaningless, then stared at the wall for a while trying to think and getting nowhere with the project. I drank a cup of coffee and nibbled a few cookies and reminded myself even as I ate them that I needed to quit between-meal snacks. I made a vow that soon I would do just that as I reached for two more pecan shortbread wafers. Eventually I was able to bear down on my paperwork. I was typing away on the computer in late morning when Maylene stuck her head in the door to tell me that Pappy Clyde was outside and wanted to see me. I told her to send him on in and then to go get the Lysol spray.
In any community all the hard-core drunkards seem to know one another and often congregate together during their squalid revels. In Sequoya, Homer “Pappy” Clyde was their acknowledged philosopher and all-round godfather. He was a year or two past seventy, small, bent, bald, and smelled like he’d been pickled in a mixture of cheap gin and horse piss.
In my seven plus terms as sheriff, I’ve dealt with plenty of alcoholics. The majority fight against their condition in one way or another. Many get into AA or some other program and eventually make a full recovery back to normal life. But I’ve known a few who cheerfully admit their disorder and then go right on drinking without any effort to stop. They seem to take the attitude that if God or fate or whatever it is they believe in has seen fit to make them what they are, then it’s not their place to try to alter their destiny. Pappy was one such individual, and there were maybe a dozen others like him in the county.
A few times over the years the old man had come to my office in hopes of swapping information for a little money to buy whisky with. But for the most part he steered a wide course around me because he knew that I was apt to arrest him and send him into the detox program over at Rusk State Hospital if I thou
ght his health had deteriorated to the point that his life was in danger. Which I’d done a couple of times in the past. Always before when he dropped by, he’d been either three sheets in the wind or wracked with the shakes and on the verge of DTs. But this morning he looked only moderately hungover.
“What’s on your mind, Pappy?” I asked.
“Bad things, Bo.”
“Do you need a drink?” I asked.
“I could use one, but I don’t feel right taking it.”
This was a new turn, and so out of character for him that it shocked me. “Why not?”
“Because I didn’t come here to inform and get paid.”
“No?”
He shook his head. It had long been rumored that Pappy Clyde had been a preacher before the bottle defeated him. Whether that was true or not, his speech was always colorful and sometimes took wing on the soaring currents of high metaphor, as it did today. “I came to do my civic duty,” he said. “Even though it means giving up a good friend into the merciless arms of the law. My heart lies heavy in my breast this morning, Bo Handel. Truly it does, and I hesitate to profit from his misfortune.”
I reached into my desk drawer and brought out the whiskey and a glass. I poured a triple shot and pushed it across the desk. “Go ahead, old fellow,” I said gently. “Make it easy on yourself.”
“I thank you mightily,” he said and drained the glass in one pull and held it out for more. I half filled it this time. He cradled the amber liquid against his chest like a long-lost child and took a deep breath and shook his head. Then he sighed and stared morosely down into his drink for a few moments. When he looked up at me he had tears in his eyes.
“What’s bothering you, Pappy?”
“I know who killed that Kimball boy. I know it as sure as I know that God in heaven made the very earth on which this courthouse stands. I don’t want to tell you, but I feel compelled to. I’m afraid that if I don’t, the Lord will never forgive me. I may not be much in the eyes of the world, but I still hold out hopes of His mercy at the end of my days.”
“I think we could all use a little mercy, Pappy,” I said gently. “So you just go ahead and say what you have to say.”
He nodded absently and then looked down at his drink once more. When he looked back up tears were rolling down his cheeks.
“Who did it, Pappy?”
“It was my old friend Jesse, Sheriff. Jesse Kemp.”
* * *
After I spent an hour getting the warrants, I went across the street to Walter Durbin’s office and wound up waiting another half hour until he was finished with a client. Eventually I got in to see him. “Can you take a ride out in the country with me?” I asked. “It’s important.”
“I guess so. I’m about through for the day, anyway. What’s the problem?”
“I want you to represent a man I’m about to arrest. Or at least I want you to represent him until the judge can appoint him a lawyer. Come on and I’ll tell you more on the way.”
We took the department’s Suburban. I stopped on the edge of town and bought a bottle of Windsor Canadian Whiskey. When I got back in the truck I asked, “How much do you know about Jesse Kemp?”
“I know he won’t do to mess with. He’s an alcoholic Vietnam vet, and he’s a little crazy. I also know he’s somehow kin to Willa Hathaway.”
“Right on all counts. Jesse’s a complex fellow, and I’ve never really figured out what makes him tick. For one thing, he doesn’t really believe in racial equality or racial mixing even though he’s part white. He just seems to assume the segregated world he was born into was the way things were meant to be, and that all the changes since then are perversions of the natural order. He’s smart as hell too. The school psychologist was going back over some old records a few years ago, and he told me Jesse had the third highest IQ ever scored in this school district. And he has dreams and visions. I know several reliable people around town who swear he told them he dreamed about President Kennedy getting killed in Dallas weeks before it happened.”
“Do you believe them?” he asked.
I turned and looked at him and grinned. “Hell, yes I do because I’m one of the ones he told. I remember it as clear as a bell.”
He pulled a long cigar out of his shirt pocket and stuck it in the side of his mouth to chew on. Then he seemed to ponder a moment before he spoke. “I’ve dreamed things that have come true a few times myself. Just minor, unimportant things, but it makes you wonder.”
“Walter, the rational side of my mind says that with the billions of people in this world sleeping every night, some of them are bound to dream things that come true simply as a matter of chance. But the irrational side says something else.”
“Welcome to the club,” he said. “What are you going to charge him with?”
“Nothing, I hope. But maybe manslaughter or even murder. I just don’t know yet.”
“Why don’t you tell me the whole story?”
“Pappy Clyde came by to see me a while ago. All these chronic drunks here around town know one another, but he and Jesse have been especially tight for years. He said he went out to Jesse’s place early this morning in that old broke-down pickup of his. He’d been up all night, and he thought Jesse might have something to drink. Jesse wasn’t there, but he figured he hadn’t gone far since he doesn’t have a vehicle. So Pappy just decided to sit down there in the yard and wait for him. He hadn’t been waiting long when he heard two shots just down the road toward the cemetery. Then about fifteen minutes later Jesse came up the hill carrying a big old revolver. Pappy said Jesse just walked right on past him like he wasn’t there and went in that little shack of his. When he came back out he didn’t have the gun.”
“Scott Kimball,” he said grimly.
“Right. The news is all over the county. Pappy wandered into town a couple of hours ago and heard people talking about him being found dead out at the cemetery. Even as addled as he is, he put two and two together and knew what had happened. And I think you can see my problem. I’m convinced Scott killed Amanda Twiller and Doyle Raynes. I know he killed those two drug dealers in that house we raided two nights ago. If Jesse shot Scott, then there’s every chance in the world that there were mitigating circumstances and that he was justified in doing it.”
“But what possible motive could he have had?”
“More than likely he got it in his head somehow that Scott was going to harm Willa. He’s very protective of her. Or at least he’s as protective as a drunk with no means of transportation can be. Maybe I should have put a stakeout at her place last night, but I really didn’t expect Scott to go home. Besides, it could have caused a hostage crisis, and Willa might have gotten hurt too.”
“So you want me to sign on and—”
“If we find the gun and it matches the bullets in Kimball, I want you to talk to Jesse and come up with a plausible defense out of whatever crazy story he gives you. If he acts like he always has in the past, he’ll either clam up completely or he’ll tell you what happened as he sees it. Whatever he says will probably sound pretty strange because he’s obsessed with biblical prophecy. His mother was a spirit lady. You know what that is, don’t you?”
“A sort of voodoo practitioner, right?”
“More or less. Over here in East Texas it’s called hoodoo, and it’s strongly Protestant where classic Louisiana voodoo uses a lot of Catholic symbolism. In hoodoo you’ve got the priests who actually practice ritual magic, and then you have the spirit ladies, the ones who dream the dreams and have the visions. They’re more respected and feared than the priests because people who believe in this stuff think anybody can learn the rituals while the spirit ladies were actually chosen and set aside by God.”
“Or the devil,” he said.
“Right you are. Nobody who’s into hoodoo is ever quite sure where the prophetic gift comes from, and even the folks who consult the spirit ladies are wary of them. So when you’re talking to Jesse, you need to keep in mind that
not only was he brought up in the middle of all that crazy business, but he’s been drinking rotgut whiskey and listening to his good buddy Pappy Clyde expound his own peculiar interpretations of Scripture for thirty years. So don’t be surprised if his version of things is riddled with images right out of the book of Revelation.”
“Bo, I can’t help but be curious why you’re going to this much trouble for an old alcoholic.”
“Jesse’s a drunk, but he’s honest and he has a hell of a war record. And as far as I know, he’s never hurt anybody who didn’t try to hurt him first. Scott Kimball’s passing was no great loss to the world, and you and I both know it. I just think it would be a shame for a man like Jesse to have to go down for killing him. I don’t believe he’d survive a year in prison.”
“Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll represent him all the way through, and do the whole thing pro bono.”
“Thanks,” I said with a sense of relief. “You’re a good man.”
He snorted. “I don’t know about that, but I’m a combat vet myself, and I won’t stand by and see him turned over to some young pup just out of law school. But we may wind up having to mount an insanity defense, and even if we win, it will still mean incarceration.”
“The state hospital would be a hell of a lot better than the pen.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The sun hung low on the horizon when we pulled up in front of Jesse Kemp’s cabin. He stepped from the doorway and waited impassively until we got out of the Suburban. Jesse was about five-ten, with the muscular, agile body of a man half his age and skin the color of well-seasoned mahogany. The Kemps had a good measure of Cherokee blood, and it showed in Jesse’s features. His eyes were yellowish and slanted over high, flat cheekbones, and that gave his face a distinctly Asiatic cast. That day he was dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of baggy fatigue pants stuffed into the tops of unlaced combat boots. On his head sat an ancient Harley-Davidson leather garrison cap like motorcyclists wore back in the 1940s.
Nights of the Red Moon Page 23