Broken English

by P. L. Gaus

  In the car, on the drive back to Millersburg, Cal Troyer began to pray. When Caroline pulled the car up to the Raber farm, he seemed at first not to know where he was. When he recognized the farm and roused himself, he climbed out, walked up the lane to the big house, and turned inside without speaking. He had an utterly crestfallen and bewildered expression on his face, and, for the first time, his mind and heart seemed battered by cruel doubts, the temptation to lose faith in David Hawkins nearly overpowering him.

  27

  Monday, June 16 5:10 P.M.

  FOLLOWING them down the lane to the rifle range would have been a monstrously stupid mistake. He could see that now. But it had been close. Another near-fatal error. Too many, now. Too much on the line. He closed his eyes and relived the shattering, unbearable hours when Branden had gone to New Jersey. The risk to have let him go there unfollowed. To have let him go there at all. To even have let him live.

  Going back to check the bugs at the Brandens’ had been worth the risk. The call Branden had made from Trenton had delivered him. Now it was clear that Branden had not figured out anything at all. Nothing. Perhaps he never would. At least not in time to matter.

  No need to follow them, now. He had gotten it all when Erlanger had called Caroline. Fools. Sightless country fools. It’d all be over before any of them caught a clue.

  Now, just wait it out. Follow them back into town, and watch for signs of trouble. If any of it started to unravel, he always had the .22 and the silencer. Do Branden out in the country. Lure him there with a phone call, and it’d be days before they found him. Even if they did, Sands would still go down for Janet Hawkins. And whatever else might happen, no matter the cost, he promised himself again that Sands was going to pay.

  28

  Monday, June 16 11:30 P.M.

  HALF of the deputies and half of the Holmes County Sheriff’s Reserve found themselves called to duty at various stations near the center of Millersburg. Bruce Robertson had them stationed at precise locations near the courthouse. There were squad cars to block traffic on each street leading to the courthouse, with instructions to use no lights. Ellie Troyer was on the dispatch radio, with instructions to call those cars into place when Robertson appeared in the front room with Jesse Sands. Six deputies patrolled the sidewalks around the jail and the courthouse, armed with 12-gauge pumps and their duty pistols. Two more deputies would go with Robertson into the cells, each carrying a shotgun. Ricky Niell followed Robertson in, carrying leg irons, a waist restraint, and handcuffs. Robertson said, “Not the leg irons, Ricky,” and then all was ready.

  Robertson, Niell, Wilsher, and Schrauzer pushed through the iron door abruptly, rousted Sands from his sleep, threw him onto the floor, bound his wrists to an iron band around his waist, and stood him upright in his cell. Sands protested, and Robertson yanked his head back by the top of his sandy hair.

  “You’re gonna walk, Sands, and you’re not gonna say a word,” Robertson snapped.

  As they pulled Sands toward the cell door, he shouted and tried to twist free of the deputies. Robertson swung his nightstick against the back of Sands’s legs, dropping him forward on his knees.

  Robertson said, “Gag him,” and Ricky Niell produced a wad of cloth and a leather strap. He pushed the cloth into Sands’s mouth, wrapped the strap around to the back of his head, and tied it off with force. Then Niell jerked Sands to his feet and pushed him through the door. When Ellie saw them coming down the steps at the far end of her hall, she called for the cars to block the streets, and when they were in place, Robertson nodded. “We’re going in the side door. Right?” he said.

  The deputies nodded grimly, and Robertson led the way out the front door of the jail. It took less than fifteen seconds for them to run Sands into the side entrance of the darkened courthouse. Without stopping, they ran him up the long steps from the basement, and then up the two long stairways to the third floor. Their feet pounded out a furious commotion on the old wooden floors as they pushed ahead in the dark. On the third floor, they ran to the remodeled men’s room, pushed Sands through the door into Robertson’s custom brick room, dropped him onto the single cot, and untied his gag.

  Sands squirmed and fought against his cuffs and tried to struggle to his feet in the dark. Robertson sent one deputy back to give Ellie the word, and he put two deputies on the door. When Ellie got the go-ahead, she called in the squad cars, and the deputies out on the lawn poured into the darkened courthouse and took up positions that Robertson had earlier designated. By the end of the operation, Jesse Sands found himself in a brick-lined room, with a cot, a toilet, and a cold-water sink.

  When a deputy hit the light switch in the outside observation room, Sands looked around and growled, “This is a stinking toilet.”

  “That’s right, Sands, it’s your own special little stinking toilet,” Robertson sneered.

  There were four men in the outer room, and Niell inside with Robertson and Sands. Robertson eyed Sands with contempt, and looked around at his handiwork with a satisfied expression. The deputies waited.

  Sands rose off his cot and moved threateningly toward the sheriff. Robertson caught him across the face with his nightstick and dropped him to the floor. Then Robertson pushed a knee into Sands’s back and ordered the deputies to unlock the restraints on his waist and wrists. When Robertson let Sands up, he sat on the edge of his cot and rubbed at his wrists.

  “This is your new home, Sands,” Robertson said. “You’re going to trial through that door, and you’re gonna live inside a brick box until we’re done with you here.”

  “You country slobs won’t convict me of anything,” Sands snarled. “I’ve got lawyers.”

  Robertson said, “Niell, I want you to take my sidearm and my nightstick and back out of here. Close the door and don’t open it until I tell you to.”

  Niell obeyed.

  Sands relaxed and lay back on the small bed. Robertson waited until the steel door was closed, and then he yanked Sands up by the shoulders and jammed his back against the brick wall inside Sands’s new cell. The palms of both the sheriff’s massive hands were planted flat on either side of Sands’s neck. Robertson’s jaw was set like a cocked hammer, eyes blazing heat, a snarl on his lips.

  Sands started to say something, but Robertson drew back his fist, and Sands swallowed his words. Robertson forced himself close enough that he could have clipped eyelashes off Sands’s face with his teeth.

  “Shut up, Sands,” he growled, taking hold of Sands’s throat. “Shut up or I’ll stomp a hole in you right here. I don’t care a rat’s hole, as you can plainly see, whether or not you draw another breath. But I do care about my good name, so you’re not checking out on my watch. After your trial, I’ll stand in line to light you up. But if you have to sleep in a brick toilet for a month in order to save my good name, then that’s what you’re gonna do.”

  The sheriff eased his grip on Sands’s throat. “You’re not gonna die in my custody, Sands, that’s just the way it is. But here’s a little something for you. One day down the road, not right away, because your lawyer will appeal, but someday you’re gonna pay for Janet Hawkins. You’re gonna lie back that last time, and I’ll be there to strap you down. The governor of this fine state owes me a favor or two, and I’ll be there to push the poison into you, myself.

  “Oh, sure, guys like Cal Troyer will try to save your soul. But that day, Sands, it’ll be just you and me, and I’ll be the one who’s smiling. I’m gonna drop-kick your worthless hide into the next world, and it won’t be too cruel. Won’t be too unusual. It won’t be even a little bit sad. That day’ll come, Sands, soon enough, and I’m gonna send you back to your maker.

  “You see, Sands, Cal Troyer and his type believe in a God of love, mercy, and forgiveness. Well, that may be true, but I don’t get too worked up on that particular angle. Makes sense, you see, but I just don’t get emotional about it like Troyer does. No, Sands, I take it a step further. I see a God of justice. Justice for people lik
e Janet Hawkins. And justice for scum like you.”

  29

  Tuesday, June 17 10:00 A.M., and later that night

  CAROLINE met the professor at the baggage claim, lower level, of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. She had driven their small truck, and he tossed his one bag into the truck bed and climbed in on the passenger’s side. As she drove, he recounted for her the fruitless hours he had spent in New Jersey.

  In turn, she told of the afternoon she and Cal had spent at Erlanger’s rifle range. When she described how Hawkins had zeroed his scope, the professor urged her to retell it with all the details.

  “The first targets were posted at two hundred yards,” she said. “Each shot he took brought him closer to zero. The last shot was dead on.

  “Erlanger showed us Hawkins’s little yellow flags on white poles. Windage markers. He said Hawkins can see heat shimmers in his scope, and that he slows his pulse for a shot. Then Erlanger moved his telescope to focus on other targets, at more than three hundred yards. More little flags there, too. The first shots in this second set were low, and the last one was a dead-center bull’s-eye.”

  Branden thought of Jesse Sands and fell silent as Caroline drove south on I-71. “Michael,” Caroline said at last. “Have you ever been to Hawkins’s house at night, like when Janet Hawkins was killed?”

  “No,” Branden said, rousing with her question.

  “Do you know everything that happened that night between Sands and Greyson?”

  “No,” Branden complained.

  “I’ll go over there tonight,” he said. “Try to see what it was like when Greyson captured Sands.”

  By nightfall, a breeze from the north had stiffened, and the temperature had dropped twenty degrees. A cool mist gave way to a drizzle, and then a soaking downpour. By 10:00 P.M., the professor was standing in the rain, wearing a long, black, hooded poncho, in front of a neighborhood bar on the west end of town.

  The Budweiser sign out by the street was shining. There were two cars in the gravel lot beside the old green house. He climbed the wooden steps onto the porch and entered through the steel door with a small diamond of heavy glass for a window. Two old cigarette machines stood inside the door. Two of the booths held customers.

  The bartender was a short man with tattoos. He dried his hands on a white apron that hung at his waist and drew Branden a beer. He said he remembered Sands. Branden nursed the beer, not liking it especially, and asked about the night when Jesse Sands had sat on the last barstool, drinking alone.

  Leaving his beer half finished, Branden paid up, went out through the back door, and found himself near the intersection of two alleys in the old neighborhoods of Millersburg. He checked his location against his memory of where the Hawkins house stood, and started off in that direction.

  In ten minutes he had found the right house from the alley in back. The key in his pocket let him in through the door on the back porch. He felt his way in the dark as Sands must have done. From memory, he found the kitchen and then the door that let out onto the side door landing.

  He turned in the dark to the swinging door on his right and pushed through into the dining room. He felt his way into the living room and found the steps to the second floor. He sat on the steps thinking about Jesse Sands for a while, about his movements the night he shot Janet Hawkins. Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the dim street light coming through the front windows. He worked his way back to the kitchen, where he went through the door to the basement stairs.

  On the landing, he felt for the wall switch to the basement lights, but out of a vague sense of familiarity, he did not throw the switch. Instead, Branden felt his way down the steps in the dark.

  Again, there was the background hum of dehumidifiers in the basement. The faint oiled aroma of the machine tools. The wooden block was in its secret place under the stairs. The hidden toggle switch once again activated the electric bolts to the hidden door in the wall behind him. The door turned inward noiselessly when he pushed. He closed the door behind himself, took five paces across the darkened room, found the padded stool, and sat down, unnerved to the point of distraction to have understood the power and resolve that David Hawkins surely now possessed, as he made his plans with his newly zeroed rifle.

  Branden remembered Cal Troyer, out at the Raber farm, and then Abigail, her outward beauty marred by a single scar, her inward beauty measureless. He thought of Herman P. Raber’s great-grandfather and the homestead cabin where Abigail and Hawkins were to have been married. He thought of Nancy Blain, and Eric Bromfield. He thought of Marty Holcombe, preparing to run as much of the stories as Bromfield had managed to finish before he was killed. He thought of Bruce Robertson’s limitless, manic determination to guard Jesse Sands. He thought of Ricky Niell, not at all convinced that the sheriff was actually right about David Hawkins. He thought of Brown, the chief security officer for Warden Franks, uncomfortable with the way the warden had handled matters in New Jersey. Of Billy Hershon’s smoldering animosity and his cold celebration of hate. And Nabal Greyson in a dilapidated walk-up apartment in Millersburg, overlooking the courthouse and the jail next door.

  Then there was Sands. What motivated him? What had Sands meant by what he told David Hawkins in the jail that night, precipitating the defining crisis of Hawkins’s present and future life? Finally, there was David Hawkins, himself. Since his night with Cal Troyer at the jail, David Hawkins had . . . What? As far as Branden knew, Hawkins had actually done only two things. He had made up a batch of high-performance ammo, and he had sighted-in his rifle at three hundred-odd yards, using yellow windage markers. And why do that if not to kill Jesse Sands?

  But Hawkins had an alternative. He was to inherit, with Abigail, the best of the precious farmland that Holmes County had to offer. He’d have a lifetime of safety and peace to enjoy. His immediate family would extend to dozens of households, every Brother and Sister ready to help at a moment’s notice. He’d have a life so far removed from the government and greater America that soon his nightmares of combat would fade, and he’d end his days peacefully in his own bed, grandchildren near his side. David Hawkins had more to lose than any of them did. So why the rifle?

  Branden closed his eyes as he sat in the dark. The black poncho rustled when he moved, and drizzled water onto the concrete floor of the private armory room. He turned the jagged forms of the puzzle over in his mind and saw nothing new in any of them. Still the press of rolling time seemed almost palpable to him. Tomorrow, Nabal Greyson would stand on the courthouse steps and accept a citation from the mayor. Two days later, Jesse Sands would find himself in the courtroom of Judge Harrold S. Singleton. By this time next month, Sands would likely have been transferred to Lucasville State Prison. And by then, the fate of David Hawkins and Abigail Raber would have been crystallized for eternity, like a diamond. Or would it be graphite? Abigail and David still stood a chance of coming through this affair with their future together intact. If only Hawkins would forsake revenge.

  But that all depended on the actions of Hawkins alone. David Hawkins himself would determine his path into the future. By this time next week, he’d either have moved into the cabin with Abigail at the back of the Raber fields, or he’d have moved himself out of state, beyond the reach of Bruce Robertson. He’d either have walked away, free, into the life of peace, or he’d have run away, with the burden of vengeance crushing him.

  Then, abruptly, as he sat in the dark on the tall stool next to David Hawkins’s loading bench in the secret back basement armory, Branden caught the unmistakable aroma of a pungent cigar. He slipped quietly off the stool, eased across the floor, opened the secret door, and saw the red-glowing end of Nabal Greyson’s cigar in the dark, blocking his way up the steps.

  Greyson leaned back against the far wall in the dark, knocked ash off his cigar, and said, in his graveled voice, with a selfcongratulating tone, simply, “Professor.”

  30

  Tuesday, June 17 11:15 P.M.

  NABAL Grey
son stood in the dark at the bottom of the basement steps and drew purposefully on his cigar. Branden could hear him there, shaking rainwater off his jacket, and he could see the glowing cigar. The first pulses of adrenaline began to subside in Branden as he stood his position next to the step risers. He focused his eyes on the red tip of the cigar and quietly lifted his hand to the toggle switch. The electric bolts slid home with their faint, nearly inaudible whir. He replaced the wooden block and moved right, toward the machine tools. He found the tall green metal drill press, fumbled for the switch on its small spotlight, and turned it on in time to see Greyson moving toward him, caught offguard by the shaft of intense light, jerking his right arm behind his back to hide the heavy object in his hand. Branden pulled the adjustable light from its position over the drill press’s flat metal stage and aimed it at Greyson’s face.

  Nabal Greyson’s wet gray hair lay flat against his scalp, slicked back straight from his forehead. He caught his cigar between his teeth and ran the palm of his left hand across each eyebrow and back over his forehead to clear rainwater from his eyes. His right arm stayed locked in place behind his back.

  Branden’s mind took him in a dozen troublesome directions, and his instincts cautioned him to flee.

  “Why, Professor,” Greyson said. “You surprise me. We’ve got Sands in jail on a simple case of breaking and entering with murder, and you just can’t seem to leave it alone.”

  Branden crossed to the lathe and snapped on its small light. “Sorry, Greyson,” he said. “Academic curiosity.” He circled around to the right and put the jigsaw between him and the pallid Greyson.