Matt caught his arm. "Cool it. I'd like to blow him away myself, but unless she takes out a warrant..."
Luke turned back to Emma Jean, who had backed against the side of the house, her eyes like a frightened doe surrounded by hunters. "You'll sign a warrant, won't you? After what he did to you?"
She turned away, her tiny shoulders quaking as silent sobs racked her body.
"Mrs. Veazey, please..."
Bertha cried, "She ain't signin' nothin', sheriff, and you'd best go on and git."
Matt nudged Luke. "She's right. If she won't sign, there's nothing we can do."
But Luke wasn't about to give up. "Think about it, Mrs. Veazey. You don't have to put up with this. Just say the word, and..."
Between clenched teeth, Rudy warned, "I'm warnin' you, Luke..."
It was a scene Luke had witnessed all too often with other couples. "If you change your mind, call me," he said to Emma Jean.
He was about to turn away when he noticed the red stain in the crotch of her white pants. "She's bleeding," he said as her knees buckled. He caught her before she slumped to the floor. Bertha and Rudy both lunged for her, but Matt had drawn his gun to hold them back.
"Take him in and book him," Luke ordered, lifting Emma Jean in his arms. "I'll get her to the hospital."
"You can't do this, damn you," Rudy screamed at Luke as Matt cuffed him and steered him to the patrol car. "I'll sue your bastard ass. I swear I will."
Matt shoved him into the back seat without the obligatory motion of pushing his head down. It smacked the roof, and Rudy cursed all the louder.
Luke was already on his way, siren blaring, as Matt backed out of the drive with Bertha running alongside the car, huffing and puffing as she shouted to her son, "I'll go wake up your pa, and he'll be down there to get you out. Don't you worry none. He'll have you out in no time."
"Aw, to hell with it." Frustrated, Rudy threw his head back against the seat. "I shoulda just yanked the damn phone out before she called the law."
"What I wish you'd have done," Matt taunted, "was keep pushing Luke so he'd blow you away."
"Screw you, Rumsey." Rudy jabbed the air with his middle finger.
* * *
Luke paced about the empty waiting room. Emma Jean hadn't said a word during the ride, although he kept trying to convince her to take out a warrant. Otherwise, he couldn't keep Rudy in jail.
He told her he'd known Rudy in school and how he had always been a bully. He said the best thing for her to do was leave him and go back to wherever she came from because it wasn't going to get any better. But she had just sat there, doubled over and clutching her stomach and moaning.
When they got to the emergency room, she was whisked into a treatment room. Luke told the triage nurse he would wait, hoping that after Emma Jean had time to think about it, she'd change her mind.
It wasn't long before he was called to the phone. Matt said Wilbur Veazey was down at the jail raising holy hell about his boy being locked up without a warrant, and Matt wanted to know what Luke wanted him to do.
"The fact that Rudy's wife is being treated because he beat her up is all the warrant I need right now. If Wilbur gets nasty about it, you can lock him up, too."
Luke saw Dr. Soseby, the doctor on call, motioning to him and put the phone down.
"She's had a miscarriage," Dr. Soseby said. "I've got her scheduled for a D&C first thing in the morning to clean things up. Other than a few bruises, she'll be okay after a few days rest."
Luke did not mourn the loss of a baby sired by Rudy Veazey and hoped his wife had sense enough not to either. "I need to see her. She's got to sign a warrant or I can't hold him."
The doctor shook his head. "Sorry. She was in a lot of pain, so I had to sedate her. Maybe tomorrow."
There was nothing for Luke to do but head home, and by the time he got there it was nearly four o'clock.
One of the first things Alma had done when they bought the little two-bedroom house after he got elected sheriff was to have the back porch closed in to make a room for him. She said it was because he would be working late hours, and she didn't want him waking her up when she had to get up so early to go to work at the mill. He knew the real reason was because she didn't want to sleep with him. Fine. He didn't want to sleep with her either.
He grimaced at the sound of the back door squeaking when he opened it. Alma raised all kinds of hell when he woke her up, and he was too tired to listen to her.
The bed was just as he'd left it when he had crawled out of it at six a.m. the day before. That didn't surprise him. The only time she made it up was when she changed sheets on Saturday morning. Otherwise she only went in his room when she wanted to nag about something. Like now. He groaned to hear her coming and quickly dove into bed and pulled the covers over his head.
In a screeching whisper, she began her tirade. "Luke, it does look like you'd try to be quieter when you come dragging in at all hours. You know I've got to be up for church, and once I get woke up, I can't go back to sleep. And how come you're out so late? Who were you screwing this time? One of those cheap hoochy-coochy girls at the fair, I'll bet. Irene Cleghorn called to tell me you were out there. She said Burch went on behalf of the church to see just how dirty it was and that you were there and left with one of the girls."
He burrowed his head under the pillow to try and shut her out.
"I don't know what to do about you, Luke. I swear I don't."
He could picture her dramatically throwing her arms over her head.
"I try to have a decent home. I keep a clean house that you don't appreciate because you're never here. I cook good meals that you don't eat because you're never here. I get up at dawn five days a week to stand on my feet at the mill all day, sometimes six, and Sundays I take our daughter to church, but you never come with us. I'm a good Christian wife, but our marriage stinks because you don't care, and the least you could do for the sake of appearances is try. You could have some self-respect and do your screwing around where folks can't see you."
She paused to take a breath and sailed in again. "You could at least have the decency to think of your daughter. I mean, my God, Luke, we use the same bathroom, and what if you bring home crabs or some kind of nasty disease from those women you screw? Me and her could catch your filthy crud."
In that moment, Luke thought if Emma Jean Veazey were like Alma, then maybe he could understand why Rudy had lost control and beat the hell out of her. But something told him Emma Jean wasn't like Alma, because nobody was like Alma. And he sure as hell wasn't like Rudy and would never hit a woman for any reason, but right then he admitted to being sorely tempted.
Flinging back the covers, he bounded out of bed to tower over her. His face was red, and his breath was coming in quick, hot gasps, and he kept his fists squeezed tight at his sides. "There's a limit to what a man can take, and you're fast pushing me to mine. You don't know what the hell you're talking about. Now get out of here and let me have some peace. I'm dog-assed tired, and I don't need this crap."
Alma stared at him uncertainly. True, he had never hit her, but there was always a first time, and she figured she had made her point, anyway. "You just remember what I said about your bringing home your crud," she said in retreat as she backed toward the door. "And I'm going to tell Tammy not to use the toilet after you till she wipes if off with bleach."
* * *
It was almost ten when Matt called and woke him up the next morning. "We gotta do something about Rudy. His old man called that jack-legged lawyer from Childersburg, Steve Lindsey, and he says you got no right to hold Rudy, and if you don't let him go he says he's calling the attorney general."
Luke was worn out. His whole body ached, and his mouth tasted like something had crawled in and died. "Stall him. Tell him you can't get up with me. Meanwhile, I'll go back to the hospital and see if I can talk to Rudy's wife."
He hung up and went to take a shower, glad Alma had gone to church and he had the house to hims
elf. The bottle of bleach she had left on the back of the commode got him riled all over again, and he angrily shoved out the window screen and threw it in the yard. The woman was going to drive him crazy.
Shaved, showered, and dressed in a uniform fresh from the cleaners, his stomach led him to the kitchen. He made a peanut butter and banana sandwich and wolfed it down on the way to the prowler.
Because it was Sunday afternoon, the hospital parking lot was full.
Ramona Whitley, wearing a pink volunteer smock, was on duty at the visitor's desk. Mrs. Veazey was in Room 110, she said, but both visitors' passes were out. She offered to call the room and have someone come out so he could go in, but Luke said he would try later.
He left by the front door, walked around the side of the building, and reentered the hospital by way of the emergency room. Positioning himself where he could keep an eye on Room 110, he figured the visitors could only be members of Rudy's family and wouldn't stay long. He was right. Within ten minutes, Bertha Veazey came out with her sister, Pinella.
He stepped around a corner so they wouldn't see him and heard Bertha boasting as they passed, "She won't sign no papers on my boy. She knows he'll kill her if she does."
In a husky cigarette voice, Pinella agreed, "Well, I don't think she will, either, but he shouldn't beat up on her like that. He was drunk again, won't he?"
"Well, she drives him to drink, her and her hoity-toity ways, but that's what he gets for not marryin' one of his own kind. And if she don't learn her place, he's gonna keep on beatin' up on her. That's the way men are. Lord knows, Wilbur smacked me around till I got over my sassiness."
"Well, Ernie's hit me a few times, too, but he's done good by me and the kids. We ain't never gone to bed hungry."
The voices faded away. The ignorant prattle disgusted Luke. He had heard it before from other battered wives. He entered the room and was glad the other bed was empty so he could talk to Emma Jean without anyone hearing.
She was laying on her side facing the wall, her back to the door.
"Mrs. Veazey, it's Sheriff Ballard. I know you probably aren't feeling good, but I really need to talk to you."
When she did not respond, he walked around the bed, wincing to see her bruised and swollen face. "I'm sorry about the baby." It seemed the proper thing to say, even if he didn't mean it.
"I'm not."
He saw that the frightened doe eyes of the night before were now red sparks of anger.
"I don't want his baby."
Her face crumpled like paper tossed into a trash can, and her hands snaked from beneath the sheets to cover her eyes. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Please don't tell anybody."
Luke pulled up a chair and sat down. "You don't ever have to worry about anything you tell me. Now I'm going to stick my nose in your business again, and tell you again, that you ought to leave him and go back to your family. But first I want you to sign a warrant for what he did to you."
"I don't have any family. I don't have anywhere else to go. Rudy is all I've got. And I'm not signing any warrant, so you can leave."
Luke argued, "The warrant will teach him a lesson. He won't go to prison this time, but he'll get a suspended sentence. He's got sense enough to know if it happens again, the judge would throw the book at him."
"He'd kill me."
"I know his mother was just here to scare you into thinking that, but..."
"It was my fault."
"And how do you figure that?"
It was like a dam unleashed, as though she had to hear with her own ears some kind of justification for what had happened, even if it meant taking the blame herself. "We were at the dance in Talladega. I didn't want to go, but Rudy made me. He made me dance with Frank Goforth, and I didn't want to do that, either, because I can't stand the way he looks at me when I go in the supermarket where he's the meat cutter. But Rudy was dancing with Frank's wife, Nina, so I didn't see any way out of it. It was a slow dance, too, which made it worse because Frank danced me into the shadows and started rubbing... ," she trailed to an embarrassed silence.
"It's okay," Luke prodded. "You can tell me anything."
Finally, she went on. "He started rubbing his thing against me and kind of hunching at me. Then he whispered that I should meet him in the alley behind the supermarket sometime, so we could sneak into the storage room and have some real fun." Her face twisted with disgust. "He said he'd give me the sirloin between his legs and, afterwards, he'd give me a pound of hamburger for free to take home for supper."
Luke thought that sounded just like Frank Goforth, who fancied himself a lady's man but had all the class of a pig at a trough. "So Rudy saw what was going on and got mad and took it out on you."
"Not exactly. I told him about it on the way home, 'cause I was so mad at Frank, but he said Frank wouldn't have acted like that if I hadn't given him reason to think he could. One thing led to another, and he started hitting me." She bit her lower lip, then winced because it was sore. "I shouldn't have called the law. He didn't hit me in the stomach till after I did."
If Rudy had walked in the room right then, Luke knew he would have pounded him right into the floor and not given a damn as to the consequences. "Sign the warrant, please."
"I can't." She rolled over on her back and stared up at the ceiling. "You just don't understand, sheriff. I'm sorry I bothered you with this, and I'd appreciate it if you'd just go on now. I really don't feel like talking any more."
Either Bertha or Pinela had left their orange visitor's pass on the nightstand next to the bed. Luke picked it up, took a pencil from his pocket, and scribbled both the number of the sheriff's office and his home phone. He stuck it in her hand. "Keep that where you know where it is and call me anytime you need me, day or night."
He could only hope that she didn't throw the numbers away, because if she kept living with Rudy, sooner or later, she was going to need them.
Back at the courthouse, he told Matt to let Rudy go but make sure he left by the back exit because, if he saw his smirking face, he was going to bash it in.
Matt pointed out, "He's going to want to come up here and use the phone to call his old man to come get him."
"He can walk home or use a pay phone on the street. Now if nothing else is going on, I'd like to hide out in my office and catch a nap." He would have preferred his own bed but avoided being around the house when Alma was there, which he knew she would be on a Sunday afternoon.
"Jubal Cochran wants you to call him. He's left two messages."
Jubal had been a big contributor to Luke's campaign, but Luke liked him for reasons beyond that. He was a good man, and Luke felt sorry for him. His wife of forty-some years had died the past week. "He's probably lonesome. If he calls back, tell him I'll drop by later. I'm really bushed, Matt."
"I know. Once I get rid of Rudy, I'm going to take a snooze myself, but I think I'll call Jubal and let him know you'll be around. He sounded upset. Something about Hardy Moon and his wife's funeral."
Luke was careful not to let his sudden interest show. If Jubal had a complaint about Hardy, he damn well wanted to hear it. "Well, maybe I'll take a run over there now."
He was out the door before Matt could ask why he had so abruptly changed his mind.
* * *
Jubal offered what was left of the casseroles and desserts the ladies of his church had brought, but Luke politely declined. The cheese on the broccoli looked like a dirty floor mat, and the pound cake resembled a sour sponge. Besides, he was too anxious to hear what Jubal had to say about Hardy to care about eating.
Jubal settled into his recliner and offered Luke a cigar, which he also declined. Then Jubal lit up his own before explaining what had him upset. "It's about what happened the day Henrietta was buried. Now I know the usual thing is for the family to leave while the grave is filled in and then come back later after the flowers are in place, but I just felt like I wanted to stay with her till she was in the ground. They wouldn't let me, though—O
zzie and Hank. They said Hardy had a rule against it, and he'd have their heads if they covered her up while I was there.
"I said I was staying anyway," he continued, "and Ozzie, he got real huffy and said if I didn't leave that Henrietta would sit right there till I did. They meant it, too. I could tell. So I told 'em to go ahead, and then I made like I was leaving. Only I parked way off down the road and sneaked back."
Luke leaned forward in his chair. "Then what happened?"
"They were too fast. They figured what I was up to and had her buried by the time I got back."
Luke could understand Jubal's disappointment but did not feel he had a legitimate complaint. "I'm sorry, but there's really nothing I can do."
Jubal flared, "Not even about the flowers? And that's just the least of it."
"What about the flowers?" Luke asked patiently.
"When I went back, I saw that some of the ones that were on wire stands had been taken off and put right on the ground. Now you know there was another funeral the day after Henrietta was buried. Bea Canady, remember?"
Luke nodded, wondering what Jubal was leading up to.
Jubal shook his cigar for emphasis as he said, "Well, I'll just bet the stands for Bea's flowers were the same ones taken from Henrietta's grave. I think Hardy had Ozzie and Hank strip off Henrietta's flowers so Lucy could use them on the arrangements for Bea Canady. He has to buy those, you know.
"And that's not the worst part." He lowered his voice to a near whisper. "I think they switched coffins."
Luke tensed. "Why do you say that?"
The corners of Jubal's mouth began to twitch with rage as he recounted how he had looked for Ozzie and Hank to ask them about the flower stands, and when he had gone to the tool shed, thinking they might be in there, he had seen a white pine coffin standing against the wall. "I was curious," he said, "because it was just like the one I picked out for Henrietta, and I remember Hardy telling me at the time that it was the only one he had like that—white pine with lavender lining and a big purple satin bow on the top like a box of candy. I knew Henrietta would have liked it, only I'll bet my last dollar she's not buried in it."
Final Justice Page 12