Garrett wouldn’t take that bet with somebody else’s money. Smiley had been too damn smart for all of them. He straightened up and looked Whit in the eye. “Does this make sense to you? LaSalle introduced himself to the local Chief of Police, then killed two people?”
“His little missing hooker story gave him a reason to go traipsing around all over the place, at any hour. It’s the perfect alibi,” Whit said.
“I’m not sure you know what alibi means. Have Lyle show you how to Google it.”
“Keep it up, smartass. You have no idea how deep you are.”
“So where’s the one crucial piece you’re missing? LaSalle,” Garrett said.
“We figure he saw us tossing his room and lit out. Probably already been picked up by one of his cohorts,” Whit said.
“Cohorts? Do you ever listen to yourself?” Garrett said.
Before Whit could respond, a deputy came in from the backyard carrying The Box.
“Found this box in the backyard, smells like it’s soaked with lighter fluid.”
Whit gave Garrett a triumphant dip-stained smile. “Is that right?”
“It’s personal stuff I’m getting rid of. It’s got nothing to do with your case.” Garrett couldn’t take his eyes off the Box as the deputy set it on the kitchen table.
Whit handed his shotgun to Lyle Hampton and put on a pair of rubber gloves. Garrett’s heart sped up and spots of colors danced across his vision. He had to maintain here. Whit would look no matter what, but there was nothing bad in there, so bear down and make it through.
“Aw, isn’t that cute, we got Disneyland wrist bands,” Whit said. He pulled items out and put them on the table, but Garrett kept his eyes on Whit. Lyle and the deputy stood close to Garrett, but they were watching Whit as well.
Whit came across the picture of Garrett and Michelle at her sister’s wedding. Garrett in a rented suit like a high school kid at the prom, and Michelle in a scoop-neck dress that had more men looking at her than the bride.
Whit let out a whistle. “I’ll give you this. You did pick up one hot piece of ass out there.”
Maybe the guys were lax because it was Garrett, or maybe he moved too fast. Garrett somehow got between Lyle and the deputy and took a looping elbow shot at Whit Abercrombie. Whit slammed into the kitchen cabinets, a wide gash opened above his eyebrow. He scrambled and yanked his pistol from the holster, but Lyle and the deputy already had Garrett by the arms.
“Easy, Whit! You’ll shoot one of us,” Lyle said.
“Get outta my way,” Whit said.
“No,” Lyle said. He took out his cuffs and put them on Garrett, who didn’t resist him.
Whit got to his feet, his gun still in his hand. Blood dripped onto the stars on his uniform collar and he glared at Lyle. “I’m gonna remember that, Lyle.”
“Me, too,” Lyle said.
Garrett felt an odd sense of pride in the young officer. He was a better cop than Whit and Garrett put together.
And then it was time to go to jail. Again.
23
The orange jumpsuit gave his skin a sick yellow cast in the metal mirror over the sink/toilet. Garrett had the cell all to himself last night, since he represented a major crime wave for Artemis, West Virginia.
He could see part of the cinderblock hallway, the walls painted dark blue and light blue, split halfway up. He always hated the smell of a jail. Antiseptic trying to override the stink of humans kept in a closed environment.
Clanging and creaking from down the hall told him someone was coming to see him. He stayed slumped on the metal cot bolted to the rear wall of the cell and waited. Preceded by the clomping of his heavy boots, Whit Abercrombie appeared. He had a white butterfly bandage over his eyebrow. He folded a piece of paper and dangled it through the bars.
“This guy look familiar?”
Garrett pushed off the cot and grabbed the paper. A printout of a charge sheet with a mug shot in the upper left corner.
LaSalle, Chester. Age 20.
Charge: Murder.
“He did time?” Garrett said.
“Nope. Walked on the case.”
Garrett folded the paper up and shot it back through the bars at Whit. “Then that doesn’t mean shit.”
“Means enough when you put it alongside the knife and the blood. We got our results about an hour ago. Both Nadine’s and Bradley’s blood are on the knife,” Whit said.
“Fingerprints?”
“I think you know better. Guy was a pro.”
“Yeah. A pro who leaves the murder weapon in his suitcase,” Garrett said. He went back and sat down on the bed. “You’ve been led by the nose all the way here, Whit. But I’ll be damned if I have the energy to explain it to you again.”
“Oh, right. Old Smiley Carmichael is a mastermind of crime. I forgot. Thanks for tippin’ us off, he almost got away with it.”
“Yeah, he almost did,” Garrett said. “Why don’t you ask him if you can take a look around his place and see what he says.”
“Because we live in the real America here, son. Smiley’s home is his own, and the government doesn’t have a right to search it when he hasn’t done anything wrong. I understand if that’s not the L-A-P-D way,” Whit said.
“Will you get off that, already? Probable cause is the same everywhere. What I’m saying is ask him. But I understand, to use your term, if you two have been ass-buddies so long you can’t bring yourself to do it,” Garrett said.
Whit pressed his lips together so hard it made his dip bulge out like a tumor. More clanging from down the hall made him relax a little. “Here comes your ride.”
“My ride?”
Two Sheriff’s deputies Garrett had never seen before stepped in front of the cell.
“You’re being transported to County Jail so you can be arraigned tomorrow. You’ll be held without bail until the hearing, since you’re charged with felonious assault on a peace officer. Have a nice ride,” Whit said. He took a set of jail keys from his belt and unlocked Garrett’s cell.
Garrett let his arms hang loose as one of the deputies cuffed him. He felt numb, detached, lost in a rolling sea no one else seemed to be swimming in. At the crest of a wave, he saw where he wanted to be, solid land, emotional stability. Then he’d slide down into the trough and lose it all as he got slapped under again.
Whit led the way and the deputies escorted Garrett through the station. His face burned when he saw Shirley through the dispatch center window. He didn’t know how to read her look, so he stared at Whit’s back.
Outside the station, Whit halted the little procession. Smiley stood at the bottom of the steps. Although he wore a somber mask, the corners of his lips twitched upward.
“I am real disappointed you would try to bring me into this after your daddy and I were friends for so long, Garrett Evans. But I forgive you, because I know lately things ain’t been right for you,” Smiley said. He tapped the side of his head. “Just not right.”
For some reason, that little speech recharged Garrett better than any pill could have. He straightened his spine and felt the deputies tighten their grips on his arms.
“I bet these Sheriff’s boys have got some DNA swabs in their war bags. Would you like to let them swab your cheek, Smiley?” Garrett said.
Smiley began to smile. He smiled so wide he looked like a cartoon. “I don’t believe I would. Because I am a law-abiding citizen,” Smiley said.
“Get him out of here,” Whit said to the deputies.
They escorted Garrett to a waiting Sheriff’s unit and opened the back door. Before they could stuff him in, he craned his head back to face Smiley again.
“Hey, Smiley. Were you whackin’ off the night you peeped in that little girl’s window? Probably why Tuffy thought you would have made such a piss poor police officer.”
For a hot second, the icy mask broke and Garrett felt the full heat coming from Smiley’s pale blue eyes. Then Smiley relaxed again and winked.
“I think Tracy w
ould be ashamed of your behavior,” Smiley said.
The deputies stuffed Garrett in the car and closed the door.
***
“Smiley, watch me,” Angela said.
She rolled a boulder of snow into a shape somewhat resembling a head. Smiley took it and stacked it on top of the bigger boulders he’d rolled himself, finishing off a snowman that looked like couple of drunken sailors made it. It stood next to a snow fort they dug out by Smiley’s front porch.
The girl chattered away, as usual, and Smiley tried to put in the appropriate “Oh my” and “You don’t say” when needed. But a furious black cloud rolled through his mind, threatening to obscure even his love for Angela.
That little shit Garrett Evans stood right there in front of all those officers and called Smiley a peeper.
You are a dirty peeper.
Smiley cut his eyes toward the old well. But Papa wasn’t there. Nobody was, of course.
“Smiley? What is it?” Angela said.
“Hmm? Nothing at all, darlin’. Just thought I saw a rabbit out of the corner of my eye.”
“Did he have a pink nose?”
“Why not?”
She giggled and went back to putting pieces of charcoal up the snowman’s front.
Puppy killer!
Not Papa this time. The voice of Delroy Cutler called to Smiley from the seventh grade. They all heard about it and teased him until the teachers finally made them leave Smiley alone.
Angela didn’t see his face wrinkle at the edges. A crystalline memory stabbed him behind the eyes, sharp as a High Def bullfight. Papa coming home from jail after he beat up the man accusing Smiley of killing his pups. The dry, cracked skin on Papa’s knuckles as his fist came arcing in from way up high.
They told everyone the old bay kicked Smiley’s teeth out.
“Can you hold me up for his face?” Angela said.
“I’ll try. You’re getting to be so big, I won’t be able to pick you up soon,” Smiley said.
He grabbed Angela around the waist and lifted her up so she could put the carrot nose in place. She dug a selection of buttons from her coat pocket, her fingers red from the cold, and held up different “eyes” to gauge her favorite.
A biting breeze blew her hair into his face. It reminded him of being small, Ma holding him the way he held Angela, with Ma’s hair tickling his cheek.
Mama’s boy.
Smiley twitched, but didn’t spin around. He didn’t have to look, Papa wasn’t back there.
Made you look like a fool and you did nothin’.
He took a deep breath through his nose to calm down and smelled sweet shampoo little girls use.
Told ‘em about you whackin’ your pecker to a little girl not much older’n that one.
A grinding sound echoed in Smiley’s head. It was his dentures. He tried to relax his bulging jaw muscles.
“All done. What do you think?” Angela brushed the flying hair from her face and looked at him with those big serious eyes. She’d put in a large blue button and a small green one. The snowman looked like one of her silly Japanese cartoon characters who just ate something sour.
“I think he’s about as perfect as a snowman can be,” Smiley said. He put her down and she backed away to admire her work.
“He’s cute,” Angela said.
“Not as cute as you.”
“I don’t have funny button eyes,” she said. She scooped up snow and flung it at Smiley.
They both laughed and pelted each other with snowballs, fighting their way back to the house. They stopped on the front porch to catch their breath. Her eyes twinkled over apple-red cheeks, her smile a thing of perfection. Weakness overcame him, and he imagined what it would be like to have a normal life. “What do you think, Angie? You think you and your momma might wanna come live here someday? You could have your own rooms.”
“We couldn’t do that, silly. What would Nana Emma do?”
Stay drunk all day like usual, Smiley thought.
“Nah, I was just kiddin’. Of course you need to take care of Nana Emma,” he said.
He crushed down the rejection, packed it away with so many other things jammed into the pit of his soul. Shaking off one glove, he tucked a strand of hair behind Angela’s ear. If this was all he could get, he’d take it.
At least until she got too old to be cute anymore.
***
The Hunter crept up as close as he dared.
Tracy had gone to bed an hour ago, the lights in the house winking out one by one, until only the vague yellow haze of a reading lamp shone on her bedroom curtains. The material was sheer enough to let Smiley see her, reading in bed, propped up with two pillows and covered by a thick down comforter against the chill.
Get on with it.
Looking, he was just looking. Nothing else. Not tonight.
Coward.
“I ain’t,” he said, so low the wind ripped the words away leaving no sound behind.
Made you look like a fool. Hurt you and smiled about it.
And Garrett would hurt for it when the time came. Not long ago, he would’ve worried about his urges being directed toward someone from town, someone familiar. But getting away with putting down two people right under the law’s nose had been a freeing experience. He’d proven he was too smart for them. He didn’t need to worry anymore.
He did worry about his lessening feelings for Angela. He’d drugged her again tonight without so much as a twinge of guilt. What if the Hunter saw her as worthy prey someday?
No. It wouldn’t happen. He loved Angela. She was an innocent.
Ain’t none of ‘em innocent.
After they got Smiley’s new dentures, Poppa had sat him down in the barn for a talk. He explained a man had to have control in his life. Over his woman. Over his money. And over his urges, no matter what they were. He never said he was sorry about knocking Smiley’s teeth out.
Only later, when Smiley got old enough to have a few decades to look back on for reference, did he realize what a hypocrite the old man was. Control his urges? He was the kind of drunk you had to hide mouthwash from. And the things he did to Ma...
Smiley recognized those urges for what they were. Right down to the last swing of a splintery two-by-four.
Tracy shifted in bed and yawned. Smiley crept closer, his face inches from the glass. The light from her reading lamp would keep her from seeing the Hunter, camouflaged by the dark.
Her head nodded forward and she put the book on her lap. She yawned again and dog-eared the page in her paperback before putting it on her nightstand. Missus Crumley would send you home with a note for your parents if you dog-eared a library book. Smiley had the marks on his back to prove it.
The Hunter faded back, shining blue eyes watching Tracy turn out her light. Coward? Hardly. A smart man makes preparations before he takes his prize. Hadn’t he seen Papa measuring the edge on one of the front steps? Sizing it up against a two-by-four?
Garrett would suffer the same hurt he dealt out with his nasty words. He would come to know what Smiley knew at the tender age of eight. What it felt like to see someone you love lying dead on the floor and being too weak and small to do anything about it.
***
The jail deputies led Garrett by the elbows. His hands were cuffed in front of him and he wore the blue jumpsuit of the County Jail. He felt like they were leading him to the gas chamber instead of the visitation area. Only one person would bother driving all the way over here to see him. He had contemplated refusing the visit, but he thought she’d misunderstand the reason.
Down a drab hallway with cinderblock walls painted in nursing-home beige, through two more security doors. Here and there, the paint had flaked away to reveal an earlier generation of beige. Garrett was willing to bet the County got a bulk deal on government surplus beige paint right after World War II and they were still working their way through it.
The place even smelled beige.
Their little procession halted ou
tside a thick steel door with a massive lock. One of the deputies produced a set of brass keys that looked like oversized toddler toys. He slotted one of those big bastards and Garrett heard the clunk inside the door.
He entered a small cubicle with bulletproof glass on one side and the door slammed shut behind him. Tracy sat on the other side, tears already welling up. Garrett took a seat and reached up with cuffed hands to grab the intercom phone.
She picked up her side. “Oh sweetie, I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything. Just let me look at you.”
Her red hair flowed in a wild ponytail, and the hand holding the phone had yellow paint under the pinkie nail.
I put glue in her hair in the third grade, Garrett thought.
“Is he gone? LaSalle?” Tracy said. She wiped tears away, but more cascaded down to replace them.
“I can’t say for sure. But I think he must be. I know damn well he didn’t kill Nadine, so I know what all the ‘evidence’ in his room means,” Garrett said.
“I can’t believe all this. I mean—“
He cut her off by holding up his hand. “Don’t. Let’s talk later. They’ll arraign me tomorrow and most likely I’ll be able to bail out. Feel like dinner with an ex-con?”
She wiped away the fresh tears and gave their usual banter a brave try.
“Don’t you have to be convicted to be an ex-con?”
“Oh, I’m guilty, sister. You’re looking at a cop-puncher.”
“Since I never considered Whit Abercrombie much of a cop, I’ll grant you clemency on that one,” Tracy said.
“Thank you, Governor.”
They both tried to smile, but nothing felt the same anymore. Seemed like his screwed up life had somehow bled over into her beautiful world of swirling colors and giggles, like a black fungus chewing away all the spontaneity and humor.
“I’ll see you soon, okay?” His chest tightened and he wanted to be back in his cell, away from everything, free to turn inward and kick himself for a good long while. She nodded and touched her fingers to the glass. Before she hung up, he waved at her and motioned for her to listen again.
“Hey,” he said. “Stay away from Smiley, okay?”
“Yeah,” she said.
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