Sticks and Stones

by Michael Hiebert

  Jonathon gave her a smile. “You really are a poet.”

  Carry felt herself blush. “I was just tryin’ to explain why I still have them. You asked.”

  They kept walking along Main Street without talking. All Carry heard was the sound of the rain, that soft, ambient hush that makes you know nature’s still out there, even when things are shrouded in gray.

  After a while, Jonathon spoke again. “You said your ma brought down the Cornstalk Killer, right? From a couple of years back?”

  “Yeah.” Carry sighed. “Don’t even remind me. That was no fun. Don’t you remember the stupid curfew she put in place?”

  “I do. I remember complaining to my grandpa about it. Telling him I was fifteen and should be allowed to stay out as long as I wanted.” He gave her a smile.

  Carry shook her head with a sarcastic laugh. “The curfew wasn’t even the worst of it. For you, at least, you got to stay out ’til then. Abe and I? We couldn’t leave my mother’s sight. She even had my uncle come down here and babysit us.”

  “How old were you?”

  “I was fourteen,” Carry said after a slight hesitation.

  “Wasn’t he snatching up fourteen-year-old girls?”

  Carry frowned. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Your mom was just worried about you. Wouldn’t you try and keep your kid safe if you’d been her?”

  Carry looked up at him. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Talk to me rationally about something I have a completely irrational viewpoint on. I like my irrational viewpoints, thank you very much.”

  “Okay,” Jonathon said.

  “You know,” Carry said after another round of silence. “I actually keep waiting for her to do it again.”

  “Who? Do what?”

  “My mother. I keep waiting for her to tell me and Abe we can’t go outside because the Stickman might get us.”

  Jonathon shrugged again. “The Stickman hasn’t gone after any kids, has he?”

  “Do you think that matters?”

  “What?”

  “That he hasn’t killed a kid yet? Do you think he actually cares who he kills?”

  Jonathon appeared to think this over for a bit. “I don’t know. I’ve never had the urge to kill someone, but you gotta think that somewhere in his mind, somethin’ is making him do what he does. Isn’t that how they always catch the killers in the movies? Because of patterns that come out in their crimes? Hard to control behavioral patterns. They’re subconscious.” Jonathon wiped the rain dripping from his nose with his arm. “It would be weird for him to suddenly start killing kids if he hasn’t done it yet. At least I think it would. I don’t know. We should ask your ma. She’d have a better idea.”

  They passed by Madame Crystalle’s Psychic Shop with the creepy frog statue outside. Again, neither of them said a word for the next block. Then Carry asked, “Please don’t, okay?”

  Jonathon stopped walking. “Please don’t what?”

  They stood facing each other, Carry’s left hand in his right, her right hand in his left. “Don’t ask her about the Stickman? My mom. Please?”

  “Okay,” Jonathon said. “But why?”

  Carry sighed. “Because she’ll think it’s a big deal and that you’re either freaking out about it or secretly rooting for him. Or . . . something like that. She makes a big deal out of things that aren’t such a big deal.”

  “I think a killer runnin’ around Alvin is a bit of a big deal.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Carry said, “but it’s . . .” She sighed again. “Just promise me you won’t mention it to her? As a favor to me? Please?”

  Jonathon thought a second before answering. “Sure,” he said finally, then went back to walking.

  They passed the hardware store and Mel’s Pop Shop before Carry stopped again. “You really want to read some of my poems? Honestly?”

  “I do.”

  “Okay,” she said with a big breath. “Let me think on it. It’s just . . . I’ve never showed them to anyone before. It’s weird.” She tried to reconcile the emotion she felt about the whole idea and found no word to describe it.

  “I know,” Jonathon said.

  “What if you laugh at ’em?”

  “I won’t.”

  “I know you won’t, but my stupid brain doesn’t.”

  “That’s your problem,” Jonathon said.

  “What is?”

  “Thinking with your brain. I stopped doing that real quick after we met.”

  “So, you just don’t think?” She laughed. “Not sure that would help matters at all for me.”

  Jonathon smiled. “No, I still think, only not with my brain. The brain’s not so great at figurin’ out stuff when it comes to love. You have to go deeper.”

  “Deeper? To what?”

  “Your heart, silly.” Jonathon laughed. “I can’t believe you didn’t see that coming.” A bird flew from a pepper tree down onto the sidewalk in front of them. With a shake, it tossed all the rainwater from its feathers. Jonathon gestured toward it. “Even the wren knew where I was headed.”

  Carry laughed.

  “See, that’s the big difference between you and me,” Jonathon said. “You’re a poet and I’m just some corny guy with sappy lines.”

  Carry decided right then, next time he came over, she’d probably let him read one or two poems.

  CHAPTER 28

  Police Chief Montgomery called Leah into his office, not even bothering to open his door or turn down his television as he did so. All she heard was a muffled “Leah!” over the sound of whatever sport he was watching. Her guess was baseball.

  “Jesus,” she said to Chris while getting off her chair. “You’d think the man could get off that big ass and at least open his door.”

  Chris just laughed.

  Straightening her black shirt, Leah walked over and let herself into the chief’s office. “You call, Master?”

  Ethan’s gaze was fixed on the television hanging from the corner of the ceiling. Turned out he was watching baseball. Texas Rangers playing the Cleveland Indians, if she was right. In fact, she was pretty sure Nolan Ryan just threw a strike over the plate, putting Joe Carter out.

  “Damn, that boy can pitch!” Ethan said. “You missed the Rangers going ’round the horn just a minute ago.” He shook his head. “Amazin’.”

  Leah pressed her lips into a thin line and just nodded. “I don’t even know what that means. That why you called me in? Give me an education in baseball?”

  “No,” he said, still watching the screen but using the remote to mute the sound. “Have a seat.”

  Leah did. “So, what’s up?”

  Finally pulling his eyes from the screen, Ethan looked at her for the first time since she came in. “I remembered something from the old Stickman files. Not sure if you’ve come across it yet or not. I know there’s a lot of crap to go through.”

  “You could say that. It’s a bit dizzying.”

  “I’m sure. Anyway, after you told me ’bout the squealer who knew ’bout the holdback. Whatshisname? Goose?”

  “Duck.”

  “Duck. Yeah. What’d you say his real name was?”

  Leah blinked. She actually had to think hard to remember, she’d gotten so used to just referring to him as “Duck.”

  “Stanley Bishop.”

  Ethan’s eyes were back on the TV screen as he pointed to her. “Yeah. I knew I’d heard it somewhere before. You’ll find it in them folders sooner or later.”

  This got Leah’s attention. “Duck’s in the old files?” she asked, wishing Ethan would focus on her, dammit. This could be something important. In fact, it almost had to be. “Where . . . how does he fit into the old case?”

  “Oh!” Ethan screamed, his arms going up over his head. “He was tagged. That was a bad call!”

  “Ethan,” Leah said, trying to stay calm. “Can you please finish with me, and then I’ll let you alone to holler at the umpire all you wan
t.”

  “Sorry,” he said, and actually turned off the set. “That was rude of me.”

  “So . . . Stanley Bishop?”

  Ethan snapped his fingers. “Right. He was here. Your pa questioned him.”

  “Duck?”

  “Yeah. It all came out from two witnesses coming forth and describing the same car being parked near one of the crime scenes—I think that’s the body we found in the back of Full Gospel.” He shook his head. “That was something, let me tell you. Seeing that body staked in the goddamn middle of the night among all them crosses and tombstones. It was a clear night, too, with practically a full moon. Just the shadows cast in the glow of that bone-white moon were enough to give me nightmares.” He gave a dramatic pause before continuing.

  “Anyway, one of the witnesses got a partial plate, and both said the color of the vehicle was yellow. Got a hit with Bishop’s vehicle—he drove a yellow 1968 Dodge Charger, a car you didn’t see a lot of around Alvin. So we followed it all up, but it turned out to be a dead end. Figured I’d let you know before you read about it and got too excited, involving your witness and all.”

  Leah fidgeted in her chair. She was still trying to recover from finding out her pa and Duck had crossed paths. “Wait . . . what kind of dead end?”

  “He had an alibi. It stood up.”

  She shook her head. “Listen, Ethan, either I need more coffee today or you’re being annoyingly vague. Can you give me the whole story? I haven’t read the report, remember? It must be near the bottom of the stack.”

  “Sorry. The Charger looked like a good lead. It even matched some of the tire marks found at other scenes. But with just the partial plate, there really wasn’t anything conclusive we could hang Bishop on.” Ethan glanced up at the dead television. “Love to have that car now.”

  Leah couldn’t help but feel her pulse in her wrists. It was too much to be just a coincidence. “This could be exactly the break we need,” she said. “He knows about the holdback.” Her eyes drifted to the wall behind Ethan. “Why the hell didn’t I think of this before now?” she asked, more to herself than Ethan. “He goddamn lied when I interviewed him. He didn’t meet the Stickman in the psych ward at all. He knows about the holdback because he is the friggin’ Stickman!”

  Ethan held up a thick-fingered hand. “You’re not listenin’. We checked out his alibi. It was good. You’ll see the statements and shit in the file. Him and a friend or some guy he worked with were at the bar all night. Closed the place down.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Jesus, Leah. It was a bar. People saw him there. The barmaid specifically said she noticed him. He sort of stood out. She said all his type did. Called him ‘weaselly.’ ” Ethan laughed. “ ‘Weaselly.’ Isn’t that rich? I thought of a lot of people that could describe—”

  Leah stopped Ethan’s tangential thought. “But . . .” she started. “Even if it was just his car at the scene and he hadn’t been driving it—especially if it was also at other scenes. That could—”

  “His car was at the bar. They were at Bell’s Tavern. You know that place? Been there since the invention of fire?”

  “The one about ten miles west? Looks like someone dragged it kickin’ and screaming from the back of a train?” she asked.

  Ethan nodded. “Seen the inside?”

  “No. Never had the urge to get that close to it.”

  “Probably just as well.” Ethan’s mouth formed a thin line.

  Something else struck Leah. “Hold it. Why was he so close to Alvin?” This seemed like another unnerving coincidence, although she realized she didn’t know where Duck actually was from before getting thrown in the box.

  “He lived here,” Ethan said, plainly.

  “Here?” Confusion fell over her. “In Alvin?”

  Ethan nodded as though she should’ve known this already.

  Leah’s mind revved into high gear. Coincidences didn’t exist, not to her. This was too much. She’d found her killer.

  “Leah,” Ethan said, obviously noticing her mind had gone off through a field picking wildflowers. “He’s not your man. He wasn’t back then, and he couldn’t possibly be now.”

  That was true. Be pretty hard to kill someone from behind bars in Talladega.

  Leah bit her lower lip. “It’s too much of a coincidence,” she said. “I—”

  “Don’t believe in coincidences,” Ethan said. “I’ve heard that before. Many times. You know from who?”

  Leah shrugged.

  “Your pa.”

  “Yeah?”

  Ethan batted her question out of the air. “Shit, half of what comes out of your mouth sounds just like him.” His face looked at his desktop, but his eyes looked up at her from under his graying brow. “That’s why you’re good, you know. You got his blood.”

  Her mind still sat in Duck’s car that night parked out front of First Gospel. “Did y’all ever find any other vehicle matching the description and tire marks and partial plate and all that?”

  Ethan leaned back in his chair with a loud squeak. “Nope. Remember, though, we found other tire markings consistent across murder scenes that didn’t fit that Charger.”

  Leah hadn’t had a chance to actually put together a timeline to look for patterns. She’d wanted to look through everything before she did that.

  While she thought that over, Ethan turned the television back on but left the volume muted. “Figured you’d get all excited over this,” he said. “That’s why I wanted to tell you ’fore you stumbled on it yourself, on account of I honestly don’t think there’s anything there.”

  “How about my pa?”

  “How ’bout what?”

  “How did he feel about it?”

  Ethan laughed, his eyes on the TV. “Oh, he, of course, was all brimmin’ over about it, too. Eventually, though, even he had to admit there wasn’t anything to it. Anyway, it’s in the files I gave you.” Suddenly, he yelled, “Yes!”

  Leah looked at the TV. The Rangers were up by four and the bases were loaded. “I assume we’re done?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Ethan said, his eyes locked on the game.

  A thought passed through Leah’s mind. “Actually, we’re not.”

  Ethan’s eyes quickly met with hers. “What do you mean?”

  “I need to ask you for somethin’. You’re not gonna want to give it to me.”

  “What’s that?” His eyes wandered up again.

  “The names.”

  “Names? What names?”

  “The other detectives or officers or whatever they are ’sides you and my pa who know about the letters.”

  Ethan’s tongue clicked, and his gaze slowly fell and settled on Leah. “Figured that was coming sooner or later.”

  “I need to cover all the bases.”

  “Your pa handpicked these people, Leah. You questioning his judgment?”

  Leah shook her head. “No . . . I . . . I dunno. Maybe. I mean, it’s startin’ to look like he might’ve shot himself the wrong guy. I’m starting to question everything.”

  “If I give you those names, what are you goin’ to do with ’em?”

  Leah took a big breath. “God’s honest truth?”

  “Mmm.” Ethan sat back, crossing his arms. Of course his chair squeaked.

  Another deep breath. “Probably at least give them each a call. Maybe meet with them. Ask them some questions.”

  “You’ll piss everybody off if you do that.”

  “What’s important here, Ethan? The feelings of—”

  He held up his hand. “I don’t need to be preached at. Let me think ’bout it a spell, okay?”

  She started to object, but he once again cut her off.

  “I told you I need to think on it. Respect that.”

  With a big sigh, she said, “All right.” Ethan’s attention once again fixated on baseball. “I’ll see myself out,” she said.

  * * *

  Chris was playing some game called Sup
er Slither on his computer when Leah got back to her desk. She thumbed through the small pile of folders she still hadn’t gone through, until she came to one labeled Bishop, Stanley. Without even looking through it, she tossed it right on top of Chris’s hands and keyboard. She had another copy at home she would study over this weekend.

  “Hey!” Chris snapped. “What the hell?”

  “Stanley Bishop,” she said. “Better known in the pen as ‘Duck.’ Find out everything you can on the guy, and I mean every single thing, Slither-King.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Monday morning, Leah sat at her desk still going through the old Stickman case files. She decided she had to finish them today. She was down to victim six. There wasn’t a lot left to go. She was already at least two-thirds done.

  Then it happened.

  She started looking at the report for victim six—a woman from Montgomery named Geneva Wade—already expecting to see that Geneva was working at a hospital. Ethan had told her victims four onwards all did. He’d also said two of them worked at places Harry Stork didn’t have contracts with.

  This was one of those victims. Only—

  Only what she read couldn’t be right. It was way too much of a coincidence, and it made Leah’s brain go on the offensive.

  Geneva Wade was a psych nurse at Grell Memorial, the same hospital Duck reported meeting “the Stickman.”

  “This is impossible,” she said.

  “What?” Chris asked. He had been on the phone and his computer nonstop since Leah came in.

  “You know that list of witnesses I gave you from Grell Memorial Hospital in Montgomery?”

  “Yeah, I’m workin’ on it. Hold your horses.”

  “No, I’m not rushing you. I’ve just . . . The original Stickman’s sixth victim—she worked there.”

  “No shit,” Chris said. “Didn’t you say Harry Stork had a medical waste company or something?”

  “Yeah, but—” She flipped back to the list of major contracts her pa had made. Grell Memorial wasn’t there. Then she scanned all the pages from Stork’s books listing every job he did, once again noting that a handful had asterisks beside them that Leah guessed came from her pa. But not a one was for any job at Grell. “He never did any business with Grell.”