Sticks and Stones

by Michael Hiebert

  My mother looked even more puzzled. “What do you mean?” she asked, her eyes narrowing. “Understand what? What story?”

  “The story of her life. The story of how it ended. How she never got to do everything she thought she would on account of her life being taken away so early. See, I understood this. I was meant to. And it’s not a bad story, it’s one that makes you happy for everything you have and everything you get to do. And it was good that I was the one who saw her, because I know, no matter what, I ain’t never gonna forget her.”

  My mother took a big breath and kind of looked away at the microscopes still standing on that fold-out table. “Did you tell Dewey all this?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Why not?”

  “He wouldn’t understand, or he’d make me clarify it so much that it would lose its meaning. I don’t ever want to lose the feeling that comes with the memory.”

  “It’s a good feeling?”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s a horrible, scary feeling.”

  Her jaw tightened. “Then why do you want to keep it?”

  “Because I think there are still much more things I can learn from it. I reckon it’s the sort of thing you have to mull over for a lifetime and you might still not understand it completely.”

  “How do you feel about Jonathon’s death?”

  “I miss him. He was a nice guy.”

  She paused, and it felt like she was thinking real hard on something. “What sort of feeling do you have with this memory, Abe?”

  “I don’t rightly know. I think it’s still forming itself, to be honest. I don’t feel bad, not like I did for Mary Ann Dailey.”

  “Really? How come?”

  I gave this a moment’s thought. “I reckon it’s because Jonathon always seemed so happy. I don’t think he missed out on a lot, even though he died so young. Life for him was simple. The simpler things are, the better they are, I believe. Folk always try to complicate life too much.”

  She placed her hand on my knee. “Are you worried about your sister?”

  I blinked, thinking this had to be a trick question. “Of course I am. She’s goin’ to be all right, though, right?”

  My mother took another big breath. “I think so, Abe. There’s a process she has to go through. No telling how long it will take, though.”

  “What kind of process?”

  “It’s called the ‘grieving process.’ It has five steps.”

  “And Carry’s gotta go through all five? How long is each step?”

  My mother softly shook her head. “It’s always different for everybody. And she might not go through all five, or she might go through some many times before she’s ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “To face the world again.”

  I wondered about my next question, whether or not I might upset my mother, but I decided to ask it anyway. “Did you go through these steps when Pa died?”

  Her eyes went back to them microscopes. “Yes, Abe. I did.”

  “And how long did it take you?”

  Her chest expanded, and a big sigh came out. “I’m not sure.”

  “How come you ain’t sure?”

  “Because I reckon in some ways I’m still going through them.”

  “Still?” I asked. “What about Dan?”

  She looked at my floor. “Dan’s a good person. He treats me well.”

  “Do you love him?” I asked.

  She gave me a look that made me wish I hadn’t asked. When she spoke, she stumbled over her words. “Um . . . you know what? Yeah.” She smiled. “Yeah, I reckon I do.”

  I smiled back, not because I liked Dan so much, but because my mother seemed happy. Then I had a thought that made my smile disappear.

  “What’s wrong?” my mother asked.

  I rubbed my nose. “You reckon he drinks too much?”

  Her eyes widened slightly. She really didn’t expect me to ask that, and I wondered if maybe I’d get lectured for not minding my business. “Um . . . well, let me ask you that question, Abe. Do you reckon he drinks too much?”

  “He averages a half liter of Jim Beam a night,” I said. “That seems like a lot. To me, at least.”

  Her eyes narrowed again. “How do you know so exactly the amount he drinks?”

  “Carry showed me where you’ve been putting all the empty bottles.”

  My mother’s lips pressed into a line. She bounced her feet off my floor. “Is that right?” she asked, not looking at me.

  “Was you tryin’ to hide them? Carry said you were.”

  Her eyes met mine. “Y’all had a discussion about this?”

  I frowned. “Sort of. Carry said you weren’t hidin’ them from us, though.”

  “I wasn’t? Who was I hiding them from, then?”

  “Carry figured you was hidin’ them from yourself. So you didn’t have to deal with it.”

  My mother looked away, her head gently nodding. “That’s what she reckoned?”

  I nodded.

  My mother patted my knee again. “Your sister’s goin’ to be fine. She’s bright. Even brighter than I ever gave her credit for.”

  CHAPTER 74

  “Duck,” Leah said, sitting back comfortably in her chair. She spoke quietly, so her voice didn’t slam around on the screaming white concrete walls. In places, the paint was peeling. Leah didn’t like these rooms. They reminded her of death. Death that comes silently into the night and leaves behind its unmistakable teeth marks. That was what these walls said. They warned you. Warned you about getting in the way of death’s teeth marks.

  Leah cleared her throat and spoke slightly louder. “Duck,” she said again. “I’m back.” She was back at the Talladega Correctional Institute, this time without Dan. It didn’t make Duck look any more happy to see her.

  “Where’s Pencil Dick?”

  “He had to head back to his own station. It’s up north.”

  “Thought you were partners?”

  “We are. We were.” She hesitated and then finished with, “We are.”

  “Kind of long-distance partners, ain’t you?”

  Leah just watched that ball sail over the plate. She wasn’t going to let herself be riled up by Duck or anyone else. After what she had been through, she was happy just to have another day with her daughter safe and sound. “It’s a work in progress,” she finally said.

  Duck narrowed his eyes as the revelation came to him. “No! Don’t tell me. You and . . . and . . . Pencil Dick?”

  “It’s really not.”

  “What?”

  “Like a pencil.”

  Duck looked panicked. Started shaking his head. “No! I don’t want to hear actual details. This is freakin’ worse than solitary!”

  Leah smiled. “You know why I’m here?”

  “No, but I’m sure you’re goin’ to tell me. You’re almost as bad as he was, the way your mouth never stops movin’.”

  “I’m here on account of I know what you did.”

  Duck shook his head. “And, lady, as usual, I ain’t got no fuckin’ idea what you’re talking ’bout.”

  “You lied to me, Duck. You said you never met Harry Stork, but you did. In fact, if I’m correct, you knew him well.”

  “Listen, lady, I already told you, I—”

  She raised her hand to quiet him. “No, you lied. You told me you never met Harry Stork whereas the truth was, you did. And you knew him almost intimately well.”

  “I don’t even wanna know what you mean by that,” Duck said.

  “Okay, well, I may never know how well you knew him, but from August 1959 until July 1960, you guys spent time together in juvie. Now, you’re goin’ to tell me that was all just coincidence, too? And you never actually met him?”

  Duck just shrugged. “You can make up any shit you want.”

  “I don’t have to make shit up, Duck. The shit’s all over the place. I’m just pickin’ it up and lookin’ at it.”

  Duck closed hi
s eyes and shook his head.

  “Problem is, Duck, you left some evidence behind you. After Harry Stork’s house was raided by the police, it was never put up for auction. In fact, nobody has ever been inside it since.”

  “Lady, what the fuck does this have to do with—”

  “Until we went back in again. Last week. See, after all the pieces fell into place about Noah Stork, it got me thinkin’. The man showed a lot of compassion toward both his sons, but especially toward Harry. Made me wonder why someone like that would let their kid take the fall. Fact is, he didn’t, did he, Duck?”

  Duck’s handcuffs rattled. “Once again, lady, I have no idea where you’re—”

  “The one thing you didn’t lie about, Duck, was having anythin’ to do with the Stickman killin’s. Fact is, they started a good eight months, maybe even a year, before you came into the picture. Before you ever met Noah Stork at Grell Memorial Psychiatric Hospital in Montgomery.”

  Duck looked like he was going to speak, but he didn’t. Then, “I told you, I don’t know nobody named—”

  “Oh, you do. Only when you first met him, his name was Joshua Delford. You knew right away, though, didn’t you? The resemblance is uncanny. Those boys got a lot of their old man’s genes. But it was Noah—or Joshua, if you prefer—who told you about the signature, right, Duck?”

  “Lady.” Duck laughed. “This is a fuckin’ reach.”

  “No, Duck, it ain’t. Because you remembered Harry and knew Harry might be useful. But what really clicked with you was hearing about how the Stickman did it. And what he did. Something deep in the reptilian part of your brain liked it. In fact, you liked it so much you sold your house in Calvert and bought a different house just miles away from where Noah Stork lived, in what is now Blue Jay Maples. Back then, it was just the boonies with nothin’ but logging roads running through it. Why would anyone move to a godawful place like that, unless they had some kind of ulterior motive? And you had one, all right: You wanted to keep tabs on Noah Stork so you could ‘discover’ his victims, just like the police.”

  “This is some sick and twisted shit you’re spoutin’, lady.”

  “Mmm,” Leah said. “I’m afraid on that point, we agree. Because deep down, you’re no killer, are you, Duck? But you like the idea of killin’. You’re like the Son of Sam, only without the actual drive to pull the trigger. Maybe you’re just too much of a pussy?”

  Leah heard his handcuffs rattle again. Moisture had collected on Duck’s cropped hair. “Lady! Nobody ever calls me a pussy. You don’t have any freakin’ idea who you’re—”

  “Well, whatever the reason, you didn’t like actually killin’ no one. At least not that I could find. You just liked to ‘see’ the victims afterward. What did it do for you, Duck? Give you some kind of thrill? Did you masturbate at the crime scenes?”

  Duck looked away to the white wall at his right. A trickle of sweat ran from his blond hair down the left side of his face, curving around the outer edge of his ear.

  “That really is some fucked-up, twisted shit, as you said, Duck.”

  “You have no proof of nothin’,” Duck said.

  “Oh wait. We’re comin’ to that. The part where we go back into Harry’s house fifteen years later. But don’t let me spoil it.”

  Duck locked eyes with her for an instant, and if Leah hadn’t known until then, now she knew for sure. Duck was guilty. She was firing on all his cylinders, and his motor was revving up. He was actually shaking.

  “Anyway, one thing you never suspected when you broke in to Noah Stork’s house and stole the gun was that he would call the authorities.”

  Duck studied her. Luckily, she hadn’t got to the part where she had to lie, yet. She could tell the truth and not stumble. She just hoped she could brace herself all the way through. Getting a confession hung on it.

  “He did, Duck. He called us. Well, I wasn’t there at the time, but an officer by the name of Strident went out to his place, and he was showed how the bedroom window—Tommy’s window—had been broken enough for a hand to get through and open it completely. Nothin’ was reported as stolen, though. Makes one wonder why Stork even bothered reporting it.”

  Something shimmered in Duck’s eyes, and Leah knew he was wondering the same thing. He looked at her as though trying to size up whether she was pulling this stuff right out of her ass or not. She wasn’t. Not yet. This part really happened.

  “But I know what was taken and, for obvious reasons, not reported. Noah’s .38 Special. Smith & Wesson. Does that sound familiar to you?”

  “Lady, like I said, you ain’t got—”

  “Then why are you sweating so much, Duck? Why are you trembling? Surely you—”

  A shrill whistle came from the other side of the table. “Guard! Guard!” Duck called out. “We’re done in here. Guard!”

  “Nobody’s coming, Duck. They all know the truth. How the police were closing in on Noah and how you panicked. You didn’t want to see it all go away. You didn’t want Noah to be caught. So you framed Harry, knowing that with what little we had in the way of DNA and blood matching back then would trigger a match close enough to assuage any police officer’s doubts. You paid off two ‘eyewitnesses’ for pretending to see Harry Stork. You even made sure they picked Tommy out of a photo lineup before Harry Stork was ever on anyone’s radar, knowing that the police would make the connection because they were monozygotic twins. That, and the fact that the witnesses reported Tommy as the man, only nobody remembered seeing the scar on his face—that led the police to Harry.

  “Then you planted the gun in Harry’s house. One thing forensics could do in 1974 was match a round to a gun, and you knew we had at least one bullet in evidence. You knew on account of you broke into our shop and stole all the Stickman case files from where they sat on Joe Fowler’s desk. So you knew you needed to plant a murder weapon.

  “Four weeks later, police received their final Stickman letter, only this one didn’t come from Noah Stork, it came from you. And just so nobody was fooled, you even put Harry Stork’s initials on it. H.S., the final Stickman victim.”

  “This is freakin’ incredible,” Duck said, regaining some of his composure. “I feel like I’m watching a freakin’ movie. Nobody’s goin’ to believe this story.”

  “No? Harry did. At least he believed your version of it. You visited him just before putting the gun in his house. You told him you broke into our shop and saw the reports. The reports that said we were after him. You psyched him out enough that you knew he’d run. Knew he’d hide. What choice did he have? Then, a day or two later, his house was raided, and the police came forward saying they found the weapon in the home of Harry Stork and issued a statewide manhunt. Sounding familiar yet, Duck?”

  “Not at all. You’re crazy.” He sounded calm, but sweat dripped from his chin. He kept trying to wipe it away with his orange sleeve, but he couldn’t quite get it all.

  Leah was closing in for the final blow, and she only hoped he kept believing her. So far, it had been easy, because so far she hadn’t lied. Lies were coming, though. And when they did, she had better be able to act it all out because Duck’s confession depended on it.

  “So, after telling Harry if it ever came down to it, the evidence would put him away for life or even maybe get him the death penalty, you said to make sure he shot first. You drilled that into his mind. Problem was, Harry wasn’t a killer. He didn’t even buy bullets for the gun. The magazine was empty when he burst out of that shack.”

  Duck’s hand trembled. If only sweating and twitching would stand up in court, this would all be over.

  “And so, Harry Stork died for the Stickman killin’s. And that ended them. Probably, you thought, forever.”

  She waited to hear something back, but Duck remained silent.

  “What you didn’t know, though, Duck, was that Noah Stork continued. It took a handful of years, but the urge to kill came back. Only this time, he decided to change things up. Probably, he thought
, the Stickman case was closed. They solved the crime. No point in stirring up any old witch pots. I mean, that’s what you thought, right? That getting Harry put away or killed would be enough of a signal to make Noah Stork go into hiding? Don’t feel bad. He did. He did for years until that urge came back. And when it did, he reinvented himself.

  “As the Cahaba River Strangler.”

  Duck’s eyes went wide and gripped Leah’s. She had him.

  “You know what started Noah Stork and the Stickman killin’s? It was the death of his ex-wife. She killed herself, Duck. Granted, the family was a little messed up. Noah Stork has—had—schizophrenia, which, of course, you knew about. What you don’t know is that he handed a lot of that down to his kids. Sure, being in Vietnam set Harry off, but Tommy was diagnosed early. Neither of them were as bad as Noah, though. Yet nobody knew. Not about Noah. They only knew about Joshua Delford. But it was the death of his wife, Sally-Anne, that finally pushed Noah Stork’s diseased mind over the edge. Started him on the Stickman murders. What you probably don’t know, and the ironic part, is that the killin’s were targeted. Not the first few, but the rest. They were targeted at people working in hospitals. People whom Noah Stork would run into while helping out his son Harry with his cleaning business. So, in a way, Harry was involved. You just never knew. And, of course, neither did he.”

  Duck stayed silent. His eyes darted from hers to the tabletop. Sweat continued dripping off his chin and down his neck. The upper part of his uniform was getting wet, the soaked orange taking on almost the color of dried blood.

  “I know what you’re wondering. Why did the Stickman killin’s start up again if Noah Stork was getting all his killin’ enjoyment out as the Cahaba River Strangler? I know. This one stumped me for a long time. Then it came to me. And once again, there’s some irony here. Not sure how well-read you are, but I don’t want you to miss it. Surely Noah Stork wouldn’t have. Me, Duck. I’m the reason. I was interviewed in the Alvin Examiner in an article that ran about three weeks ago now. In the article I talked about my pa—my father. Who was as fine a police officer as there ever was one. Any idea who that was, Duck? He’s dead now.”