“I need to get my hands on ’im.” Ned lifted his hat to wipe the band. The humidity was still thick and heavy. The back of his ear was throbbing and he was feeling mean as an old sore-tailed tomcat.
John tilted his head toward the sound of the baby crying inside the trailer. “Do you think he got after Top just ’cause the boy recognized him?”
Replacing his hat, Ned grunted. “We’ll find out once we catch him.”
Cody cross his arms and studied his boots, thinking. “Well, we got an APB out for him. He won’t get far riding a motorcycle without somebody seeing him.”
Anna leaned against Calvin’s truck. “Connie told me all about this guy. He’s been going out at all hours and coming back smelling like smoke. She says she figures he’s hurt some folks, but doesn’t know for sure.”
Thinking hard, Cody glanced into the truck bed and raised an eyebrow. It was odd in that part of the country to see a bed so devoid of farming litter. Most every truck he’d ever seen was littered with hay, bailing wire, and feed sacks. The boards in the Ford’s bed were clean except for coiled ropes they used to stake tents and a few muddy footprints.
He reached in and picked up one of the coils. “Well.”
Ned leaned in to look. “Well, what?”
John understood at once. He walked around and dropped the tailgate with a bang. “Looky here.”
Anna came around. “What? Rope, stakes, and footprints.”
“This is red clay.”
“So?”
“Red clay that looks like what might have come from under a hanging tree. This is the same kind of rope somebody used to hang Charlie Clay.”
Anna cleared her throat. “That’s what’s been bothering me. Connie said he left so fast he didn’t get all of it off and that’s what was on the hanging rope that we thought was grease or paint. It was greasepaint. The kind clowns use to make themselves up.”
“We got him.” Cody patted his pocket to celebrate with a cigarette. There wasn’t even a stick of gum in there.
Chapter Seventy-four
We were sitting around the laminate and chrome table in Miss Becky’s kitchen the next morning. Instead of bustling around, she was in her usual place, sipping her second cup of coffee, something she rarely had. I’d never seen her so still.
“This old world’s gettin’ so rough, I believe I’m afraid to let any of y’all go anywhere. We just need to stay at home from now on.”
Pepper frowned at her plate. “That won’t be any better, now that Mama and Daddy’s bought the Ordway place. It’s just as dangerous as eating dinner in the middle of the highway.”
Mark grinned and picked at a piece of toast. “It wasn’t nothing but the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Miss Becky studied me. “You poor kids. Y’all’ve been through more’n kids your age ought to have ever seen. I hate it, and I know it’s hard on you. It was Calvin you been dreaming about, ain’t it, hon?”
“I believe so. Everything fit. The lights, the giant lips…all of it.”
“Do you think it’s over?”
“My dreams? No.”
“Why not?”
“He got away.”
Norma Faye came in from the bathroom where she’d washed her face. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying. Uncle Cody dropped her off and promised to be back as quick as he could. “Miss Becky, I’m so sorry.”
“Hush, hon. This ain’t nothing you done.”
“But I was married to him…and…you know, that brought this trouble.”
Miss Becky’s eyes cut over at us. “Well, that was then and this is now. This ain’t your doin’. You’re family now, so that’s it. Me and you’ll talk later, but you quit frettin’ about it.”
Pepper glanced at the wooden kitchen door that was propped open to air the house out. There was nothing between us and the outside but wire screen held closed with an eyehook latch. “He could come walking right in here like nobody’s business if he had a mind to.”
Norma Faye nearly dropped her coffee cup. She looked as scared as if she’d picked up a snake.
Miss Becky sipped again. “No he won’t. Hootie’s outside and I’m not afraid with that shotgun leaning in the corner.”
“One of them clowns didn’t have you down on the ground.”
“Well Pepper, I don’t expect to see any clowns coming up the driveway this morning.”
Mark grinned. “That’s the truth. It’s so hot his makeup would run off his face like ice cream.”
Still trembling, Norma Faye leaned a hip against the cabinet counter and took a long, shuddering breath. “I’m so sorry.”
“Hush, I said.” Miss Becky reached out a hand and Norma Faye took it.
Pepper gave Mark a good-natured nudge and twirled her long hair. “Well, it’s too hot to do anything today. I just want to go in the living room and listen to the radio.”
“All right.” Miss Becky stood to clear the table. “Y’all get out from underfoot, but don’t turn it up too loud.”
We left the table and Pepper dialed a station in until it was clear. “Take the Last Train to Clarksville” was on and Pepper made a face. “I hope they play something good after this shit.”
I limped over to the couch and laid down where I could see the south door. I didn’t want anybody to come sneaking in from that way. Mark laid down on his stomach and opened The Chisum News on the rag rug covering the floor. He turned to the Sunday comics and I watched a fly bump the screen while Miss Becky and Norma Faye talked in the kitchen.
Chapter Seventy-five
Ed’s Tourist Cabins in Hugo, Oklahoma, was the perfect place to lay low for a couple of days. Reclined in a sagging bed in cabin number five, Calvin lit another cigarette and thought back over the past week. There was no longer any use in stirring up trouble between the Clays and Mayfields. They were already mad enough to kill each other for the next ten years. His idea of framing Cody for all of it had failed, but his string of successes was like a tonic.
He’d killed and burned out some of those who wronged him, and that was enough for now. He could even come back and finish up tomorrow, next month, or next year.
He was patient, and smarter than any lawman he ever ran into. He chuckled. Even if he had to wait another year or two, it would be sheer hell for them every time they opened their eyes in the morning, wondering if this was the day, or if he’d come tomorrow.
With the makeup gone, Clocko the Clown ceased to exist. Cal Willis was also gone. He didn’t think of himself as Calvin Williams, either. He was now The Wraith, and he had business to finish.
The Wraith drew a deep breath, smelling the gas from his Indian that had barely fit through the door.
He lay there with both hands behind his head, listening to Hank Williams on the radio and remembering how he’d cut Hollis Mayfield in two with a shotgun because Hollis once dusted Calvin’s back and ass with a load of rock salt one night when he and his running buddy Ron Preston snuck into Hollis’ watermelon patch. The teenagers were headed for the woods carrying a melon apiece when the dim of a flashlight beam caught them two rows away from the barbed-wire fence.
Hollis hollered and cut loose with one barrel that hissed through the air behind them. Ron dropped his watermelon and ducked to the left. Calvin made the mistake of hanging onto a big melon and running straight for the fence. When they didn’t stop, Hollis fired again and the load of salt had time to spread out, cutting through his clothes and setting him on fire.
Calvin remembered how he screamed at the impact, thinking he’d been shot for real. It was only after the wounds began to burn with an ungodly fire that he realized what had happened. He ran through the woods in an inferno of pain. They met up at the car parked on the other side of a strip of woods and Ron drove across the river to his uncle’s house while Calvin shrieked and writhed in the backseat.
The uncle he never saw again used the point of a knife and tweezers to pick the salt from the seeping, burning wounds in his back, ass, and legs. The scars were still there, and from time to time Calvin found himself rubbing his fingertips across the thick skin, remembering.
The worst was when women asked him about them. He could never come up with a good story, instead telling the truth and waiting in embarrassment for them to laugh, which they always did.
Now he’d settled all but one of the scores that had plagued him all his life. He grinned at the stained ceiling, thinking about how he’d finish the job that night and be gone. Something up there caught his attention, and he stood to turn on all the lights. A laugh bubbled in his chest when he recognized the stain as blood splatter. He followed the dried drops from the ceiling down the wall to where it had been wiped away.
It looked as if someone had taken a baseball bat to whoever’d been sleeping in his bed. That, or the guy had blown his own brains out.
The Wraith dropped back on the bed and laughed loud and long at the irony.
Wouldn’t Norma Faye and Cody be surprised when they woke up dead in their bed the next morning?
Chapter Seventy-six
The lawmen’s cars were positioned the next morning to temporarily block the lanes crossing the Lake Lamar Dam. Ned’s shirt was already sticking to his back, telling him it was going to be another miserable day. Despite the heat and humidity, he felt better after catching a few hours of sleep.
John, Anna, and Cody joined him at the twisted guardrail to hear Anna’s theory about the car crash and resulting clash between the two families. She pointed at the highway only twenty feet away from the damaged rail. “See that tire mark?”
Cody used his foot to point. “This curved one here?”
“Right. Those short skidmarks from Maggie’s car are back there, and there are two of them. This is where someone peeled out on a motorcycle.”
Ned studied the scars on the slope below and then looked up to see his house a mile in the distance. He unconsciously scanned the horizon and stopped when he saw the roof of Cody’s house.
“My Lord.”
John heard the tension in his voice. “What, Mr. Ned?”
“It’s as plain as the nose on my face.” Ned pointed. “John, that there’s the roof of Cody’s house in them trees and there’s mine on the hill over yonder.”
“So?”
Anna agreed. “That’s my point. Calvin Williams was sitting here in the dark on his bike, watching y’all’s houses. It was late. Maggie and Frank came around at a high rate of speed. She instinctively tried to dodge him and instead of taking to a ditch, they went through the rail. That mark’s from where he peeled out and was gone.”
Ned’s voice was soft, as if he were trying to sneak up on the answer that he already knew. “She’s right, but that still don’t explain what they were doing together.”
She pointed to the wooded overlook. “You can park against the trees and nobody can see you. My guess is they spent most of the night right there, talking. They could have been having sex, or arguing, or both for all I know, but from what I’ve heard, they’d probably decided to be together because Maggie was pregnant.”
Anna spoke softly, eyes almost closed as if she could see that night. The dam was silent. A hawk rode the thermals above the woods lining the creek. “She started to have an abortion in Frogtown, but changed her mind.” She saw Ned’s eyebrow rise. “Miss Sweet sent Ralston to bring her back. Miss Sweet told John, and I talked to some other women, so I know it’s true.”
Cody faced the west in the direction the car was traveling. “So Frank and Maggie’s accident was just that, an accident that came at the worst possible time. But I’m still wondering why his car was at a joint across the river. No one there saw them.”
“’cause that’s a good place to leave one.” John thought aloud. “Maybe they just pulled up out there at the edge of the lot and he got in with her.”
Anna thought about it. “It fits. I doubt people recognized a car from Chisum sitting out there in the dark. They were probably going to go back and get it before daylight, but almost ran into Calvin instead. Good Lord. He had no idea who they were at first, but when he found out, he used the wreck to restart this feud and tried to put the blame on Cody. At the same time we got locked into who they were. It led us to concentrate on the wrong set of events.”
She watched their reactions. “It was brilliant. Once we get all this sorted out, I think we’ll find that he was behind some of the fires, in addition to the murders of Merle Mayfield, Joe Bill, and if I’m right, Hollis Mayfield.”
Ned rubbed the back of his neck, digesting her theory. The puzzle pieces fell into place and they all fit when he realized why Calvin had been on the dam in the first place. “He was settin’ here, Cody, stewing on you and Norma Faye, I ’magine. Y’all might have been next, or if he hadn’t got caught here that night, first.”
Cody’s eyes roamed over the house and woods. “If y’all are right, Calvin’ll might try to come to the house.”
John shook his head. “That guy’s most likely gone for good.”
“But we don’t know that. If Maggie’d hit him, none of the rest of this would have happened.” Cody hooked both thumbs behind his gunbelt. “But she didn’t and he got away. Anna, you done good. This explains almost everything.”
“Except where Calvin Williams is now,” Ned said.
Cody drew a long breath. “All right. Let’s get back to what we were doing and see if we can’t run him down. We need to find him now more than ever.”
They started back to the cars when John pointed. “Sheriff, your car’s leaking oil.”
Cody squatted and looked underneath. Oil dripped like water. “Dammit. Looks like the oil pan’s got a hole in it. Look at the size of that puddle.”
Ned’s stomach rumbled, reminding him he’d only had coffee for breakfast. “You think you got enough to get back to town?”
“Maybe. You follow me, though, just in case.”
“You bet. I’ll bring you back to the house.” Ned faced the creek bottom and the house he’d called home for the past forty years. “Mama’ll have dinner ready by then.”
Chapter Seventy-seven
The Wraith couldn’t take lying around the Oklahoma motel room any longer. His head throbbed all night from where Ike Reader split his scalp with the shovel and he added Reader to his now short list of people to settle up with.
The urge to do something, anything, took over. No one would be looking for him in Center Springs. Anyone with any sense would think he was long gone from the state. Right now was the time to finish his business and go.
He worked the handlebars of his 1949 Indian through the cabin door. Once outside, he tied a red bandanna around his head and put on a pair of sunglasses, figuring it was enough of a disguise to do what he wanted.
He kicked the engine alive and grinned. He had a new plan. Like everyone else in his old community, Ned’s family most likely gathered at his house for Sunday dinner. The Wraith decided to ride his bike back into Texas to the Sanders Creek bridge and park it underneath. Then he could follow Center Springs Branch, just like he did the night he slipped into Norma Faye’s house, only this time it would be broad daylight.
No one would be there and he could wait for the couple to come home, full of fried chicken and sleepy, and not expecting what they were due. The Wraith pressed his left arm against his chest, feeling the knife under his shirt.
It would be quick and silent. Then he could simply walk back down the stream and ride away. It would all be happy trails after that.
He gunned the engine and rode south, singing the Roy Rogers song. “Happy trails to you…”
The Wraith crossed the Red River bridge twenty minutes later and into Texas. He turned right onto 197 and glanced into his rearview mirror. A red Plymout
h Fury popped up right behind him and he recognized the men in the front seat. “Oh, shit!”
In the passenger seat, Sheriff Cody Parker slapped a red light onto the roof and it came to life.
The Wraith gunned the engine.
His plan had just come unraveled.
Chapter Seventy-eight
The motorcycle accelerated as soon as Ned turned in behind him. He mashed the accelerator and the Plymouth’s big engine roared.
“I don’t believe it!” Cody slapped a light on the roof and snatched the microphone off the dash. “John! Anna!”
Deputy John Washington came back first. “Cody, what’s wrong?”
“We’re coming back from dropping my car off and Ned just turned in behind Calvin Williams on that Indian motorcycle. He’s on 197 from Arthur City and heading for Center Springs. Where are you?”
“I was nearly to my house.” The sounds of squalling tires came through the Motorola’s speaker telling Cody the deputy was making a U-turn. “I’m on the way.”
“Ned!”
“Go ahead, Anna!”
“I’m coming, too.”
“Where are you?”
“Just west of Powderly.”
Ned leaned forward over the wheel and squinted into the distance. “Tell her to come back down the new road across the dam.”
Cody saw the wisdom in the move that would close off all three routes. Williams would have only one option to escape and that would be to take the dirt roads through the bottoms that led nowhere. They’d have him trapped.
Ned grunted. “She shuts that road off, and we’ll have him.”
“Did you get that, Anna? Come through Powderly and cut him off at the dam.”
“Got it.”
Chapter Seventy-nine
The Wraith twisted the accelerator, leaning into the curves as he pulled away from Ned’s Plymouth. The white Indian jumped forward and roared down the road. He couldn’t believe his bad luck! It was the same luck he’d had all his life and he was tired of it. He was smarter than everybody else, but John Law was always picking on him, or showing up at the wrong time, or trying to bust him for things that were out of his control. Now here they were again, right on his ass and it just wasn’t right!
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