In the conversation, they chatted back and forth about possible targets and things like directed detonations and chemical names I vaguely remember from high school years. I jotted down names of chemicals, allusions to places and times. They mentioned a restaurant and I wrote it down too, desperate for every particle of information that might help.
The wind outside rattled the trees against the small window, and I hugged myself. Cold.
I shut off the MP3 player, frustrated. The recording needed cleaning up. I knew there wouldn’t be a place here, but maybe…
A beep in the corner startled me, and I jumped. Another beep sounded, and I spotted a blinking red light on a plastic console mounted by the door. I walked over, saw that it was an intercom, and pressed the button below the light.
“Uh, yes?”
“Oh, how are you doing up there, dear?” Bonnie’s voice squeaked out of the plastic speaker. “Are you hungry yet? You’ve been up there for some time.”
“No, I’m fine. Are you heading out? Do I need to leave?”
“Well, I am going home, but you’re welcome to stay as long as you like, dear. Just be sure to close the front door when you leave.”
“OK, Bonnie, thanks.” Something occurred to me. “How do I lock it?”
“What? The door?” Bonnie chuckled softly. “Why would you lock the door?”
“In case…” I stopped, surprised. “What if someone comes in to steal something?”
“I don’t see why anyone would do that if you can check out the books for free.” The amusement in Bonnie’s voice made me smile. Small parish life was definitely different than living in the city.
“Oh, all right.” I said finally.
“Bye, dear.”
A few minutes later, she walked out the front door, got into the only car in the parking lot, and drove away.
I watched from the half-moon window. The old house seemed suddenly lonely and a bit eerie. The darkening sky with its flashes of light didn’t help. I leaned against the wall thinking, my eyes on the wood file cabinets.
“What can it hurt?”
On the second drawer, the yellowed label read, ‘AM-AZ.’ I licked my lips, my hand on the brass handle, debating. I had told Bonnie I intended to do some research, so I wasn’t peering into files without permission. I glanced at the microfiche machine still shrouded in its opaque plastic dust cover, the boxes of film piled neatly on a shelf overhead. General news wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted articles on the locals…on Jake.
I pulled the drawer open, walked my fingers along the tabs, and stopped. The last file, labeled with the neat lettering of a hand stamper, bore the last name “Ayers.” I hesitated for a moment, and then pulled it out.
I opened the file with shaking hands. I felt like a stalker, peeking into Jake’s life without his knowledge, or permission. Still, the files were public, right?
Bonnie, or whoever archived the articles, cut them from the original newspaper and hand pasted them onto cardstock. I flipped through the faded pages announcing births and deaths from as far back as eighty years ago. The pictures of Jake’s family, strikingly similar, all had the same intense stare.
Reading the articles, I discovered that Jake’s father and his grandfather all served as the parish’s sheriff at one time or another. Jake was sworn in as sheriff thirteen years ago.
“Wow,” I muttered to no one. “That’s a long time.”
The man who served before Jake was named Jason Ayers. I remembered the name from an earlier article and flipped back.
Jason Ayers, born a year and a half before Jake, was his older brother. I stared at the article announcing his election as sheriff. Jake’s brother looked a lot like him. Same eye shape and jaw, but his brother’s features seemed softer, somehow, more like his French ancestry, I guessed.
The next article wasn’t a story, but an obituary for Jake’s mother, Justine Ayers. The picture that ran with the announcement showed a woman still striking at the age of seventy-seven. The obituary listed her death from natural causes and that she was survived by her husband, Edward Ayers, and her son, Jacob. The obituary ran four years ago.
I cocked my head to the side. So if Jason was Jake’s brother, and he died…then he died some time ago.
I leafed back through the file searching for something to explain the date of death. I passed an announcement for Jake’s going-away party at Verona’s Vittles. Something about the military. Jake served in the Navy? I kept searching until I found an obituary that ran fifteen years ago.
Jason Ayers, beloved Sheriff of La Foudre Parish, lost his life yesterday in a tragic motorcycle accident on Bramble Cliff Road. He was hit by a truck at 11:45 pm and killed instantly. An unnamed deputy speculated that Ayers may have been driving at an unusually high rate of speed and possibly on the wrong side of the road, but that has not been officially confirmed. His brother, Jake Ayers, back from the military only two weeks, was also at the scene, but unharmed. Services will be at La Foudre Community Chapel on Thursday. Call Edna at the front desk for details.
I reread the article twice, trying to take in every nuance.
Jake was there that night. He’d just come back from…where?
I sat at the desk listening to the wind outside and thinking. Sounds from outside the archive room pulled my attention, and I went to check it out, glancing at the window on the way.
Dark blotches scarred the orange sky as the sun, half hidden by the trees, dipped low on the horizon.
“Bonnie?” I called.
No one answered.
I heard another bump, as if someone shoved a chair across the wood floor, and the hair on my arms stood on end. I crept along the stair railing, peering down to the marble table in the foyer. The lights were out, and the shrouding darkness made my chest tight with fear. I hated the dark, had since childhood, and pushed back the panic that clawed.
I remembered seeing the light switch at the foot of the stairs.
More noise below sent fear knifing through me. I struggled to keep my breathing quiet and controlled. Taking the steps slowly, willing myself to be silent, I went down the carpeted stairway to the front door. I tried the light switch; nothing.
Desperate panic tore through me, and I flattened against the rough walls as I took the last few steps to the first floor.
I gasped when I saw the open door. It bumped against the umbrella stand with a gust of wind. The bump I’d heard before? I couldn’t be sure.
Looking around frantically for a weapon and hoping I wasn’t about to frighten some old lady to death, I grabbed a wood candle holder and held it over my head like an ax.
“Hello?” My voice trembled a bit, but I stepped forward, gaze on the open doorway. “Bonnie?”
The smell hit me before I saw him. Standing just outside the library’s door on the cement porch was a man in a tattered coat. He raised a gnarled hand towards me. “Rileeee…” his guttural growl sent me staggering back, my butt hitting the marble-topped table, stopping me.
I remembered the candlestick and shook it like a batter taunting a pitcher.
“You better watch out,” I panted over my panic. “I – I was MVP of my softball team!”
He looked at me with wide, yellowed eyes, and I noticed a shopping cart parked next to him. In it, a tattered chicken sat in the front seat. I looked at it, and then at him and struggled to wrap my mind around what I was seeing.
He grimaced, showing blackened teeth. He pointed again. “The light,” he breathed and I smelled the rot of his bad gums. “Milk and the light of truth, Rileeee. Milk and the light of truth!”
Lightning lit up his jagged silhouette in a scene a horror enthusiast would truly appreciate.
It was all too much for my brain to handle. I screamed and ran at him with the candlestick.
He screamed and flailed his arms, off balance, falling to the side of the door as I barreled past.
I ran full bore, with my legs pumping, not looking back. I cried, crazily guilty that I lied about the softball. I�
�d never played. I’d been a track star.
I heard him yell, but the thunder ate up his words.
Freaked out and angry at my own bizarre reaction, I slowed when I hit the street. To my right, headlights from a truck lit up the dark road. I called to them, arms waving.
“Hey, hold on,” I panted.
The truck stopped and I staggered to the driver’s side.
The driver’s side window rolled down and I gasped with relief. “Thank goodness it’s you!”
The driver’s eyebrow went up. “Girl, have you lost your mind?” Verona snapped her gum. “What’re you doing running around in the dark like that? You trying to get yourself killed?”
****
We sat in the same booth we’d occupied before.
She pushed a steaming cup of coffee to me and urged me to drink. “You want to tell me what that particular piece of drama was all about?”
I laughed nervously. “I think I attacked a homeless guy with the library’s décor.”
She blinked, and then snapped her gum. Eyes narrowing, she nodded outside. “Did he have a chicken with him?”
“Yeah…how did you…?”
“Awe, that’s the Chicken Guy,” she said and waved her hand dismissively. “He’s harmless.”
“He knew my name.” I sipped the coffee. “He said my name. Twice.” I tried to stifle a shudder, failed, and burned my hand with sloshing coffee.
“Huh.” Verona shrugged. “Guess he knows you, then.”
“I’ve never met him before.” I used the paper napkin to wipe up the spilled coffee.
“Well, homeless dudes don’t go around calling your name unless they know you, Red.” Verona rolled her eyes. “We need to call Jake.”
I touched her forearm. “Please don’t.”
She looked down at my hand and I moved it, with a pleading look.
“You two have a spat?” She sat back down. “Cause he can be infuriating, I know, but he’s a good guy. He’s worth the trouble.”
“We’re—there’s no relationship, Verona.” I looked at her, exasperated. “Where’d you get that from?”
“Then why?”
“Why what?”
“Why don’t you want me to call him?”
“We did have a fight, but…”
“I knew it.” She bobbed her head, like those bobble-head dolls on dash boards.
“It’s not because we’re a couple,” I whispered the last word. “He thinks I lied to him.”
“Did you?” Verona snapped her gum again and crossed her arms.
“No.” I shook my head. “No, I didn’t. Citrine misinterpreted a fax and—”
“Oh, do not get me started on her and her daughter.” Verona rolled her eyes. “That woman… anyways, what were you doing at the library? No one ever goes there since they built that new one out in Thibodaux. The parish just keeps that old house open because some rich family pays for it out of their estate.”
“I was hiding out from…all of them. Then Bonnie left, so I was alone. I must have been reading for a while up on the third floor, because before I knew it, it was dark.” I rubbed my crossed arms. “I hate the dark, Verona.”
“Yeah, I saw that,” she said. “You looked terrified out there.”
Nodding, I sipped the coffee. “Anyway, I was reading some…files,” I hedged. “And then I heard a noise, went to investigate, and you know the rest.”
Verona leaned back and looked at me.
I didn’t know if I should stare back, or not.
“What?”
“What were you doing up there in the archives?”
“I – I was…” I was caught. “I was reading up on Jake.”
She smirked. “Find anything interesting?”
I leaned forward. “I found out about the brother you mentioned.”
Her smile faded. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh,” I repeated. “Why would he never mention this to me?”
“Because it’s painful, and it happened fifteen years ago.”
“Even after my brother died, though? I thought that we formed…a bond, or something. I’d just lost a brother, and Jake knew what that felt like. Why wouldn’t he say anything?” I blew out a breath. “I sound lame.”
Why was I telling her all this?
Verona nodded out the window, seemingly lost in thought.
I watched her silently, not knowing what she thought of me, or me and Jake, or why it would matter, anyway.
She turned to me, her face almost sad. “Why are you doing this, Red? Do you even know yourself?”
I felt the ache of sorrow constrict my throat. I fought to keep from crying. “I feel like it’s my fault. Like I should have seen where Randy was headed and what was coming and stopped it.”
“And now you think that proving Randy wasn’t alone, you can make things right?” Verona’s gaze went to the bandages on my forearms.
I pulled my sleeves down subconsciously.
“Is that what you’re hoping to do here?”
“I don’t know, maybe?” I said, truly lost. “I wish Jake could understand that. I wish he saw how desperately I need to make this right; and not for some stupid television show, but for peace, or closure, or something.”
I told her about the letter Randy sent, about Randy’s problem with depression when he was younger, and about the fax that set off the fight between Jake and me.
She listened, a concerned look on her face. “You feel like you failed your brother.”
I nodded, wiped my eyes, and frowned at the mascara stains on the napkin. “I’ve tried to let things fall where they may. I tried to get it out of my mind, to let it go and toe the line my family wanted me to, but for some reason, I have to do this.”
“Have you told these things to Jake?”
“What for? It wouldn’t change his mind about helping me, now. Besides, he wouldn’t understand. He’s just interested in keeping the peace out here, no matter what he has to overlook to make that happen.”
“No, Red, I think in all the parish, Jake’s the one who knows exactly how you feel.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Jake caused his brother’s death,” Verona whispered. “He killed his older brother. At least, that’s how he sees it. And feeling that way, he wouldn’t tell you. ”
“What?” Alarm and shock shot through me. “How?”
“Jake and Jason argued that night.” Verona twisted the napkin in her fingers, frowning. “They got in a fistfight. Jason sped off on his bike and crashed into a truck a few miles down the road.”
My chest tightened with sorrow. “That’s terrible, Verona.”
“What’s worse, the fight was over a woman.” Verona was sad. “It was over Citrine.”
13
I sat back and stared at Verona with my mouth agape.
“Close your mouth, girl, you’ll let the flies in.”
I snapped my teeth together. “Citrine?”
“You’re telling me you didn’t know something went on there?” Verona shook her head. “I thought you reporters were all observant and stuff.”
I didn’t know where to look, worried Verona might pick up on the pang of jealousy shooting through my chest. I had suspected, but the way he acted on the boat when he pulled me close…
I blew out a slow breath, the lump in my throat painful. “They have a thing going?”
“Had,” Verona corrected. “Oh, please, let it still be in the past.”
“What happened?”
She poured us more coffee from the stainless steel carafe on the table.
I busied myself with perfecting my milk to sugar ratio while I waited. Sometimes people told you more if you just kept your mouth shut and didn’t push. Then in occurred to me that this was gossiping. “Maybe we shouldn’t be talking about Jake like this.”
“You need to hear this. I want you to understand where he’s coming from, and I don’t believe he knows how to tell you himself, but I think he would if he could.”<
br />
“But…” I looked at her, unsure of what to do.
“You have to understand. Those Ayers’ are practically born with a badge, Red.” Verona blew across the surface of her mug, the steam obscuring her eyes for a moment. “Jake’s daddy, his daddy’s daddy, on back to before La Foudre ever made it onto any map, they all served as lawmen here in one way, or another.”
“But, I read in the archives that Jake went into the military.”
She waved my comment away with a flick of her hand.
“Jake was never meant to be sheriff, mind you. He was always going to be a deputy under his brother. That’s just how it worked. Jason was the oldest, so he’d be sheriff. But Jake and Jason, they were so close in age, only eighteen months, and with Jake so much more...” She searched the ceiling, looking for the right word. “Capable? I guess is the word. Jake was bigger, better at sports, some say more handsome, and that caused trouble between them. Jason knew his place in the family, but Jake, I think, felt lost. His daddy was the sheriff, so Jake was the kid who made the most trouble in town.”
“Really?” I thought about his calm manner, and the way he defused the car-killing situation with Carl.
How he dealt with Carl’s wife, and the couple from the radio call who fought. Nothing seemed to rile Jake. This troubled youth seemed out of place. Like a different person.
“What…how…” I put my hands flat on the table, at a loss for words again.
“Jake and Citrine were in the same grade at the high school. With his French mama, no one was surprised that Jake took up with her, but they fought constantly. Citrine isn’t a bad person, Red, but she has her ideas about how things should work and Jake doesn’t always go with the flow of things.”
“And one of those things was Jake being a deputy.” I knew where this was going. I thought about the bed and breakfast, the life on the water, and understood. It was a good life. Citrine wasn’t bad to want that. “But Jake went into the Navy, instead.”
“Jake and Jason’s dad had a heart attack so the job fell to Jason, who had been sort of a junior deputy for two years, before then. Toughie was recovering from a boat accident, again,” she said. “But he agreed to come alongside Jason and fill in the experience gap for a while.”
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