by Craig Smith
I gave a lonesome shrug, ‘All I know is Missy Worth told me she didn’t think you had the guts to come see her.’
‘Really?’
‘Something about that prissy county prosecutor…’
‘ Prissy?’
Chapter 57
Darkness.
‘WHAT DID HE WANT?’ TABIT ASKED.
Penny Lyons didn’t answer.
‘Penny...?’ Again she did not respond. Tabit shivered and felt Tammy pulling closer to her, taking the role of the younger sister as she often did when things went badly. Tabit was sick with fear and Tammy’s clinging forced her to be braver than she felt. She wanted Tammy to let go of her. She wanted to cry her own tears!
Tabit could not erase the image of Mr Lyons being shot. She saw the shells spinning in lonely arcs to the floor, the spray of blood like a mist off his chest. Then she remembered Will shooting Benny in the knee. The way he had smiled just before he did it!
Something beautiful, she whispered for only God to hear. Something to carry her to the end, she meant. But all er ᑀ* alignf hthat came to answer her prayer was the most horrible thing she had ever witnessed. She closed her eyes to the darkness and pulled her sister close, suddenly as hungry for touch as Tammy. She thought to pray, because there was nothing left to do but pray. When she tried there were no words for God. No words. No beautiful thing. No peace. No God at all.
Not if he let such things as this happen.
‘Dad’s alive,’ Penny announced.
A voice out of the dark, a sigh of pain. Benny’s voice. ‘Did he say anything?’
‘He said he loved us,’ Penny answered with a whisper. ‘He said he loves all of us. He says we have to hang on.’
Chapter 58
Friday 11:30 a.m., March 26.
I WAVED AT THE SHERIFF’S deputy with a lone finger rising off my steering wheel. He was parked on a side street at the back of the Merriweather house. I drove on around to the front and put a tire in some deep snow close to the Merriweather lawn. Two other cars were parked the same way. Both of them FBI-issue.
I went directly to the front door. A federal agent opened it and made quite a show of checking my credentials. Then he said he would go see if the reverend could talk. A moment later, he came back, followed by a trim middle-aged woman. I decided she must be Mrs Merriweather.
‘Pastor’s resting,’ she offered simply as the agent vanished into the shadows to wait with his partner for Will Booker’s call for a ransom.
I tried out her name and was informed coolly that she was not Mrs Merriweather. That gave me a little encouragement and I said, ‘Tell him it’s important.’
‘He’s already talked to the sheriff. I don’t see that he needs to go through all this again.’
‘And you are?’
‘Louise Robbins.’
‘Ms Robbins, get Dr Merriweather out here or I’ll go in and wake him up myself.’ From the look on her face, I might have said I’d kick his ass. Louise Robbins disappeared in something of a huff. A few minutes later Connie Merriweather appeared. He was alone, blinking, disoriented. It was late in the morning, working toward the lunch hour, actually, and I realized I’d probably interrupted the man’s first sleep since his kids had been snatched.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
Connie Merriweather was about as friendly as Louise Robbins. I introduced myself as congenially as circumstances allowed and shook the big man’s hand. The guy towered over me, too. I figured six feet, eight inches, but he could have been taller. ‘Sorry to intrude, Dr Merriweather. I know it’s a trying time for you and your wife, but I’d like to talk to you about Will Booker.’
‘I’ve been through this with Detective Tincher.’
‘Yes, sir, I know that, and I expect you’d do it a thousand times more if you thought it would help us find your two girls.’
Connie Merriweather thought about this. ‘Come on back to the kitchen.’
The kitchen a e?’‘Yes held a tight, worn group of folks from the minister’s church. They looked to be living on stale coffee and desperate prayers. Introductions were quick and cool. I was an outsider, come to stir the pain up again. The prosecutor’s own. To their thinking that was still the enemy camp. ‘I suppose the first thing Miss Garrat wants to hear,’ Merriweather offered with a grim smile, ‘is that she was right, and I was wrong.’
‘What Ms Garrat wants is what we all want: your girls back home safely. You can help by giving me as much information as you can think of.’
Connie Merriweather shook his head. ‘I don’t have any information.’
‘The daughter he left the hospital with...’
‘Tammy.’
‘She’s the older of the two?’
Merriweather nodded. ‘She’s eighteen.’
‘And the younger girl is Tabitha?’
‘Tabit. Says Tabitha is a witch.’ There was a fond smile with this, and I liked the man with a suddenness I hadn’t expected. A fool for his cause, but a man all the same. A father with losses I could calculate all too well. ‘She turned sixteen a few months ago.’
Tears came to the preacher’s eyes but the voice didn’t quite break. I felt sick at my stomach watching his misery. I was sure I had been as bad when Sarah had vanished. Break anything, weep, swear, roar. But nothing changes because of it. A missing child is a rock that won’t break.
‘Do you have any pictures of the girls?’ I asked.
‘The sheriff has been provided with pictures,’ one of the men answered sharply. He had a name, but I’d already forgotten it. I didn’t back down. I’d seen the pictures they had provided the sheriff, but I wanted Connie Merriweather to show me his girls. I wanted to know just what they were like, from his perspective. Getting a man to show you pictures of his kids will tell you what speeches never can.
‘There’s a good one of them both in the family room,’ Merriweather announced. ‘I can’t let it go, but if you’d like to see it...’ The preacher looked at another of the men sitting at the table, and the fellow rose to get the photograph. ‘The church has been here from the start,’ the minister explained, almost as an afterthought. It was something to fill the gap, at the same time a way to give the others around the table a thank you.
‘I bet you’ve had a lot of phone calls from friends,’ I said, ‘people dropping by...’ I remembered my own house packed to the brim sometimes, empty at others. Strangers wandering around, the perfect chaos of it.
‘Actually, the deacons organized a few people to come around to the house in shifts. And we put the word out to keep the phone lines free, in case Will wants to call.’
I looked at the others. Not the closest friends, but there on assignment.
‘We have a prayer line,’ one of the men told me,’ as if he imagined I was curious.
‘Everyone has three or four people to call. We can get the word out pretty fast when we want to!’
‘We’re a big church,’ Connie Merriweather told meone:, ‘but we’re close. Like a family, I mean.’ He looked at his parishioners, friends for years, if I read the look right. ‘We’ve got a couple hundred people at the church day and night reciting prayers and singing hymns.’
‘It’s more like five hundred this morning, Pastor,’ Louise Robbins announced primly.
Merriweather nodded, and then dropped his gaze. ‘Rachel went down this morning for the first time,’ he told me. ‘I’ll go this afternoon.’ He thought about it quietly, then added, ‘First time.’
The man returned with a photo and Merriweather took it from him. ‘I shot that last fall at a retreat,’ Merriweather announced fondly. His eyes swept over the thing. ‘Just a snap shot, but it was so good we had it...’ Merriweather hesitated, gathering his control, then seemed to forget to finish his thought.
I considered the two girls without comment. So young. So perfectly innocent, and I wondered again how a man could be so stupid and proud and stubborn as to put them in harm’s
way. The older, Tammy, was a
big, soft girl with chalky eyes and straw-blonde hair. A double chin, rosy cheeks, a kid’s smile. Even at eighteen, despite her weight, she had no real breasts to speak of: a little cherub, right out of a Rubens painting, giggling on cloud tops. The other, Tabit, was trim and pretty. She had her father’s dark features and the same sharp little nose. Small breasts, tight hips caught in a candid little wiggle, a smile that was full of an uncommon grace for one so young. A sexuality beyond her years.
‘Did Will show interest in either girl?’ I asked, lifting my gaze up suddenly on the preacher.
Connie Merriweather shook his head. ‘He was a perfect gentleman, Mr Trueblood.
Never a look that was out of place. Nothing that anyone could... no. Nothing. If I’d even thought...’
‘What about the girls? Did either of them show interest in him?’
‘No.’ This was too quick, and Merriweather seemed to reconsider. ‘Well, I don’t know if that’s true. Rachel seemed to think Tammy had a schoolgirl crush on Will.’
I took this without comment. Tammy was the one at the hospital when Booker disappeared. She was also the kid Will Booker had been with when Clint Doolittle attacked him.
Predator that he was, Will Booker hadn’t tried for pretty.
‘Do you have children, Mr Trueblood?’ Merriweather asked me.
The question startled me, and I answered him before I had time to consider a dodge. ‘I had a girl.’
The eyes narrowed, softened. ‘The law student down in Attica?’
I nodded and looked out the window to the blue sky beyond. ‘Sarah.’
‘The name Trueblood was familiar. I thought...’ he hesitated. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It was years ago,’ I said. Eight and counting. Nothing had changed for me, but I knew the rest of the world had moved on. I pretended time had healed my loss some. It was the kind of lie that made it easier for people to deal with me.
Merriweather’s eyes wentded wet and distant. ‘Her death happened not long after Will was imprisoned,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I always thought there might be a connection between your daughter’s murder and what happened with the kids Will was convicted of killing.’
‘I read the theories,’ I said. I kept my voice flat, neutral. I didn’t tell him what I thought at the time, the hatred I had had for him; how I had felt like he was contaminating my girl’s life with his far-flung theories in defence of a killer. Sarah deserved better than to end up as an alibi for William Booker.
‘You must know what this is like,’ the big man told me quietly, his voice trembling.
I didn’t answer him. All death is private. A lost child is like no other. I had some idea of his pain. He had some idea of mine. There are many mansions in heaven. A lot of tiny rooms in hell.
Chapter 59
Friday 11:50 a.m., March 26.
‘YOU KNOW,’ MERRIWEATHER TOLD me after we had talked a while about the day of the abduction of his two girls, ‘I keep thinking I could have done something...’
‘Pastor...’ A hand reaching out to shut him up.
But Connie Merriweather shook his head. ‘The old man sharing Will’s room told me Will had taken a walk with some pretty girl. I thought he meant... well, I didn’t know what he meant. If I had just asked!’ He shook his head miserably, tears taking his eyes again.
‘Was the old man at the hospital in your congregation?’ I asked. I was having trouble understanding the sequence of events, especially Merriweather’s long talk with some old codger.
But for that, Merriweather might have stopped this thing before it began.
‘A parishioner? No. He was... what I like to call pre-saved. Primed and ready for the Lord. Just needing a little push. Wanted to talk Bible. Seems Will had...’ The big man blinked and gave me the most miserable smile I have ever witnessed. ‘Will was talking to him about the Book of Job, Mr Trueblood. Do you know it?’
‘I know Job suffered,’ I said. ‘I haven’t read the story for a long time.’
The preacher looked at me like I was lying, but he didn’t call me on it. I had read it. I had read the whole Bible cover-to-cover after Sarah’s death. I just didn’t want to be quizzed on it. ‘The old man thought it was strange that God and the devil would sit down and hash things out face-to-face, even make a wager.’
‘That is a bit unusual, isn’t it?’ I asked.
‘Singular,’ the minister answered. ‘Nowhere else in scripture do they even talk with one another.’
‘Any idea why the Book of Job would interest Booker?’
‘Will knows his Bible, Mr Trueblood. The last ten years, it’s all he’s studied; the only thing he’ll read. He won’t even watch television. As for a computer, he won’t touch one of those!’
‘Yes, sir. But was he especially fond of Job?’
‘Not especially,’ Merriweather answered. ‘But you have to realizev> ᒀ D Will thinks biblically, if that makes sense to you.’
‘I’m afraid it doesn’t.’
Merriweather gave a quick, strained look at one of the others. This was something they had discussed among themselves but hadn’t bothered giving Max Dunn or Rolly Tincher. ‘The wager Satan made with the Lord is about Job’s faith – whether he’ll keep it or lose it when ruin hits.’
I frowned, not quite getting it. ‘You think this is all some kind of test?’
‘The whole point, as far as Will’s concerned.’ He smiled gently. It was a look I had seen at funeral homes.
‘The point being…?’ I asked.
‘Connie...’
Merriweather was crying again, but his voice held together reasonably. ‘The first thing that happens after the wager, Mr Trueblood, is a mighty wind comes and blows a building down.
It kills all of Job’s children.’
Chapter 60
Friday 12:05 p.m., March 26.
PAT GARRAT’S SECRETARY called ahead to arrange an interview. When Garrat arrived, Missy Worth was sullen. She was missing lunch and made a point of mentioning it. Then, lighting a cigarette, cool as an old con doing twenty: ‘I told that bald guy that works for you I want a lawyer.’
Garrat sat down without greeting the woman. ‘His name is Rick Trueblood.’
‘Whatever. I still want a lawyer.’
‘He wants me to cut you a deal, but I’m not sure that’s in my best interest.’ The hollow dark eyes came into quick focus. Old what’s-his-name wasn’t such a bad Joe, maybe.
‘If you want me to talk, I have to get immunity. In writing. Approved by my lawyer.’
Full of confidence, this one. Holding hostages with her silence. Garrat’s smile was as thin as piano wire. ‘Enjoy your lunch, because when you are done with it, the next one is going to be courtesy of the sheriff.’
Garrat had made it to the door when Missy Worth called out. Garrat stopped, turned and faced the younger woman. ‘What?’ she asked.
‘You need to work on your sense of humour,’ Missy told her sourly.
Garrat returned to the woman but didn’t sit down. ‘Let’s get something straight right now. I’m the county prosecutor, not your girlfriend and not someone else’s flunky. If you want to play games with me, I’ll bring ten tons of grief down on your sorry head. You think you know how things work? Spent a few nights in jail, call your bail bondsman by his first name? Go ahead and play your games, Missy, but I’ll tell you right now, you don’t know what a murder indictment is going to do to you. First of all, forget about ever getting out. You’ll sit in the county jail until I can find room in my schedule to take you to trial. You can write your job off.
If you’re financing anything… like a motorcycle, maybe? By the time you get out, assuming I don’t get you convicted, it will be repossessed. You got friends? Forget them. Oh, they’ll be allowed tl b To come visit, but they won’t make it. They never do when it comes to murder. Best you get with a murder indictment is your mother – unless you’re accused of killing your own sister. That leaves you batting your eyes at your court-appointed atto
rney, and if you think I’ve got a lousy sense of humour, wait until you try one of those kids in legal services.’
‘You made your point.’
‘I don’t think I have. I don’t think you know what kind of hole you’ve fallen into, lady.’
Missy Worth held Garrat’s gaze only a few seconds before she turned away. She pulled at her cigarette and blew the smoke out angrily. ‘I need a deal,’ she answered. ‘I don’t want to serve time.’
‘Here’s my deal. Tell me the truth right now. That’s your only chance of avoiding an indictment for murder.’