Half closed and unseeing, Amy's eyes stared into the setting sun, her mouth open as if about to reveal some secret that her eyes had found there. And though her face, cleansed of makeup, was that of a child, the wet cotton clung to her small round breasts and the fullness at her hips, and she seemed suddenly the woman she had strained to become. As the light receded, a siren cried in the distance. And in the extended shadows, Amy's eyes seemed to close in sleep, and the pale, cold skin of Amy's face glowed rosy in the final colors of the day. Pickett knelt there for a very long time, his face as blank as Amy's eyes.
Gradually, the shadows lengthened. Bodie Pickett sank to the ground, the lifeless form that he had pulled from the river now his shadow. And he put his head down on the warm sand and closed his eyes and sank slowly back into the darkness from which he'd pulled Amy—or that lifeless thing that once was Amy—as if in search of the life that had escaped him there.
22
“This one's alive, I think.”
“Shoot. That boy's too goddamn dumb to get himself killed—takes half a brain for that.”
“Got more guts than brains, I guess.”
“Maybe so. Maybe so…” Homer Beane nudged Del Trap aside and hung, heavy, above Pickett. “Well now, boy, you like to take the long way home that time.”
“Amy…”
“Calm down now, son. You done all you could.” Homer laid a hand on Pickett's forehead and pressed it back to the ground. “When someone wants to die, there aint no stopping them. You just rest a spell, now. Doctor'll be here in a minute. Plenty of time—”
“Sheriff!”
“For Chrissake, Skeeter—”
“Franklin's here with Mooring.”
“Shoot!” Homer pulled himself up, hitched up his trousers and lumbered off toward the bridge. “Let's get it over with. God damn,” he muttered to Trap as he passed, “I hate this.”
Trap's brow was knit, but not with concern. He cocked his head and looked at Pickett from the corners of his brown eyes. “Whydya do that?”
“That?… that what?” Pickett slowly pushed up to his elbows, rubbed his eyes.
“Go in after'er like that. There weren't no use in it. Damn near kilt yourself, too.”
“Why?” Pickett repeated stupidly. “I dunno.”
“Can't figure you, man…”
The rest was lost, covered by a cry that sounded from the highway. Pickett looked down at the dark shape that lay next to him as if the sound had come from Amy. What once was Amy. He blinked and looked back over his shoulder.
Roger Mooring struggled down the sandy shoulder to where Pickett sat. Homer had hold of his upper arm, half restraining him, half supporting him. He was speaking to Roger. Roger reiterated the cry as he staggered toward the body that lay next to Pickett: “No!”
“Wait for the doctor,” Homer was saying. “You don't want to see her like that. Roger—”
“Let go!” Roger shouted.
Homer stepped back as Roger's fist fanned his face. Roger stumbled to the limp form next to Pickett and stopped. He looked down with his mouth loose, his eyelids heavy, the eyes beneath them momentarily losing focus. He dropped to his knees. “Amy,” he whispered, “don't go. Don't leave me, Amy.” His voice held neither desperation nor tension. Only gentleness. Roger buried his face in the wet sand filled hair and pulled Amy's shoulders onto his lap. “It's okay,” Roger whispered. “It's all right, now. Daddy's here, don't you worry.” Roger Mooring huddled above the lifeless face like a thunderhead above a grey winter landscape. He rocked it in his arms.
A siren sounded from the far side of the river. The flashing lights moved smoothly toward the bridge, while their doubles glittered through the lazy ripples of the St. Johns toward some more obscure destination.
Pickett rose awkwardly to his feet. He stepped toward Roger, but Homer pulled at Pickett's sleeve and motioned him back toward the highway.
“Let him be.” Homer's face darkened in the last light of the day. “Won't make no difference to her.”
Pickett didn't move. “How'd you get here?”
“That nigra fella, Trap. He lives here abouts. Saw Amy… saw the car go over. Gave the office a call. Roger'd already called; said we ought a stop her. Didn't pay no attention, though. Rog been calling me about Amy everyday for the last couple of weeks. Anyways, when that Trap fellow described the car I was afraid maybe Roger was right this time. So…” Homer shook his head. “Should a listened to him, I guess. Hell, you can't though. You can't go traipsing off after every god damn…” He stopped, unable to take his objection seriously. He looked at Pickett. “Why'd she do it, you got any idea?”
Pickett told the sheriff about Millie's mother, and about Amy's visits to Edmund. He did not tell Homer what, inadvertently, he had told Amy.
“Ed's always had an eye for the ladies, the younger the better. But he's always been, well, careful, y'know what I mean? They knowed what they was doing I figured, and it weren't no business of mine. Anyhow, I figured it'd catch up with him eventually. Anyone in the public eye like that. I dunno…” Homer pulled at the loose skin on his neck. “I never figurd him for… well, I guess I just never figurd this.”
Pickett didn't ask what this referred to, and Homer didn't explain. “Looks like Purdy might've had a hook in him.”
Homer raised his chin and squinted up at the other. “You watch it now, boy. You let me do the thinking. I'll get to the bottom of this, don't you worry none about that. But I don't need no loose talk. There's been too much talk already, boy. I hope you understand that. You do understand that, don't you, boy?”
Pickett ignored both the words and the tone. “Think Kemp's involved?”
“God dammit—” Homer thrust a stubby finger at Roger Mooring. “Ain't that enough for you? Aint you helped about enough, Mister ex-big-city-cop?”
The ambulance screamed down the bridge and shuddered to a stop on the shoulder. Its doors flew open and disgorged two attendants with a stretcher. They ambled down to the beach and glanced a question toward Homer. He still glared at Pickett, his unanswered question answered by the low drone of Roger's voice. Finally, Homer turned to the white-shirted attendants and shook his head.
“Aint no hurry, boys. She aint going nowheres.” The repetition of his grizzly joke seemed to catch Homer unawares. He closed his eyes for a moment, then walked to Roger.
Roger let the body slide slowly down his thighs as Homer pulled him to his feet. He looked at Homer, then glanced back down with surprise, almost astonishment. “That can't be Amy.” He looked desperately to Homer. Then to the attendants. When his eyes came to Pickett's, they hardened and froze. “What have you done with her.” Roger took a step toward Pickett, Homer Beane hanging on one arm. “Where's Amy? Where's my daughter?” There was hate in his eyes. “God damn you—” Roger pulled at Homer's restraining hands like a rabid animal.
“Skeeter!” called Homer.
Skeeter rushed down the grade and grabbed Roger's other arm. Anger welled up in Roger's face, and curses poured from his mouth like sour wine.
Pickett stepped toward him, an open hand extended. Roger hawked and spat, but the tall man ignored it. He stopped close before Roger and took Roger's struggling hand. Roger settled slightly, his face still red, but the words stilled.
“Roger…” Pickett moved a step closer. “Roger, look, I'm sorry.”
The words hit Roger like a bucket of cold water. His knees buckled and he hung by his supported arms. All the anger and hate washed from his eyes, drenching his cheeks with a torrent of pent up grief and regret. “I'm sorry,” Roger sobbed, as if Pickett's words had been his own. “Oh Amy, I'm so sorry.”
Homer let him back down onto the sand as the attendants loaded the body onto their stretcher. Roger followed as they carried the stretcher to the ambulance; he climbed in after the body without a word. Before the attendants could close the door, Homer Beane jogged to the back of the ambulance and climbed in with Roger.
The siren burst to life with
the engine, but a flick of the driver's finger choked it off in mid cry. The ambulance accelerated back over the bridge and into the deepening night. Skeeter stood, one foot on the asphalt, one on the shoulder, and watched as it went. “Sure as hell something funny goin' on round here…”
Pickett headed down the highway in the opposite direction—toward the Ayers' place and his Nova. By the time he got there, he was running.
23
The Nova's dash said ten o'clock. Lights were on in the Ayers' house, but Bodie Pickett beat on the door steadily for several minutes before Matt Cheatham opened it. Matt looked like he'd just walked out of a department store window.
“Mister Pickett, I believe?” Matt glanced blankly over Pickett's drip-dried clothes as if to underscore the question mark in his voice.
“I'd like to talk to Edmund.”
“I'm afraid that won't be possible. Reverend Ayers is indisposed.” He made it sound like a rare tropical disease for which he alone possessed the cure.
“I'd still like to speak to him.”
“I see. Would you wait here, please?”
“No—” Pickett stepped around Matt into the paneled hall. “-- but I will come in.”
In the bright light of the hall, Matt looked frayed. Whatever he'd been at, he'd been at since the morning. His mullet eyes stared red through horn rims not quite straight on his nose, his beard cast a five o'clock shadow on his chin. His suit gave uncharacteristic evidence of having been lived in—though his mask-like pallor suggested that if it had, it had been by someone else.
“I see.” Matt closed the door on the dark. “Do come in. Edmund's resting, but I'll tell him you're here.” He walked past Pickett, stopped, and turned. “Do I dare suggest that you wait?” His lips flattened against his teeth, parting to reveal them.
“I'll wait.”
“Thank you,” he said blandly, then disappeared into the large room at the end of the hall where the party had been two nights before.
Pickett shivered at his own damp clothes and the air-conditioning. He winced as he did, supporting his right hand gently in his left.
“Good Lord, Bo, what happened to you?” Jan Ayers was dressed in the manner of her morning visit to the boat house. She waited for Pickett to respond; when he didn't, she whispered: “She's dead, isn't she?” Soft and sad, her words spoke concern—but without the participation of her eyes.
“She destroyed herself.”
Jan didn't acknowledge the quote. She gestured toward Pickett's damp clothes. “What happened?”
“I went in after her.”
Jan opened her mouth in response, but it was a moment before she spoke. “Amy was beside herself when she came to the house—incoherent, really. I heard a noise at the end of the drive—”
“I tried to stop her.”
Jan raised her brows; Pickett raised his and frowned.
“But I couldn't. Didn't, anyway.”
Jan nodded. “I went to the window in time to see her, well, go over. It was horrible.” But there was no horror in her face, only a question—a question directed toward Pickett. His eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.
“You made pretty good time back here.”
“I was on my way out when she came. I didn't see any use in my stopping. I mean, the police were already there. You understand…”
Pickett smiled with one corner of his mouth. “What did Amy want?”
“She wasn't making much sense. That she wanted to see Edmund was about all I could understand.” She paused, self-conscious, then added quickly: “She was upset, of course.”
“Of course.” Pickett's voice was as blank as his face. “What did you tell her?”
“Tell her? Why—that Edmund wasn't there. What else would I have told her?”
“That was my next question.”
Jan paused, put anger on her face, then, as quickly, removed it. “Really, Bo, there's no need for us to quarrel. Come, sit down, and let's talk.” Jan took Pickett's arm and propelled him gently toward the door at the end of the hall.
The room seemed smaller without all the people. It was sparsely but softly furnished in white and pastel blue. Long shadows fell across the white shag carpet and white modular furniture as though across a snowbound city. Edmund sat on the far side of the landscape, deep in a square white armchair. The lines and hollows of his face were deeply etched with shadow from the high pole lamp behind and above him that provided the only light in the room. Edmund was half dressed—dress shirt open, tie unknotted at his neck—and looked only half alive. An empty glass moved with his hand. A decanter on the low glass table beside him contained an inch of amber liquid. Its crystal stopper lay beside it refracting the light from the lamp onto the white carpet. Edmund looked up as his wife and Pickett entered, then further up to Matt who hung above him like a second shadow.
Matt's face fixed on Jan's with icy intensity.
Edmund's words shattered the strained silence like a stone fine crystal: “She looked so like her.” His tongue was thick and his stare vacant. “So like her…”
“Who?” said Bodie Pickett.
“Who?” said Edmund Ayers.
“Really, now,” cut in Matt, “You can see that he is—”
Pickett ignored Matt. “Who?”
“Why… Amy.” Edmund looked at Pickett in astonishment. “It was like none of this ever happened.” He made a broad lazy gesture, and, in the process, backhanded the decanter next to him. It clattered to its side on the glass. A small pool of gold liquid formed, casting a grey double on the carpet beneath. Jan produced a handkerchief and knelt next to Edmund; she dabbed at the puddle. It seemed suspended in mid air. The stopper had rolled to the floor, and the rainbow was gone.
Edmund watched Jan uncomprehendingly. “I don't understand. I just don't… understand. The Lord gave me another chance—another Millie; then…” He gestured languidly with a limp wrist. “I-I just don't understand. I didn't know.…” His hands lifted toward Pickett, palms up, as if to complete the thought; then he leaned forward, no longer talking to himself. “I didn't know… that. I didn't.” Edmund Ayers looked to Pickett for confirmation—or consolation.
Pickett offered neither.
Edmund's hands dropped to his sides, and he sank back into the white cushions looking to his wife. “Jan knew. Jan knows everything.” He showed his teeth.
“Now Edmund, you don't know what you're saying.” Jan spoke to him as if to a child. She rose and brushed the hair off his damp brow. “You need your
rest, dear. You're not used to—”
Edmund struck angrily at Jan's hand. “Don't you touch me.” Jan froze, her hand in midair above his head. “Don't either of you ever touch me.” He didn't mean Pickett; in fact, he seemed to have forgotten that Pickett was there.
But Matt and Jan hadn't. Their eyes dueled above Edmund's head. Edmund appeared to revel in the battle.
“You didn't want me to know, did you. You let me… let me…” Edmund sank deeper and deeper into his chair. “Just so you—just so the Temple could…”
“Mister Pickett,” cut in Matt, “I think that you have done just about enough meddling—”
“Oh, that's good.” Edmund Ayers's mouth twisted into a grotesque smile. “Meddling. Oh that's good, Matt.” Edmund's laugh was more a cough. His eyes moved once again to Pickett. “Maybe we could do with a bit of meddling around here, maybe Bo would like to hear how—”
Suddenly, Edmund's eyes started from his pink face. They focused over Pickett's shoulder. He threw out one arm, palm open, toward the hall door as if parrying a blow. “No! I didn't know!”
Pickett whirled around.
Black in the doorway, back-lit by the bright hall lights, stood Roger Mooring.
“You killed Amy!” he bellowed, his right arm raised toward Edmund, something small and black in his trembling hand.
Pickett lunged toward Roger's extended arm. His broken hand struck cold metal as Roger's pistol exploded. He was on his feet again by the
time Roger had brought the gun back to level. Pickett lowered his head and rushed in under the pistol; Roger grunted as Pickett sunk a pointed shoulder into his chest. The gun flew from Roger's hand, thudding to the floor in the middle of the room. Pickett's arms locked around Roger's chest, and the two men tumbled to the floor. Roger pummeled the top of Pickett's skull with his fists, rolling Pickett back and forth on top him as Matt and Jan rushed toward the gun. With the second explosion, Roger went limp.
Pickett threw himself off Roger and scrambled to his feet.
Matt stood by the chair in which Edmund had been sitting, the gun in his hand. The chair was on its side, the glass table next to it broken in half by Edmund's body. Chin on his chest, his head against the wall, Edmund lay in the V of the shattered table. The small spot on the left side of his forehead as well as the wall behind him were red. Jan stood in the center of the room, both hands to her neck looking from Pickett to Matt. Matt spoke first:
“I didn't want to hurt you.” Matt looked from Roger's gun to Pickett.
Roger stumbled to his feet as if only then sure that he hadn't been shot. Both his gaze and his legs were unsteady. He put a hand to his head and dropped to his knees huddled like a vagrant in an empty doorway. He began to cry.
“I fired into the chair.” Matt pointed the gun to a small black hole in the arm of the upturned chair; then the gun moved toward Roger. In a voice as cold and hard as his eyes, Matt said: “He killed Edmund. He…” His voice now registered astonishment. “Edmund's dead.”
“That bastard killed my Amy,” burst Roger, then quickly subsided back into incoherence.
Matt stared at Roger, his face like stone. Slowly, he raised the gun.
“No, Matt. Let's call it even, huh?” Pickett stepped toward Matt who moved only his eyes. They went to Jan's. “Let me have it.” Pickett extended his hand toward Matt; both Matt and Jan stared at Pickett's hand. It glistened sodden and red in the half-light. A black shadow spread on the white carpet beneath it. Pickett's eyes followed theirs.
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