The Devil All the Time

by Donald Ray Pollock

  “Thanks for calling me back, Sheriff,” the man said with a hillbilly drawl. “How you all doing up there?”

  “I ain’t bragging.”

  “The reason I called, well, it might not be nothing, but someone shot a man down here yesterday morning sometime, a preacher, and the boy we suspect might have been in on it used to live up in your parts.”

  “That right? How did he kill this man?”

  “Shot him in the head while he was sitting in his car. Held the gun right up to the back of his skull. Made a hell of a mess, but at least he didn’t suffer none.”

  “What kind of gun did he use?”

  “Pistol, probably a Luger, one of them German guns. The boy was known to have one. His daddy brought it back from the war.”

  “That’s a nine millimeter, ain’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What did you say his name is?”

  “Didn’t say, but the boy’s name is Arvin Russell. Middle name’s Eugene. His parents both died up around there the way I understand it. I think his daddy might have killed himself. He’s been living with his grandmother down here in Coal Creek for maybe the past seven, eight years.”

  Bodecker frowned, stared across the room at the posters and flyers tacked on the wall. Russell. Russell? How did he know that name? “How old is he?” he asked Thompson.

  “Arvin’s eighteen. Listen, he ain’t a bad sort, I’ve known him for a long time. And from what I’ve been hearing, this preacher might have deserved killing. Seems he was messing with young girls. But that still don’t make it right, I guess.”

  “This boy driving?”

  “He’s got a blue Chevy Bel Air, a ’54 model.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Oh, average build, dark hair, good-looking feller,” Thompson said. “Arvin’s quiet, but he ain’t the type to take no shit, either. And, hell, he might not even be involved in this, but I can’t find him right now, and he’s the only good lead I got.”

  “You send us any information you got as far as the tags on the car or whatever, and we’ll keep an eye out for him. And how about you letting me know if he shows up back down there, okay?”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “One more thing,” Bodecker said. “You got a picture of him?”

  “Not yet, I don’t. I’m sure his grandmother’s got a couple, but she ain’t in the mood to cooperate right now. I get one, we’ll make sure you get a copy.”

  By the time Bodecker hung up the phone, it was all coming back to him, the prayer log and those dead animals and that young kid had the pie juice smeared on his face. Arvin Eugene Russell. “I remember you now, boy.” He walked over to a big map of the United States on the wall. He found Johnson City and Lewisburg, and traced his finger up through West Virginia and crossed over into Ohio on Route 35 at Point Pleasant. He stopped in the general spot off the highway where Carl and Sandy had been killed. So if it was this Russell boy, they must have met somewhere along in there. But Sandy had told him she was going to Virginia Beach. He studied the map some more. It didn’t make sense, them staying in Johnson City. That was surely taking the long way around to get home. And besides that, what the fuck were they doing packing those guns?

  He drove over to their apartment with the keys he’d taken from the ring. The smell of rotten garbage hit him when he opened the door. After raising a couple of windows, he looked through the rooms, but didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. What the fuck am I looking for anyway? he thought. He sat down on the couch in the living room. Pulling out one of the canisters of film he had sneaked from the glove box, he rolled it around in his hand. He’d been sitting there maybe ten minutes when it finally occurred to him that something wasn’t right about the apartment. Going through the rooms again, he couldn’t find a single photograph. Why wouldn’t Carl have any pictures hanging on the walls or at least lying around? That’s all the shutterbug sonofabitch thought about. He started searching again, now in earnest, and soon found a shoe box under the bed, hidden behind some spare blankets.

  Later, he sat on the couch staring numbly at a hole in the ceiling where the rain had leaked through. Chunks of plaster lay beneath it in a pile on the braided rug. He thought back to a day in the spring of 1960. By then, he’d been a deputy almost two years, and, because their mother had finally agreed with him to let her quit school, Sandy was working full-time at the Wooden Spoon. From what he could see, the job had done little to bring her out of her shell; she seemed as backward and forlorn as ever. But he’d heard stories about boys coming by at closing time and coaxing her into their cars for a quickie, then dumping her off in the sticks to find her own way home. Every time he stopped by the diner to check on her, he looked for her to announce a bastard on the way. And he guessed she did that day, just not the kind he was figuring on.

  It was “All You Can Eat Fish” day. “Be right back,” Sandy told him, as she hurried past with another plate piled high with perch for Doc Leedom. “I got something to tell you.” The foot doctor came in every Friday and tried to kill himself with fried fish. It was the only time he ever stopped at the diner. All you could eat anything, he told his patients, was the dumbest idea a restaurant owner could ever come up with.

  She grabbed the coffeepot, poured Bodecker a cup. “That fat ol’ sonofabitch is running my legs off,” she whispered.

  Bodecker turned and watched the doctor cram a long piece of breaded fish into his mouth and swallow. “Heck, he don’t even chew it, does he?”

  “And he can do it all goddamn day,” she said.

  “So what’s going on?”

  She pushed back a loose lock of hair. “Well, I figured I should tell you before you hear it from someone else.”

  This was it, he thought, one in the oven, another worry to pour on his ulcer. Probably doesn’t even know the daddy’s name. “You ain’t in trouble, are you?” he said.

  “What? You mean pregnant?” She lit a cigarette. “Jesus, Lee. You never give me a break.”

  “Okay, what is it then?”

  She blew a smoke ring over his head and winked. “I got myself engaged.”

  “You mean to be married?”

  “Well, yeah,” she said with a little laugh. “What other kind is there?”

  “I’ll be damned. What’s his name?”

  “Carl. Carl Henderson.”

  “Henderson,” Bodecker repeated, as he poured some cream in his coffee from a tiny metal pitcher. “He one of them you went to school with? That bunch over off Plug Run?”

  “Oh, shit, Lee,” she said, “them boys are half retarded, you know that. Carl ain’t even from around here. He grew up on the south side of Columbus.”

  “What’s he do? For a living, I mean.”

  “He’s a photographer.”

  “Oh, so he’s got one of those studios?”

  She stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray and shook her head. “Not right now,” she said. “A setup like that don’t come cheap.”

  “Well, how does he make his money then?”

  She rolled her eyes, let out a sigh. “Don’t worry, he gets by.”

  “In other words, he ain’t working.”

  “I seen his camera and everything.”

  “Shit, Sandy, Florence has got a camera, but I sure wouldn’t call her a photographer.” He looked back into the kitchen, where the grill cook was standing at an open refrigerator with his T-shirt pulled up, trying to get cooled off. He couldn’t help but wonder if Henry had ever fucked her. People said he was hung like a Shetland pony. “Where in the hell did you meet this guy?”

  “Right over there,” Sandy said, pointing at a table in the corner.

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Last week,” she said. “Don’t worry, Lee. He’s a nice guy.” Within a month they were married.

  Two hours later, he was back at the jail. He had a bottle of whiskey in a brown paper bag. The shoe box of photographs and the rolls of film were in the tr
unk of his cruiser. He locked the door to his office and poured himself a drink in a coffee cup. It was the first one he’d had in over a year, but he couldn’t say that he enjoyed it. Florence called just as he was getting ready to have another. “I heard what happened,” she said. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I know I should have.”

  “So it’s true? Sandy’s dead?”

  “Her and that no-good sonofabitch both.”

  “My God, it’s hard to believe. Weren’t they on vacation?”

  “I believe Carl was a lot worse than I ever gave him credit for.”

  “You don’t sound right, Lee. Why don’t you come on home?”

  “I still got some work to do. Might be at it all night, the way things look.”

  “Any idea who did it?”

  “No,” he said, looking at the bottle sitting on the desk, “not really.”

  “Lee?”

  “Yeah, Flo.”

  “You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

  51

  ARVIN SAW THE NEWSPAPER IN THE RACK outside the doughnut shop when he went to get some coffee the next morning. He bought a copy and took it back to his room and read that the local sheriff’s sister and husband had been found murdered. They were returning from a vacation in Virginia Beach. There was no mention of a suspect, but there was a photo of Sheriff Lee Bodecker alongside the story. Arvin recognized him as the same man who was on duty the night his father killed himself. Goddamn, he whispered. Hurriedly, he packed his stuff and started out the door. He stopped and went back inside. Taking the Calvary picture down off the wall, he wrapped it in the newspaper and stuck it in his bag.

  Arvin began walking west on Main Street. At the edge of town, a logging truck headed for Bainbridge picked him up and dropped him off at the corner of Route 50 and Blaine Highway. On foot, he crossed Paint Creek at Schott’s Bridge, and an hour later, he arrived at the edge of Knockemstiff. Except for a couple of new ranch-style houses standing in what had once been a cornfield, everything looked pretty much as he remembered it. He walked a bit farther, and then dropped over the small hill in the middle of the holler. Maude’s store still sat on the corner, and behind it was the same camper that had been there eight years ago. He was glad to see it.

  The storekeeper was sitting on a stool behind the candy case when he went inside. It was still the same Hank, just a little older now, a little more frazzled. “Howdy,” he said, looking down at Arvin’s gym bag.

  The boy nodded, set the bag on the concrete floor. He slid the door open on top of the pop case, searched out a bottle of root beer. He opened it and took a long drink.

  Hank lit a cigarette and said, “You look like you been traveling.”

  “Yeah,” Arvin said, leaning against the cooler.

  “Where you headed?”

  “Not sure exactly. There used to be a house on top of the hill behind here some lawyer owned. You know the one I’m talkin’ about?”

  “Sure, I do. Up on the Mitchell Flats.”

  “I used to live there.” As soon as he said it, Arvin wished he could take it back.

  Hank studied him for a moment, then said, “I’ll be damned. You’re that Russell boy, ain’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Arvin said. “I thought I’d just stop and see the old place again.”

  “Son, I hate to tell you, but that house burned down a couple year ago. They think some kids did it. Wasn’t nobody ever lived there after you and your folks. That lawyer’s wife and her buck boyfriend went to prison for killing him, and as far as I know, it’s been tied up in court ever since.”

  A wave of disappointment swept over Arvin. “Is there anything left of it at all?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

  “Just the foundation mostly. I think maybe the barn’s still there, part of it anyway. Place is all growed up now.”

  Arvin stared out the big plate-glass window up toward the church while he finished the pop. He thought about the day his father ran the hunter down in the mud. After everything that had happened the last couple of days, it didn’t seem like such a good memory now. He laid some saltines on the counter and asked for two slices of bologna and cheese. He bought a pack of Camels and a box of matches and another bottle of pop. “Well,” he said, when the storekeeper finished putting the groceries in a sack, “I figure I’ll walk on up there anyway. Heck, I come this far. Is it still okay to go up through the woods behind here?”

  “Yeah, just cut across Clarence’s pasture. He won’t say nothing.”

  Arvin put the sack in his gym bag. From where he stood, he could see the top of the Wagners’ old house. “There a girl named Janey Wagner still live around here?” he asked.

  “Janey? No, she got married a couple year ago. Lives over in Massieville the last I heard.”

  The boy nodded and started for the door, then stopped. He turned back and looked at Hank. “I never did get to thank you for that night my dad died,” he said. “You was awful good to me, and I want you to know I ain’t forgot it.”

  Hank smiled. Two of his bottom teeth were missing. “You had that pie on your face. Damn Bodecker thought it was blood. Remember that?”

  “Yeah, I remember everything about that night.”

  “I just heard on the radio where his sister got killed.”

  Arvin reached for the doorknob. “Is that right?”

  “I didn’t know her, but it probably should have been him instead. He’s about as no-good as they come, and him the law in this county.”

  “Well,” the boy said, pushing the door open. “Maybe I’ll see you later.”

  “You come back this evening, we’ll sit out by the camper and drink some beer.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Hey, let me ask you something,” Hank said. “You ever been to Cincinnati?”

  The boy shook his head. “Not yet, but I’ve heard plenty about it.”

  52

  A FEW MINUTES AFTER BODECKER got off the phone with his wife, Howser came in with a manila envelope that contained the slugs the coroner had dug out of Carl. They were both 9 millimeter. “Same as the one that hit Sandy,” the deputy said.

  “I figured as much. Just the one shooter.”

  “So, Willis told me some lawman down in West Virginia called you. Did it happen to have anything to do with this?”

  Bodecker glanced over at the map on the wall. He thought about the photographs in the trunk of his car. He needed to get to that boy before anyone else did. “No. Just some bullshit about a preacher. To tell you the truth, I’m really not sure why he wanted to talk to us.”

  “Well.”

  “Get any prints off that car?”

  Howser shook his head. “Looks like the back was wiped clean. All the others we found belonged to Carl and Sandy.”

  “Find anything else?”

  “Not really. There was a gas receipt from Morehead, Kentucky, under the front seat. Shitload of maps in the glove box. Bunch of junk in the back, pillows, blankets, gas can, that kind of stuff.”

  Bodecker nodded and rubbed his eyes. “Go on home and get some rest. It looks like right now all we can do is hope that something pops up.”

  He finished off the fifth of whiskey in his office that night, and woke the next morning on the floor with dry pipes and a sick headache. He could remember that sometime during the night he had dreamed of walking in the woods with the Russell boy and coming upon all those decayed animals. He went into the restroom and washed up, then asked the dispatcher to bring him the newspaper and some coffee and a couple of aspirins. On his way out to the parking lot, Howser caught him and suggested they check the motels and the bus station. Bodecker thought for a moment. Though he wanted to take care of this problem himself, he couldn’t be too obvious about it. “That’s not a bad idea,” Bodecker said. “Go ahead and send Taylor and Caldwell around.”

  “Who?” Howser said, a frown breaking out on his face.

  “Taylor and Caldwell. Just make sure they understand t
his crazy sonofabitch would just as soon blow their heads off as look at them.” He turned and went on out the door before the deputy could protest. As chickenshit as those two were, Bodecker didn’t figure they would even get out of their cruiser after hearing that.

  He drove to the liquor store, bought a pint of Jack Daniel’s. Then he stopped at the White Cow to get a coffee to go. Everybody quit talking when he walked in. As he turned to leave, he thought maybe he should say something, about how they were doing everything possible to catch the killer, but he didn’t. He poured some whiskey in his coffee and drove to the old dump on Reub Hill Road. Opening the trunk, he took the shoe box of photographs out and looked through them one more time. He counted twenty-six different men. There were at least a couple hundred different shots, maybe more, bundled together with rubber bands. Setting the box on the ground, he tore a few stained and crinkled pages from a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog he found in the trash pile and stuffed them down in the box. Then he dropped the three film canisters on top and lit a match. Standing there in the hot sun, he drank the rest of his coffee and watched the pictures turn to ashes. When the last of them burned up, he took an Ithaca 37 from the trunk. He checked to make sure the shotgun was loaded and laid it on the backseat. He could smell last night’s booze coming out of his skin. He ran a hand over his beard. It was the first morning he’d forgotten to shave since his army days.

  When Hank saw the cruiser pull in the gravel lot, he folded the newspaper and set it on the counter. He watched Bodecker tip up a bottle. The last time Hank could recall seeing the sheriff in Knockemstiff was the evening he handed out wormy apples in front of the church to the kids on Halloween when he was running for election. He reached over and turned down his radio. The last few notes of Sonny James’s “You’re the Only World I Know” ended just as the sheriff came in the screen door. “I was hoping you’d still be around,” he said to Hank.