When Ghosts Come Home

by Wiley Cash

  “Well, I’m not one of your officers,” Marie said. “I’m your wife.”

  “So, you’re saying I can’t handle it? You want me just to give up and drop out?”

  “I’m not saying that, Winston. You just need to understand that when you go out alone in the middle of the night—”

  “When I go out alone in the middle of the night I go out as the damn sheriff of this county,” Winston said. “I plan to keep on being sheriff, and I’m asking you and Glenn and whoever else to let me keep this job as long as I’m elected to do it.”

  “Okay,” Marie said. “I want you to keep the job.”

  “Thank you,” Winston said.

  The line grew quiet, and he regretted raising his voice and showing Marie how angry he’d been. Displays of anger had always embarrassed him, especially his own, but that didn’t mean he was ready to apologize.

  “I heard there’s a body,” Marie finally said.

  “Who’d you hear that from?”

  “A little birdy.”

  Winston wanted to be surprised that word had carried so quickly, but he wasn’t. The island was small; the telephone made it smaller still. Word about the identity of the body would spread soon.

  “It’s Rodney Bellamy,” Winston said.

  He heard Marie gasp into the phone’s receiver, and he knew she was now attempting to collect herself, probably staring out the kitchen window into the backyard, taking in the news and thinking of how to respond. “That’s Ed Bellamy’s son,” she said.

  “I know,” Winston said.

  “He went to school with Colleen.”

  “I know,” Winston said again. “And he just had a baby. His wife said he went out for diapers last night. I found him shot dead at the end of the runway. And there’s an abandoned plane out here.” He sighed. “It might’ve been full of drugs too. Could’ve been tons, hell, I don’t know.”

  “Have you talked to Ed?”

  “No,” Winston said. “I’m about to call the high school, ask him to meet me over at Rodney’s house so I can tell his wife.”

  “I’m so sorry you have to do this, honey.”

  Marie’s voice had come out in a whisper, and he felt her softening toward him after their argument. He wanted to soften toward her too, but he felt a protective shell hardening around him in advance of sharing the news with Rodney’s widow.

  “Well, I hate that it has to be done,” he said, “but I’ll head home after that. You want me to pick up anything?”

  “No, just come on home as soon as you can. I love you.”

  “All right,” Winston said. “I love you too.”

  He hung up the phone, and then he looked around Sweetney’s office, searching for a telephone book. He found one in a desk drawer, and he flipped through it until he found the number for the high school.

  Winston called the school’s office, and while he waited for Ed’s voice to come onto the line, he pictured Bellamy inside the classroom that he had visited several times while Colleen was a student and a handful of times since. He figured Ed Bellamy was sitting at his desk, grading papers or flipping through a textbook, his thick glasses turned down toward the page, his black crew cut beginning to gray around his temples. A student assistant sent by the office steps into the classroom, whispers to Bellamy that he has a telephone call. Bellamy looks up from his desk, tells the students to continue working quietly, and then he steps into the hall.

  While he’d been swept up in Korea, Winston had been too old for the Vietnam draft, and he knew he’d been lucky, but Ed Bellamy was younger than him, and he hadn’t been so lucky. Ed still carried himself like a soldier: rigid, unsmiling, watchful, direct. That’s how he appeared in Winston’s mind as he marched down the hallway at the high school, his feet clapping on the dull linoleum floors, his straight shoulders passing the banks of olive-green lockers that lined the walls on either side.

  “Hello,” a man’s voice suddenly said on the other end of the telephone line. “This is Ed Bellamy.”

  He’d made it to the phone faster than Winston had expected, and the sound of his voice caught him by surprise.

  “Ed,” Winston said, “this is Winston Barnes.”

  Silence.

  “Ed, I’m really sorry, but I’ve got some terrible news.”

  Another moment, and then Winston heard Bellamy’s voice again.

  “Oh, Lord,” Bellamy said. “Oh, Lord, oh, Lord.”

  “Ed, I’m sorry to tell you this, but Rodney’s been—” But Winston stopped, corrected himself. “Rodney’s passed away.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Bellamy whispered again. “Oh, sweet Jesus.”

  Something in Bellamy’s voice told Winston that his eyes were closed, his face downturned, his free hand raised to his forehead. Winston paused for a moment, considered what to say next. He heard Bellamy stifle a sob on the other end of the line.

  “Ed,” Winston said, “can you tell me his wife’s name?”

  The line remained silent. Winston waited.

  “Janelle,” Bellamy finally said.

  “I hate to do it, but I have to talk to her, tell her what happened. I think it would be good if you could be there when I do it.”

  “She called me this morning,” Bellamy said. “She said she hadn’t seen him since last night.” He fought another sob. Winston heard him swallow, clear his voice. “How did he— Where did you find him?”

  “He’s been shot, Ed. I’m out here at the airport.”

  “Shot?” Bellamy said, his voice louder than it had been before. “Shot? At the airport?”

  “Yeah, Ed, and that’s about all I can tell you because it’s all I know right now.”

  “I want to see him.”

  “I know, Ed, and you will. I’m happy to come out to the high school and pick you up. We can ride out to Janelle’s together.”

  “No,” Bellamy said, his voice tightening. Winston knew Bellamy’s brain was clicking away from his own grief toward the grief Rodney’s widow would soon feel. “I’ll meet you there, but give me a few minutes. Wait for me before you knock on the door.”

  “Okay, Ed,” Winston said. “I’ll see you there.”

  He set the phone back on its cradle. He looked around Sweetney’s office. An entire bookcase was dedicated to meticulously constructed and painted model airplanes. Beside it sat two metal file cabinets. Sweetney’s desk was neat and orderly, the chair pushed back as if he had just stood up to step outside. A chair for guests sat on the other side of the desk, and Winston considered taking a seat and calling home to talk to Marie again, but he decided not to. He knew his mind was searching for reasons to stall, for him not to climb into Marie’s car and drive out to the area of Southport known as the Grove to deliver the worst news that Rodney Bellamy’s wife would ever hear. Winston decided not to wait any longer, and he opened the door and stepped into the sunlight.

  Outside, a crew from Channel 3 had set up a camera in the parking lot on the edge of the field that led toward the runway. The newly arrived reporter looked up at Winston where he stood outside Hugh’s office. She didn’t look a day older than twenty, her big, blond hair barely registering the breeze. “Sheriff?” the reporter called, but Winston waved her off. She’d talk to Channel 9’s reporter. He knew they’d compare notes, coming to the conclusion that they had no option but to wait for his statement.

  Winston looked out toward the runway. Kepler still loomed like a scarecrow over Bellamy’s body, the tarp that covered it stirring almost imperceptibly in the breeze. Winston saw that Dorsey and Sweetney had begun walking back toward the office, and just as Winston and Dorsey locked eyes, Dorsey raised his hand and pointed at the television crews gathering in the parking lot. Winston raised his eyebrows and shook his head in warning. There was no way in hell he wanted Dorsey out in front of the investigation. Dorsey nodded as if he understood, and Winston followed the sidewalk toward Marie’s Regal where it still sat parked beside Bellamy’s Datsun. Before climbing behind the wheel, Winston hear
d Dorsey call out to him, but he let the breeze carry Dorsey’s voice far away from his ear.

  Death had brought Winston to someone’s door on only a few occasions during his time as a police officer in Gastonia and as a member of the sheriff’s department in Brunswick County, but it had rarely been murder that sent him. He was usually consoling mothers, fathers, and spouses, and then glossing over the details of car crashes, drownings, and other accidents. It wasn’t often that he had to explain to someone that another person had taken the life of their parent or child or, in this case, husband.

  After leaving the airport, he tried to calculate how long it would have taken Bellamy to leave the principal’s office and go back to his classroom for his car keys, how much time would be required to find a substitute to take over his class for the day, and how many minutes a grieving father would need to drive the eighteen miles from the high school to Rodney’s house in the Grove. Fifteen? Twenty? Certainly no less.

  Winston drove as slow as he could down Howe Street into downtown Southport, the water rising up before him at the end of the street. Here the Atlantic Ocean merged with the Cape Fear River as it led northwest to Wilmington and the Intracoastal Waterway to the southwest, which separated Oak Island from the mainland, and here, centuries earlier, pirates had reigned. Now the sleepy town depended more on the treasure of tourists than it did on the bounty of pirates. At the end of Howe, Winston turned right and drove along the water where boats of all kinds and sizes were tied up in slips and restaurants that had been closed for the season sat empty and dark. He made another right and circled back toward North Lord Street, where he drove into the Grove and found a little white house with a well-manicured yard and a tan sedan parked haphazardly behind a pickup truck in the driveway. A little of the tension that had been building inside Winston released itself because he knew that Bellamy had beaten him there.

  Winston parked Marie’s car on the street in front of the house. Just up the road, a Black boy played with a little dog at the edge of a yard. The boy, who might’ve been three or four, must have held something in his hand that the dog wanted because the dog was leaping for it, and the boy was laughing, holding his clenched fist above his head. For a moment, Winston found himself back in Gastonia, sitting behind the steering wheel as a much younger man, the errand that brought him to park alongside the street just as tragic as the one that brought him to the Grove now. The little boy opened his palm and the dog took something from it. He wiped his hand on his shirt, and then he looked up the road at Winston. The sight of the little boy was almost too much for him to bear. The little boy ran back toward his house, the dog following, and Winston climbed out of the car.

  He figured the truck parked in the driveway must have belonged to Rodney and that he had been driving his wife’s Datsun last night. The irony of that discovery settled on his chest with a weight that surprised him. He closed his car door and made his way across the yard. He could hear Janelle’s cries before he even stepped onto the porch.

  On most occasions, the sound of a doorbell is loud and cheerful, loaded with mystery and curiosity and expectation. Doorbells have an element of surprise that feels manipulative—almost evil—when announcing the news of death. Winston had spent a lot of time thinking about this over the years, and he thought about it again at that moment as he delivered three almost silent knocks on Janelle Bellamy’s door. Inside, the woman’s cries seemed to go silent, and Winston feared that, in her sudden grief, Janelle might believe that he was Rodney returning home, that there had been some great mistake and that her husband was still alive. He feared that she would open the door and find him instead.

  But when the door opened, there stood Ed Bellamy, his eyes damp and his face already collapsed with the kind of exhaustion that only grief can bring. He nodded at Winston. “Sheriff,” he said.

  They shook hands, and for a moment Winston wanted to pull Bellamy into an embrace, but instead he just stepped into the living room, and Bellamy closed the door behind him. The interior of the small house reminded Winston of his and Marie’s home back in Gastonia: the living room full of secondhand furniture; the short hallway on the left that led to a kitchen and probably a small laundry room; the hallway on the other side of the living room, the open bathroom door on the right, the three closed bedroom doors on either side of the hallway just beyond it. Something about the house—the arrangement of the furniture or the smell of new carpet—told Winston that Rodney and Janelle Bellamy had not been living here for very long, and now, if she stayed in their home, she would be living here without him.

  Bellamy walked to the sofa and sat down. He closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. Winston had not been invited to sit, so he continued to stand by the door.

  “Ed,” Winston said, “I just want you to know how sorry I am. I can’t imagine—” But he stopped speaking when Janelle opened one of the bedroom doors in the hall and walked into the living room. Winston saw that the woman he’d heard crying just moments before was now gone. This woman’s face was shining, her bright eyes showing no trace of tears aside from the redness they’d left behind. Her face portrayed no sign of sadness, but also no shock that the Brunswick County sheriff was standing in her living room. She held a fussing baby that didn’t look to be more than a few months old. She bounced the baby as she walked. She raised her eyebrows at Winston and nearly smiled, the gesture being the only false thing about her.

  “He didn’t sleep much last night,” she said. Her voice was pitched and sharp, and Winston could feel her restraint and also the panic that fueled it. She patted the baby’s back, rubbed her open hand up and down across it. “None of us slept.” And that was the moment when her face changed, when she turned back into the woman Winston had heard. “He just went out for diapers,” she said, her face collapsing, her mouth nearly swallowing her lips as she choked back a great, heaving sob. The baby in her arms began to cry louder. Bellamy stood from the sofa and stepped around the coffee table toward her, reached out his arms to take the child. Janelle turned away from him, began whispering over and over. “Shhh, it’s okay, honey. Daddy’s just gone for diapers. Daddy’s just gone for diapers.”

  It was all too much for Winston, but the only thing he could do now was look away.

  Later, Winston’s name came over the walkie-talkie as he turned onto Howe Street. He pulled to the side of the road, wiped his eyes, took a breath, and picked up the walkie-talkie from where it sat on the passenger’s seat. On the other end was Randy Taylor, a retired officer who often ran dispatch during the morning hours once Rudy had gone home. Everyone in the office called dispatch “The Randy and Rudy Show,” and even though no one had ever said that to Randy or Rudy, Winston figured they probably knew just the same and probably even got a kick out of it.

  “Sheriff?” Randy’s voice repeated.

  “I’m here,” Winston said. He took another breath, rubbed his eyes and then his face with his free hand.

  “Leonard Dorsey wants to talk to you,” Randy said.

  “You know what it’s about?” Winston asked.

  “He didn’t say, but I reckon it’s something about that airplane.”

  “Is he still out at the airport?”

  “He is,” Randy said.

  “Well, do me a favor and call Hugh’s office. Tell them I’m on the way.”

  “Ten-four,” Randy said.

  Winston tossed the walkie-talkie back onto the passenger’s seat, where it landed on the campaign posters Marie’d had printed. He sat there on the roadside and watched as cars entered and left Southport. He rolled the window down, felt the warmth of the morning. He took another deep breath.

  Although he tried to shake the image and the sound, Winston could still see and hear Janelle crying, the baby boy wailing in her arms. He had wanted to do something, but there was nothing he could do but watch Ed Bellamy wrap his arms around the young woman while turning his face away from Winston. Winston knew that he had muttered condolences and promises to do all he
could, but he knew that Janelle and Bellamy either hadn’t been listening or perhaps hadn’t been able to hear him over the sound of the baby’s cries and their own deafening sadness. Winston didn’t blame them. He wouldn’t have listened to himself either.

  At one point, a bedroom door had opened in the hallway just past the bathroom, and the face of a teenaged boy peered out and made eye contact with Winston. His hair was cropped close, and his skin was darker than Janelle’s, but their faces were similar. Winston wondered if they were siblings, although the boy seemed much younger. The boy had stared for a moment, his eyes moving from Winston to the spot where Bellamy stood, attempting to console both his daughter-in-law and his grandson. The boy in the doorway hadn’t spoken. Once he’d finished looking, he’d simply withdrawn into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.

  When Winston left, Ed Bellamy had followed him outside to Marie’s car.

  “What can you tell me, Winston?” Bellamy had asked.

  “Not much,” Winston had said. “Not because I can’t or don’t want to, but just because there’s not anything to tell right now, Ed.”

  “Where’d you find him?”

  “Out at the airport.”

  “Where out at the airport?”

  “By the runway,” Winston had said. “A plane landed out there in the middle of the night. Whoever brought it in abandoned it and disappeared.”

  “And that’s who—” Bellamy had said, but he’d stopped, unable to force out the words he hadn’t yet prepared himself to say.

  “Maybe,” Winston had said. “We just don’t know, Ed. But I promise you I’ll do my best to find out.”

  “People are going to think it’s drugs,” Bellamy said.

  “It might’ve been, Ed,” Winston said. “We don’t have any idea.”

  “Rodney wasn’t involved with drugs,” Bellamy said.

  “I’m not saying he was, Ed.”

  “I’m saying he wasn’t, Winston. I don’t even want to hear that or see that mentioned anywhere.”