Dream With Little Angels (16 page)

“Now you're sure about the time and that?” Officer Jackson said.

“One hundred percent,” I said. “See, my Uncle Henry bought me a new watch today.” I showed him my exquisite timepiece.

“And you're certain the body wasn't there already?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “In fact, that was why Dewey and I came in the first place. To look at the tree where they found Ruby Mae twelve years ago.”

He tapped his pencil against his pad and stared at me a few seconds. “Livin' with your mama really has an effect on you, don't it?”

“I think everyone's mama has an effect on them, don't you?” I asked.

He nodded and looked away, scratching the back of his head. “I suppose you're right. How about you roll up those windows now and try to stay warm. Your mama's probably gonna be here another couple hours. If you want, I can try to get someone to come pick you up.”

“No, sir,” I said. “I'd like to stay, if that's all right.”

He shook his head. “It's fine with me.”

A
bout an hour or so later, another two squad cars pulled into the ranch. Since Alvin only had two of their own cars, these were obviously from some other town. I suspected this was the forensics team Officer Jackson had called in.

Two officers got out of each car. Of the four, two of them each carried some sort of kit, much bigger than the CSI kits that Officer Jackson and my mother kept in the trunks of their cars. All four of the men had short-cropped hair. Two were blond with goatees. The other two had dark features and no facial hair.

One of the pair of experts went in the direction of the body; the other started taking samples of things from around Mr. Garner's ranch: leaf and branch cuttings, dirt specimens, and something that looked remarkably like chicken dung to me. All of it was collected and put into clear plastic bags. Some of it, like the chicken dung, was taken using a pair of tweezers and placed in a test tube full of liquid that was then shaken and brought back to their cars. I had no idea what they were doing with any of it. All I knew about forensic experts was that they were way too high-tech as far as Alvin police work went and that they were the ones who tried to solve crimes by running scientific tests on things like blood and stuff like that. We were just learning about blood cells in school.

I called Dewey back and reported with an update.

“They're testing chicken shit?” he asked in disbelief. “Why the heck would they be doin' that?”

“I don't have the slightest idea,” I said. “Maybe they think it's possible Mary Ann Dailey was taken by a chicken.”

Dewey laughed and I wished I hadn't made the joke. After seeing her body, laughing just didn't seem right.

“Wow, I can't believe all this,” Dewey said after a period of silence.

One of the forensic experts called out to Mr. Garner. “Is this here your shovel?” he asked, pointing to the spade I had seen on my way back to the car.

Mr. Garner's hands went to his hips. He barely gave the shovel a glance. “Could be,” he said. “Sorta looks like it could be anyone's shovel. Most shovels look the same, don't they?” He sounded mad, and I couldn't figure out why.

“You being a smart ass?” the man asked.

“You're the expert, you tell me,” Mr. Garner said.

“Detective Teal, I'm finding your friend here rather uncooperative,” the forensic officer said to my mother.

She came over to where Mr. Garner was standing, his big arms crossed across his chest. “Something wrong, Bob?”

“I don't know, Leah. You tell me. You bring these ‘forensic experts' in and suddenly they all askin' me if that's my shovel or not. Sounds to me almost like an accusation.”

“Bob, please just answer their questions. They're only doing their job, just like the rest of us.”

“Okay, then,” Mr. Garner said. “
You
ask me.”

“Ask you what?”

“Ask me if that's my shovel.”

“Is it?” my mother asked. I didn't remember seeing that shovel when Dewey and I had been here earlier. Not lying on the other side of the river or anywhere else for that matter.

“Are you asking me if I killed a little girl and left her body partially buried beside the creek?” Mr. Garner asked back instead of answering my mother's question. I couldn't see how he mixed those two things up.

But my mother paused and I saw her swallow. “Did you?” she asked.

I couldn't believe I heard what I heard. “My mom just asked Mr. Garner if he did it,” I told Dewey in a fast whisper. “If he was the one who killed Mary Ann.”

“We know he wasn't,” Dewey said.

I shushed him and told him I couldn't hear with him jabbering and the rain and all.

Mr. Garner's face grew slightly red. “What do you think, Leah?” he asked. “Let me tell you what
I
think. I think you're makin' some really bad decisions right now and you don't want to be askin' me things like that.”

My mother took a very deep breath. She was frustrated. After a hesitation, she asked, “How come your tools ain't locked up?”

“Jesus
Christ,
Leah, I only
just
got the roof on the shed. Like less than ten minutes before I found Mary Ann. I haven't even gone down to Jim's for the hardware for the door yet. The last thing I expected was someone to come lookin' for a shovel to dig a hole for a little girl.”

My mother considered this, looking over at the willow, where I assumed Mary Ann's body was being bagged, since I saw them take the necessary equipment in that direction. “Three little girls go missing,” she said. “Funny, how two of 'em show up right outside your ranch.”

Mr. Garner was quick to respond. “Yeah, you'd think I'd be smarter than that if it were me.”

“That's not helping your case.”
^I

“My case?
What?
I'm actually a suspect? Shouldn't you be reading me my rights?”

“No,” my mother said, nodding to Officer Jackson. “
He
will. I have to get my kid home.” She turned and started walking toward the car.

“Dewey, I gotta go,” I quickly said and hung up the phone.

“You're not serious?” Mr. Garner called out behind my mother just as Officer Jackson told him about his right to remain silent and all that.

Mr. Garner apparently didn't care about that right. “Leah, your pa and I were friends, for Christ's sake.” I watched Officer Jackson bring Mr. Garner's hands behind his back and cuff him.

“Geez!” I said, remembering the windows. Quickly I reached across and started winding my mother's up. Her seat and steering wheel were drenched from incoming rain, but she barely seemed to notice as she opened the door and got inside.

“You think Mr. Garner killed Mary Ann Dailey?” I asked.

“Mind your business and do up your belt.” She glanced at my open window. “And do that up. And give me that.” She pointed to the car phone lying on the floor at my feet. I handed it to her and started rolling the window up. She went through the phone's call log. I swallowed hard, knowing she was seeing my two calls to Dewey. “I figured as much,” she said. “Abe, you got about as much sense as a dew worm.”

“You only told me to stay in the car , nothing else.”

“You know what?” she asked. “Right now, I don't even care.”

I could tell by her tone not to ask any more questions about nothing. I didn't think it was Mr. Garner who killed Mary Ann Dailey, though. I still had Mr. Farrow at the top of my list.

She backed out, leaving tire trails in the swampy mud before turning back onto the dirt road. “Is Mr. Garner gonna go to jail?” I asked after a few miles of silence.

“I said, mind your business.” She lifted her phone and speed dialed Chief Montgomery at home without even pulling over to do it. This was very unusual behavior for my mother, who was generally overly cautious about such things. I listened to her describe what had happened.

“. . . and we found tape marks over her mouth, rope marks on her wrists, strained ligaments in her feet. Yeah. Very much like the Vickers girl. No, Ethan, I'm fine. Seriously.” She threw me a sideways glance. “Nearly exact same indications of sexual abuse. Yes. No, I'm seriously fine. I don't care
how
I sound. If you saw what I just did, you wouldn't sound so perfect, either. Yeah, they're bagging her. Found extensive DNA evidence on Bob Garner's shovel. Not sure yet. Yeah, we're bringing him in.”

She hung up the phone. I started to say something, but she quickly snapped at me, “I said, mind your business,” so I closed my mouth tight.

All the way home, I kept glancing at her every couple minutes. It was a very long time for me to have to mind my business.

 

Back at home, I tried talking to my mother about Mary Ann Dailey, but I could tell right away she really had no desire to discuss it. “Why don't you go and find something to do in your room?” she said. Carry was already in her own room with the door closed, where she'd spent most of her time since her grounding. That is, other than the foray into Japanese raw fish, which was almost like cruel and unusual punishment as far as she was concerned.

It wasn't even near on bedtime, but I stayed in my room anyway, sitting on my hardwood floor and playing with my LEGO blocks. Really, it was just an excuse to listen to my mother and Uncle Henry talking down the hall, a good three rooms away. I was starting to get pretty good at picking up their conversations.

“The killings were almost identical,” I heard my mother say. “Mary Ann was even killed the same way—slit right across her throat.” I cringed, remembering that slash.

“Did they find the knife?” Uncle Henry asked.

“No, but whoever dumped her walked in from the road. They found traces of blood leading back to where she must have been taken from a truck or a car, so she was killed somewhere else and brought to the swamp.”

“Well,” Uncle Henry said, “there must be a heckuva lot of blood somewhere, don'tcha think? Can't you just look in every car seat, trunk seat, vehicle trunk, and truck bed in town for blood?”

“You know we already arrested Bob Garner. They found evidence linking him to the shovel used to dig the shallow grave the body was laying in.”

“Yeah,” Uncle Henry said, “but do you really think it was him?”

“She was found on his property.
His
shovel was used to try and bury her. It's pretty cut and dried, Hank. Least the forensics guys think so. They've still got some more test work to do, but for the time being, Bob Garner's being held for the murder.”

“You know that man was a good friend of your daddy's.”

“That's got nothin' to do with nothin'.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I always thought he was a pretty smart man, though.”

“What're you sayin'?” my mother asked.

“I'm sayin' a smart man don't leave a shovel round with evidence on it settin' him up for murder.”

“Maybe he was in some kind of hurry.”

“Or maybe—” Uncle Henry cut off his sentence.

There was a pause and then I heard my mother, her voice choked with tears: “She was laying in almost the exact same place as Ruby Mae. Almost
exactly,
Hank. It's too much of a coincidence, ain't it?”

“It's been twelve years, Leah. Coincidences generally happen faster than that.”

I heard her sigh. It almost sounded as though she was going to break down completely. “I told the Daileys today that their little girl was gone forever,” she said. “It was horrible. It was Ruby Mae Vickers all over again.”

“Oh, come here,” I heard Uncle Henry say.

And then my mother's sobs wound their way down the hall, echoing off the bare yellow of our kitchen walls.

I sat on the floor of my room, listening to them talk, piecing together LEGOs in seemingly random ways. I had no idea what it was I was building, I was just doing stuff to pass away the time, sorta like the way me and Dewey used to kill off afternoons in the front yard balancing rocks on the ends of sticks. But as I assembled what looked to me like some sort of strange molecule, I began to think about how Dewey and me were the last two people to see Tiffany Michelle Yates alive that afternoon and how weird that was and all.

That coldness came back, only this time it started at my feet and rose right up to my neck as I realized Dewey had been right. It could very easily have been him or me that went missing that day. What if one of us had ended up beneath that willow?

The image of Mr. Robert Lee Garner being handcuffed by Officer Jackson flashed in my mind and a sour feeling came to my stomach. I remembered what Mr. Garner said about Ruby Mae and how bad he seemed to feel about finding her body all them years ago. I remembered him telling me and Dewey how he still left flowers for her. I remembered the fresh flowers we had seen earlier today when we rode our bikes to his ranch. I was near on positive he didn't have anything to do with Mary Ann Dailey's death, yet he was now sitting in the Alvin jail for it. Then I remembered the fifteen minutes I spent in that cell and the sourness in my stomach grew worse. I checked my watch. Mr. Garner would have already been there at least two hours.

I don't think I could've survived another fifteen minutes in that sickly mustard-colored room.

It occurred to me that since Ruby Mae was killed twelve years ago, in all likelihood, Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow wasn't behind this on account of him just moving to Alvin at the end of last summer. From what little I knew of him, his interests leaned more toward roadkill than young girls anyway.

So if it wasn't Mr. Garner and it wasn't Mr. Farrow, who was it?

It was a mystery I didn't find nearly as fascinating as the disappearing roadkill, so I finally stopped thinking about it, figuring it was one of those things best left to grown-ups to work out.