Final Justice (20 page)

Luke was livid and didn't know who to blame—the rescue squad or Lubie. Death cars always drew the morbidly curious but to leave a brain inside? Jesus. "Is it still there, Ebner?"

"Naw. Ronnie's old man heard about it and came to get it the next day, mad as a wet hen, but it was gone. I reckon the cats ate it that night. I'd been chasin' 'em off it all day."

Luke made a mental note to raise enough hell with those who might have been responsible that it would never happen again.

"I need to talk to Betsy."

"She's inside, washing one of Dougie's younguns' hair. Teacher sent him home again with lice."

Luke walked on up the steps and into the cabin, and promptly felt something squish under his foot. Looking down, he grimaced to see he had stepped into a pile of chicken doo.

"Gotta watch where you're walkin, sheriff," Betsy said from where she had a small boy doubled over a washtub pouring what smelled like kerosene over his head as he screamed bloody murder.

Luke glanced around. There was hardly room to move because of so much furniture crowded in the tiny room: old sofas that vomited stuffing, rickety chairs set around a three-legged table, stacks of newspapers ready for shredding to use in the outhouse, and eight stained mattresses on the floor.

The smell was awful, too, of grease, onions, urine, but maybe the worst was the sight of the chickens picking and cackling, and dropping more doo on the floor.

Betsy saw him staring and shrieked at the hens, "Out! Right this minute."

Luke thought she meant him, then realized it was the chickens she was talking to when she lifted her hands from the water and kerosene to wave at them and yell, "Shoo! Shoo!"

As they began to obediently make their way to the door, she called after them, "You all know you ain't allowed in here when I got company. Now git before you wind up bein' supper."

He was amazed at how they obeyed her, the hens walking out in single file behind a cocky red rooster leading the way.

"Now what you want, sheriff?" Betsy turned back to her task. "Kids," she grumbled. "Send 'em to school and they come home full of nits. I'll be glad when they all turn sixteen so's they can quit."

Luke doubted it would be that long before Betsy's numerous nieces and nephews dropped out. Not a one of the Meeses had ever gone beyond sixth or seventh grade. "Hardy Moon says you and your family broke into the funeral home last night and busted your nephew's coffin open."

"Well, it's his word against ours."

"Did you do it?"

"What if we did?" She jerked the boy's head out of the tub, covered it with a rag, and told him to go outside and dry off.

"Betsy, you can go to jail for breaking and entering. Damaging that coffin is called vandalism."

"Look, sheriff," she talked as she dragged the bucket to the back door and tipped it out to empty the water in the yard. "If'n we
did
do it—and I ain't sayin' we did—it was because that ass Hardy Moon wouldn't let us make sure it was our kin inside that box. We had a right to know."

"And are you satisfied now that it is?"

She grinned. "Uh-uh, sheriff. You ain't trickin' me into sayin' we done it. You gotta prove it."

Luke saw one of her front teeth was missing, and the rotten one next to it didn't look like it would be in her mouth much longer either.

"Can
you?"

"Betsy, I could take you in for questioning, and if I dig hard enough, and long enough, yeah, I can probably prove it, but I'm not going to, because I can understand how you felt."

She nodded without looking at him.

"Okay. That's settled. Now let's talk about you and your family paying for a new coffin. The government isn't going to spring for two."

"There ain't no need. A bag of guts don't need no box. Me and Pa and Dougie are going to the funeral home this afternoon and get Normie and bury him in the family graveyard up on Crow's Knob. Dougie and our cousin, Lem, are up there now diggin' the hole."

Luke saw nothing wrong with that. Maybe it was bending the law a bit, but he leaned on the theory that sometimes it was best to
go
along to
get
along, especially with people like Betsy and her backwoods family. "I'm going to let you slide by this time, but if you ever pull a stunt like that again, you'll be spending some time in jail. Understand?"

She said she did.

He knew she didn't.

As he left, he paused to scrape the bottom of his shoe against the steps.

* * *

Luke was stopped for a traffic light when he recognized Emma Jean Veazey crossing the street in front of his car. She glanced in his direction and quickly ducked her head and pretended not to see him.

She was wearing light blue pedal pushers, white sneakers with no socks, and a beige pullover sweater that had seen better days. Her hair was pulled back in a perky pony tail. She looked like a sixteen-year-old. Luke was amused to think how, even though she obviously played down her looks to pacify Rudy's jealous streak, she could not completely hide the fact she was a damn fine-looking woman.

The light changed, and he turned in the opposite direction toward the funeral home. As he passed, he saw Lucy Moon getting into her car. She waved. He waved back. He liked Lucy. Always had. It was just a shame she was so plain homely she had leaped at the chance to marry Hardy without stopping to think he was only after her money. The funeral home was a gold mine, and Hardy had known it.

* * *

Luke made up a story to satisfy Jubal. He said the wreaths had been taken off the wire stands and put on the ground so they wouldn't blow around. This was flimsy, but Luke hadn't bothered to check. He had bigger fish to fry than charging Hardy with scoffing flowers off stands to use again and charge for new ones each time he did.

As for the coffin Jubal had seen in the storage shed, Luke lied and said he'd learned another one like Jubal had bought had come in and was being kept there due to lack of space inside the funeral home. He wasn't about to tell him the truth. He was also glad he didn't have to worry about the same thing having happened to his mother because he'd stayed till the grave was covered. Ozzie and Hank hadn't dared tell him to leave.

When he got off the phone with Jubal, Wilma said Rudy Veazey was on the other line. "He says somebody stole his wallet."

Luke told her to let Kirby handle it.

A little while later, Kirby came into his office. "I can't believe that guy. Claims he fell asleep in his car at the grill Friday night, and somebody stole his wallet right out of his pocket. He probably got drunk and lost it."

Luke told him not to worry about it, all the while hoping Rudy wouldn't take his bad mood out on Emma Jean. Then he chided himself for thinking so much about her lately anyway.

A call came about a fender bender out on the Talladega highway and Kirby left. Right after he did, Wilma yelled, "Sheriff, your wife's on the phone."

Luke barely had time to speak into the receiver before Alma started in. "Don't give me no excuses about tonight, Luke. You promised Tammy you'd go to revival with us."

"I didn't promise anything, and you put her up to asking." It really griped him how Alma had started to use Tammy to try and get her own way. "All I told her was that I'd try to go if I wasn't busy, but it looks like I will be."

"Doing what? Luke, damn it to hell, you're never home."

Cupping his hand over the mouthpiece, he whirled his chair around so his back was to the open door to the outer office. "I've told you before. Don't call me down here raising hell. And listen to you cussing like a sailor in the same breath you're talking about going to church."

"Don't you tell me how to talk. Now are you going to go or not?"

"I told you I've got to work. Maybe next time."
Maybe never,
he thought, or at least not unless she outlived him and had his funeral in her kooky church. That was the only way she would ever get him there. "Now I've got to go."

"You can go to hell," she snapped into the receiver before slamming it down.

Luke leaned back in his chair, pulled a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket, and lit it. He didn't really have anything to do that night, and, like so many other times, he would probably stay right in his office and read till all hours. It beat going home to Alma.

He decided to have supper at the Bulldog and kill some time there. Mondays were never busy, and Clyde joined him in the booth with a cup of coffee. Luke always enjoyed the chance to talk to Clyde and was annoyed when Ned phoned to report someone had found Rudy's wallet behind the grill. Only there was no money in it, and Wanda was worried Rudy would think she took it since she was the one who found it.

Kirby and Matt were patrolling on opposite ends of the county, so Luke drove out to the grill where Wanda was waiting to swear over and over that the wallet was empty when she found it next to the dump bin when she took the trash out.

"With that temper of his, I don't need him on my back, and I'm afraid he's going to go around calling me a thief."

Luke said he would handle it. Besides, it was a nice evening for a drive in that almost hallowed time between dusk and darkness, when the land seems hesitant, yet poised, to leap into night. The few cotton blossoms remaining in Sid Dootree's fields running along both sides of the road seemed like sprinkles of silver from the half-moon rising in the sky.

A nip of fall was in the air. Luke rolled up the window, but not before catching a whiff of boll weevil poison lingering on the brown cotton stalks since spring. The sweetly acrid smell brought back memories of long-ago summer nights when he would take Sara parking on the backside of the fields. The thought ignited a fire in his loins, not for the woman-wife-mother she was now, but for the recklessness and hot blood of his youth.

He slowed to gaze longingly at the fields. A part of him would always be there. A part of Sara, too, and every other teen who had been there in search of something he, or she, could not understand, knowing only that a hunger was awakening within that begged to be fed.

In times when his memories took him back, Luke always found himself wondering how his life would have turned out if Sara had loved him back. But she hadn't. It had always been Dewey for her. Still, he couldn't help thinking about it, imagining what it would be like to share the kind of love Sara told him she and Dewey had for each other.

Maybe he was meant to be alone. He had said that to Sara once when they were having one of their soulful conversations on her front porch. They only got to do that in the summer when Tim was working a late shift and it was warm enough for them to sit outside. They never went in the house alone, knowing it would cause talk if anybody saw them.

So they visited outside in front of God and everybody. Sara told him that he should never give up hope of finding a true love. Maybe he would have to hide his feelings from the world as she did, but the necessary deceit was worth it.

"There's always an excuse for love," she had said many times. "It would be a real sad life if there wasn't."

Luke's life
was
sad because it seemed his only reason for existing anymore was wreaking justice. He had no idea what he would do with the rest of his life when he felt like his mother could finally rest in peace. For the moment love didn't seem important, but he still couldn't deny feeling lonely sometimes.

Luke could not tell whether Rudy was home till he drove around back of the house. Seeing his truck wasn't there, he started to leave, but the porch light came on, and Emma Jean appeared, framing her eyes with her hand against the light as she strained to see who it was.

Luke stopped and got out. No need to make her worry over why a patrol car had pulled into her yard. "Evening, Mrs. Veazey," he called as he walked towards the porch. "I've got Rudy's wallet. Somebody found it behind the grill and turned it in."

"He'll be so glad," she said, sounding relieved herself. "All his pay was in there."

"Well, I'm afraid somebody stole that. I'm sorry."

"Oh, no." Her hand flew to her throat. "He... we... needed that money. The hospital bill and all..." Her voice trailed and she glanced away, embarrassed to bring up that humiliating night. "But thanks for coming out here with it. I'll tell Rudy when he gets home. He's working third shift this week."

Luke felt a relaxing wave for not having to worry about Rudy tearing into the drive any second to raise hell about his being there. "Are you doing all right now?"

"Yes, I am. Thank you."

Luke wondered again how anybody could hit something that looked that good. "Well, I'm glad to hear it, and I hope things work out for you."

He turned to go. He didn't want to but knew it was best because looking at her, being so close, gave him a strange feeling he did not understand.

"Sheriff..."

He whipped about to see how scared she looked and thought how there was no need to be. Not around him. No, Lord. Never around him.

"I'm sorry I told you what I did."

"About what?"

"About Frank Goforth. I had no right. I mean, a woman shouldn't talk about such things to a man. I've been embarrassed ever since. Please don't tell nobody else."