Flight of the Stone Angel (27 page)

“With a shovel. I hit him in the gut with the first blow and whacked his hands with the next one. Tom was busy checking the dog for holes. He looks up at me and down at Fred, and he says, ‘Augusta, that’s rude.’ But he didn’t say anything when I hit Fred alongside the head. Tom isn’t given to repeating himself.”

He looked at Henry, the source of this story, but Henry was concentrating on his food. Charles turned back to Augusta. “I’m sorry. I was misinformed.”

Deliberately?

And now Charles became lost in speculation. Henry could have been shielding Augusta. Or she might be shielding the sheriff. One of them was less than truthful. And now he pondered the etiquette of lies within this company of liars he had joined. And then he considered the well-intentioned lie versus the lie for personal gain, the general ranking of sin.

“So Fred told people Tom did that?” Augusta did not look pleased. “Well, that isn’t right, giving Tom all the credit.”

Now Henry lifted his face and his hands to say to Charles,
“I thought you were more interested in the old murder. Getting hit with one rock doesn’t have the same cachet as a stoning by a mindless mob.”

“A mob is not mindless,” said Augusta, passing Henry a plate of butter. “You don’t remember that lynching in Arkansas?”

She turned to Charles. “Three boys were jailed for murder. One of them had a change of heart and run off before the man was shot and his wife was robbed of her jewelry, but all three were arrested. Next day, a rumor spread all over town that the woman had been raped – though she never was. That night, a mob dragged the boys out of the jailhouse and lynched them – all but the one. They were putting the rope around his neck when someone in the crowd yells out, ‘That boy had no part in the murder.’ The rope was taken off, and the mob returned him to his cell.”

“She’s right, Henry,” said Charles. “The mob has a goal and a guiding intelligence. It even has an awareness of right and wrong. But something has always bothered me about
this
mob. It’s just wrong somehow.”

“
The lack of noise? The lack of passion
?” asked Henry.

“Yes. It was done in cold blood. That’s one oddity. But I don’t think Travis or Alma knew what was going to happen before they got to the house.”

“It wouldn’t make sense to do a cold murder in a group,” said Augusta, “unless they were all in on it. Otherwise someone would talk.”

“That is a problem,” said Charles.

“Not a problem at all.” Mallory stood in the doorway of the kitchen, holding a carrier cage full of white doves. “They have a lot in common.” She set the cage on the slate counter. “One murder charge for all of them, whether or not they threw the rocks. Bloodshed makes the bond real tight.”

Augusta set out a plate for her, saying, “Now how did you charm those doves into the cage?”

“I threatened to break their little legs if they didn’t cooperate.” She sat down at the table. Her back was turned on the cat sitting on top of the refrigerator. “How’s it going?”

Augusta ran one finger down the list. “Henry’s favorites are the women. But if you don’t count Alma, every one of them has an admirable mean streak. Not a weak sister in the pack. I could make the same claim for most of the men.”

“Most?”

“Well now, this name is a surprise.” She pointed it out for Henry. “Are you sure about this one?”

“I’m positive.”

“I wouldn’t have thought he had any violence in him at all.”

“He’s the one I want,” said Mallory.

The cat was only staring at the captive doves, her eyes wide, and perhaps disbelieving.

“You don’t know he did anything,” said Augusta. “Alma never threw her stone, and Travis only stoned your dog.”

“If you believe them.”

When Charles turned back to the cat, it was standing on top of the wire cage, staring at the docile doves, which apparently had never seen a cat before. There was a great deal of eye contact, but no violence yet.

Mallory, unaware of the impending massacre, was saying, “I don’t care if he threw rocks or flowers. He was there, and I’m gonna break him.”

“Maybe not,” said Augusta. “You don’t know the first thing about these people. You could pummel this one all day, and he’d just take it.”

Charles was raising his hand to point to the cat’s paw dipping in between the wires, when cage and cat tumbled to the floor, the door banged open and the doves flew upward in tight formation, all of one mind in their desire to live.

“Damn cat!” Mallory was on her feet. “It took me hours – ”

“I’ll take care of it,” said Augusta.

The cat was in pursuit of its lunch, and Mallory was reaching for her revolver. Augusta grabbed the wrist of the gun hand and stared the younger woman down, eyes hard and unwavering. “Don’t even think about it, little girl.” Each word had the same weight, the same amount of menace.

The cat was leaping joyfully from countertop to refrigerator and down to the floor again in pursuit of each new roost of a dove. But the birds were quicker. White feathers were flying, and some were drifting to the floor as the manic chase went on.

Augusta still held Mallory’s wrist in a tight grip, and her expression was conveying that the younger woman would be dead meat if she dared to shoot that animal. And that was a promise.

The cat was closing on a bird, stealing up from behind and hyperventilating in happy anticipation. A squeak of excitement escaped from the cat and warned the dove into flight.

Mallory’s expression was somewhere between anger and incredulity. This old woman had no weapon, no –

Augusta assured her with a slow nod that she could and would make good on a threat. If Mallory wanted to go round and round, the older woman was up for it.

Charles was only a little shocked to note that Mallory was clearly weighing this proposition. Then she sat down.

He sipped his coffee and watched a fish hawk dive for its dinner as the gulls screamed and circled over the river. Charles was viewing nature in a less than pastoral light these days. He smashed an insect on his wrist and left a red smear on his skin. Another bug made a clean getaway with his body fluids, and who knew what was going on among the flightless insects and the small animals in the long grass extending out to the levee. And what of Augusta, nature’s local custodian?

Mallory leaned against the veranda rail, and stared down at the pocket watch in her hand, oblivious to any violence not of her own making.

He had asked her a question ten minutes ago and was still waiting for a response. “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”

She wouldn’t even look at him.

He felt his relationship with her had reached a new growth point, for she pissed him off so easily these days. “You don’t trust me. You think I’d give it all away.”

She slipped the watch into her jeans pocket. “Do you trust
me,
Charles?”

“You want blind faith? Like Malcolm’s little flock?” He hadn’t meant to say that aloud. It was only an echo of Riker from the back of his mind. “When were you going to tell me about the bullet wound in your shoulder?”

“Never.”

Well, so much for trust.

“I want you to find Riker,” she said. “Just go from bar to bar, you’ll turn him up. I want you to give him a story, send him off to the next parish to keep him out of my way.”

“Riker thinks you’ve come back to destroy all those people. Have you?”

“I came here to collect evidence in a homicide.”

“Not just any homicide.”

“It’s like any other case, same – ”

“Mallory, you’re not really going to play the blushing virgin, are you?” He noted the sudden widening of her eyes, and he nearly laughed. “You always said I didn’t have a face for poker. Well, you don’t have the face for righteous indignation.”

She was angry now.
Good.
Before she could speak, he put up one hand. “I should warn you, I can not only outvirgin you, but even though I’m not from the South, I can outsouthern you too. I’ve learned a lot from Henry and Augusta.”

“Yeah, and you were going to find out who killed Babe. How much did you learn about that?”

He didn’t care for her sarcasm either. “Well, according to the sheriff, to know Babe was to have a motive. What did you turn up at the hospital yesterday?”

“Nothing.”

Right.

“Charles, are you going to help me with this or not?”

“What you’re doing is just another variation on torture. That’s the sheriff’s method.”

“It was Markowitz’s method too.”

“No, your father was a good and decent man.”

“And a world-class cop. When Markowitz didn’t have any hard evidence to use in court, he worked the perps into a frenzy. He lied like the devil, and scared them shitless. If Markowitz had been here, he would have done it the same way, or maybe gone me one better.”

“Riker says this is – ”

“Riker will say whatever it takes to get you working against me. He came here to bring me back to New York, like I’m some runaway kid.”

“He worries about you. I think his biggest fear is that you’re only – ”

“I came here to do a job, and I will finish it. So
don’t
help me, all right? Just don’t get in my way.” She stalked to the staircase.

“Mallory, wait. I don’t think – ”

“No, you’re not thinking at all – you’ve got Riker for that.” She turned on him. “He’s got you blindsided.” She came walking back to him, not with her usual stealth, but with boot heels hitting the boards hard. “He’s a fine one to quote the rule book. You don’t think he’s ever gone over the edge to get a confession?”

She stood over him now, arms folded. “Once I watched Riker slap a child molester on the back and smile. Then he commiserated with the pervert – ‘What a tease that four-year-old kid was, huh, pal? Yeah, she had it coming to her.’ Oh, did I mention that the creep killed the kids when he was done with them?”

Charles lowered his head, and she shot out one hand to lift his face to hers. “No cop can stomach the rape of a child. It’s the lowest crime, and this insect also killed them. Not because he was sick – he just didn’t want any witnesses – it was that cold.”

Her hand fell away. “Riker was the child killer’s best friend. The perp was so smitten with his new buddy, the cop. He led us to every little corpse – all for the love of Riker. As we went from one child’s grave to another, Riker held the perp’s hand in the back of the car. It was a love affair. Are you disgusted, Charles? You think there was a righteous way to get that confession?”

His eyes stayed with her as she paced to the staircase and back again.

“Did Markowitz try to stop it? Did he say, ‘No, Riker, don’t get down in the dirt with that creep’? No! The old man watched Riker develop the suspect as a witness to his own crime. Riker went around with this pervert for days and days until we’d collected seven very small bodies. The techs would dig up a little kid, and Riker would hug the pervert and say, ‘Good job, pal.’ And then they’d pick up their shovels, and we’d all go on to the next shallow grave.”

She hunkered down beside his chair. So close. “By comparison, I don’t think Riker found
you
much of a challenge.” She stood up and turned her back on him.

Charles felt drained, as though he had run a mile. He looked down at a flower blooming through the rail near his chair. Its vine had twined up fifteen feet of brick foundation to get at the wood. The flower was flame-red, so beautiful, fragile. A dark, twitching beetle crawled from its center as Mallory came to light in the chair beside his own.

“Forget that the victim is my mother.” Her voice was so calm, so utterly detached. She went on, with no inflection to give a meaning beyond the dry words. “The crime is old. A cold trail is the hardest one No evidence, no witnesses, unless you count Ira, and I don’t. I’m keeping him out of this. And Alma’s crazy and useless.”

Now her voice was on the rise, but still no emotion, as though she had merely turned up the volume on a machine. “I have to develop a witness to testify against the rest of them. I plan to break the bastard any way I can – whatever it takes.”

Mallory’s face was inches from his own. Her hand wrapped around his arm, fingers digging in. All her emotions came out to play now. There was real pain in her face, her voice. “And then I’m going to tell the creep that my mother had it coming to her! That the bitch
deserved
to die!”

His head jerked back as though she had slapped him.

Her voice softened. “I’ll tell him any filthy lie he needs to hear.” She whispered, “That’s what cops do.”

And now she was rising, going away from him again. She stood by the rail and leaned back on her hands, all cold to him now, and mechanical when she said, “So Alma Furgueson slit her wrists. Alma’s still breathing. My mother is dead. Time to choose up sides, Charles.”

She hovered by the staircase, undecided whether to go or stay. “Has Riker won you over?” She set one boot on the steps. “Are you throwing in with him or me?”

“I would never – ”

“Are you in or out, Charles?”

“I’m in.” After all, Alma
was
still breathing.

The sheriff sat back and evaluated his young deputy over the rim of his beer glass. Though Lilith Beaudare still had a lot to learn, she had been broken of arrogance – just as he had broken Eliot Dobbs before her. Deputy Travis had come to him prebroken, and was no damn fun at all.

“Very soon, things may get ugly, Lilith.” And how would she react? “Could you kill somebody if you had to? If you can’t do it, you might wind up dead, or someone else will. You’ll only get one second to find out what you’re made of.”

And now he knew he had hit on a soft spot. She lowered her eyes – a bad sign. Had she already been tested under fire? There was nothing in her file to say she’d ever been involved in gunplay.

“Have you ever killed anybody, Sheriff?”

He approved. Distraction was a good move on her part. But her brains were not in question today. “In all the years I’ve had this job, I’ve never had occasion to fire my gun in the line of duty.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I do believe we’ll have the time to know each other a little better, Lilith, but that time is not here, not yet.” Well, that knocked her down again. “So what is it you’re not telling me?”

Her hands wormed around her glass as she dropped her eyes again, casting around for some better diversion. Soon he would have to teach her not to give so much away.

She looked up again. “I think Mallory might be a cop. It’s just a – ”

“A good guess. She is. Detective Sergeant Kathleen Mallory.”

“How did – ”

“Well, if it isn’t the man from New York City.” He pointed toward the door of the Dayborn Bar and Grill.

Charles Butler was blocking out most of the sunlight streaming in behind him. The door swung shut, and now he was in that disorienting passage from bright light to dim.

While the man was still half blind and vulnerable, the sheriff called out across three tables, “Mr. Butler! If you’re looking for your friend Riker, you just missed him. He’s gone off to New Orleans.”

The sheriff gathered that Butler had elected not to bluff his way out, but to ignore the remark. The man was smiling as he joined the sheriff and his deputy.

“Call me Charles, please. Actually, I was looking for
you
, Sheriff.”

Tom Jessop was working hard to suppress a grin, for now this poor bastard had to come up with a reason for his impromptu visit.

“I was just wondering if you had any men on your suspect list yet. So far you seem to favor women.”

“Still do, Charles. I’m nothing if not politically correct.” He turned to his deputy. “Ain’t that right?”

Lilith smiled as she rose from the table and left with explanations of places to go and things to do. Out of respect, Charles stood up to see her off. Tom Jessop remained seated for much the same reason.

“So, Sheriff, you don’t think Fred Laurie could have done it?”

“He could have.” And he did like the idea of a dead man as a suspect. Fred was probably in the ground by now and in no condition to whine about being maligned.

“I also wondered where
you
were when Babe Laurie died.”

The sheriff grinned. “You have real good instincts. If I’d known what Babe did to Ira, I might have been your best suspect. As it is, I still like the ladies. And now you’re probably thinking I missed Augusta, but I didn’t. I just didn’t want to ask her on the off chance she might confess. As I’m sure you know, letting Augusta get away with murder is a tradition in St. Jude Parish.”

“You’re speaking figuratively, of course.”

So Charles didn’t know. “Didn’t you take the tour? Betty tells the whole story to everyone who comes through here.”

“I’ve been rather busy.”

“You must be the only visitor in fifty years who didn’t know that Augusta murdered her own father.”

Charles only shook his head from side to side, smiling now to say this must be a joke. “She couldn’t have done that.”

“She dragged it out, too.” The sheriff caught the bartender’s eyes and held up two fingers. “Not a neat clean death. ‘Course, I know the details better than most. My father was her lawyer. Augusta would be happy to tell you the story herself. It’s not like she ever tried to deny it. Fact is, she took a lot of pride in that murder. She’s a rare one. Most southern women would favor slow poison for the alibi factor. They’d want to be three counties gone before your body hit the floor. Not Augusta. Hell, she wanted the credit.”

Two beers landed on the table, cold gold on the inside, cold sweat on the glass. “Put it on my tab,” said the sheriff. The bartender nodded and walked off.

“Thank you,” said Charles. “So, she confessed? There was a trial?”

“No, it never went beyond the coroner’s jury. The ruling was accidental death. You gotta remember that she was fifty years younger then – nineteen, almost twenty years old. The coroner’s jury was all men. Not a one of them wanted to see her hang for murder. And to be fair – she meant to shoot the old bastard, not push him down the stairs in his wheelchair.”

“Was it the money? I know he cut her out of the will.”

“Oh, hell no. That’s Betty’s theory, but Augusta didn’t care about that. She could have married more money and a bigger house if that’s what she wanted. You just don’t know what a beauty she was. People from Nashville to New Orleans had heard of Augusta Trebec.”

“I know her mother committed suicide. Was it –?” “You could say it started with her mother’s death. The local doctor – he was also the town drunk – he said Nancy’s suicide was insanity. Old Jason probably figured her blood was tainted. Now suppose Augusta went crazy, too? What would happen to his precious house? That’s all any of the Trebec men ever cared about – that damn house. And what if Augusta married? His property would pass to another family. So Jason had his own daughter neutered like a cat.”

“Augusta wouldn’t have allowed that.”

“She didn’t know. Old Jason and the doctor made up some bullshit story about her appendix. She was only sixteen. Well, he’d killed off his last chance for an heir with Augusta’s surgery. He was a sick old man in a wheelchair, and in no shape to make another baby.”

“So he made the house into a historical monument to himself.”

“Right you are. By the time Augusta turned nineteen, the hack doctor who butchered her was dead. It never occurred to Jason that the drunken old fool left medical records on Augusta’s surgery. So another doctor took over the practice, and he told Augusta what had been done to her.”

“And then she killed her father?”

“Didn’t waste any time, either. She came home that very day and went after him with a pistol. The sight of the gun scared him so bad, he backed up his wheelchair – backed it right down the grand staircase. But he didn’t die right away. He was lying there all broken up and screaming in agony. Augusta decided it would be a damn shame to put him out of his misery. So she stayed with him until he died. It took the better part of two days.”

“Are you telling me she didn’t call a doctor?”

“No, she didn’t. But she had the presence of mind to call a lawyer. That was my father. That’s how I happened to be in the room the night she finished the old man off. I was five years old.”

“Your father brought you into a thing like that?”

“He had no idea what she wanted him for, and it was late at night. He couldn’t leave me at home. The housekeeper was gone, and I didn’t have a mother. So I was there when Augusta hurried up Jason’s demise. Half the bones in the old man’s body were broken. My father called for an ambulance the minute we got there. I suppose Augusta was afraid her father might pull through. So she leans down and tells Jason she’s gonna bury him in the family plot where he can have a good view of the house he loves so much. The old man smiles. And then she yells, ‘So you can watch it
fall down!
I’m gonna let it
rot!’
Well, the old man turned red, and then he turned blue and died.”

“But you said she confessed. How could the coroner’s jury bring in a verdict of accidental death?”

“It was a bit of a stretch, but their reasoning was pretty sound. They figured if she was gonna lie about him backing his wheelchair down those stairs, then she would have lied about her original plan to kill him with the gun. So they decided she was truthful about that fall. And it was sort of an accident, if you look at it with a legal squint.”

“But she let him lie there in agony for two days.”

“Now that did trouble the jury. So my father solved that problem for them. He swore under oath that Jason Trebec, late in life, had converted to Christian Science and didn’t want a doctor – so Jason and Augusta had spent those two days praying together.”

“And the coroner’s jury bought that?”

“Don’t you see? They
wanted
to believe it. They were smiling the whole time Dad spun that lie. But then, when he finished his testimony, Augusta burst out laughing. Well, Dad stepped down from the stand, cool as you please, and he slapped her face. He told the jury she was hysterical with grief. And then he strong-armed her right out the door before she could do any more damage.”

“Your father was in love with her, wasn’t he?”

“And fortunately, so was her doctor. He backed up my father’s story on the witness stand. So, you see, she could have killed Babe Laurie. But I don’t ever want to know that for a fact, so I never asked.”

“She had no motive to kill him.”

He liked Charles’s loyalty, and he was satisfied in the man’s character. Augusta’s friendship spoke well of him, considering that he had no feathers or fur.

“Augusta presides over every matter of life and death north of Upland Bayou,” said Jessop. “I don’t think much has got by her since Cass was murdered. She took that killing very hard. She blocked off Finger Bayou and the road to the mansion, locked up her land just like you or me would lock up a house. So there was Babe on that road to Cass’s place, lying in wait for Kathy. And I know that’s what he was doing. I found three of his cigarette butts near the spot where he died.”

“But how would Augusta know that? You would have to assume that she knew all the events leading up to the death. That’s really reaching, isn’t it, Sheriff?”

“If she didn’t do it, I’d bet good money she knows who did. Don’t you understand it yet? Augusta can see everything from her attic window and she spends a lot of time with that spyglass. You think she’s only watching her birds? We’re all part of Augusta’s aviary.”