Flight of the Stone Angel (30 page)

Jimmy bowed his head to hide his face.

The sheriff put one hand on the younger man’s shoulder and shook him lightly. “You saw that killing, and you never said a word to me?”

“He was part of it,” said Riker, holding out a bulging manila envelope. “It’s all here. A signed confession and all the names.”

The sheriff waved the envelope away and backed off from the prisoner. “I want to hear it from him. Lilith, take the boy into the conference room.” The man was thirty years old, but Tom Jessop would always see him as a runaway boy, and he didn’t trust himself to touch Jimmy Simms, not yet.

They all filed down the hallway and through the last door. The sheriff remained standing while the others sat down in metal folding chairs pulled up to the long table. This back room lacked the antique warmth of the reception area. The walls were cold white and held contemporary maps and bulletin boards with papers dangling by pushpins. Riker was seated at the head of the table, flanked by Lilith and Charles. Jimmy Simms sat alone on the other side.

And now the sheriff hovered behind the prisoner. “Let’s hear it, Jimmy.”

The younger man only looked down to the end of the table, where Riker was coating half of it with official-looking papers. The sheriff put one hand on the prisoner’s shoulder to prompt him. “You told it to Riker, now you tell it to me.”

Jimmy stared at Riker, who didn’t look up, but continued to cover the table with evidence, pieces of a murder. Now Riker did look up as he pulled a blue sheet of paper from the envelope, and held it up to the prisoner.

Jimmy spoke as if he were reading the words. “Cass took me to the meeting at the New Church. She dragged me right into that room. She was so angry, waving her letter around and yelling at people.”

The sheriff bent low, his head close to Jimmy’s. “What was Cass angry about?”

“I don’t remember what she was saying. I just wanted to crawl away and die.” Jimmy looked at Riker, who smiled gently and nodded, making a rolling motion with his hand. Jimmy continued. “She was gonna tell the whole town. She was gonna tell
you.
The last thing she said was, ‘The sheriff will be back in the morning, you bastard.”

“Who did she say that to?”

“My uncle.” He sank down in his chair and covered his face with his hands.

Riker waved a hand to caution the sheriff. “Don’t get him off on that. He’ll cry, and it’ll take an hour to settle him down again.” To the prisoner, he said. “Go on, kid.”

“My father must’ve put it all together, ‘cause he was looking at me real strange, just staring at me like I’d crawled out from under some rock. After Cass left, Dad told me to wait outside while the grownups talked.”

“Talked about what?” the sheriff prompted.

Riker handed him two blue sheets of paper, hospital lab reports on blood tests for a twelve-year-old boy. “The ID number matches Dr. Shelley’s case file number for Jimmy.”

The sheriff scanned the first line. “Hepatitis?” He looked at Riker. “I knew he had that. Cass treated him for it when I brought the boy back from New York.” But apparently, she’d treated him for a more serious ailment as well. On the next blue sheet was the positive test for venereal disease. “Jesus.” That might explain the downslide of the boy’s life from the day he had brought him home to his parents.

“There’s more,” said Riker.

Jimmy was staring at the blue sheets and crying softly.

“All right, boy.” The sheriff put one hand on his shoulder. “Never mind that now. Get on with the rest of it.”

Again, Jimmy looked to Riker for his instructions, and the detective nodded.

“We all gathered at the Shelley house. At the time, I didn’t know what for. I remember accidentally kicking a stone loose from the flower bed around the big tree in the front yard. So I stooped down and put it back. Dr. Cass was particular about her flowers.”

She loved her flowers. They bloomed all around the house in every season.

“Then I saw the blue letter again and people were talking in whispers. They were going to fix everything so no one would know.”

By killing Cass, who never did you any harm and never would.

“Somebody threw a rock and hit her on the side of the head. She never cried, never said a thing. It didn’t seem real – like TV with no sound. Another rock hit her in the shoulder. Then somebody put a rock in my hand. It was just there in my hand, and this voice whispering in my ear, ‘Do it, do it.’ And I threw the rock and hit her in the knee. That one brought her down. She fell so quiet.”

“And then what did you do?”

Jimmy looked up at the sheriff, with faint surprise. “Well, I went back to the flower bed to get another rock.” As if that were the most obvious answer, the most natural thing to do, for he had thrown his rock and needed another one, didn’t he? Jimmy turned to Riker. “And that second rock was the one that broke her front teeth.”

Riker smiled and nodded in approval.

Behind Jimmy’s head, the sheriff’s hand was rising like a club. Hate was everything now. Charles Butler was getting up from the table. Riker only touched the sleeve of the large man’s shirt to restrain him. “Stay out of it, Charles.”

Jimmy looked up to see the sheriff’s large fist hanging over him. He stared down at his own hands neatly folded in his lap as though he were on best behavior in church. His shoulders stiffened, bracing for the beating. His voice was calm and reasonable when he said, “I’m sorry for it now, but I didn’t want them to know what he did to me.”

The sheriff’s hand was suspended in space.

In the same reasonable voice, Jimmy said, “The dog forgave me.”

Riker held up more blue sheets. “The kid was raped. He says his uncle did it – a lot.” He passed the papers down the table. “It didn’t stop till he was thirteen. There were other kids, too.”

So that was what Jimmy had run from, and what he had delivered the boy back to. Now the sheriff read a blue sheet with an account of the blood workup for a six-year-old boy, identified only by a number.

“Another case of hepatitis.” And now he looked at the other sheet for the same child, bearing a later date. It was a positive test for syphilis “Why would Cass test a six-year-old boy for VD? How did she make the jump from hepatitis? We’ve had hepatitis in the schools before. It’s pretty common.”

Charles said, “Not the blood-borne variety. Small children get a highly infectious form transmitted with clumsy toilet habits. Even that one would be rare in the upper grades, Jimmy’s class. You’d have to be sexually active or shooting drugs to fall into a high-risk group for hepatitis B. It was a glaring marker for abuse in a six-year-old.”

The sheriff turned to the last sheet, a positive VD test for a nineteen-year-old man. He looked up at Charles and held out the sheet. “There’s no name. You’re sure this one is Babe?”

Charles nodded. “It matches Cass’s patient file number for previous treatment.”

Now he looked from one sheet to the other. The six-year-old was the most recent infection of syphilis. Jimmy’s was older – second-stage and apparently not contracted during his brief flight from home.

“Babe’s infection was the oldest,” said Riker, “even at the time of his famous VD party at the Dayborn Bar and Grill.”

“I gather he never completed the treatment,” said Charles. “That would explain the advanced case at the time of his death.”

Riker was talking, explaining the remaining evidence to support the motive for murder, the illegal activities which would not stand up to any investigation, and the pedophile with a preference for small boys.

The sheriff was not listening. His rancor was curiously absent as he picked up another set of papers from the table. This was the handwritten statement of Jimmy Simms. At the bottom of the final page, all of Cass Shelley’s murderers appeared in a neatly printed column. His eyes moved listlessly from one name to the next, and then the sheets dropped from his hand and landed on the table.

This was not the outcome he had been anticipating,
feeding
on for all this time.

What a cheat.

He had expected something larger, more on the grand scale of Lilith’s stone avenger in flight. The long-awaited moment had finally come, and it was not enough.

Lilith remained to guard the weeping prisoner. Tom Jessop left the room with the hollow feeling that he had missed a meal. No – a great many meals – years of them.

He led Riker and Charles back down the short hallway to the reception area, speaking mechanically, all business now. “Me and my deputy are gonna take Jimmy out the back way. I think he’ll be safer in a New Orleans lockup. We might be a while. I’ve got to scare up warrants for twenty-three people, and I don’t know a single judge that owes me a favor. Riker, could you mind the store and stay close to the phone? I might need the backup if a judge is gonna buy this story.”

“No problem,” said Riker.

As the small group entered the reception area, they encountered Jane’s smiling face. She was seated on the bench by the door and holding a covered tray on her lap. “Hello, Tom. I saw your new prisoner come in. I thought you might want to feed him.”

“No need, Jane. I turned him loose ten minutes ago. But you just send me the bill for that tray, all right?”

Jane’s smile was undiminished, and that told him she wasn’t going away with nothing for her trouble but the price of the tray.

When the door closed behind her, he turned to Riker. “Whatever she heard, it’s gonna be all over town before lunchtime.”

“How fast can you get the warrants?”

“Not fast enough. Babe’s funeral is tonight in Owltown – just family, but that’s at least a hundred drunks. It’s a better idea to move in real early tomorrow morning with state troopers. We’ll pick up the suspects when they’re all hungover and sick.”

At one o’clock, Charles returned to the sheriff’s office, carrying their lunch and coffee in paper bags from Jane’s Cafe. “I didn’t hear any gossip going around. Maybe Jane didn’t hear anything either.”

“Fat chance.” Riker’s eyes never left the window on the square as he groped in the brown paper bag and pulled out a sandwich. He was staring at one of Jane’s customers. The man had just walked out of the cafe and now he slowly turned to face the sheriff’s office.

Charles was in good spirits as he sipped his coffee. “So Mallory did it by the book.”

“I count three felonies in the paperwork gathering. Whose book are we talking about?”

“Well, she didn’t hurt anybody.”

Didn’t she?

Riker said nothing. The sandwich lay on the desk, untouched. He was intent on the man in the square, who had been joined by a friend. There was no conversation between them, nor any curiosity. They were only keeping watch on the sheriff’s door – sentries.

“Riker, you don’t still think she – ”

“Mallory came back here to get those bastards, and now she has a complete list.” He slumped back in the sheriff’s chair and put his feet up on the cluttered desk. “I wish you’d go back to Augusta’s and keep her occupied for a while.”

Another man had joined the watchers in the square. They moved back to the fountain and perched on the rim of the basin like a row of Augusta’s birds on the paddock fence.

Riker turned away from the window to face Charles, his next problem, and such a large one. How to get rid of him?

“Why can’t you trust her?” Charles was pacing now, unaware of the watchers, but adding to the tension. “You know she won’t do anything to compromise this case.”

“Charles, what does it take to get through to you? For Christ’s sake, she’s telegraphing everything.” It was a fight to keep his eyes from straying back to the window, to the watchers. “You’ve seen the gunslinger outfit. You think Mallory’s playing dress-up? She’s the real thing, Charles – the genuine article.”

“That’s ludicrous.”

Riker only glanced out the window, as though he might have a casual interest in the weather. Malcolm Laurie was leaving Jane’s Cafe, stopping for a moment to exchange smiles with the men by the fountain, and then passing on. Charles was looming over the desk, waiting for a return volley.

“I’m not gonna argue with you, Charles.” Riker flicked through the sheriff’s Rolodex, then picked up the phone and dialed the number for the hotel across the square. “Hi, I wanna book a room for Charles Butler…. Yeah, that one.” As if there might be two giants with large noses. “He’ll be by in a few minutes…. Fine. Thanks.”

When he set the phone down he looked up at Charles. “No offense, Charles. I like your company, but I need to get some sleep. I don’t want anybody to see that car going over the bayou bridge, so leave it in front of Betty’s. Sign the register and go straight on through to the back door. Then go back to Augusta’s and sit on the brat till morning.” And now for the closing shot. “But don’t get any ideas about taking the gun away from her. She’ll hurt you just for trying.”

Well, that made him angry, but at least he was leaving, silently and quickly. The outer door slammed. Bless Charles’s misplaced loyalty to Mallory.

Riker looked back at the small gathering of men. Their heads turned in unison to watch the silver Mercedes drive down the street, turn the corner and roll to a stop on the opposite side of the square. When Charles had disappeared into the hotel, the men turned their attention back to the sheriff’s office. They were joined by two more men.

Riker checked the bullets in his gun and debated calling in the state troopers. What would he say? ‘There’s a crowd of smiling good ol’ boys gathering in the town square, and they scare the shit out of me.‘ And then the state cops would ask what he was drinking.

“Excuse me, neighbor.” A man his own age was standing in the office doorway. Flab hung over the belt of his jeans. His smile was wide; his eyes were dull and stupid. “My name’s Ray Laurie.” The man was walking toward him with one hand extended.

Under the cover of the desk, Riker shifted the gun to his left hand and offered Ray Laurie his right.