Only the Truth (14 page)

"Let me tell you something, Hutchins. Just because I'm a cop doesn't
mean I don't feel things. I got kids of my own, three babies just about the
same age Kristen's children were when they got torched. Torched! Not even dead!
Yeah, Covey and Kristen shot her parents, but the babies, they just shut them
in the room and let them burn to death alive." I heard his voice waver. He
cleared his throat. When I looked up at him, he had tears in his eyes. "I
never saw anything so awful in my life, Hutchins." He looked up and blinked.
He pressed his lips together and cleared his throat again.

He looked at me coldly. "That's your little girlfriend, Hutchins. If
she hadn't done in that old man, you might have come home one day and found
your own house on fire and your own baby barbequed." He shrugged.
"Or, maybe you are just like Covey, wherever the hell he is. Maybe Kristen
has a type." He leaned forward a little. "Maybe you helped Kristen
kill that neighbor of yours. Maybe you were hiding Covey up there in your
little house on the mountain. Maybe the old man figured out what you three were
up to."

I felt like I was in someone else's dream. The policeman was spinning a
story that seemed like it could be real if only it didn't have me in it.

He was flipping the photo over again.

"This here is your name on the back of Covey's photo." He stopped
and waited for answer the same as Mr. Stanley had done. I didn't have any
better answer now and it wouldn't have mattered because I knew the dream was
going to go on and I was going to find out how my name ended up there.

"So, Kristen had Covey's photo with your name on it. So they go looking
for you, friend of Mr. Rubin Covey, and find a nice little hideaway in Arkansas
while we go nuts searching every cave and gulley in Tennessee trying to find
them."

He looked at me again.

"Did you and Covey have a falling out? Was it over Kristen?" He
wobbled his head back and forth like he was trying to tumble all the answers
into place.

I just sat there with my mouth open.

He slammed his fist on the table.
"Nothing to
say?"
He made a kissing noise with his teeth. "Do you know how
long you will go to prison if you helped those two
escape
the law? Now, you better start telling me about your relationship with the two
of them and where Covey is. I want to bring that bastard back to Jenkins and
see him in the chair."

I knew he didn't mean the kind of chair I was sitting in but the one with
electricity. I gripped the arms of my seat and shifted uncomfortably from my
right leg to my left. My butt felt numb.

"I don't know nothing about Mr. Covey," I said, trying to get out
of the bad dream the police officer had stuck me in. "I just know
Charlene…Kristen…she was alone when she came to Whitfield Glen."

"With your name in her hand," he pointed out again.

"I don't know Mr. Covey," I insisted again.

He sighed and drummed his fingers on the desk.

"So, if I remember my demographics," he said and then he looked at
me, "and that means how many of what kind of people are in a particular
place, Mr. Hutchins, Whitfield Glen has only one black man and that would be
you."

He looked smugly at me.

"And now, Kristin, a white girl from a town of five hundred, runs off
with a black man who, until last year, just happened to be only one of five
black men here in Jenkins. She coincidentally stumbles upon Whitfield Glen and
goes straight to your home, a black man with his name on the back of another
black man's picture. But, you don't know Mr. Covey."

I shook my head again.

"You know I can lock you up for vagrancy since you don't have any identification,
no one to stay with...," he snickered and then paused for effect,
"….since you don't know the Coveys, and you don't have enough money for
even one night at a motel."

"By the way, you can call me Chief Williams. Chief Morris
Williams."

So I was talking to the police chief of the town. He made me nervous and I
didn't want to be put in a cell.

Suddenly he smacked his hand down on the table and nearly knocked his police
reports off.

"I know what I can do for you! I'll take you out to see the Coveys
myself! I want to see if they are going to be excited to lay eyes upon Billy
Ray Hutchins or not." He jumped up out of his chair and walked over to a
coffee machine and started pouring the dark grounds into the cone-shaped
filter. "No, I don't know what connection you've got to Rubin Covey but I
am damned sure going to find out or you're going to wind up a permanent guest
in our town, at least for the next 364 days." He started up the coffee
machine, turned around and grinned at me.

I didn't like his attitude but at least I was going to start getting some
answers. I was also getting a free cup of coffee, and I didn't have to pay a
taxi to take me out to see those Coveys.

********************

It wasn't that there were no black people around
Jenkins,
it was just that they mostly lived in the next town over, in
Mitchelleville
. Those Coveys and a couple other black
families spilled over the line into the town where folks claimed their
ancestors came from Germany which is why they were all big, stocky people, even
the girls. Chief Morris Williams says he was the result of a romance between a
neighbor girl and boy whose backyard gardens were on either side of the
boundary line. He laughed and told me things were changing across the state and
those lines between folks were disappearing, and soon things would change, even
in Whitfield Glen way up there in the mountains.

We pulled up to the Covey house at 9:30 am. Chief Williams thought that
would be an acceptable time to knock on a person's door. While we walked up
onto the small gray porch extending from the front door, he warned me I was to
just stand there and say nothing, let him do the talking. I guess he thought I
might give the Coveys a coded word or something that would tip them off that
they weren't supposed to know who I am.

Chief Williams knocked three times on the window pane because they didn't
have a knocker or a bell. Then he rapped a few more times when no one came to
the door. After another half a minute, we heard someone saying to hold on and a
woman unbolted the slide lock and pulled the door back.

"Chief?"
I guess she knew him but she
didn't look overjoyed to see him.

He beamed at her.
"Hi, Mrs. Covey.
Look who I
brought to see you!" He put his arm around my shoulders and squared me in
front of the woman.

She looked at me but she didn't seem very impressed.

"Who?" she asked Chief Williams.

I
bust
out laughing and he cuffed me on the back
of the head.

"Billy Ray Hutchins," he growled at her.

Mrs. Covey crossed her arms, putting her fists under her elbows. She was a
woman who was probably in her middle fifties, with a few dozen more pounds than
when she was young girl. She was tough. She meant business, and you didn't mess
with her. She reminded me of my Aunty, what I could remember of her.

"So? What am I supposed to want with him? Who is he?"

Chief Williams pulled out the photo and showed her my name on the back of
it.

"Uh-huh…and?"

He turned the picture over and Mrs. Covey's expression froze on her face.

She didn't take long to speak. She was angry.

"What kind of game are you playing, Chief?" You could have cut
potatoes with her voice it was so sharp. "I don't know who the hell this
man is you have brought to my doorstep and I have told you time and time again
I have no idea where my husband is at."

The Chief looked rather chastened like his own mother had put him in his
place. He actually apologized.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Covey, I know you're telling me the truth. I just
thought you would know this man and I could figure out what the connection is
between him and your husband."

Mrs. Covey looked
tired,
tired of going through the
same conversation over and over again. I knew just how she felt. Maybe she was
caught up in Chief William's dream as well.

"I don't know him, all right?"

"Yeah, yeah.
All
right."

Chief Williams turned like we were going to leave but then he put his hand
up on the doorframe and slumped against the wood.

"Can I ask you a favor, Mrs. Covey?"

"What kind of favor?" Mrs. Covey didn't like the sound of that
question.

He straightened up, stepped back, and pushed me forward.

"Talk to this fool. He's in love with that girl your husband ran off
with."

Her eyes snapped over to me and locked onto my face.

"Why the hell should I talk to him?"

The Chief actually spoke softly and kindly about me.

"I think he's a nice guy, Mrs. Covey, and he could use a little
straight talk from someone with sense."

I knew the Chief was fooling her; he wanted us to talk to see if I would
give up some information to Mrs. Covey that he could circle around and
come
get from her later. If she was honest like he said she
was, she would tell him the truth even if it meant turning her husband in to
the police and him ending up in that chair.

Mrs. Covey fell for it. Her face softened and her arms unfolded.

"Come in, Mr. Hutchins." And she pushed the storm door open so I
could come through.

Chief Williams gave a nod.

"I'll wait out in the car. Take your time."

Mrs. Covey closed the door behind me and ushered me into her living room
which was as blue and velvety as the inside of one of those jewelry boxes I had
opened once when I was in the drug store.

"Sit!" she ordered, but much more sweetly than Chief Williams had
in his office.

I sat in a blue chair and it felt really soft under me. I couldn't help but
stroke the cushion just a little because it felt so good.

Mrs. Covey sat down opposite me on her couch.

She pushed her glasses slightly back up her nose.

"Are you really in love with that girl?"

I swallowed. "I think so."

"You think so? You don't know so?"

"Well, I loved her for three years but now Charlene…uh, Kristen…I call
her Charlene…has me so confused…," my voice failed me.

"So have you got her hidden somewhere? Is that why the Chief has you
here? Did you tell him where she is?"

I guessed she hadn't heard the news about Charlene.

"No, Ma'am. I mean, I didn't have to. Charlene is already in
jail."

Mrs. Covey breathed out heavily.

"So, they finally caught up with her."

"No, Ma'am," I tried to explain. "They didn't know she was
living with me in Arkansas until she got arrested and someone recognized her
picture and called Sheriff Hathaway and then he called Chief Williams I
guess."

"She got arrested for what?"

"She…she…killed someone."

"Again?"
The word ended in a high pitch.
"And who did she do in this time around?" asked Mrs. Covey, her voice
now sounding flat and sarcastic.

"An old man who lived across the road," I told her.

"Did she burn him up? Shoot him and then burn him up?"

"Yeah."

"Dear God!"

She got up and walked over in front of me.

"And you're still her man?"

I guessed I was.

She slapped me on the side of my head and my left ear started ringing. She
had a strong hand.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Mr. Hutchins? You take up with a
woman who has murdered five people… wait, no…now, six people? What is wrong
with you men? What is so special about this girl," she stopped, then
added, "who
ain't
really
nothing
to look at? What is so amazing about this tramp that my husband had to get all
caught up with her and her schemes and now you're hooked up in the same thing?
Is she that good in bed? You all make me sick." She was huffing, blowing
her cheeks in and
out,
clearly exasperated that
Charlene had stolen her husband.

She turned to me angrily.

"And it isn't only about my husband leaving me. I could live with that.
But to know he helped that girl kill those innocent babies…I wish I had never
met the man. I curse the ground he walks on. To think...,"
tears
welled up in Mrs. Covey's eyes and started down her
cheeks, "I always believed him to be a good man. I thought he loved me,
that he was a Christian the way he always read his Bible and talked to me of
what Jesus required of us and how he wanted to please his God…."

She sniffed and pulled a Kleenex from under her sweater.

"He used to tell me to feel sorry for Kristen, that she was really a
sweet girl with low self-esteem who just let boys take advantage of her. Then one
night, I drove into town late….well, Rubin was at work at the hospital over in
Pitts…he was on the night shift working as an orderly…and I drove into town to
gets some corn chips and soda, just felt like some corn chips and soda."
She laughed a little sadly. "I can't stand corn chips anymore."

"What happened then?" I asked.

She laughed halfheartedly again. "The damn convenience store was right
next to that cheap motel; it costs so little that men don't mind paying the
whole night rate for just an hour of fun. Well, I came out of the store with my
bag of chips and my soda and got in my car. I was tearing into the chip bag and
enjoying myself when I look across the parking lot and there they were…Kristen
and my husband….all cuddly, his arm around her, a married man with an underage
girl at that, still a child in my opinion, even if she acted like she was all
grown up and was Satan's Seed…unlocking the motel room door.
Number
21.
I hate that number, too."