Piercing the Darkness (94 page)

MOTA AND SIGNA
stood next to the old Chevy pickup, hands on swords, eyes alert, waiting for her arrival. Their warriors had closely guarded that machine since Sally left it there. The kids on dirt bikes, the hikers, the equestrians, and any would-be vandals had all passed it by, so it remained untouched, slightly overgrown with brush, but ready to roll.

SALLY PUSHED THROUGH
the new growth, pulling the keys from her jacket pocket. The door opened with its familiar groan; the smell of the cab was the same; she still remembered to avoid that small rip in
the seat lest it grow longer. Her heart danced a little. This old truck was a blessing because it was familiar, it was hers, it was a piece of home.

It moaned a bit, hesitated, cranked over a few times, and then, with Sally’s well-practiced pumping of the gas pedal—something that had to be done just right—it lurched to life!

Mota and Signa gave her a push, and with little difficulty she got the truck turned around. The two warriors hopped into the back, and they were all on their way back to Bacon’s Corner.

CHAPTER 46

“I WOULD LIKE
to know the real reason why I’m being fired,” Irene Bledsoe demanded.

Her supervisor was an older woman with white hair pulled tightly to the back of her head and held there with innumerable pins; her hair was tight, her expression was tight, and due to her obesity, her clothes were tight. Everything about the woman was tight, especially her patience.

“You know your driving record better than I do,” she snapped, hardly looking up from the work on her desk. “Such irresponsibility on the road, especially while transporting children, is a liability to this organization and cannot be tolerated.”

Bledsoe tried to maintain her professional dignity, but she was definitely indignant. “Ms. Blaire, I have here in my hand the driving records of no less than a dozen other Child Protection Department employees; I even have some aptitude test scores—”

“I have seen them all, and do not wish to see them again.”

“Ms. Blaire, you are tangling with the wrong person!”

SLAM!
Ms. Blaire slapped her papers and pencil down on her desk and bored into Bledsoe with eyes of cold steel. “You just
said
that to the wrong person. Ms. Bledsoe, you are addressing, in essence, the state. We don’t ‘tangle’ with anyone; we set our agenda and judge our employees by how efficiently they carry out that agenda. The fact is, you
have been judged to be a liability to this department, and as such, you have been terminated.”

“It’s because of the Harris case, isn’t it? That
is
the real reason?”

Ms. Blaire answered coldly and mechanically, “It is because of your driving record, Ms. Bledsoe. You—”

“I was only fulfilling the orders I received!”

“You simply can’t be trusted to transport children safely, and that is my final word on the subject. Now finish out your duties properly, or I’ll see to it that you forfeit your severance pay!”

“You . . . you can’t do that!”

Ms. Blaire only smiled her cold, calculating smile. Oh yes she could, and Bledsoe knew it.

“All right. All right. I’ve cleaned out my desk and handed over my caseload to Julie and Betty. So what’s left?”

“Drive the Harris children back to Bacon’s Corner.”

ED AND MOSE
were still sitting at their post in front of Max’s Barber Shop, just taking in whatever passed before them on the Toe Springs–Claytonville Road.

Ed was looking through the latest
Hampton County Star
and making sure Mose was kept up to date on everything whether Mose was interested or not.

“The Big White House is for sale,” he said.

Mose was watching a mud puddle across the street and wondering if maybe the Mercantile needed new gutters. “Heh?”

“I said the Big White House is for sale. That couple living in sin finally decided to move on.”

“What? They splitting up?”

“It’s just an ad for the house, Mose. It doesn’t say anything about that.”

Mose took a moment to spit into the street. “Yeah, probably doesn’t say anything about Sergeant Mulligan either. He was living in sin too, I hear, him and that supervisor from the door company.”

“You mean with each other?” Ed wondered.

“They’re both gone, aren’t they? Both took off at the same time. Somebody saw them together. I wasn’t born yesterday, Ed.”

Ed thought for a moment. “Eh . . . I don’t mind them leaving. They were a strange bunch, them and their friends.”

“Not a very good cop either.”

“Jon Schmidt was a cop?”

Mose was astounded at Ed’s dullness today. “No, friend,
Mulligan
!”

“Well, I’m glad to see him go too.”

“Yeah, and that bunch at the Big White House, I’m glad to see them go.”

“
Everybody’s
going. Looks like the whole town’s quitting.”

“Who’s quitting?”

Ed turned the paper toward Mose, and Mose adjusted his glasses. “See here? You’ve got . . . uh . . . these three folks on the school board, uh, Mrs. Hanover, and John Kendall . . .”

“John Kendall? That stubborn—! Who finally talked him into it?”

“And look here: Jerry Mason. That’s three.”

Mose was amazed. “Well . . . wasn’t it just yesterday Elvira was telling me that the grade school lost the fourth grade teacher, Miss Beer?”

“Brewer.”

“The same. She and that Woodard got into a fracas.”

“Woodard’s getting old, that’s his problem. He’s retiring.”

“Say what?”

“He’s retiring end of this month.”

“He didn’t seem that old.”

“You been looking in the mirror too much, Mose.”

Mose tilted his hat back. “Well I’ll be. You’re right. Everybody’s quitting! Maybe they know something we don’t! Hey! Hey, wait a minute there!”

“What?”

“Well, flip back to the second page there. Look there.”

“Well, give me wings and call me an angel . . .”

“There’s something going around, Ed. Something going around.”

They were looking at a news item: SUPREME COURT JUSTICE STEPS DOWN.

Ed tilted his head back so he could read through his bifocals. “Who’s this Owen Bennett?”

“Newest man on the Supreme Court. Hasn’t been there long.”

“‘Bennett attributes his resignation to ill health and personal reasons.’
But he looks kind of young, don’t you think?”

“You been looking in the mirror too much yourself, Ed.”

“Well now, that could be . . .”

Mose broke out laughing. “Hey, you know what, Ed? Maybe we oughta quit too.”

Ed thought about that a moment and replied with great seriousness, “Mose, where would the world be without us keeping an eye on it?”

Then they both laughed, hitting and poking each other and having a great time; you could hear them for blocks.

SALLY DROVE ON
toward Bacon’s Corner, turning over and over in her mind just how she was going to present herself to Mrs. Potter, back from the dead as it were, and ask to continue renting the old farmhouse. Of course, that would be contingent on getting her job back at the door factory, and that was probably contingent on whether they would accept her excuse for being away so long without saying anything, and that raised the whole question of what she was going to tell them, and that was going to depend on what she could and couldn’t talk about in public during the course of the investigation, and then again, she didn’t know yet if there would even be an investigation.

She slowed as she approached an intersection out in the middle of the cornfields. She felt a slight tension in her stomach. This was the same intersection where that Bledsoe woman just about rammed her with Tom Harris’s kids in the car.

Anyway, the first thing was to find out what was happening in Bacon’s Corner, and how that lawsuit was progressing, or if it was still progressing at all. Bernice Krueger should have gotten that last letter by now, and she must have sent all that material to Tom Harris, so
something
should be brewing. She hadn’t seen any newspapers in the last several days . . .

Well! What was this, a flashback of some kind? She had to be seeing things!

There was that same green Plymouth!

IRENE BLEDSOE MADE
sure to stop carefully and safely at the notorious intersection that had cost her her job. Josiah and Ruth were buckled in snugly this time. The intersection looked the same except that the corn was taller. It was almost like
deja vu
, sitting here waiting for that . . . that blue pickup truck . . . being driven by the lady with the checkered scarf . . . !

SALLY STARED TRANSFIXED.
She couldn’t help it. This was Irene Bledsoe again! And there were the two Harris children!