The Murder in Skoghall (Illustrated) (The Skoghall Mystery Series Book 1) (32 page)

A guard escorted John Sykes to the table by his arm, providing necessary support. John sat down with a breathy exhalation of relief. “Well?” he said before the guard had taken up his station by the wall.

“How are you?”

“Dying. My hip’s shot. I can barely walk…but you didn’t come here for my health report. What do you want?”

“I saw your son today.”

That made John straighten up with interest, but not without wincing. “Does he know about me?”

“I…” Jess looked at her hands. She found herself once again on the verge of telling all, but thinking better of it as the words were leaving her mouth. “I tried to tell him everything, but he doesn’t open the emails I send or answer the phone when I call.”

“But you
saw
him today.” John leaned forward with his forearms on the table, his knotty fingers spread almost flat. His eagerness was almost as painful to see as the way he had limped over to the table.

Jess nodded. “He wasn’t happy to see me. He doesn’t want to hear anything I have to say.”

“Why not? Doesn’t he want to know his own father?”

Jess was slow to answer, but she could think of no way to soften what she had to say. “He says he knows who his father is.”

John sat back against his chair, dragging his hands across the table until they fell into his lap. “How?”

“I don’t know. I guess his grandparents told him…”

“That son of a bitch.” John’s face lit with a spark of anger and then the life vanished and he again looked as yellow and faded as a piece of parchment. “I wrote Johnny letters. I never heard back. Not once, not even after he turned eighteen. I suppose that grandfather of his made sure he never saw a single one.” John turned his face away from Jess and looked over the heads of the other prisoners and visitors toward the windows. “For forty years I’ve been looking at the sky through bars. Marking time. That’s all I’ve been doing, marking time.” He looked at Jess again. “What does he look like?”

“Johnny? He’s got that light blond hair…”

“Towhead. That’s what his mother called him. A towhead.”

Jess nodded. “He wears glasses. He’s a history professor. He looks like the kind of professor I would have had a crush on when I was in college.”

John’s lips curled into a smile of wistful longing. “A history professor. That’s fine. That’s a fine profession. Much better than traveling salesman.”

“John, who do you think killed Bonnie?”

“You think if I knew that I would have spent forty years rotting in jail?”

Jess was startled by the vehemence in his voice. “No, but you might have an idea about it, even if you can’t prove it or even if nobody would listen to you.”

John’s body softened. “No idea. I tried to get that damn sheriff to look for her killer, but he wanted to close the case fast. Open, shut. Put a man in jail, even the wrong one, and folks sleep better at night, then the sheriff gets his reelection.”

“There was a transient, a veteran, in town at that time. I think he might have been the one…”

“Are you going to find this transient? This no-name vet? Are you going to put him here in my place?”

“I don’t know, but we can clear your name.”

John stood on wobbly legs and glared down at Jess with a ferocity that came from some deep reserve of energy. “My name is shit. There’s nothing left to clear after forty years. I don’t give a damn about my name or the time I’ve done. My time is over.” His voice dropped to a hoarse croak and tears welled in his eyes. “It’s too late for that. They’re giving me compassionate release and shipping me to some hospice to die. So what’s the point of it now?”

The guard who had led him to the table approached from his side and put a hand on John’s arm. He waited for John to finish, a courtesy that touched Jess.

“You tell me, why would I bother? I’m better off dying here. Save everyone the trouble of moving these old bones to another bed in another cell.” John shook his head, as though he could not believe the stupidity of those around him. He paused and looked back at Jess. “I would like to see my son. That is my dying wish, Miss Vernon. My one and only.”  He turned away from her, and the guard helped him across the room in a slow, shambling retreat.

Jess watched until he was gone, then looked again at the windows situated high on the wall, reinforced with wire and covered with bars. For a moment, she had the impression it was the sky that had been caged.

Jess left filling the claw-foot tub to greet Beckett with a smile and a kiss. She had called him from the road and asked him to bring Shakti to the house. She needed a soak and a glass of wine. And if one more man yelled, cried, or threatened to hit her, she was going to lose it.

“That’s more like it,” he said and kissed her back.

Shakti, tucked under Beckett’s arm, got stuck between them and wasn’t going to wait another moment for her proper hello. As she squirmed, her hind claws caught on Jess’s shirt and dug into the flesh underneath.

“All right, Bear.” Jess took the puppy from Beckett and accepted a face full of kisses and a wagging tail thumping against her ribs. “I’m sorry about last night,” she told Beckett. She’d had plenty of time while driving to think about how he must have felt when she didn’t show up for dinner. Shakti got a good lick to Jess’s mouth. She set the dog down and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “Want another kiss?”

“I think I’ll wait until after your bath.”

She led the way upstairs. A bottle of wine and two glasses already waited on the edge of the sink. Beckett poured while she undressed and slipped into the water. He handed her a glass of wine, then sat on the edge of the tub and rubbed her shoulders. Jess told Beckett about her day, from the woman at Mr. Ecklund’s house, to Johnny calling her a bitch, to the security guys expelling them, and to John saying he’d rather die in prison than go to a hospice.

“Wow,” Beckett said when she had finished. “All I did today is trim some pots and load my kiln.”

“What do I do now, Beckett?” Jess wiped the steam from her forehead and dropped her hand back into the water.

“Let’s see. First, you scoot up a bit.” Beckett took up the question again once he was situated in the tub behind her. “You’ve got a man in jail who doesn’t care about clearing his name, a son who doesn’t want to know who his father is, and an old man who might hold the key to this whole mess, but has Alzheimer’s.”

“I’m screwed.” Jess tilted her head back against Beckett’s shoulder to look up at his face.

“Yep. Pretty much.” He kissed her brow.

Jess sighed. “Do I just give up?”

Before Beckett could answer, a heavy crash shook the house. Shakti ran into the bathroom, skidded across the tile floor, and wedged herself in the corner between the tub, the pipes, and the wall. Jess and Beckett scrambled to get out of the tub without tripping on each other. She grabbed her towel off its hook and wrapped it around herself as she ran out of the bathroom and across the hall.

Jess stopped in the office doorway, her mouth agape. Beckett ran into her, almost knocking her off her feet. The Underwood lay on the floor with her desk chair on its side next to it. Jess stepped into the room and knelt beside the typewriter. The bottom of the attached case  had struck first, mashing the corner. The left ribbon cover had been knocked off, and the carriage return arm was broken. There was also a dent in the floorboard where it had struck. Jess hefted it from the floor and set it back on the desk, catching the end of her towel as it slipped away. She looked back at Beckett, unable to hide her quivering lower lip.

Beckett stood in the water dripping off his body, his hands, so capable and normally so busy, hung at his sides. He extended his arms and drew Jess into a hug. She allowed herself to cry on his shoulder while Bonnie glared at her from the corner of the room.

The ghost appeared menacing, the marks around her neck a searing red as though freshly made. Her eyes, that had seemed so sad before, were again marred by the bursts and snakes of hemorrhaged blood vessels. Blood began seeping out from under Bonnie’s feet. Jess watched as the puddle of grew, spreading across the floor toward her and Beckett. She began to shake as Bonnie raised a hand to point at her. Jess curled her fingers against Beckett’s shoulder blades, held him desperately tight, closed her eyes, and waited to feel the thick wet of blood touch her feet, and she couldn’t help wondering if it would be warm or cold.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Her voice felt small, unable to compete with the engine noise of Beckett’s van. When he insisted they relocate to his place, Jess had been happy to grab a fresh t-shirt and head out the door. She sat with the Underwood on her lap and Shakti curled at her feet under the dashboard and picked at the frayed edges of the mashed case. She hadn’t told Beckett that Bonnie was in the room with them. “I can’t give up,” she said again.

“What?” He looked at her, concern deepening the lines of his brow. “Can’t give up?”

She nodded.

“I’ve been thinking the same thing. Obviously, giving up isn’t an option with that ghost in your house.”

“Beckett, she was murdered on the 13
^th
.” Jess held her typewriter like it was a wounded friend. “I think things are only going to get worse as we near the anniversary of her death.”

“The 13
^th
? That’s one week away.”

“Yes, it is.”

Jess spent much of Sunday calling Johnny, leaving voicemail after voicemail. Beckett warned her he was going to take out a restraining order against her if she didn’t knock it off. Finally, he put a ball of clay in her hands. “Here,” he said. “Work it out with this.”

“How?”

He showed her how to wedge the clay, pushing it forward with the heels of her hands, then pulling it back over on itself. “Just like kneading bread,” she said. The physical act of wedging required she push from her shoulders and put her weight into it. She developed a rhythm of push and pull, rolling the clay against the table and under her hands. As her arms began to ache, she decided she liked the feel of clay under her hands and the way she got lost in the rhythm of movement, and for once stopped thinking about Bonnie.

Beckett said goodbye to some customers and came to stand behind her. He put his hands over hers. She stopped moving the clay. He nuzzled her neck, his face moving against her hair until he found skin along her jaw and under her ear. “You’ve been wedging clay for an hour,” he whispered.

Jess turned inside his arms and reached around his shoulders, keeping her hands out of the way. “I like wedging.”

Beckett smiled. “I thought you would.” He took one of her balls of clay to the wheel and slapped it onto the center of the wheel’s head. He got it spinning, wet his hands and the clay, then leaned forward, elbows against his thighs, and cupped his hands over the mound of clay. Jess watched, studying his hands. The water spun off the clay between his fingers, running backwards over his hands, as the clay formed a more perfect ball. He squeezed it, shaping the ball into a cone, then pushed it back down. Jess wondered at the transformation of the clay, how effortless it appeared. Beckett did this several times, then stopped the wheel and stepped off.