A Blind Eye (4 page)

I
t’s hard to know Jesus. No matter how I try to keep his picture in my mind, the face just leaks out my ears like sand. I think it’s ’cause I’ve got all these other pictures in there. Things that happened to me…here in my life. Not to somebody else a way long time ago. I can stare at the picture of Jesus in Papa’s Bible…the one with him standing on a cloud with all this white light coming out from him like he’s the sun or something. I can look at it for an hour, and the minute I stop, all I can see are Billy Cameron’s eyes, and that pink party dress Brittany Armstrong wore to the last day of school…and my hair…my hair…all scattered and lying there. Mama says that’s why those nun ladies wear those black things and lock themselves all up together in musty buildings. So’s they can keep their minds empty. So’s they can make room for Jesus.

T
he television image flickered, but Richardson’s voice came through loud and clear. Beneath the talking head and the bank of microphones, they kept flashing the words
Deputy Sheriff Cole Richardson
. Live from downstairs in the hospital lobby. Back over his shoulder, the guy who showed up at the Holmes place—Judge Powell—stood shoulder to shoulder with a tall man who looked a lot like Deputy Richardson. His city councilman father, Corso guessed. Although Richardson didn’t come right out and say it, the message was that if he had been sheriff for the past seventeen years, those poor people in the shed wouldn’t have been lying around out there all this time.

Someone rapped on the door. Corso clicked off the TV and told whoever it was to come in. The kid’s yellow nylon jacket was so bright it made Corso squint. HERTZ. Big black letters across the front. Cursive
Craig
embroidered up higher on his chest.

“Uh…Mr. Corso,” he stammered as he pushed a clipboard toward the bed, “if you wouldn’t mind signing right here.”

Corso marked his place in his journal and used his pen to sign on the dotted line. The kid tore off the top copy of the rental agreement and handed it to Corso. From his right-hand jacket pocket he produced a set of keys. Corso nodded toward the end table. The kid took the hint, placing the keys next to the water pitcher.

He walked to the window and looked down into the parking lot. “Hunter green Expedition. Right down there,” he said. “Next to the white Buick.” He turned back toward Corso. “Plate number’s on the keys.”

Corso nodded his thanks and picked up his journal. The kid began to leave the room. From the rear, it was obvious he had something tucked beneath his arm.

“What’s that you’ve got there?” Corso asked.

The kid stopped walking. Checked everywhere except under his arm.

“Under your arm,” Corso said.

The kid looked like he was surprised to find a book tucked away in his armpit.

“Oh,” he said. “It’s…ah…”He pulled the book out and glanced at the cover. “I’ve read all your books, Mr. Corso.” He held out a copy of
Missing Lync,
Corso’s second book. “
Lync
is my favorite,” the kid blurted.

“And you want me to sign it?”

“If you…I mean…I brought it, but then it didn’t seem…”

“No problem,” Corso said quickly. “Give it here.”

Corso set the book on the bed and retrieved his pen from his journal. “Can I personalize it?”

The kid looked bewildered. “Excuse me?”

“You want me to put your name in it?” Corso asked.

The young face brightened up. “If it wouldn’t be too much—”

“That’s Craig with a
C
?”

The kid covered the embroidered name with his hand. “Oh, no,” he said. “I’m Michael. I borrowed the jacket…from…mine had a…”

Corso scribbled in the book and held it out. “Here you go, Michael.”

Michael used two hands to hold the book against his chest. “Thank you,” he said, backing toward the door. “If there’s anything else we can…Hertz is always…”

“You’ve already gone beyond the call of duty,” Corso assured him.

The kid’s expression said he thought so too. He nodded and smiled his way back into the hall. The door silently closed behind him. Then opened again. The kid stuck his spiky head back in the door. “Er…Mr. Corso, sir…my supervisor…Craig Mason…he wanted me to ask you if maybe you couldn’t be”—he winced—“you know…be a little…a little…”

“He wants me to try and not crash this one.”

“Something like that. Yes, sir.”

“Tell him I’ll do the best I can.”

The door had only been closed for a moment when the sheriff pushed her way into the room, followed by a pair of cowboys in matching beige suits. Each man held a dark brown stocking cap in one hand and a Stetson hat in the other. The sheriff made a rueful face. “Mr. Corso, these gentlemen are from the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office. This is Officer Duckett,” she said, indicating the older of the two, a slitty-eyed specimen who looked like he’d spent a lot of time squinting out over the prairie. “And Officer Caruth,” who was under thirty, wide-eyed, and looked like this was as far from home as he’d ever been. “As soon as the doctors say it’s all right for you to travel, these gentlemen are here to take you back to Texas. On a material-witness warrant.”

Corso went back to writing. Somebody cleared their throat. “Well then…” the sheriff stammered. “I’ll let you gentlemen know when Mr. Corso here’s cleared for takeoff.” The cowboys issued a couple of thank-yous and reluctantly shuffled from the room. Once they were gone, Sheriff Trask stood for a moment, hands on hips, breathing deeply, looking around the walls. “What’s with them and those hats?” she asked finally. “You’d think they’d leave the damn things back in the motel room instead of carrying them around with ’em all day.”

“It’s a Texas thing,” Corso offered. “You gotta spend some time there to understand.”

She shook her head and grinned. “You want the bad news, the worse news, or the worst yet news?” she asked affably.

“You mean…other than the cavalry there.”

“Yeah.”

He finished writing a sentence and then looked up again. “Let’s start with the bad. That way I’ll have something to look forward to.”

“You’ve drawn quite a crowd, Mr. Corso. We got every damn news agency in the world down in the lobby, wanting to talk to you”—she waved a disgusted hand—“…or me, or anybody else they can get to say anything at all. It’s taking every deputy I own just to keep them pinned downstairs.” She gestured toward the TV. “Don’t matter what channel. Turn it on and there’s some old picture of you and they’re running on about your troubles with the
New York Times
and all that. If it isn’t you, it’s me or the state boys tellin’ ’em we got no comment. That’s how the Dallas boys got a line on you.” She used her right hand to massage the back of her neck. “Or worst of all, it’s Richardson running his mouth about how Eldred and Sissy have been lying out there for all these years right under my nose and how I never even had a clue.”

“I watched a little of it earlier.”

“He’s digging my grave, Mr. Corso.”

“He’s sure as hell setting you up to fail. All that stuff about having a dramatic announcement for the press in the next few days is just an invitation for a retraction, if you ask me.”

Corso watched as her eyes turned inward. She was silent for a moment. When she spoke it seemed as if her words had been rehearsed. “I’m too damn old to start over,” she said. “Richardson beats me in November…I mean…what in hell am I gonna do? Apply down at the Burger King? See if maybe I can’t get on with the Parks Department? Being sheriff is all I know. I just can’t see myself—”

She caught herself. Stopped. Brought a hand to her mouth and walked around in a tight circle. “I’ve also got a pair of Wisconsin state troopers who want to ask you a few questions about finding the bodies.”

Corso lifted his hands from the sheet and then let them fall.

“I’ve got nothing to hide,” he said.

She nodded. “And then there’s your friend Ms. Dougherty.”

“What about her?”

“Seems she’s got some pretty graphic images tattooed all over her.”

Corso’s eyes narrowed. His tone was brittle. “How’s that a problem for
you
?”

“Nobody in these parts has ever seen anything like that before. The only way I could keep medical staff from making up reasons to go in her room for a peek was to post a guard on the door. That puts me an extra officer down.” She cast a glance Corso’s way, started to say something, and then stopped. He read her thoughts.

“Somebody did it to her,” he said.

“You mean…she didn’t—”

“An asshole ex-boyfriend drugged her up and put that shit all over her.”

“No kidding.”

“She almost died from it.”

She shook her head in amazement. “And I thought
we
had problems.”

“Trust me, Sheriff, Hopalong Cassidy and Gabby Hayes there are gonna be a big problem for me.”

She looked surprised. “All you gotta do is testify,” she said.

“There’s a minor problem with that plan.”

“Such as?”

“Such as I don’t have the information they think I do.”

She was momentarily taken aback. “I was given to understand that you did.”

“Me too,” Corso said. “But it didn’t work out that way.”

She eyed him closely. “Well now…as a guy who once got canned from the
New York Times
for making stuff up…that leaves you between a rock and a hard place, now doesn’t it?”

“It means they can hold me indefinitely without charging me with anything. Lawyers or no lawyers. No bail. No nothing. Anywhere from six to nine months in the hoosgow,” he said.

“Grand juries have a lot of power,” she said.

“Don’t suppose there’s any way I could talk you into telling those Dallas cops to take a hike,” Corso said. “As I understand extradition law, you don’t necessarily have to turn me over.”

She nodded. “Ordinarily I’d have quite a bit of latitude in the matter. I’d be able to weight the value of cooperating with another department against the gravity of the crime and then make my own decision. Under regular circumstances I could make them fight for you in court. I could even let you walk, if I wanted.”

“But…”

“But…with the whole damn world watching on the six o’clock news, and my own deputy sheriff telling everybody this is just another example of me being out of touch with the community…I just don’t see as I’ve got any choice but to hand you over.”

“A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do,” Corso said.

She cast him an annoyed look. “Hold the guilt, Mr. Corso. I don’t need any help beating myself up.” She paced across the room to the window and stood staring out into the parking lot. “Maybe my detractors are right,” she said after a moment. “Maybe I have lost touch with the community.”

Something in her tone caught Corso’s ear. He frowned and levered himself higher in the bed. “What makes you say that?” he asked.

Her face said it was a stupid question. Her voice began to rise. “I’ve had a local family rotting away under a shed floor. They been right under my nose for the past fifteen years.” She waved an arm. “As the crow flies, it’s no more than five miles from here and I’ve…” She went silent. Knotted muscles trembled along the edges of her jaw.

“Something personal here?” Corso asked.

Her mouth sprang open in denial, but nothing came out. “You’ve got a good ear,” she said finally.

“It’s what I do.”

She continued to stare silently out the window.

“So?” Corso pressed.

“Miss Sissy Warwick,” she said.

N
ineteen seventy-three. I was twenty-two and fresh out of college.” She rolled her eyes and made a face. “I’d just figured out I was never going to be Shirley Temple. That
dainty
was never going to be the first thing anybody thought of when I came to mind.
Horsy
maybe…but not dainty.” She stifled a sigh. “Anyway…I came back home to lick my wounds for the summer. A little R and R before figuring out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.” She looked over at Corso. “You ever live in a small town like this?” she asked.

Corso shook his head. “Not since I was a little kid,” he said.

“Well then, you’ve got to understand…towns like this are pretty much closed societies. People come and go, but nothing really changes. Most of the kids we send up to the university at Madison stay gone for a while. They meet mates, have children, move someplace else. They come back to Avalon on the holidays to show off the grandkids. And then later on they start coming back to see how their parents are getting along. And then later on for good…get away from the hustle of the city…you know, the urban lifestyle and all.” Corso nodded that he understood. “What I’m trying to say is that…up until a couple of years ago, we didn’t even have a motel. All we had was a hundred-year-old rooming house.” She folded her arms. “Which had the same people living in it for as long as anybody could remember. Because just about everybody who comes to town is related to somebody who already lives here and is staying out with them at the family farm. We really didn’t need anyplace to house strangers, because we didn’t have any strangers.” She sighed and scratched the back of her neck. “We’re not exactly a destination getaway…if you know what I mean.”

Corso chuckled.

“So when a young woman who isn’t related to anybody here in town shows up and takes up residence, it’s something people are going to notice. It’s something that’s going to get talked about over coffee and down at the barbershop.”

“And that’s what happened?”

“Right after I got home from college, so it must have been the middle of June sometime. Hottest damn summer anybody could remember.” Her eyes moved inward. “Sissy Warwick. Jet-black hair and those big blue eyes. Real exotic looking. Like nobody you ever saw before. Like she could have been from the Middle East or Turkey or someplace like that. Claimed to be twenty years old, but I always thought she was more like eighteen.” She caught herself rambling. “Anyway, Sissy Warwick shows up in town one day. Gets herself a room at Harrison’s. Next thing you know, she’s got a job as a receptionist at the medical center, and it seems like you can’t hardly walk down the street without running into her.”

Corso smiled. “Town just wasn’t big enough for the both of you, eh?”

The sheriff lifted her eyebrows in resignation. “Maybe that was it. Maybe it
was
just a case of having two hens in the same barnyard,” she said. “You could be right. Lord knows…everything she did that summer sure seemed sinister to me.” She listened to an inner voice for a moment and then said, “Wasn’t just me, though. Lotta people in town felt the same way. For a while there, all anybody could talk about was who was this girl and what was she doing here.”

“So?”

“So, right there in the middle of that sweltering summer”—she made an expansive gesture with her arms—“it was like this girl was everywhere. No matter what sidewalk you walked down, she was there. No matter what tree you stopped under, she was there. If you went to the library, she was sitting over in the corner reading a book. If you—” She read Corso’s expression. “Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating a little…”

“You make it sound like it was yesterday.”

She got serious. “It’s like it was. I didn’t realize how much she’d affected me until I looked into that barn Friday morning. How I’d practically forgotten about Eldred and Tommie and James. But how Sissy”—she waved a finger—“how Sissy Warwick had never been far from my thoughts. How something about that woman was still grinding away at me, all these years later.”

“The damnedest things stick in our hearts, don’t they?”

She thought it over. Decided she agreed. “Something about her just didn’t ring right for me,” she said finally. “That was a really vulnerable time for me. I was trying to figure out who I was and didn’t like some of the answers I was getting from the universe. I didn’t believe in myself, and something about her made it impossible for me to believe in her either. It was like neither of us was for real.”

“Interesting.”

“It was like a voice inside of me said we couldn’t both exist and have things be right with the world. Like I couldn’t be the person I was and have her alive on the planet at the same time. It was that visceral. I felt like we were mutually exclusive or something.”

“What else?”

“She was just way too friendly. Remembered everybody’s name. Had that smarmy, car salesman quality about her. Always asking questions. By the time she’d been here three months, she knew as much about the town and everybody’s business as people who’d lived here all their lives.”

“And then?”

She swallowed hard. “So, you know…she’s been around for about six months when I start hearing the rumors, and—” She stopped herself again. “—I was probably the last to know. I was so busy driving back and forth to Madison, pretending to look for a job, I nearly missed the whole thing.”

“What rumors were those?”

Corso watched as her professionalism failed to defeat her obvious discomfort. Her hands made quotation marks in the air.

“She had a number of ‘things’ going on with local men.”

“Affairs?”

She nodded. “Prominent local men.”

“Such as?”

“Such as my predecessor, Sam Tate. Which is how I ended up being sheriff.” When Corso didn’t speak, she pointed a finger at his chest and ambled his way as if to impale him on its blunt tip. “You’re like a snake on a rock,” she said. “You just sit there sunning yourself until people blurt out what it is you want to know.”

Corso smiled. “Way I see it, most everybody has an intense desire to tell their story. All you got to do is shut up and give them a chance to spit it out.”

Her eyes narrowed. “As I recall, that was pretty much Sissy’s MO too.”

Corso’s face was stiff. “You figure that means I’m fated to develop an unquenchable yen for local law enforcement personnel?”

“I don’t think Richardson would like that at all,” she deadpanned.

“You’re probably right,” he said with a smile. “So…it was this Sam Tate’s sexual proclivities that got you elected.”

“Actually, it was his death proclivity.”

“Ah.”

“Two weeks before the election.”

“Good timing.”

“Better for me than Sam.”

“That’s the way things generally work out.”

“Sam was gonna outpoll me twenty to one. I was only running for sheriff because I couldn’t figure out what else to do with my life.” Her eyes clouded over. “Just got back in town. Came home to look after my dad.” She met Corso’s eyes. “Alzheimer’s,” she said. “I had a degree in criminal justice and five years’ experience as a Saint Paul County deputy.” She shrugged. “So I ran for sheriff.”

“And then…that fateful night.”

“Sam took Sissy up to his family cabin on Hunter Lake. Came out later they’d been up there a bunch of times.” Her lips were pressed tight. “He died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Dropped stone dead on top of her while flying united. She had to call search and rescue. Fire department don’t service that far out in the boonies.”

“So they find Sam Tate dead.”

“They also find a Polaroid camera and a bunch of snapshots of what she and Sam had been doing with each other. That’s when the rumors started about the others. How she had a bunch of other lovers. How she’d taken pictures with all of them. I’m telling you, this town was humming.”

“Rumors from where?”

The sheriff shrugged. “Who knows. It’s a small town.”

“Full of
prominent
men,” Corso said with a sneer.

“And the shit hit the fan. Just about this time of year—a month or so before Christmas—the town is buzzing. Everybody’s looking at everybody else and wondering. We’ve got our own version of
Peyton Place
going on. I’m figuring either one of her lovers is gonna kill her or the wives are gonna get together and ride her out of town on a rail, and either way, with Sam dead and only two weeks to go till the election, sooner or later I’m going to end up having to deal with it.”

“So you won the election.”

“Hell, no!” She laughed. “He beat me from the grave!”

“Musta been the sympathy vote,” Corso said.

“Town charter says if a candidate dies, the other candidate gets the job.” She spread her hands in mock resignation. “The rest is history.”

“What was the big attraction?” Corso asked.

“Whadda you mean?”

“What was the big sexual attraction to Sissy Warwick?”

“I wasn’t aware men needed one,” she said.

Corso’s lip curled. “Work with me here, Sheriff.
Prominent
men don’t risk their tranquillity and let people take pictures of them doing it unless there’s something pretty special going on.” He watched as her neck began to redden, as the color began to work its way into her cheeks and finally all the way to the tops of her ears.

“Supposedly…she was just hell in bed.”

“That’s it? She was a good roll? These guys risked life, limb, and community property just to…”

She winced at the gesture he made. “The pictures of her and Sam made it plain that she was…you know…”

Corso kept silent.

“Kinky,” she finally blurted. “She was quite…” Again she stopped. Regrouped. “Of an alternative persuasion.”

“What alternative was that?”

She looked as if she’d just smelled something vile. “Dressing up…spanking…that sort of thing.” She waved a hand in front of her face as if to brush the odor away. “And whatever else it is those people do to each other.”

“Did the names of these prominent men ever come to light?”

“Not officially. But believe you me, Mr. Corso, everybody in this town’s got their own list of who they think it was.”

She took a deep breath and turned away. The set of her shoulders told Corso all he needed to know. “What else?” he pushed.

She spun his way, embarrassment turned to anger. “Else? What do you mean
else
? Isn’t that enough? Jesus.”

She met his stony gaze with her own. Silence settled into the room like cigarette smoke. After an uncomfortable moment, she said, “The talk in the barbershop was that she liked it up the ass.”

“So this Sissy Warwick is now the town ‘ho,’ ” Corso prodded. “Givin’ the good old boys a little something they can’t get at home. Takin’ pictures of it all. Causin’ all kinds of chaos among the local gentry.”

“I can see you’re an incurable romantic,” she said.

For the second time Corso laughed. “Yeah…ask anybody.”

She went on. “Everybody in town figures she’ll do the right thing and either kill herself or disappear back to wherever it was she came from.”

“But no.”

She shook her head. “Next thing you know, I’m hearing she’s hot and heavy with Eldred Holmes.” She shook her head in remembered astonishment. “First time I heard it, I laughed out loud.”

“Why’s that?”

“It was crazy. They were just such an unlikely pair,” she said.

“Ah” was all Corso said.

“And Eldred…I mean there wasn’t a less likely candidate for romance in the whole county. Eldred might have been our least prominent citizen. You want to talk backward and shy, I’m telling you, Mr. Corso, Eldred was the poster boy for awkward. Poor kid spent his whole life out on that eighty acres where you found him. His parents were deaf. They died the year before Sissy came to town. By the time I saw them together, he’d already had his teeth fixed. Bought himself some new clothes. Stopped cutting his own hair.”

“You think this Eldred knew about the
prominent
men?”

She frowned. “Wouldn’t have mattered. She had old Eldred firmly in hand.”

“And then?”

“And then, the next thing you know they’re getting married, and everybody’s picking up their jaws and waiting for the pictures to appear in the newspaper. They’re all wondering what she wants from poor Eldred. Figuring she’s gonna move in for a while and then screw him out of the farm, since that was pretty much all he owned.” She cast a glance at Corso.

“But no.”

“No.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Next thing you know she’s pregnant with Tommie. They’re out there trying to scratch a living out of some real marginal acreage. Trying to be self-sufficient. Running a few cows. Growing some feed. Just doing what folks around here mostly do.”

“So what happened?”

“Nothing. That’s where it gets really weird. They just sort of settled in. Had a second kid. James.” She stopped, as if listening to herself. “They were like hermits. Just stayed out there on the place. You maybe saw Eldred once, twice a year, if he needed something from the Grange, but that was it. Other than that, you never saw any of them in town…ever. Wasn’t until the boys grew up that anybody remembered they were alive. Half the people who remembered what happened with Sissy were dead by then. And then one day about the time the boys got to be adolescents, she had to start coming into town to bail them out.”

“At-risk youth, eh?”

“Big time. It’s not good for kids to be raised in isolation. They miss out on the whole social interaction thing. The socialization process. Didn’t do Eldred any good, and it wasn’t good for his boys neither. Soon as they started to mature—just about the time puberty kicked in—they started to be a problem. Boosting cars. Starting fights on Saturday nights. A couple of B and Es.” Her lips rolled into a smile. “They got drunk and drove Eldred’s one-ton truck through the front wall of the Dairy Queen. One thing after another. I used to spend half my time cleaning up the messes the Holmes boys made.”

“So.”

“So that’s just about the time the state starts building the freeway. Right up there on the side of Barnett Mountain by their farm. She came into town for the first time in years, blew a gasket at the Zoning Commission—had to be escorted out of the courthouse. Then, a couple of weeks later, I hear they’re gonna move.”