A Quiet Belief in Angels (26 page)

“The viewpoint that set fire to his house and killed his daughter?” I asked. I was starting to get angry.

“A terrible thing,” Dearing said. “What happened back then, no question about it. It was a terrible, terrible thing, and I, for one, feel a tremendous sense of responsibility—”

“Why would you feel responsible? You didn’t light the fire, did you? Or
did
you, Sheriff? Was that a situation where there was sufficient motive and opportunity—”

Dearing raised his hand. “There are lessons to be learned in life, Joseph. You can try something once and learn a lesson from it. Kind of lesson you need to be taught twice says you’re nothing but plain dumb.”

I frowned.

“You upset me once, heading on out there to Fleming. Hell, the last person in the world I expected to see out there was you. I don’t want you to be upsetting me another time, Joseph.”

I raised a conciliatory hand.

“Gunther Kruger was a suspect back then. I don’t mind telling you that. You know something? I’ll tell you this for a nickel and dime and you don’t gotta pay me straight away. There was nothing,
not one thing
anywhere that said his little girl had the spasms—”

“She was an epileptic, Sheriff—”

“Was she now?” Dearing leaned back in his chair. He tucked his right thumb in his belt and looked pleased with himself.

“You’re saying she wasn’t?”

Dearing shook his head. “I’m saying there was no record anywhere that that little girl had the grand mal or anything like it.”

“So the bruises I saw . . .”

“Were simply the bruises you saw, nothing more or less than that. Hell, Joseph, whichever way you dress it up and take it out there was something awry with that family. Me, I’m a Democrat, and I don’t know that I’m in favor of selling up Georgia land to foreigners and the like, but I got a basic respect for my fellow man and no ill will toward him. However—” Dearing paused melodramatically. He leaned forward to emphasize his position and the importance of his viewpoint. “When it comes to killing little girls I have no opinion about anyone, ’cept that they might or might not be involved. I ain’t one of these ignorants that hates folks just ’cause they’re from someplace else. Don’t matter who they are, what color, what language they speak, they all get the same degree of interest when it comes to the law. Fact that your ma, God bless her, makes like Lana Turner in that
Postman
picture with Mr. Gunther Kruger . . . fact that she was a decent and God-fearing woman . . . well, hell, Joseph, I can’t take the fact that your ma got personal with Gunther Kruger as any kind of reference for his character. I . . . we . . . figured him for beating the little girl, me and Ford Ruby, and Sheriff Fermor . . . he’s the one you had the pleasure of meeting that afternoon with Miss Webber, right?”

I nodded. “I remember him, yes.”

“So the three of us had a couple of meetings, and we did what we did, we asked our questions and followed our clues, and we didn’t come back with anything for the show-’n’-tell. Nothing ’cept the coincidence of where the little girls were found. That and the fact that we took Gunther Kruger for a child beater.”

“Which ain’t one helluva lot to hang a murder rap on someone.”

“True, true, but bright you may be, all full of ten- and twenty-dollar words, and I might be slow and methodical, and have no more sparks in my head than a damp firecracker, but I’ll tell you something I have got, Joseph Vaughan . . . I’ve got persistence, you see? Persistence. I’m the sort of man who gets ahold of an idea, and I ain’t gonna let go of it ’til it’s been wrestled off of me, and even then whoever’s doin’ the wrestling knows they’ve been through a fight.”

“So what’re you saying?” I asked.

Dearing leaned back. He took on the resigned, philosophical aspect of someone attempting to solicit information by nonchalance, almost as if whatever I might say really didn’t matter a great deal. “What I’m saying is that I got Alice Ruth Van Horne, Laverna Stowell, Ellen May Levine, Catherine McRae and Virginia Perlman all dead between November of ’39 and August of ’42. Then this thing happens with the Krugers. The fire. The little girl dies in the fire, right? The Krugers are gone out to wherever—”

“Uvalda, Toombs County,” I interjected. “Apparently one of her cousins had a farm up there.”

Dearing nodded. “That’s where they went,” he said, “but that’s not where they stayed.”

I frowned. I had lost track of the Krugers, and never asked of their fortune. Perhaps, in some way, it had been a relief to see them go. Their continued presence would have reminded me of Mr. Kruger’s infidelity and the death of Elena.

“They wound up in Jesup.”

“Where?”

“Jesup,” Dearing said. “Right in Wayne County.” He opened one of his desk drawers and pulled out a map. He unfolded it across his desk, stood up, and motioned for me to come look. He stabbed his finger on a spot and I peered down at it. “The sixth girl, Rebecca Leonard, found September tenth, 1943, right here in Meridan, Mclntosh County. Put your finger there.”

I complied.

“Seventh girl, Sheralyn Williams, found February tenth, 1945, right there in Offerman, Pierce County.” Dearing took a nickel from his pocket and put it on the spot. “And then the eighth girl, as you know, found right here in Liberty, Fleming County. Esther Keppler. That was just days ago, December twenty-first.” Dearing looked up at me, the two of us on opposite sides of the table, leaning over this map with our fingers on it like we were Blücher and Wellington at Waterloo. “So whaddya see?”

“I see three locations, with Jesup right in the middle.”

“I see the same thing. From Jesup all of them are no more than thirty miles by crow.”

“Which doesn’t mean a great deal.”

“But at the same time doesn’t mean nothing.”

“And just because those three locations make a triangle with Jesup right in the middle tells you that Gunther Kruger did these killings.”

Dearing snorted contemptuously and folded up the map. “No, shee-it, it don’t tell me nothing of the sort.”

I was puzzled. I didn’t know where Dearing was going with his implications and innuendos.

“I got eight dead girls, Joseph, nine if you count the Kruger girl. She doesn’t figure in this thing in my mind. Kruger wouldn’t have set fire to his own house. That fire was set by someone who figured Kruger had it coming. Either that, or an accident. So, like I said, I got eight dead girls, youngest seven, oldest eleven, and four sheriffs from four different counties unable to answer any questions from the victims’ respective parents about what might have happened and who might have done this. I got one suspect, maybe two, and nothing on either of them. That’s where I am, and this thing started all of six years ago—”

“We think,” I interjected.

“You what?”

“Six years ago, we
think
,” I repeated. “This could have been going on an awful lot longer, we could have just been unaware of it.”

Dearing shook his head. Up close I realized how much he had aged. His face was striated with fine creases, not so much wrinkles as points of collapse, where the invading force of time had usurped the territory of youth. He looked like a crumpled picture, unfolded, that would never lie straight again. “I don’t know that I wanna hear such a thing,” Dearing said quietly. He sounded tired, a little overwhelmed.

“I’m sorry, Sheriff, I didn’t mean to—”

Dearing raised his hand and shook his head. “Forget about it. I’m just of a mind to talk, and I’ve known you since you were yay high, and this thing with Miss Webber . . .” Dearing paused and looked at me. “How old is she, Joseph?”

I sat down and looked up at him. “She’s twenty-six. Sheriff, I told you that before.”

Dearing sat down also, pushed the map to the edge of the desk. “Sure you did, sure you did. It’s just that—”

I smiled at Dearing. “You know something? I don’t think in anything but straight lines and right angles, Sheriff. You got an opinion, I’m gonna hear it. Ain’t any real issue of whether we agree or not. People think what people think, always have done, always will. I’m sure there are people that find some solace in leveling a criticism here or there. Such people, as far as I’m concerned, are full of bitterness and schadenfreude.”

“Sharda-what?”

“
Schadenfreude
. . . it’s a word that describes the sort of person who gets a kick out of other people’s miseries. You know what I mean, right?”

“Hell, do I know what you mean,” Dearing said. “That about sums up my wife’s sister, twisted old bitch that she is.”

I laughed at Dearing’s facial expression, like he’d taken a mouthful of copper filings.

“Anyway, you got something to say then you can say it. I’m not the easily offended type.”

Dearing shrugged. “Dammit, Joseph, you look like . . . Christ, I don’t know what the hell you look like. Rasputin or something, right? Your hair’s too damned long, and this beard you seem so intent on wearing makes you look like a crazy person. And now this thing with the schoolteacher. You were damned near up ahead of the circuit court for exposing yourself in a public place, for lewd and lascivious conduct . . . you were lucky that was all, lucky that Burnett Fermor didn’t strip your hide raw out there. That kinda thing, along with the way you look . . . well, hell, Joseph. Burnett Fermor wasn’t the first one to look in your direction for these killings.”

My heart stopped. For a while I couldn’t breathe. I tried to say something but nothing came out.

“You found the Perlman girl,” Dearing went on. “Several of the victims were found very close to your house. There was even the possibility raised that the fire was set by you to direct the focus of attention elsewhere.”

“What?”

“It’s just nothing, Joseph . . . it’s just scared folks with more fear than common sense. That’s how any kinda prejudice is gonna start. People get afraid, ignorant people mainly, and they have nothing to do with their time, and then the time fills up with anxieties. It’s an easy thing . . . look at the way it goes with Negroes. Anything goes missing, well it’s gotta be a Negro. Someone hears that someone’s house got broken into, well it’s gotta be a Negro. You sure ain’t doin’ yourself any favors in Augusta Falls, and I gotta be the one to tell you because sure as hell no one else is going to.”

“I don’t believe this!”

“You gotta understand what’s happening here, Joseph. This has been going on for years, and people are scared. They want to know what’s happening. They don’t want to hear about the number of leads we’ve followed, the rumors we’ve heard. They don’t want to hear about the vagrants we’ve dragged out of boxcars and held for two days and nights before they were sober enough to answer questions. They want us to bring them a child killer’s head, and that’s all.” Dearing sighed exasperatedly. “Anonymous phone calls. Jesus, you want to hear about anonymous phone calls, and every one of them, every single one of them, has to be followed up.” He closed his eyes. “The thing that you have to appreciate, Joseph, perhaps more than anything else, is that you have to abide by other folks’ expectations or there’s going to be a prejudice.”

“This is insane, Sheriff,” I interjected. “This is just so beyond—”

“Just calm yourself there,” Dearing said.

I was gripping the arms of the chair so hard my hands were hurting.

“This isn’t an accusation, Joseph. This isn’t anything but hearsay and rumor and tittle-tattle out of the mouths of people who should know better. People who have lost daughters, and want some answers as to who’s responsible . . . and when you have scared people talking together their natural instinct is to look toward anyone who’s a little different, a little out of the ordinary.”

“You can’t tell me that people honestly think that I might have had something to do with murdering little girls?”

“What people think and what’s the truth ain’t the same thing, believe me. All I’m saying is that when Gunther Kruger was here they saw a foreigner, a German, and a little girl with bruises on her arms. There was a war going on. There was already sourness in the atmosphere, and someone managed to convince themselves that Kruger was their man. I know it wasn’t you that fired the house. I don’t think you got a murderous thought in your head. But now Kruger might as well have disappeared from the face of the earth, and people have got nothing. So what they gonna do, ’cept look for the next one who stands out, the one who looks a little different.”

Dearing paused to gather his breath.

“And you let them think this?” I asked, incredulous that I was even involved in such a conversation.

“Christ, Joseph, who d’you think I am? You think I have the slightest influence on what people think in their own time? No one’s breaking the law by having their own thoughts, and if they get talking over a few beers, if the women at these quilt-making circles start winding each other up, then what the hell am I supposed to do? You figure I should get myself invited to every social gathering in Augusta Falls just so I can overhear any slanderous words about Joseph Vaughan and give them a piece of my mind?”

I shook my head. I felt anxious and aggravated, I didn’t know what to say.

“All I’m telling you is that you gotta take some slight degree of responsibility for how other people see you. You understand what I’m saying? You’re not a child, Joseph. You ain’t one of them Guardians any more. You’re all grown up and people take you as they see you, nothing more or less than that.”

I looked directly at Dearing. I could feel how the blood had drained from my face. I imagined I looked like a man haunted, maybe the ghost doing the haunting. “You’re saying that I have to fix myself so I look and behave like everyone else. Either that, or someone might come and torch my house while I’m sleeping. And while they’re at it, hell, they might get the schoolteacher as well, and that don’t matter a damn ’cause she’s nothing more than the child killer’s punchboard anyway.”

Dearing frowned and shook his head. “Shee-it, boy, you have a mouth full of piss and vinegar, don’t you?”

I leaned forward. I was tired. Resolve was diminishing, like the pressure in a tire with a slow puncture.