Butterfly Sunday (27 page)

All he had to do was hang a right at the next intersection, drive a mile and a half downhill through an area that decayed into a semiurban mess of car dealers, car washes, gas stations, drive-in groceries and cheap motels; veer onto the interstate and fly north. Leona would have a cat with a tissue paper tail.

But so what?

It wouldn’t kill either one of them. He could cover his ears. He sure as hell didn’t have any time to convince her. It was like they taught you in Red Cross lifeguard class. The first thing you have to do in order to rescue a drowning person is knock him out. Otherwise he’ll drown you. There wasn’t any doubt at the moment that unless one of them pulled a miracle out of their pocket in the next ten minutes, Leona was dead in the water. Or to be more specific, by lethal injection.

He’d do it, that’s all. He couldn’t live with the alternative. Let her holler all the way to the Canadian border or wherever in hell they’d go. No point discussing it now. He knew her line. She wouldn’t run. She knew they’d kill her. It was crazy. She was crazy. He felt responsible for that. He had to make the sane choice for her. He loved her. God Almighty damn, the media would have a ball with them.

SHERIFF FLEES WITH WOMAN SUSPECTED OF CLERGY HUSBAND’S MURDER.

Why did he have to learn the big ones hanging off the cliff by his fingernails? Not even the big ones, just this one. This was the biggest one of them all. How many times had he felt a surging impulse to run to her in the last six months? How many times had his mind and body frozen with the sudden need to see her, to touch her, to tell her he couldn’t begin to tell her how senseless and impossible life was without her?

How many times had he gripped his resolve to let the moment pass?

And why?

Had he really thought his promises would keep her head above water forever? Hadn’t he known every day of her life was hell? He could hear his father telling him
an hour before he died that his sins of omission were what made leaving this world unbearable.

God, he was sorry. It was all fear, wasn’t it? He and Leona could have stood beside each other and looked the world in the eye and demanded their right to love each other. Except he’d been afraid, worried about a job he didn’t want, cowed by his faithless ex-wife’s possible reactions (even though she had already split for California with the kids). Afraid to live, to be, to have or feel his own life!

Now here he was, a poor-ass fool, clutching the steering wheel with cold, sweaty fingers with every desperate thought in his head a prayer. Oh, God, I love her; oh, God, I need her; oh, God, she couldn’t take any more of it, please, please help me help her. Oh, God, please save this woman. She’s my whole life.

Oh, no, he wouldn’t own up to that while he had the luxury of months, even years, to give her the contents of his heart. No, no, that would have made her happy. That would have turned him into a flesh-and-blood human being. Owning the love he felt for her would have made their lives mean something.

If it weren’t for his recurring, lunatic hope against hope, he’d hit the floorboard and put an end to this ludicrous torment by veering into the side of the next bridge. Or maybe it wasn’t even hope. Maybe now that he had completed his ruin, he finally had the self-control to pass up a chance to play God.

If his heart wasn’t bruised and bleeding, if his stupidity hadn’t condemned her, he’d have to laugh. It took him back to something his high school football and basketball coaches had told him a thousand times. Blue always figured how to win it after the game had been
lost. And his magic formula was always something they had tried to tell him before the game.

He could barely stand to look at her.

“Blue, don’t try to save me.”

Any response to that on his part was going to render him a useless mess. He couldn’t indulge in that, not while she sat there with such quiet grace.

“Things had to go this way, Blue.”

“I love you so much.”

“It makes all the difference.”

“It could have.”

“I had to do it. I’ve known it for a long time.”

“I’ve known how much I love you for a long time.”

“A million times I thought about running to you.”

“Oh, God, why didn’t you?”

“I knew I was eventually going to have to kill him.”

“He wasn’t worth killing.”

“I didn’t do it for me.”

God, life was a farce. All that reaching and growing, the changes, the losses, the regrets and starting over—where did it get anybody? What for? Where was this climbing path to peace and wisdom all those stupid books talked about? How could she sit there beside him looking so peaceful as he downshifted for soft places in the sand clay road?

Justice, the supreme ruler, man’s purported attempt to administer the Will of God, wanted its eye for an eye. Leona, who had never killed before and would never kill again; Leona, who rid society of a worthless man; Leona would stand trial. Judge and jury would purse their Christian lips and shrug and regret that they were morally, legally bound to convict and kill Leona with about as much sensitivity and remorse as the pound displayed when it killed a rabid stray.

All he had to do was hang a right at the next intersection. Yet he kept straight for the courthouse at the stop sign. The road to hell, he knew now, wasn’t paved with anything as lofty as good intentions. Its construct was far more intricate than that. It was made of millions of connecting willful ignorances and blind self-indulgences.

“Leona, please, listen to me.…”

“I have to do this, Blue.”

“Justice is whatever suits those with the most power.”

“I agree.”

“Then why hand yourself to them?”

She was empty. She had no more words to offer. There was nothing to pull out of her hat that would make him see her purpose. This wasn’t something she would debate with anyone. Others might well have better ideas than hers. She was past all that. She had reached the inevitable part, the point of no return. It didn’t matter whether this was her insanity, self-indulgence, self-destruction, cruelty or folly. This was her own private cross, her bloody trek up Golgotha. She was seeing it through.

“Answer me, damn it! Why hand yourself to them?”

She wouldn’t indulge herself the feelings now. She was too tired, too weak, too vulnerable. Her heart was begging him to overpower her decision, to turn at the intersection up ahead, to take responsibility for her fate. Yet some inscrutable power of intuition had dictated otherwise. Blue was wild with despair. She had to appear calm and resolute. She had to at least convey the steel conviction that he would understand one day. But how? What words could she borrow? Then it came to her with no little irony. She could steal them from Averill.

“Why?” Blue repeated, looking pale and helpless.

“Why did Jesus go to Jerusalem?”

He let the car roll past the stop sign at a snail’s pace while he glanced up and down the deserted crossroad. He coasted across the highway, his right foot pressed the clutch and his right hand guided the gearshift into first. Now second, passing the city limits sign, then third. The road widened into a residential avenue lined with two-story houses that sat deep behind ancient wrought iron fences. They stopped at a red light. He looked at her.

“Would the answer make life without you bearable?”

MONDAY, APRIL 24, 2000

4:00 P.M.

By four o’clock that Monday afternoon Leona was about to tear her hair out. Blue still hadn’t let anyone else talk to her. He wasn’t willing to face facts. He was violating his own procedures, wielding authority he didn’t have and listening to no one but himself. Instead of putting her in a cell that morning, he had locked her in his office while his staff watched with their jaws agape. He had been running in and out all day. He was all over the place. Half listening, interrupting himself, now on one phone line, forgetting the other was holding. When there was a knock, he opened the door only as far as the chain lock would allow.

“Blue, they’ll be in here with tear gas and machine guns if you don’t take hold of yourself!”

This was nothing like what he had told her to
expect. He was supposed to deliver her into the custody of a deputy. Then he was supposed to walk upstairs to see a judge. He needed some kind of papers in order to remove himself from her case. Meanwhile she’d go into the interrogation room. When Soames’s fancy lawyer showed up, the deputies would question her with him running interference. Though Leona had her doubts. Soames was probably grandstanding to keep Leona from losing control. Surely some big-time Memphis lawyer would know how to force his way in to see his client.

Instead, Blue was holding her here like personal property.

She’d been here in his office since their arrival at eleven this morning. God, she’d never forget that moment. The minute Blue parked in the sheriff’s space at the curb, a pack of lawmen and reporters swarmed. Word was already out. The deputies pulled Leona out of the vehicle, handcuffed her and brought her into the building. There must have been twenty cameras. Half the crowd was outraged and demanding Blue’s resignation. The other half was catcalling and making it all a dirty joke.

Why the hell hadn’t Blue just gone to California last week as planned?

Blue’s men were organized. They had the entrances to the courthouse secured. The media had to wait outside. Blue lingered behind them to answer questions and deny that he’d spent last night with his suspect. As they had driven down Whitsunday Hill that morning, Leona saw that highway patrol cars were stationed by the crossroads store. At Blue’s directive, they’d been turning curiosity seekers away through the night.

The county board of supervisors was already demanding to see Blue when he arrived. He, of course, ignored them. Instead he took her into his office, locked the door and removed her handcuffs. The only other lawman Leona had seen all day was the confused-looking young deputy who Blue sent across the square for coffee and sandwiches. Around noon she had overheard two deputies in the hall outside of Blue’s office during one of his sudden disappearances. Leona and Blue were now “Sheriff Romeo and Juliet” on Memphis talk radio.

“You must think you’re God,” Leona said after Blue had sent his secretary to inform the board of supervisors he was too busy to fool with them today.

“No, but I think you’re innocent in God’s eyes.”

“Blue, don’t prolong this.”

There was a knock. Blue opened the door and took a cardboard file box from a young woman who taught Sunday school out at the church.

“Hey, Lu Anne.”

“Hey, yourself,” she answered in a begrudging tone.

“Aw, now don’t be that way,” Blue cut in. “Things are rarely what they seem.”

“Well, evil can sure look cute and cuddly, if that’s what you mean.”

“God bless you, darlin’,” Blue snapped, closing the door in her face.

“Blue, if that’s an indication of what people are saying, then—”

“Sanctimonious slut.”

Leona had to admit that she had reached a similar conclusion long before any of this mess. He was taking manila files out of the box and reading them.

“Blue, I’m a confessed murderer. People expect you to uphold the law in this county.…”

“Here it is,” he muttered, not paying Leona the slightest heed.

They sat there in silence while Blue read a stack of typewritten documents. Leona had no idea what they were or why he was reading them. He was absorbed. The phone rang every two or three minutes. Sometimes it went on for fifteen or twenty rings. It didn’t seem to faze him in the least. Then it rang thirty-two times. Leona couldn’t stand it anymore.

“County sheriff’s office,” she said.

“Sheriff Hudson, please.”

“The sheriff is unavailable. May I tell him who’s calling?”

“Who is this?”

“Leona Sayres.”

The man laughed so loud it hurt her ear.

“Oh, that’s rich. That’s a good one.”