Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter (27 page)

fourteen

S
ILAS WOKE IN
his clothes and boots, only a few minutes late, and stood in the shower until the hot water ran out. He spat foul mouthwash in the sink and opened and closed his lips in the mirror, his head shady with fuzz. The idea of buzzing his razor over it was appalling so he set his hat on gently and finished buttoning his shirt going out the door and took his headache to work, bumping along in the Jeep that smelled vaguely of cigarettes and Irina’s perfume. The end of the night was a blur, him fleeing, her hobbling to the door in one boot, saying if he was going to be such a dud, would he at least drop her back at the party?

He was pretty sure he hadn’t, though he owned little memory of getting home. At least he’d woke up in his own bed. There was a message from Angie on his cell, about eleven, asking if he was coming over. Another at midnight. Where
was
he?

It was seven-thirty when he got to Chabot Town Hall. Today being Angie’s day off, it was too early for him to call her back, so he crossed the parking lot and stood wincing at the passing cars and trucks as the mill screamed at him and each bleat of his whistle jabbed a hot wire in the mush behind his eyes.

“I know that look,” Marla said when he came in The Hub, still wearing his vest, already drenched with sweat. “Seen you dragging ass over the parking lot.” She got up off her stool and handed him a cup of coffee. He thanked her and went to his table in the back and stripped away the vest and eased his hat off, resisted the urge to put his head down. Marla chatted with another customer but then here she came a few minutes later with two sausage biscuits on a Styrofoam plate and, more important, a bottle of Bayer aspirin. She slid into the chair across from him and pushed the breakfast across the table and opened the Bayer.

“Thanks,” he said, taking three of the pills and washing them down with coffee.

“Tie one on?”

“More like knotted it.”

“I remember when I used to drink.”

“Problem is, what I don’t remember.”

“What was the occasion?”

“Guilt,” he said.

Marla lit a cigarette. “Ah guilt. Opiate of the Baptists. You want to talk about it?”

“Naw. I done done too much of that. Don’t seem to help much.”

The bell over the door rang and she rose with her cigarette. “Well, sugar,” she said, limping off, “don’t be too hard on yourself. Now and again it’s okay to let yourself off the hook.”

But that was his trouble, wasn’t it? Letting himself off the hook had been his way of life.

HE STOPPED BY
Town Hall. Voncille was balancing the town’s budget, gospel music leaking around her iPod’s earbuds.

“Reckon you can write a few tickets today?” she asked.

“I’ll try.” He sat down at his desk, felt the biscuits churning.

“Guess who else called.”

“Shannon.”

“She says you’re avoiding her.”

He pretended to be interested in his reports.

“You ain’t never been shy about talking to her before, 32. What’s up now?”

Her phone rang before he could answer, and he slipped out.

HE DROVE TO FULSOM,
past Ottomotive, where somebody had spray painted
SERIAL KILLER
across the door. Two of the office windows were broken, too. The gas pump nozzles gone. Stolen. Silas kept going.

At the hospital he saw three news vans in the lot, their dishes up, reporters standing in the shade smoking cigarettes. Word was out—the killer had awakened. From here, Silas thought, it would only get worse for Larry. He pulled into the lot and radioed the Sheriff’s Department, try to get a read on French’s day. Dispatch told him French had gone to Oxford to interview and hopefully pick up Charles Deacon, the suspect in M&M’s murder. He’d be back after dark. Did Silas want the sheriff?

“No, thanks,” he said. He sat a moment longer, looking up at Larry’s room.

Then he rattled the Jeep into first and eased back onto the highway. He drove out to Larry Ott Road, past the mailbox, beat all to hell. He turned in and drove to Larry’s house and got out with his feed jug, walked around the house, through the tall grass. Fed the chickens. Stood watching them, the rain having taken care of their watering. French, he knew, would talk to Larry again, try to get him to solidify the drugged-out confession. But the chief was gone and that gave Silas a day. He left the barn and walked out toward where he’d molded the four-wheeler tracks, the one with the nail in it. Wasn’t anything unusual about people four-wheeling, or even doing it on Scary Larry’s property. There it was, smeared now, all the rain, but he stood looking down at it, ruts through sprigs of high weeds. He began to walk the field, his pants brushed by weeds and growing wet, thinking what was he missing, ranging toward the trees and back, the barn distant now. He saw a Pabst can and stared at it awhile, was looking for a stick to use as a place marker when he noticed a fresh set of four-wheeler tracks. And there it was, again, the circle imprint, the nail. Whoever this was, he kept coming back.

He saw something else, other whorls in the mud by the tracks. Footprints. This fellow had gotten off his four-wheeler here, hadn’t he?

He spent another hour wandering the land, bagged the Pabst can, then thought, since he was out here, he could go see this Wallace Stringfellow. Ask him about a rattlesnake in a mailbox.

THE JEEP BACKFIRED
as he climbed the steep hill on 7, and when he topped it and coasted down the other side he passed the catfish farm and saw the oxygen man riding his four-wheeler between ponds. Silas waved and slowed, passing the driveway of a crumpled house up on blocks, dirty aluminum siding. Satellite dish on the roof. Dirt yard and scrubby trees. There was a mean-looking dog, some pit bull mixed with something else, Chow maybe, tied to a wooden stake, getting up and barking, pulling at its rope. Brown with pointed ears, tail down, head the size of a watermelon. No water bowl in sight, no shade. There was his angle, if he wanted it. Mistreated animal. He could use that to get to the door, maybe inside. French always said you wanted an interview subject in your office, on your turf, where you were comfortable. But Silas wanted to see the snakes.

There was a beat-up sedan in the drive and a four-wheeler parked by the wooden added-on deck. No name on the mailbox, just its number. He cruised on by, holding his radio.

“Miss Voncille?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you tell me who lives at 60215 County Road 7?”

“Yeah, hon. Give me a few minutes.”

“Thanks.”

Little farther he pulled off, parked, and waited, his headache better. Thinking later he’d go get some more of those tire molds from the Sheriff’s Department.

“32?” Voncille on the radio.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I got a name.”

“Is it Wallace Stringfellow?”

“Sure is. What’s going on?”

“Might be our snake-in-the-box. I’m gone go talk to him, if he’s home.”

“You want some company?”

“Naw. I’ll call if I do.”

“Be careful.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He put the radio on the passenger seat and drove back to the house and pulled into the driveway. The dog scrambled to its feet barking, its rope lashed to an old leather collar, its head low.

“Easy, Cujo,” Silas said, getting out.

The dog pulled at its rope, straining its collar, frothing, batting at the air with its front paws.

Easy, boy.

Hoping the stake held, Silas eased around the patch of yard that defined the dog’s orbit, unsnapping his sidearm. He circled toward the house, keeping an eye on the pit bull, aware, with all this noise, that Stringfellow would know he was coming. The yard all tracked up from cars and the four-wheeler, and it was these tracks he wanted to examine, see if they had the same circle in the tread he’d noticed in Larry’s yard.

“Hey.”

Somebody coming out.

Silas glanced again at the pit bull then went to the porch where Wallace Stringfellow stood shirtless and skinny, blue jeans, a cigarette smoking in one hand, cup of coffee in the other. A few Pabst cans on the rail.

“Hey there,” Silas said at the bottom of the porch steps. He had to speak loudly to be heard. “How you doing?”

Not looking him in the eye. “I help you?”

“This your residence?”

Looking out toward the road, at the dog. “Yeah.”

“That your animal?”

Stringfellow closed the door and stood on the porch. “Yeah. Shut up!” he yelled. “You need something?”

“Just want to talk to you, you got a minute.”

“I ain’t rode on the highway no more. Just off-road, like you said.”

“Glad to hear it.” The dog was loud. He put a hand to his ear. “Can we talk? Inside?”

The young man looked behind him, the door. He pulled on the knob. “Ain’t got time right now. I’m in the middle of something.”

Silas came up the steps and Stringfellow backed away. He dropped his cigarette over the rail. He was barefooted. He looked at the cup in his hand and set it on the rail behind him, among the beer cans. “What you want to go inside for?”

“So I can hear.”

“What for?”

“I just want to ask you a few questions.”

“Bout what?”

“That dog.”

Stringfellow looked toward the road, behind him. He shrugged and got his coffee mug and opened the door. Silas followed him in, taking a deep, silent breath, not smelling the marijuana or meth he’d hoped to, just beer and cigarettes and filth. He spotted an ashtray on the coffee table but saw no roach or paraphernalia. The room was small and shadowed, its Venetian blinds drawn, fast-food wrappers on the table. A row of aquariums along the counter, each screened at the top and containing a snake or two or three, it was hard to tell, their bodies looped and strung over limbs and coiled in the dark corners, all perfectly still, like rubber snakes.

“You a reptile collector?” Silas asked, remembering Larry saying
herpetologist,
keeping an eye on Stringfellow where he’d retreated in the corner, rubbing his coffee mug like he was rosining a baseball. When he noticed he was doing it he set it on the windowsill and pushed his hands in his pockets.

“It’s a hobby,” he said, pulling out a package of Camels and a lighter.

“Mind if I look?” Silas asked him. “Snakes and me, we don’t always get along. This here’s how I like em. Behind glass.”

Stringfellow was having trouble getting his lighter to work. “Go on.”

Silas went around the counter into the kitchen, scanning the room, the aquariums between the two of them, and bent, his face inches from a fat cottonmouth, lying like a big burnt arm. He could see its frozen frown, the pits under its slit eyes, flicking tongue the only sign it was alive. Through the smeared glass, Stringfellow got his cigarette lit.

“What was it you wanted?” he asked. “I’m kinda busy.”

Silas moved to the next aquarium, this snake smaller, brightly banded in red, yellow, and black.

“This a coral snake?” he asked, remembering the rhyme Larry had taught him: red on black, a friend of Jack, red on yellow, kill a fellow.

“Naw,” Stringfellow said. “King snake.”

“Is it true they’ll eat a rattlesnake? Swallow it whole?”

“What I always heard. Ain’t never tried it, though.”

Silas stood straight, his eyes better adjusted to the dark room, and saw a monster mask on a shelf by another aquarium, on a bookcase over against the wall. It was familiar, a zombie.

“That mask,” he said.

Stringfellow followed his eyes.

“Where’d you get it?”

Fidgeting. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know.”

“Someplace.”

Outside, the dog continued to bark.

“Wait a second,” Stringfellow said. “Just hang on.” He was sweating now, sucking on his Camel. He crossed to the door.

“Hey.” Silas hurried around the counter, following him outside, on the porch, down the steps, expecting to see Stringfellow fleeing. Instead, he was over by the dog, yelling for him to shut the fuck up.

Silas came down the steps, gripping his pistol in its holster. “Hey,” he called again.

“Hang on!” Stringfellow’s hands trembled as he got the pit bull by its collar, the animal growling now and snapping, focused on Silas. “I’m just gone try and get him calm!”

The dog bit backward and nipped Stringfellow’s wrist. He let go but had its collar with the other hand and with the bleeding one he hit the back of its head. “You sumbitch.”

“Back up,” Silas was saying, coming around the porch, reaching for his radio and not finding it. He reached in his pocket for his cell phone. “Hey,” he called again.

When Stringfellow unclipped the dog, it was like he’d set off a cannon. It hit the ground once then came at Silas in the air before he could draw his weapon, was on him tearing his arms and hands, growling like a motor gone haywire in its ribs. They fell hard, him pushing at the hot slick jaw and trying to keep his face away and get his hand around its throat. He closed his eyes and turned his head and batted at the face and then it got his arm, he felt the deep teeth. Somebody, he, was yelling, wrestling the dog in the mud, his elbow in its muzzle, a bone snapping. With his other hand he clutched the loose fur of it throat and closed his fist, felt the cable of its windpipe in his grip and latched on.

Then he heard a shot, very close, and rolled. Another shot, loud and ringing. The dog yelped, blood on its fur. It was hit. Or he was. Dog trying to get away now, but now it was Silas wouldn’t let go. Using it for a shield. Stringfellow yelling, “Get him!” They’d rolled under the porch. Silas heard another shot and saw the man’s running legs, bare feet. Felt cold mud in his arm. The dog was trembling and he lay behind it, fumbling for his gun. Shit smell everywhere. Another shot, mud splashing in his eyes. He clung to the pit bull, the dog shaking and biting weakly at him. Silas had his pistol now, awkward in his right hand. He put the barrel to the back of its head and fired. It shivered once and lay still. Stringfellow’s footsteps over the porch, loud ringing shots as he fired into the wood yelling, “Killed my dog!”