Into the Web (24 page)

“How long did you ‘have charge’ of her”?

“Couple months, that’s all. Wallace paid me good for it too. But she was a whiny little thing. Money or not, I was glad to see her go.”

“Go?” I asked, now aware that I might have to follow those lost steps too, but which I felt utterly resolved to do. Gloria had become to me some frail child out of a dark fairy tale, bewildered, wandering lost in the forest, dropping bread crumbs in a futile attempt to leave a trail.

“Yeah, Wallace sent her down south.” Mavis struggled to her feet, walked to a small table, and retrieved a single white envelope. “Wallace brought me this letter when he come over this morning. He said to give it to you since you seemed so all fired up about knowing what happened to Gloria.”

“He thinks of everything, doesn’t he?” I asked stiffly.

“Yeah, he does.” Mavis’s voice was metallic. “Here. Read it. And then git gone. I ain’t got no more time to fool with you.”

The letter was from a place called Bryce Treatment Center, located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It stated that on June 9, 1974, Gloria Lynn Kellogg, age 26, had died of a brain aneurism. As Miss Kellogg’s “only living relative,” Wallace Porterfield was assured that everything possible had been done for her, and was asked to make the necessary funeral arrangements.

“Why does this say that Porterfield is Gloria’s only living relative?” I asked.

“ ’Cause he was.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

“I don’t care whether you do or not,” Mavis snapped. “But I know for a fact Wallace and Gloria’s mother was cousins. That’s why she come to Kingdom County in the first place, ’Cause Wallace said he’d put her husband on as a deputy.”

“Where was the rest of her family?”

“Wallace never said. Told me he was stuck with Gloria, ’cause her mother was his cousin. That nobody else would lift a finger for her, so it was up to him to see after her. Which he did.”

I felt a small thread snap in the elaborate fabric of conspiracy my father had woven so persuasively.

“Fact is, Wallace done what he could for Gloria,” Mavis said. “Spent a fortune on her. Keeping her in that hospital down south. Cost him a whole hell of a lot of money to do that.”

“But it wasn’t his money,” I argued, determined to stitch the tapestry up again, make it tough and strong, able to bear the weight of my father’s anguished need to bring logic to the universe. “Porterfield used Gloria’s money to—”

“Gloria’s money?” A laugh rattled from Mavis’s twisted mouth. “Gloria didn’t have no money.”

“Of course she did,” I said emphatically. “The money she inherited. From her father.”

Mavis’s laugh jangled again. “Gloria’s daddy was a thief. Give hisself big loans from his own bank. It all had to be paid back. That damn girl didn’t have a penny.”

“But the house and everything in it,” I persisted, conjuring up my father’s description of the auction, people gathered in the wide front yard, bidding on furniture, dishes, finally the riches of the house itself, Porterfield in charge of it all, watching greedily as Gloria’s patrimony was sliced into pieces and carted away.

“Wallace had to sell off everything,” Mavis informed me. “They was big people had a stake in that bank. They had to be paid back or it would all have got out about Gloria’s daddy. So Wallace paid them. Time it was over, there wasn’t a penny left for nothing.” She laughed. “Wallace used to say your brother done that no-account daddy of Gloria’s a favor by shooting him. Said Horace Kellogg would have ended up in the penitentiary pretty soon anyway. Said he got what he deserved when your brother killed him.”

Which, as I realized, had finally brought me full circle, back to the reason I’d whispered Mavis’s name in Porterfield’s ear, back to that snowy night twenty
years before, the wild shots that had rung out behind the ornate door of 1411 County Road.

“Did Gloria ever talk to you about the murders?” I asked.

“She had this old locket. Said her grandmother give it to her. It brought things back when she fiddled with it.”

“Things?”

“Just got her to whining over it,” Mavis answered. “Said she had to have the damn locket ’cause she was gonna hock it. When they got away, I mean. Her and that boyfriend of hers, your brother. Anyway, Gloria said he didn’t have no money so she was gonna take that locket to wherever they went once they got away. That’s all she ever said about them killings. Just how, come hell or high water, she had to have that damn locket, and she aimed to get it no matter what he said.”

“What who said?”

“Her boyfriend, I guess,” Mavis answered. “The one she was running off with. He didn’t want her to get that locket, but Gloria said she had to have it, and she wasn’t going to leave without it.”

“But she
did
have it,” I said, baffled. “She had it when Porterfield found her that night.”

Mavis shrugged. “All I know is she had to have it. That’s what Gloria told me. That she had to have that locket and she wasn’t going to let him stop her. Said they fought about it ’Cause he didn’t want her to go get it.”

Go get it.
I felt something shift in my mind, saw Archie’s car parked beside the hedge, two people in the front seat, arguing desperately.
I have to have it, Archie. No. I’m going back for it. Gloria, don’t. I have to have it!
Then the door of my brother’s old black Ford opened,
Gloria racing out into the night, turning up the driveway, leaving the tracks in the snow that Wallace Porterfield had later seen.

“Did Gloria say what happened after she went back for the locket?” I asked.

“Just that she went to her room to get it, and she had it right in her hand when all hell broke loose downstairs. All this screaming, she said. Her mother screaming for her father, telling him that this boy had a gun.”

I heard my brother’s anguished apology,
I didn’t mean for her to see it.

Lavenia Kellogg, I thought, imagining Archie’s panic as Horace Kellogg rushed toward him.
So fast.
Rushed into the room and saw the pistol, turned and ran toward where he hoped to find his own.
So fast.
A woman fleeing up the stairs.
So fast.
A man running down a corridor.
So fast.
And so no time to think, to argue, to explain, no time to do anything but reach for the pistol they’d already seen and with it stop the screaming and the panic, the chaos and the terror, the wild rush of time, because everything was happening …
so fast.

“Oh, Archie,” I whispered.

Mavis toyed absently with her hair. “Well, you got any more questions?”

“No,” I answered. Now I knew, accepting the fact that Wallace Porterfield had had nothing whatsoever to do with my brother’s death, nor the murders themselves, nor ever connived to gain advantage from either of them. He had “played” with me, the old devil in him bent on tormenting me, but he was innocent of the deaths that had wrecked my family’s life.

“That’s it, then?” Mavis asked.

The gavel fell. Case closed, I thought, on Wallace Porterfield.

“Yes,” I said.

“Good,” Mavis said. “ ’Cause Wallace figured you was after him.”

“I was,” I admitted.

Mavis snorted. “I’m surprised ain’t nobody ever come after him before you,” she said, her voice filled with admiration for the aging sheriff, the evil he’d done yet always managed to escape. “ ’Course, Wallace had a way of scaring people so they wouldn’t tell.” She laughed. “Especially them girls he brought here.” She walked to a cabinet, drew out a bottle of whiskey, and poured herself a drink. “Brought in for questioning, he called it.”

Doc Poole’s voice sounded in my mind,
Betty said he took Lila in for questioning.

“Did you ever see any of these girls?” I asked. Mavis took a swig. “Seen ’em all.”

“Did you ever see a girl with bright red hair?”

Mavis set down her glass. “Red hair?” She laughed again, but mirthlessly. “No, I didn’t never see no girl with red hair.” She glanced away, her eyes squeezing together slightly as if trying to bring that very girl into focus, the one she hadn’t seen. “You better be on your way. I ain’t got no more time for this.”

“A girl with red hair,” I repeated coldly. “Brought in for questioning.”

Mavis walked to the sofa, snatched up the yellow slicker, and began to put it on. “I don’t remember no girl with red hair. Come on now, I got to go.”

My father’s accusation leapt from my mouth. “You’re a liar.”

Mavis stepped to the door and opened it. “Get out of here now.”

I didn’t move. “Porterfield brought a girl here. She had red hair. Her name was Lila Cutler.”

Mavis watched me tensely, her body rigid, eyes defiant. “I ain’t telling you nothing.”

I felt something rise, fierce and newly born in me, my father’s ancient rage. “What did he do to her?”

“He didn’t do nothing,” Mavis snarled. “Get out of here!”

I strode across the room, grabbed the door, slammed it, then grabbed Mavis Wilde by the throat and squeezed with a violence that seemed to build with each passing second.

Mavis’s eyes bulged, her face fixed in animal terror. She was gasping for air, but I didn’t care. “He said she wasn’t worth the fight.” She gasped. “Said she wasn’t even
fresh.”

My fingers bit into her throat. “Tell it all.”

“I thought he’d gone too far this time.” Mavis’s fingers clawed at my hand. “The way she fought him. I thought, ‘He’s gonna have to kill her ’cause that one ain’t gonna take it. She’s gonna tell for sure what he done to her.’ But he started telling her how he had the goods on her boyfriend. He said, ‘You keep your mouth shut about this if you want that boyfriend of yours to stay alive. ’Cause I can arrest him anytime I want to.’ That’s what Wallace told her. That she either keep her mouth shut or he’d make sure that boyfriend of hers paid for it good.”

I released Mavis Wilde’s throat and she sank to the
floor, sucking in great gulps of air. “I guess she never said nothing about what he done,” she gasped, “ ’cause nobody never come over here looking to make Wallace pay.”

Betty Cutler’s condemnation cut through my mind, You’re not the man your daddy was.

True enough
, I thought.
Until now.

Chapter Twenty-Five

My father’s eyes fluttered open as I slammed into his room. He saw the rage in my face, the steaming wave I rode.

“Roy? What happened?”

I jerked open the door of his closet. “Porterfield.” He stirred on the bed, kicking at the sheets. “What are you looking for?” “This.”

He stared at the rifle in alarm. “What’s got into you?”

“Where are the shells?”

“Put that gun down.”

He lifted himself to a sitting position, then drew his legs over the rumpled side of the bed. “Put it down, Roy.”

I jerked open the top drawer of his bureau, the place
he’d always kept his bullets in the past, and there it lay, a box of shells nestled among his socks and underwear.

“Roy, stop it,” my father said. “Gimme that gun.”

I opened the breech and shoved a bullet into the cylinder. “Wallace Porterfield is going to pay.”

I started for the door, but with an unexpected burst of energy, my father staggered forward and blocked my path. “Roy, give me that goddamn gun.”

“Get out of my way, Dad.”

For a moment, our eyes locked. Then my father stepped aside to let me pass.

I turned toward the door, heard my father rustle behind me, then a groan, like someone lifting a crushing weight, and after that, blackness.

I didn’t know how much time had gone by before I saw light again. My eyes opened, then closed, then opened again, a space of murky shadows. Minutes passed, and the shadows fled, the room now illuminated by a blinding shaft of sunlight.

I lay facedown on the floor, and it took me some time to realize that I was still in my father’s bedroom. Everything was silent, and in that silence I remembered the way I’d turned from my father, the sound of his groan, but it was only when I saw Archie’s baseball bat on the bed that I realized what he’d used.

Woozily, I staggered to my feet and looked around for the rifle. It wasn’t there. I stumbled out of the room, rubbing the knot at the back of my skull, and peered out the front window.

He was sitting silently on the old orange sofa behind me, the rifle in his lap. “You all right?” he asked.

When I only glared at him, he said, “I had to stop you, Roy.”

“You haven’t stopped me,” I said, the rage building again, fired by a terrible image of Lila on her back, Porterfield’s massive bulk rising and falling above. “I’m going to make him pay, Dad.”

I strode across the room and yanked the rifle from his hand.

“Roy, wait!” my father cried. “I ain’t losing nothing else to Wallace Porterfield!”

But I was already to my car. My father clung helplessly to one of the supporting posts of the porch as I drove away.

The anger continued to mount as I made my way toward Porterfield’s house, a bloodred tide that swept me down the long, winding road to where I hoped to find the old sheriff sitting in malevolent splendor, still the evil king at the rotten heart of Kingdom County.

I’d already begun to imagine the terrible violence of the coming confrontation when I drew in upon the house and saw the flashing lights.

Lonnie’s patrol car was parked in the driveway, along with two others from the State Police. An ambulance rested in the driveway, its double doors open.

I saw Lonnie standing beneath the great oak in his father’s yard, three uniformed officers around him, and there, a few yards away, lying on his back on the green lawn, the enormous figure of Wallace Porterfield.

A uniformed officer strode toward me as I approached the house.

“We’re not letting traffic through right now,” he said when I came to a stop.

“What happened?”

“It’s Wallace Porterfield,” the officer said. “Somebody shot him.”

I glanced toward the figure in the grass, the empty lawn chair beyond him, his now-vacant throne.

My father’s voice gathered around me:
I ain’t losing nothing else to Wallace Porterfield.