Judas Burning (6 page)

Dixon read Tucker’s brief story on the missing girls. It had been a difficult call to make, but by eleven, when the girls hadn’t returned, she’d finally settled on a small story simply saying they were missing. Her decision not to use names or photographs had aggravated Tucker, but she explained her reasons: no speculation, no panic. It was consideration for the families of the girls that held her back, not worry about the Chickasaw County authorities. As the sheriff had told Tucker, the girls would have to live down whatever was printed in the paper.

She typed out her four-paragraph story on the closed-door school board meeting and walked to the composing room to hang her copy on a hook for Linda. Once those stories were set and pasted up, the paper would be ready for Tucker to take to Gautier at two A.M., where it would be printed by an offset press. Wednesday before noon, the papers would be hauled to the post office for delivery.

She stood in the composing room, the backshop of the paper visible. When she’d bought the
Independent
, she’d gotten the old press and linotypes, dinosaurs, from a time long past in newspapering. She’d wanted them.

As a preschooler, she’d frequently gone to work with her father at his politically oriented weekly in Jackson. She’d stood on a crate beside him as he made up the heavy metal pages. Her job had been removing the old slugs of lead from the previous week’s issue. She’d take the slugs to the linotype machines where they would be melted down and reset. Most of the linotype operators were deaf, and they’d laughed in a high-pitched cackle when she deposited her small buckets of lead for them.

The press had been a roaring monster that rolled forward and retracted on its bed, the steady rhythm frightening—yet also satisfying and exciting. Once a pressman’s fingers had been crushed beneath the press as she watched. The pressman had gone to the emergency room, then returned to continue running the press. Getting the paper out was a matter of honor for all involved.

Shaking off the ghosts, she sighed. The
Independent’s
press hadn’t run in years and wouldn’t ever again. She was lollygagging in the past. She returned to her desk, picked up the phone, and dialed. There was one last lead to follow. A wary male voice answered on the first ring.

“This is Dixon Sinclair. May I speak with Tommy Hayes?”

There was a pause. “He isn’t home.”

“When do you expect him back?” She tapped the eraser on the pad as she listened to dogs barking in the background.

“He was supposed to be back at four.”

The man’s voice sounded worried. He was hoping she was the cavalry. Wrong story—she was the Big Bad Wolf. “I’m the publisher of the
Independent
, and I’d like to speak with Mr. Hayes when he returns. Would you take a message for him?”

“Why is the newspaper calling Tommy?” the young man demanded. “Has something happened? He should be home by now.”

Dixon hesitated. “Please ask Mr. Hayes to call me when he returns,” she answered.

“It’s that bitch Angie, isn’t it? He should have had her expelled.”

“Angie?” Dixon fumbled on her desk for the story of the missing girls. One of them was named … she found the copy that Tucker had turned in. Angie Salter. “What does Angie Salter have to do with this?”

There was silence, then the telephone hummed in her ear. Dixon swiveled her chair to face the front window. Dust motes swirled in the slanting golden sunlight, and she thought of the story her father had told her when she was a child. When the day died, the dust motes turned into tiny fairies, creatures brought to life by the fading sun to dance for an instant in the blue hour before the fall of night.

A brief, fierce dance of death.

Outside, along the half-mile strip of Main Street, the lights were on. The pink mercury vapors were the only concession to “town.” Jexville didn’t exactly welcome the night with celebration, but it didn’t struggle against the darkness with shafts of neon, either. It gave up gently with a locking of shop doors and the glow of kitchen lights and televisions.

She went to the composing room and reread Tucker’s story on the missing girls. The connection between Tommy Hayes, a just-fired teacher, and a missing girl, who might be the source of his problems, was disturbing. Her gut told her to play it big, but she left it as it was. If she trusted her gut, she’d end up back in the bottom of a bottle.

Awake in the moist embrace of the night, Dixon lay on her left side. In the moonlight that filtered through the bedroom window, the far wall was a pale coral. The beaded board paneling had been a bitch to paint.

In the darkness a vehicle shushed past leaving isolation in its wake. The house on Peterson Lane, with the woods around it and the small creek behind, remained untouched and secluded. She’d lived her adult life in the hustle of cities. Now she found the woods comforting but wasn’t sure why.

Beside the bed the gauzy curtain fluttered as if blown about by the unexpected cry of a bird that swam through the humid night. The gentle question of a hoot owl came from somewhere in the woods behind the house.

Dixon wasn’t sure whether it was the awful heat and humidity, anxiety, or a noise from the woods that had awakened her. She listened for a moment, but there was nothing except the owl and the autumnal rustle of the leaves, a branch brushing lightly against the screen on the window.

She rose from the bed and walked across the room, pulling the nightshirt away from her sticky skin. She fought the uncooperative windows closed and flipped on the old air conditioning unit that droned so loudly it blocked out the night sounds.

Ignoring the letter on her bedside table, she checked the clock. It was nearly dawn. Tucker would already have driven the black asphalt highway to the printing press in Gautier with this week’s edition of the
Independent
, Leaning back into the pillows, she forced herself to savor the sense of accomplishment. The front page was solid, and the editorial page had some teeth. It was a good start. The only thing that troubled her was the story on the missing girls. That and the letter.

At last she snapped on the light and lifted the letter to read again her mother’s angry words.

Dixon lowered the pages, but the words had already scalded her. She hadn’t meant to upset her mother, had never intended that her mother learn of her recent trip to the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman to visit the man who’d been sentenced to life for the murder of her father.

The phone beside the bed rang, and she snatched it up. “Hello.”

“Dixon, are you okay? You sound like you’re hatching that telephone.”

Dixon recognized Linda’s voice. “I was dreaming, I guess. What’s going on?”

“They’re gearing up a search for those missing girls. They’ll be leaving the sheriff’s office at dawn.” Linda cleared her throat. “I’m afraid something has happened to those girls.”

Dixon swung her feet to the floor. The pages of her mother’s letter fluttered beside her toes. “How’d you find out?”

“They called Frank to serve on the search party, but he can’t miss work. They’ve got an inspection at the shipyard, and he’s in charge.”

“Sheriff Horton is leading the search?”

“He’s the man.”

“Will he let a reporter tag along?”

Linda’s voice was soft, as if she were being careful not to wake someone in the house. “I don’t know him well enough to say, but ask him. J.D. will probably be glad to have you along. He was the chief source of gossip until you moved to town. You’ve sort of taken the heat off him.”

“I’ll bet.” Dixon felt along the floor for her slippers.

There was silence before Linda spoke again. “Don’t let on that you heard about the search from me. I don’t care, but it would make it hard on Frank.”

Standing, Dixon glanced at the clock. She just had time for a shower. “Listen, Tucker’s in Gautier. He can’t get back in time, so I’ll have to go. Can you and Tucker handle getting the paper over to the post office?”

“No problem. Just remember that you owe me.”

“I get the feeling I’m going to owe you a lot more. Thanks.”

“Dixon.” Linda hesitated. “Angle’s a kid with a lot of troubles. Plenty of them she makes for herself. Still, she’s a kid. Folks around here like to judge a person, and once the verdict’s in, there’s no second chance.”

Dixon knew what she was asking. “They’re juveniles, Linda. If they’re into something, we’ll have to be very careful with the story.”

“Angie thinks she’s tough, but she’s been lucky.” She sighed. “She wouldn’t agree with that, but she has. Look, be careful. There’re places in that swamp where you really can disappear.”

Dawn broke hot and hazy, the sun fighting to penetrate the dense atmosphere that seemed at least 90 percent water. Eustace sat in the old, brown Adirondack chair and sipped the hot coffee. He’d slept little. Throughout the night, Camille had thrashed and moaned. Waking her would have done no good, so he’d lain beside her, soothing her with a gentle hand on her back or a whisper.

Camille’s nocturnal episodes were less frequent now, but they worried him. She lived with demons, and though some had evaporated along the banks of the river during the year she’d been with him, others remained. They tormented her, invading her sleep and even her waking moments. She never talked about them or the past. She had made it clear that both topics were off limits. Because he was afraid he’d lose her, he had complied. But, when the demons came, her face would draw together, shutting him out, and he felt as if he’d die of loneliness.

He took a swallow of his coffee and looked down the river. A caravan of trucks and cars slowly moved onto the Pascagoula River Bridge. Eustace sat up straighter, shifting his coffee cup to the arm of the chair. There were at least a dozen cars. Once the road had been a federal highway, but now it was mostly abandoned. Large portions of the land around the river had been purchased by the Nature Conservancy, preserved against man’s uncontrollable desire to destroy the wilderness. Access to much of the swampland had been restricted, and that was fine with him. He liked it best when he had the river to himself.

“Eustace.”

He turned at Camille’s voice. She was a vision in her flimsy nightshirt, her red hair hanging nearly to her waist in thick curls. She smiled tentatively, as if she’d done something wrong in the night. “I’m sorry I kept you up.”

“You didn’t,” he lied.

She touched his face. “I did.” She kissed him. “What are you going to do today?”

“Maybe hang around here. I need to work on a few boat motors.” The truth was, he didn’t want to leave her. The vehicles on the bridge meant that strangers were about. Camille had never learned to protect herself. She was like a child, willing to talk with anyone, assuming that strangers meant her no harm.

“I want to go to the place where we’re going to build the kiln,” she said. “I want to start work on it.”

“I thought you’d planned to do something with your mother.” He hated Vivian and Calvin, but he would never interfere with Camille’s relationship with them.

“I don’t want to. I’m not going to.”

He knew that she wouldn’t call them. And he would get the blame for it.

“There’s a man in the woods.” She was looking across the water to the west bank of the river, to the place they’d planned to build her kiln to fire her ceramics.

Her words chilled him. Besides the fish heads and beer, things had gone missing from around his camp. Food, a knife, towels, and a beautiful table runner that had been Camille’s grandmother’s.

“Are you saying you’ve seen a man in the woods?” he asked. He had to be very specific with Camille, and it was possible that she was referring to her nightmares.