June Bug (19 page)

18

Sheriff Hadley Preston measured his steps on the dirt road, taking in the sounds of crickets and watching fireflies ascend. His eyes adjusted to the moonlight and shadows of tree branches.

There was movement along the ditch as an animal crept along. An opossum lumbered across the road, fat and sated on some carrion, its long tail dragging. He always had a mixture of revulsion and respect for the bottom-feeder. Like an above-pond turtle, eating anything dead it could sink its sharp teeth into. Preston nearly picked up a stick and threw it, if only to see it roll on its back and snarl its mouth into a death pose. It protected itself by making predators think it was already dead, kind of like most of Congress, he thought. But he thought better of making noise.

With all of its ugliness and impurity, there was something noble and likable about an animal that would do whatever it needed to protect its young and provide for them. The possum was just trying to get by, and there was honor in that.

Preston listened to Mike move from the cruiser and across the creek. The kid had made a loud splash and cursed, and Preston rolled his eyes and couldn’t help but smile. Mike made his way back into the hillside with relative ease and little noise, made easier by the presence of life springing forth in the early summer heat. The ground was wet and pliable now, not stiff and crackly like in the fall when things died and fell and became noisy underfoot.

A mosquito sucked blood from Preston’s neck and he swatted at it as a few deerflies tried to get in on the action. A swarm of gnats surrounded him like a cloud. He waved his hat like a horse swishes its tail. He figured there was some stagnant water nearby, and he caught a whiff of something rotting. He picked up the pace, waving his hat and spitting out a gnat that had flown in his mouth. The swarm finally lessened, though a deerfly did find the vulnerable spot on his neck. Life is harsh and unforgiving in the woods, and when something dies, something else lives, and the rest pay the price.

Preston spotted the cabin, if you could call it that, on a little rise away from the road. Just four walls and a small window in front and a pipe sticking out of the roof. Two doors, one in front and one in back. There were bigger gaps in the rotting wood around the cabin than he remembered, and the window had only a few shards of glass left. Ancient shingles on one side of the roof looked like they were moving in the moonlight.

Preston had been here with his father and mother, searching for her brother, an Army veteran from the Korean conflict. The man had gotten lost in the bottle so many times his body had wasted to next to nothing. There was a pattern to his life—he’d straighten out, spend some time at the VA hospital in Huntington, and then resume his concrete work. He was one of the best concrete flatwork finishers in the county. He’d even show up at church a few times, thanking people for their prayers and saying he hoped he would never find himself in that position again. But he’d eventually get mixed up with the wrong people, and one day he’d just be gone, disappearing into the shell. Preston’s mother would start looking, asking where he might be, and it led her here one winter, on a tip from one of his drinking buddies.

Preston’s father had gotten out of the car and stood there, his breath floating in the chill wind, staring at the countryside and the little building. “Wait here,” he had said, and Preston had never seen the lines of worry on the man’s face like that.

His mother and father walked up the hill together over the frozen ground, peeking in the window and cupping their hands to see inside. His mother scraped at the frost. Then they opened the door and went into the darkened shack, and Preston wondered what they had found inside. Just his imagination kicking in to the horror. Half of the fear of life is not knowing something that you wished you knew, and the other half is knowing it.

Preston took a breath and let it out, standing there as a grown-up, watching the two in his memory, carrying the sack of bones that was his uncle down to the car, his mother crying and struggling over uneven ground, his uncle trying to put a foot out every now and then, and his father carrying most of the weight with one arm, like a sack of grain that had a hole in the bottom and was spilling out. Preston had held the car door, but his uncle stopped short and tilted his head and retched until he finally tossed the contents of his stomach on the ground. A mixture of brown and red splattered Preston’s shoes. The man’s face was like a ghost’s when he stood.

“Sorry about that, Hadley,” his uncle said as if just noticing him. “How you doin’, boy?”

“I’m okay.”

And then they all got in and drove out of the hollow, his uncle rolling down the window and trying to get his mouth positioned outside. His clothes stained, his beard and stubble growing around chapped lips, his skin sallow and shrunken, drawn so that there was nothing but skin on bone. His eyes had scared Preston the most. It almost looked like he was another person now, and in truth, he was.

His father had Preston get out at the end of their road—it was about a mile walk to the house from there—and he told him to head home and stay there until they got back. That was okay with Preston. The last place he wanted to be was the VA hospital with all the sick people and the crying and the smells. To this day Preston had a hard time with any hospital, and he was pretty sure it had started with one of those trips.

Over the years, the cabin had been vandalized by young people until the property owner boarded up the entrances and put Posted signs around it. The occasional hunter now occupied it, but few would ever stay overnight. There was a sickly, moldy smell about the place, as if water had soaked the wood so much that it was beyond repair. As Preston stood there in the moonlight, he could feel the familiar ache of the spot, like a pinpoint on a map of the heart that brought back hurt just by looking at it.

Something moved to the right up the hill. Preston spotted Mike snaking along the ridge behind the cabin. The kid was moving quickly with his revolver out and his hands spread to catch himself if he fell. A wall of dirt stood behind the cabin, and Preston was surprised with all the slippage of the land over the years that it hadn’t already caved in.

A little farther was a small car pulled off to the side. Someone had made a feeble attempt to hide it with stray branches and an uprooted bush or two. From the back it looked like a Toyota. He clicked on his flashlight and saw the reflection of West Virginia plates.

As soon as Mike was behind the cabin and out of sight, Preston saw two quick bursts from the flashlight in the trees overhead. He signaled the same and moved up the hill. There was no light inside the cabin and no movement that he could tell, other than the ghostly moonglow on the shingles.

As he stepped onto the front porch, a raccoon darted out and streaked past him. Preston nearly fell backward, but he caught a sapling and regained his balance. He listened for a moment and heard no movement inside. Maybe this whole thing was a ruse. Maybe it wasn’t Gray’s car up the road. But when he set foot on the porch and the first board squeaked like some haunted house’s front door, Preston heard a click inside that sounded like a shotgun.

“Gray, it’s Sheriff Preston. I want to talk to you.” His voice sounded strained, even to himself, as his words echoed through the hills.

No response.

He released the snap over his holster and pulled out the gun, then took a step to his left, away from the door. He didn’t think the boy had the nerve to actually open fire on anyone but himself. But if he had enough liquor in him and was scared of going to jail, who knew what could happen.

“Nobody has to get hurt here, Gray. Come out and let’s talk.”

Preston hadn’t trained at hostage negotiation or talking someone down from a ledge, but he knew enough that calm and reassuring words could go a long way. He had to be careful not to use Walker’s name like a used car salesman. He’d done that one too many times with a young fellow in Hurricane he’d found holed up in his high school chemistry room. It was one of those images stuck in his mind he couldn’t shake. The kid holding a handgun to his chin, scared as a trapped mouse.

“I’m done talking, Sheriff,” Gray said, his voice muffled and groggy, as if he’d just come out of hibernation. “You done made up your mind about me.”

“That’s not true. I haven’t made up my mind about anything. I don’t know what went on that night. I’m trying to get answers. Now come out and we’ll just talk.”

“Right. The lawman always
just wants to talk.
” He said it in a mocking tone, like something he’d seen on a sitcom that deserved a laugh track. “And pretty soon I’m strung up in some tree. I’m convicted already, and you know it.”

“Nobody’s going to string you—”

Gray cursed loudly, interrupting him. It sounded like he was pacing. “You judged me from the minute you saw me. And what did you find on the computer?”

“Just some pictures, and you already explained that your friend was the one who downloaded them. Now come out and let me hear your side of that night.”

“Fine. Here’s what I got to say: I didn’t do nothing to that little girl.”

“And I believe you,” Preston said.

Gray muttered something Preston couldn’t hear, and the boards kept creaking inside.

“That might surprise you, but I’ve had a sense about this whole thing that you’re not the one we’re after.”

“Then you know you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“But how do I know? You ran off, which makes people think you’re guilty. So come on back with us and we’ll get this settled.”

“I come back with you and I’ll wind up in jail the rest of my life.”

“How can that happen if you didn’t do anything?”

“Jails are full of innocent people; you know that. They’ve killed a few who they found out didn’t commit the crime.”

Preston knew the more he could drag words out of Gray, the better chance they had of bringing him in. “You got me there, and that’s why I want to talk. I don’t want to hunt the wrong person. I believe you didn’t have anything to do with this, but I also think you know more. So come on out and we’ll discuss it man-to-man.”

“There’s not going to be any man-to-man stuff. Do you know what they’ll do to a guy like me in prison?”

Preston’s mind was flying with thoughts about what he meant by “a guy like me.”

“Graham, don’t get ahead of yourself. Nobody gets sent to prison for just talking about some old case. Now I’m getting eat up by gnats out here, and the deerflies are starting to form a frontal assault. Come out and I promise you’ll get a fair shake.”

“You’re just ticked off because I got away. Made you look bad.”

Preston laughed. “I’ll admit I’m not too happy about it. You got those newshounds laughing their butts off and calling me Barney Fife. But I’ll take all that if we get to the bottom of this.”

There was silence, then a clink of glass inside. It sounded like Gray was taking one more drink. He hadn’t planned a long conversation—didn’t think the boy was capable. Preston hoped Mike would stay put and not do anything stupid.

“That should show you how guilty I think you are,” Preston said. “If I thought you were the one, I’d have put an armed guard on you. But I was just asking questions.”

Something banged inside, a bottle on a table, a gun on the floor—he couldn’t tell. This was the point where Preston could set the hook if he played it right. It was also the point where the whole thing could fall apart.

“Here’s how I figure it,” Preston began again. “You come with me, and you can sleep it off. Then in the morning I’ll head over to the Village Inn and get some sausage and biscuits and you can tell me what you know. Simple as that. How’s that sound?”

“I’m not hungry,” Gray said, his voice a little softer now.

Preston inched closer to the door, trying not to make the boards creak. “If we don’t see any connection with you and the girl, you’re free. Now I’m shooting straight.”

Gray’s voice came as a whine. “You don’t know. You just don’t know.”

“There’s nothing you’ve done that can’t be worked out.”

“It don’t matter what I have or haven’t done; you’ve already decided I’m guilty.”

“I have not! Gray, I haven’t decided anything.” Preston was right next to the door, his nose almost against the wood. “And believe it or not, I’m here to help. Your thinking is off. Your head is clouded and that’s understandable. So just come on out and—”

Something cracked loudly, like wood splintering, and then there was an explosion. Someone yelled—it sounded like Mike—and something banged against the floor. Preston kicked at the door, but the thing was sturdier than it looked and he fell backward. He got up and kicked again, and the door crackled and fell in. He crouched there in the doorway waiting for another blast, but all he heard were footsteps out the back. Then the heavy panting of Mike on the floor.

“He ran out, Sheriff,” Mike said, gasping.

It was dark in the room, and Preston could only make out the silhouette of his deputy. The back door teetered, held on by one hinge.

“I’m sorry. I tried to surprise him.”

Preston clicked on the flashlight expecting to see a crimson stream somewhere on the boy’s body. Instead, he smelled a sickly aroma of a man who had lost control. Mike sat against a wall, covering his face. “You okay?”