One Summer (42 page)

“Chief.” His voice stopped the older man just before he would have pushed through the revolving doors in the center of the vast glass wall that fronted the entrance of the hospital.

Wheatley glanced back, saw Johnny, and made a motion to him to follow him through the doors. Johnny did, impatiently. Outside the hospital, in the still-warm September air, the two men stood side by side on the walk in front of the tall brick building. The chief, a burly figure in his blue uniform and hat, had his arms folded across his chest. Johnny, leaner in his jeans and white T-shirt, his new, shorter haircut making him much less likely to attract conservative Tylerville’s negative attention, stood with his hands thrust into his pants pockets.

“You wanted to see me?”

Wheatley nodded once, curtly. “I didn’t know if you’d gotten the message.”

“What is it?” Johnny was terse.

“It’s not good news.”

“Never is.”

“Okay. There’s a lot of bad feeling against you in town.”

Johnny relaxed slightly. He’d been afraid that Wheatley was going to tell him something had happened to Jeremy that he hadn’t cared to mention in front of the ladies when they were already so upset. Hearing more of the same crap he’d heard all his life was a relief. “So what else is new?”

The chief shook his head. “This is different. The talk’s real ugly, uglier than I’ve ever heard it. People think you’re guilty as hell, no matter what I tell ’em to the contrary,
and it’s making ’em mad that you’re still running around free.”

“Are you trying to tell me that I should keep one eye open for a lynch mob?”

The chief pursed his lips. “Now, I never said that. These people here in Tylerville, they’re good people, by and large. But the Watkins woman’s killing and her boy going missing have got everybody real upset. People are wondering if the kid’s been killed to shut him up, and Tom Watkins says for his money you’re the one that did it. Other people have put two and two together to identify Rachel as the killer’s next target, if there is one. Most folks hereabouts have got kids of their own, so the boy worries ’em. And everybody’s got a real respect for Rachel, so they don’t much like the idea of her ending up like the other two.”

Johnny looked hard at the chief. “You still think I did it, don’t you?”

“You’re putting words in my mouth again. I’m not saying that I think you did it. If Rachel’s telling the truth—and I’ve never known her to lie—you couldn’t have. All I’m saying is, if something happens to Rachel, or the boy turns up dead, your life isn’t gonna be worth a nickel around here. It’s not worth much more than a quarter as it is.”

Johnny started to speak, but the chief held up a silencing hand.

“Now, you let me finish. There’s two ways that I’ve been looking at it. One, Rachel’s telling the truth, and you couldn’t have killed Mrs. Watkins. Still, you were seeing her, just like you were seeing Marybeth Edwards. They’re both dead. Looks to me like Rachel’s a prime candidate to make a third, because the only thing that makes a lick of real sense with that theory is that somebody’s killing off your women. Or number two, you’re a maniac who killed Marybeth Edwards and Mrs. Watkins yourself, for unknown reasons, and Rachel’s lying to protect you. That’s
the word that’s going around town. Either way, Rachel’s in a heck of a lot of trouble—because of you.”

Johnny’s lips tightened. “You need to put police protection on her. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

The chief nodded. “I have considered it. But we’ve got a six-man force, and all the other crime in Tylerville is not going to cease because we’ve got an ongoing murder investigation. The last two killings were eleven years apart. I can’t assign a man to Rachel full time for the next eleven years.”

“So you called me out here to tell me that I’m still a suspect, and that any way it goes down, Rachel’s in danger. Is that it?”

The chief slowly shook his head. “You got it wrong. I called you out here to tell you to get the hell out of town. We’ll all sleep easier with you gone.”

“What about Rachel?” Anger sharpened Johnny’s voice.

Wheatley shrugged. “She can’t be worse off with you out of here, and she may be a heck of a lot safer. And I don’t much fancy the prospect of cutting you down from a tall tree one of these days.”

Johnny’s mouth twisted. “Okay, you’ve said your piece. Now let me say mine. Much as I want to, I’m not leaving this one-horse town unless Rachel comes with me, and Rachel can’t leave right now because of her father. So Tylerville’s fucking stuck with me.”

The chief didn’t even blink at the biting profanity. “Can’t force you to leave.”

“No,” Johnny said, meeting his eyes dead on, “you can’t.”

“Fair enough. Just thought I’d pass my thoughts along.” Wheatley started to move away, then glanced back at Johnny. “For the record, I personally don’t think you’re guilty. But I’ve been wrong before.”

Johnny didn’t say anything. The chief shrugged and headed toward where his gray Taurus was parked against the curb not far away. He opened the driver’s door while
Johnny watched him. Then Wheatley looked at Johnny across the car’s roof.

“By the way, you got any old girlfriends left around here?” he asked.

“None living,” Johnny replied tightly. The chief appeared to consider that, nodded once, and got into his car.

Johnny stood there for a long time before he went back inside.

48

I
t took a long time to die. Jeremy discovered that, as the hours blended into each other with seamless horror. No food, no water, no light, no end to the awful stabbing pain that shot through his head every time he moved, but still he lived. How many hours, or days, or weeks had passed he didn’t know, but it seemed longer than a year that he had been locked in the cold smelly darkness, alone except for his mom’s voice.

He knew now that the voice was hers, and it comforted him. His fingertips were raw and bloody from where he had tried to claw his way out through the stone walls or through the iron door where the thing had stood. He knew now that there was no way out, and hopelessness increased his misery. He lay curled on the stone floor while his head pounded and colored spots flickered against the screen of his closed lids and his body shivered with chill. He drifted in and out of awareness, and when the pain or fear got bad, his mom talked to him. Jeremy pretended that he was safe in his own bed with Jake curled next to him and his mom in the rocking chair in the corner of the room where she always sat.

“Jeremy, do you remember when I let you play hooky from school and we went fishing in the creek?”

Yeah, Mom.

“Remember two Christmases ago, when Santa brought you that new bike?”

Yeah, Mom.

“Remember Halloween … Thanksgiving … your birthday?”

Yeah, Mom.

Sometimes she recited the nursery rhymes he remembered from earliest childhood, sometimes she sang to him, nonsense songs that he liked and lullabies for Jake, and sometimes she just told him that she was present. When thirst parched his throat, it was his mom who made him get up despite his aching head and feel around the walls of his prison for trickles of moisture that would keep him alive. When he found one, he licked greedily at the slimy stone wall and as the water soothed his dry tongue and burning throat he felt her jubilation. Though more and more he yearned to go to her, he felt that she did not want him to cross over to where she was. She wanted him to live.

Hunger was a gnawing pain inside him at first, but gradually it subsided into a dull emptiness that didn’t hurt anymore. He lay all curled up next to where the water trickled down the wall, licking it when he needed to, and listened to his mom. That was the best way to keep the terror at bay.

Because he knew that sooner or later, the thing would come back for him. And this time he was afraid that it wasn’t going to go away.

At the thought of that shiny silver knife, he sobbed aloud. And he kept on sobbing, even though his mom talked to him through the blackness to try to take away his fear.

“Be brave, son. Be brave.”

49

O
n Friday, Stan improved slightly, enough that both Elisabeth and Rachel felt that they could leave him at the same time. Becky stayed at the hospital—none of them would even consider leaving Stan alone—while Johnny drove Rachel and her mother to Walnut Grove in Rachel’s car. Elisabeth, sitting in the front seat with Johnny, was little more than a pale shadow of the woman she had been the Sunday before. She leaned her head back against the seat, eyes closed, hands resting quietly in her lap. For one of the very few times in her life, Rachel realized that she was seeing her mother less than perfectly groomed.

None of the three in the car spoke. Rachel and Elisabeth were worn out, and Johnny was quiet because he sensed that they needed to be. But the silence was comfortable. For the first time, Rachel was able to take stock of all that had happened since Stan had been stricken. She realized that one good thing had resulted from the nightmare: the last disorienting days in the hospital had done much to reconcile Elisabeth to Johnny. Crisis had forced her mother to rely on him, and Johnny had responded even better than Rachel could have hoped. He’d been there when he was needed, and in the process he had done much to endear himself to her family. By that odd
alchemy that sometimes occurs in times of stress, Johnny had become one of them.

As they pulled into the gates of Walnut Grove, Rachel felt a lightening of her spirits for the first time since Stan had been stricken. The sun was shining, the air was warm, the foliage that was changing into its autumn colors was beautiful. Even the house seemed especially welcoming as they entered. Katie was singing a silly song with Tilda in the kitchen, and the child’s gaiety touched a chord in Rachel’s heart. A big pot of what smelled like vegetable soup bubbled on the stove.

“Just in time for lunch,” Tilda said, looking up with a wide smile as they entered. Katie ran with a screech straight for Rachel. Rachel scooped the child up, kissing her and never minding that her little hands were sticky from the candy stick that she had abandoned on the floor in her excitement.

“Where is everybody, Tilda?” Elisabeth asked. It was obviously an effort for her to speak at all. She was so tired that her words were faintly slurred.

“J.D.’s gone to fetch Loren from kindergarten, Lisa’s at school till three, and Katie-did and I are right here in the kitchen, aren’t we, Katie-did?”

“In the kitchen,” Katie corroborated with a nod.

“Why don’t you go upstairs and lie down for a while, Mother?” Rachel asked with some concern.

“I think I will. I am bone tired.” Elisabeth kissed Katie, who giggled, then left the kitchen, moving like a very old woman. Never before had Rachel thought of her mother as old, and the notion frightened her.

“I think I’ll go help Mother get settled,” she said, and passed Katie to Tilda. The child protested, but Tilda distracted her with a pan and a spoon to bang it with. The noise followed Rachel up the stairs.

When she returned to the kitchen some fifteen minutes later, after having run her mother’s bath and laid out her robe and nightgown, she discovered Katie standing on a
chair playing happily in the sink, Johnny leaning against the counter talking to Tilda, who treated him much like one of her own four sons, and Tilda slicing ham for sandwiches. That done, Tilda dished up two bowls of soup. She placed those and the lunch plates, which included potato salad and pickles and big glasses of milk as well as the sandwiches, on the round, polished oak kitchen table, then bore a protesting Katie out of the kitchen so that Rachel and Johnny could eat in peace.

Johnny tucked into his food with relish, but after a couple of sips of soup, Rachel pushed hers away.

“Something wrong with it?” Johnny inquired with a truculent look that told Rachel he knew very well there wasn’t. He had become very particular about how much and what she ate over the last few days, telling her that it was no wonder she was so tiny because a good-size mouse consumed more than she did. Rachel, in no mood to be force-fed, made a face at him. But in a compromise response to his hard-eyed stare, she ate the rest of her soup. More than that she simply could not do.