Redemption (13 page)

And he’s only two years older than me,
Overton thought.
The man lived in a bottle for far too long.

A guard ushered Creed into the tiny room, seated him in a chair in front of a table, and unlocked his cuffs. Overton nodded once to the guard who left the room and locked the door behind him.

“
Long time, Creed,” Overton said.

“
Yep.” Creed tapped his hands on the table, occasionally stealing a peek at Autumn.

“
How’ve you been?”

“
Ain’t complainin’.”

“
You know why I’m here?”

Creed nodded then raised his eyes to stare at Autumn. “Who’s this?”

“
Autumn Harper,” Overton said.

“
What’s she doin’ here?” Creed asked.

Overton smiled. “I’m getting right old, Creed, I’m losing my memory. Miss Harper’s here to take notes for me, if it’s all right with you.”

Creed shrugged. “Makes no difference to me. I called my lawyer. He’ll be here shortly.”

Creed Rydell has a lawyer?
“Who’s your lawyer?”

“
Curtis Daniels. He said he’d be right over.”

Curtis Daniels?
“That hot-shot lawyer with the TV ads?”

“
Yep.” Creed looked up at the lights. “The hot-shot lawyer.”

He has to be lying.
“How’d you manage to get him?”

Creed rubbed his hands together and sat back. “Beats me. He just showed up the day I got caught. He said he’d help me no charge. I wasn’t in no position to argue with him.”

No charge? So who’s paying Daniels?
“So you don’t know who’s paying him?”

“
Nope.”

“
But you’re still in jail,” Overton said. “Has he helped you at all?”

Creed smiled revealing a mouth with several missing teeth, the remaining teeth almost bronze. “Yep.”

“
But you’re still here, Creed, and it’s over some parking tickets.”

Creed shrugged. “So maybe it’s where I want to be. It’s safer here.”

Jail is safe?
“But all these years just for unpaid parking tickets?”

Creed shrugged again, lacing his fingers together behind his head. “Food’s not bad, it’s quiet most days, and the nig, I mean, the blacks leave me alone cuz they think I got AIDS.”

“
Do you?”

Creed coughed and leaned forward, whispering, “No, and don’t go tellin’ no one that I don’t. Makes life easier when folks think you’re dying.”

“
I won’t tell a soul.”

Creed again drummed his fingers on the table. “I heard about Darcy and Annie.”

“
You okay?”

“
I guess.”

He’s not that broken up,
Overton thought.
I need to shake him up.
“You hear about Lester?”

Creed blinked. “Who?”

“
Lester Williams,” Overton said. “Ran the gas station.”

“
Never heard of him.”

Because he’s black, probably.
“He got blown up.”

Creed’s fingers stopped moving. “That so? At the gas station?”

“
No. At his house. Propane explosion.”

Creed nodded. “That’s a shame. Gettin’ blown up at your house.”

“
Sure is, and it’s happened all at once, too, hasn’t it? And I wonder why all this is happening at all, don’t you?”

Creed’s fingers danced again. “People die. That’s a fact of life.”

Overton nodded. “Yeah, they do, Creed, but not all at once like this. I mean, Darcy, your daughter dies, and then Annie, the mother of your daughter, dies, and now Lester, someone you claim not to know, dies. You see what I’m dealin’ with, Creed?”

Creed looked at the lights again. “I ain’t sayin’ no more till Mr. Daniels gets here.”

Overton sat back.
I just need to find the right button to push.
“Is Mr. Daniels always late?”

“
He’ll be here.”

“
When did you call him?” Overton asked.

“
Soon as I known you was comin’.”

He knew
I
knew that he knew something about all this,
Overton thought,
so he called in the cavalry.
“Why, Creed? I might have just been coming for a social visit, you know, talk over old times.”

Creed rolled his eyes. “This ain’t no damn social visit, is it?”

“
No.” Overton leaned forward and lowered his voice. “But to make that call without knowing for
sure
the purpose of my visit, that tells me you’re hiding something.”

“
I just know what’s comin’.”

“
What’s coming, Creed?”

Creed folded his arms across his chest. “I ain’t sayin’ another damn thing.”

Wrong button. Least I have him talking.
“Now Creed, if you
knew
I was coming, why didn’t you wait until Curtis Daniels got here to even begin talking to me?”

Creed sat back. “Well, maybe I just wanted to know more about what happened to Darcy and Annie.”

You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Fair enough.
“Okay, what do you want to know?”

“
Did they ... did they suffer much?”

Overton shook his head emphatically. “No. Darcy just went to sleep and didn’t wake up, and Annie died right peacefully, too.”

Creed nodded. “Well, that’s good. That’s real good. They suffered enough while they was alive.”

Let’s try another button.
“The pink Cadillac that hit Annie broke her spine and probably paralyzed her in an instant.”

Creed’s eyes glazed over, his hands shooting out to steady himself on the table. “Did it, now?”

That
was the button. Thought it might be.
“Yep. Calhoun police found the pink Cadillac at the airport. No way of telling who was driving it, sorry to say. A pink Cadillac that old, you know. Thousands of prints. They’re checkin’ ‘em all, you know, just to be sure. We ought to know in a few weeks who all drove it. Might be fifteen, sixteen years of prints in that pink Cadillac.”

Creed closed his eyes. “Is that a fact?”

“
Yep. And you know where it had been? In a junkyard of all places. But someone hauled it out of there, fixed it up, and ran Annie down. Never liked Caddies much, but a pink one?”

Creed’s hands were gripping the table, his thumbs tracing sweat across the surface.

And now the question I have been waiting to ask.
“You never owned a Cadillac, did you Creed?”

“
Once.” Creed opened his eyes. “Nice one, too.”

He didn’t deny it?
“You did? It wasn’t pink, was it?”

Creed nodded. “Paint had come off. Pink was the primer color.”

“
Now ain’t that a coincidence?” Overton paused to take a breath. “Big engine in that thing, huh?”

“
Terrible on gas,” Creed said. “Rode like a dream.”

Probably the only car Creed will ever own.
“I wonder who would do such a terrible thing to poor old Annie.”

“
She wasn’t poor,” Creed said loudly. “She didn’t have to pay no rent. She didn’t have to pay for nothin’.”

“
Like the hospital bills?” Autumn asked.

Creed’s eyes darted to Autumn. “Them and a whole bunch of other stuff. That’s also how I got the Caddy.”

Autumn nodded. “You got the Caddy so you could visit Darcy, right?”

Creed looked up, his eyes clearer. “Yep. Darcy was the only thing I ever done right in this life.”

Autumn shrugged at Overton, and Overton nodded. “And you visited her right often,” Autumn said, “as any father should, right?”

Creed exhaled. “Much as I could. Darcy had quite a time in that hospital. All them tests and machines and tubes. We thought we was gonna lose her during the delivery, but she pulled through.”

So there
was
a baby,
Overton thought. “What happened to the baby, Creed?” Overton asked.

“
Cute little bugger. Had Darcy’s ears. Quite a fighter, that one. Had all sorts of tubes in him, too. The doctors made him live in a bubble for a spell. They wouldn’t let me hold him for the longest time, but when I did ...” Tears formed in Creed’s eyes. “I didn’t
never
want no harm to come to him, I swear! It was all part of the deal! I was just too ... I was just too damn drunk to figure it out! We coulda raised that child, I know we coulda!”

Overton’s heart hurt.
Jesus, they left the baby to die in a cemetery!

“
I know you could have raised the boy, Creed,” Autumn said. “You’d have made a good grandfather.”

Creed wiped his face with his sleeves. “Woulda been my second chance. I messed up the first one bad enough.”

Overton leaned close to Creed. “Tell me, Creed. Where was all that money coming from?”

“
Hell if I know. It just came. Went to check out that day with the baby, with a brand-new car seat, too. I go to get the bill, and they tell me it’s already been paid. ‘By who?’ I asked, and they say, ‘You don’t know?’ ‘I don’t know, you tell me,’ I said, and I guess I said it kinda loud, might have cussed a bit, so they asked me to leave. They didn’t have no right to kick me out of the hospital. I visited that boy every day. They knew me, and they treated me wrong.”

I can’t have him going off on a ranting tangent now.
“Who told you to leave the baby at the cemetery?”

“
Annie,” Creed said. “Annie told me to do it.”

Sure,
Overton thought
. Blame the dead.
“Annie told you to do it.”

“
She got some sort of message, you know, from the skies or some such nonsense. I didn’t want to, I mean, I was lookin’ at that little boy’s eyes lookin’ at me, I mean, there was a piece of me there, understand? I was just lookin’ at him.” The tears fell more frequently now. “I wrapped him tight in three blankets, even gave him a bottle, kissed his cheek ...” Creed lay his head on the table and openly wept.

Overton was looking at a broken man, a shell of a man beset by demons and hiding from the world. He felt some sympathy for Creed but couldn’t bring himself to forgive a man for leaving a baby to die. “What happened to you for the next ten years, Creed?”

Creed looked up. “Nothin’. Nothin’ at all.”

The door swung open with a thump. “Hello.”

Curtis Daniels in all his three-piece-suit-wearing glory.
“Howdy, Mr. Daniels.” Overton pulled Autumn’s notepad toward him and flipped a page.

Daniels shut the door behind him. “Are we having a chat with my client without his lawyer present?”

“
Creed and I are old friends,” Overton said, “and I was just giving him some more information about Annie Mitchem and his daughter, Darcy. We were just talking about funeral arrangements.”

Daniels slid his leather briefcase onto the table. “Is this true, Mr. Rydell?”

Creed looked straight at Overton. “Yes sir.”

Daniels motioned to Autumn with a gold pen. “And who is this enchanting creature?”

Autumn smiled and extended a hand. “Autumn Harper. I’m a friend of the family.”

Daniels shook her hand. “A pleasure.” He turned to face Creed. “Next time, Mr. Rydell, it would behoove you to wait until I get here. You may proceed with your visit, Sheriff.”

Overton scribbled a few letters on the page. “So, Creed, you’ve decided to use McSorley’s in Pine.”

Creed cleared his throat. “Yep. They do nice work.”