Shivaree (24 page)

FIFTY

Francis examined her reflection. She wore her favorite robe, a faded rose one Dylan had chosen as a Christmas present for her some years ago, back before he had picked up any of his bad habits. Back when he was still her little sweet-faced angel boy. She tugged the side of her curler cap down, and twisted off the lid of her cold cream. She applied a dab on the forehead, then smoothed the cream into an even coat. A dab on each cheek, on the chin. She gently worked the cream up, then ran her hands under warm water.

It had taken her an hour in a hot tub to help her relax after nearly hitting the fool who’d been standing in the road. She’d barely managed to swerve in time. She forced the thought from her head. No use getting herself all worked up again over it.

She tightened her robe and turned off the light, padding down the stairs in her new slippers. The old ones, the ones her husband had bought her as an anniversary present before he grew ill, had worn clean through, so she found a new pair that somewhat resembled them. She wouldn’t allow the unfamiliar to creep into her house. When Dylan finally returned, she wanted him to feel at home, to know this was where he belonged.

Oh, how she rued the day she allowed that Ruby girl beneath her roof. Originally, she had approved of a liaison between them. It seemed like the two might be a good match, both socially—Ruby was, after all, the daughter of a judge—and physically, too. Her dark eyes and raven hair were diametrically opposed to Dylan’s Apollo-like radiance, though her features were indeed exquisite. But her beauty didn’t go any deeper than what a body could see. Ruby had been a carnal girl, lacking entirely in spiritual and intellectual qualities, a taste for which she had done her best to cultivate in Dylan. Francis watched helplessly as the horrid girl dragged her beautiful son down, forcing her attentions on Dylan. Seducing him. Soiling him. Stealing him away.

Francis did what she could to intervene. She even had Reverend Miller come and speak to the youth and try to appeal to his higher nature, but the change in Dylan happened all too quickly. Francis could never have imagined that Ruby’s despicable influence would act with such alacrity, undoing a loving mother’s years of guidance seemingly overnight.

Francis flicked on the kitchen light and pulled a small saucepan from a drawer. She filled it with water and placed it on the stove. The igniter had stopped working reliably, sparking only around half the time, so she took a match and touched it to the burner; the gas flamed to life. She slid the pot to the burner, and glanced at the clock on the wall. Half past seven. She’d fix her nightly cup of Postum and warm up the radio. Dylan’s favorite program,
Suspense
, aired tonight. His father had never approved of the program, but neither had he expressly disapproved of it, so she and Dylan had enjoyed listening to it together ever since Dylan was a boy. Francis would listen to it tonight, just as she did every week at this time. It made her feel closer to Dylan, knowing that he, too, wherever he was, would undoubtedly be tuned in.

She opened the cabinet where she kept the Postum, and a sense of sorrow, greater than even what she felt at her husband’s passing, descended on her. She had done this how many weeks now? How many years?
Keeping the home fire burning. Holding everything still and in place. Early on, it had been easy to hold on to the faith that Dylan would begin to see through Ruby and her lascivious ways. That he would grow to miss the wholesomeness of his own hometown. That he would come to miss his mama as much as she missed him.

But then Ruby had returned. And Ruby passed on. Between those points, the Judge had refused to let Francis pose her own questions to Ruby, claiming that the two had drifted apart early on, and that Ruby had no knowledge of Dylan’s whereabouts. Despite the assurances of Dylan’s well-being that Clarence had passed on to her from beyond the veil, despite Chief Little Feather’s promises of Dylan’s safe return, Francis felt unsure. Tonight, for the first time, she allowed herself to question whether her boy could be gone for good, lost to her forever. She watched the steam as it began to rise from the pot of water.

She found a spoon and ladled the mix into her cup. A knock sounded at her door. For one delirious moment, her heart leapt. Could it be? She stopped. Of course not. She was being ridiculous. Another, more insistent knock set her in motion. She followed the sound of the rapping to her front door. Using one hand to secure the upper portion of her robe, and the other to grasp the doorknob, she opened the door a crack, just enough to get a glimpse at the caller on its other side without having to reveal too much of herself.

“Hello again, Mrs. Sawyer.”

“Marjorie,” Francis said, rather surprised to see the hapless woman for the second time in one day. Marjorie had struck her as a complete creature of habit, showing up every day or so, always with a cake carrier in her plump, sweaty hands. Never before had she come calling twice in one day. “It’s rather late for a visit, I think. I was just preparing to turn in.” This time the girl came without pastry, her gaze cast downward. She seemed rather upset. Francis realized it was her Christian duty to inquire. “Is everything all right?”

“May I come in?” Marjorie replied. She stood there on the stoop, looking for all the world like a lost child. Downcast. With one hand, Marjorie fingered the bow around the waist of her dress. She had something small clutched in the other, and because of the way she kept slipping it backward, nearly hiding it behind her, Francis surmised that this object was more than likely the cause of the simple girl’s consternation. “Please?”

Francis came close to refusing, but relented. “I suppose it would be all right, but only for a few minutes.” She stepped back and allowed the girl to enter. She remembered the pot she’d left on the burner, and turned. “Come through, and please close the door behind you.” Francis made her way to the kitchen, not bothering to wait on her dowdy guest to trudge along behind her.

She turned off the stove. The water had boiled, so she left it in place to cool a bit before adding it to her cup. She glanced at the clock. Still plenty of time before the program. With any luck she could wrap up Marjorie’s bundle of misery and parcel her back out the door before the announcer began speaking.

Marjorie appeared suddenly behind her, startling her. Even though Francis was well aware of Marjorie’s presence, the stealth with which she approached demonstrated none of the lumbering, ungainly qualities Francis had come to expect of her. She suppressed a gasp. “Do sit.” She motioned toward the kitchen table, circling around to its far side and pulling out her own chair. Marjorie did as requested, dragging the chair so that the legs scraped loudly against the linoleum Dylan had chosen for the room. Francis nearly protested, but something about the girl’s expression stopped her. Marjorie’s hand shot out and grasped the edge of the table as she fell, collapsing into the chair. “Dear, are you quite all right?” Francis said, noticing how pale the girl seemed. “Are you ill?”

Marjorie’s head shot straight back, and her eyes opened wide. They struck Francis as odd, but she couldn’t figure out exactly how. Marjorie’s breathing grew labored, as if she had just finished sprinting a mile. Then, through gritted teeth, she began screaming, the veins in her temples jutting out. Her hand reached up and came slamming down on the table, shards of glass escaping as the small brown bottle she had been secreting shattered. Blood dripped from Marjorie’s hand as she raised it, and Francis jumped up to get a towel to wrap it in. “What is wrong with you, child?” She grabbed a dry cloth from beside the sink and turned to use it as a bandage, but stopped at the sight of a portion of the bottle that remained on her table. She dropped the towel.

The red diamond poison warning stared accusingly up at her. But how? She’d disposed of the bottle behind the diner. Years ago now. The night that Dylan left. The night he’d threatened to turn her in to the police.

Her brother had been a chemist working for the pulp plant before he died in the war. He’d had a few bottles of it in his possession. She’d used the others. This one had been the last. She had held on to it, just in case. She never really thought she’d use it.

“You drove him away,” Marjorie said. Her face had bunched up in on itself, shriveled into a mask of rage. “I know it now. I know everything.”

Francis backed away until she bumped up against the sink.

Marjorie stood and walked to the drawer where Francis kept her cutlery. She slid the drawer open. “You poisoned Mr. Sawyer. That’s why he got sick. That’s why he died.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know what you’re saying.” Francis slid along with her back to the counter. Once she got a clear shot for the door, she’d . . . she’d what? Go to the sheriff? What if they listened to this girl?

Marjorie reached into the drawer and pulled out Francis’s best carving
knife. “You poisoned your husband. You found out he was planning on
leaving you. Leaving Conroy. So you poisoned him to keep him around.”
Marjorie took a step closer. The overhead light glinted off the blade.

“I don’t know how you got these crazy ideas in your head . . .” Francis said, sliding to the end of the counter. The entrance to the kitchen was now a straight shot.

“Ruby. Ruby told me.” Marjorie stood before her, her chest heaving. “And Dylan told her. Dylan, he told her that you poisoned Mr. Sawyer so he couldn’t leave you. Then Dylan caught you trying to do the same thing to him, so you could keep him around.”

“When did Ruby tell you this?”

“Tonight. Just now. I hear her in my head. She’s laughing. She wants me to ask you if you’d like to talk with Chief Little Feather.”

“That harlot is dead, and you are crazy.”

“I am not crazy,” Marjorie cried and lunged at her. Before Francis fully realized what she was doing, she grasped the handle of the pot she’d left on the stove and flung the still-scalding water into Marjorie’s eyes.

Marjorie howled and dropped the knife. She fell to her knees, then over on her side, pulling her legs up into her chest. “I’m not crazy,” she said between sobs.

Francis stood frozen in place. “I never meant to kill his father.” She hadn’t expected to admit it, but the confession spilled from her, surprising her with how good it felt to say the words. “I was so very careful to keep the dosage low. I just couldn’t let him leave me. I couldn’t let him leave us. A boy needs his father.” Her own legs began to feel weak, and she slid down to the floor next to Marjorie.

“I only wanted to protect Dylan. He was putting himself at such a risk with those drugs she started him taking. He was putting himself at such risk . . .
being
. . . with that undou
btedly syphilitic whore. Is there a man she didn’t spread her legs for?” A flash of anger filled her. “One day I heard them talking. Talking about leaving Conroy. I knew if she took him away, she’d destroy him. I’d never see my baby boy again.” Her own sobs rose to match and then drown out Marjorie’s. She realized her companion had fallen silent, the realization causing her to regain her own composure. “I only wanted to make him a bore to her long enough that she’d lose interest in him and move on. I would never have harmed him. Not really. He was my son. He was the love of my life.
”

Francis pushed herself up, then crawled the few feet to the stove. She opened the oven door, peering in. She drew a breath and puffed out the oven’s pilot light, then turned the gas up high. She looked back over her shoulder and took one last look at the girl, still writhing on the floor. Still on her hands and knees, Francis made her way around Marjorie, and finding the knife had damaged the linoleum, picked up the blade and plunged it into the girl.

Francis pushed through the blood that had begun to puddle around Marjorie. Francis put her head inside the oven and then, closing her eyes and thinking of her son, began taking deep breaths.

FIFTY-ONE

Corinne spotted the patrol car’s arrival through the two large picture windows that had been set one on each side of the station’s double-door entrance and emblazoned with the city’s seal. She couldn’t help but reflect on the fact that while the building’s higher and smaller windows were barred, these two large windows were not. Had the architects reasoned Conroy’s criminal element would respect the integrity of the large festooned panes?

She and Lucille had been waiting there for hours, ever since the sheriff had shown up at the Judge’s house, telling her that the Dunnes had been murdered, and that it’d been Elijah who’d done the killing.

Now the three men entered the building one by one. The deputy, who was first in the procession, opened and held one of the double doors, allowing Elijah to be pushed through by the sheriff. “Elijah,” Corinne called. She tried to grab hold of his sleeve as the sheriff maneuvered him past her and toward the large cell that lined the back of the office.

“Step back, please, Miss Ford,” Bell said, this time having no trouble remembering the family name Corinne had planned on leaving behind.

Corinne searched Elijah’s eyes for even the slightest sign that any of this could be true. That the kind and gentle young man she had intended to marry—had this really shifted into the past tense?—could be responsible for the bloodshed Bell wanted to lay at his feet. She saw no guilt. Only confusion. Pain. Corinne shuddered as she wondered if Elijah had learned of his parents’ murders from men who thought him responsible for the act.

“Sheriff,” Corinne said, inserting herself between Elijah and the cell into which the sheriff had intended to place him. “Look at him. Can’t you see he had nothing to do with any of this?”

“Your loyalty to your fiancé is heartening, ma’am, but I do need you to step out of the way.”

The deputy—what was his name?—took her by the arm and pulled her to the side. Keys jangled and metal scraped metal as Bell unlocked and opened the cage. He gave Elijah a rough shove, causing him to lurch past the bars, and pulled the door closed with a loud clang.

Corinne rushed forward and reached through the bars. “This is madness,” she said, turning her gaze from Elijah, whose eyes refused to meet her own, to Bell, his deputy, and finally to Lucille, who had wedged herself into a corner, looking like her one hope in this entire mess was to be forgotten. Corinne spun back to the man she’d come to this hell to marry. “Elijah, tell them. You didn’t hurt anyone.”

Elijah shook his head and mumbled, “I didn’t. I didn’t hurt nobody.” Finally he raised his eyes off the floor and looked at her. “I didn’t.”

“Take a seat,” the deputy said and tried to strong-arm her into a chair.

Corinne flung him off. “Do not touch me.” The deputy’s face blanched, and he took a quick pair of steps back.
That’s right, tough guy
, Corinne thought. To her surprise Lucille had joined her at her side.

“Please, ma’am. This won’t help anyone.” Lucille said.

Corinne felt her heart tumble into the pit of her stomach. Something in Lucille’s expression, the way her brow rested low over her downward shifting eyes, the calm acceptance in her voice, spoke of a hopeless resolution. “Once they made up their mind . . .” Lucille began to whisper, but then her words faded away under Bell’s withering glance. Corinne scowled back at Sheriff Bell, who seemed nearly varnished by satisfaction. He had already tried and convicted Elijah. Lucille gave her arm a gentle tug. “Please, you’ll just make it worse for him and yourself.”

A stunned-looking Elijah drifted back in the cell until he bumped up against the metal frame of a cot on its back wall. His knees buckled, and he collapsed, taking a seat on the thin mattress as the frame that held it squeaked.

“Where are they?” Bell said, advancing on the cell. Elijah sat still, staring blankly at the floor beneath his feet. Bell pulled his baton from his belt and banged it against the bars.

Elijah jolted to attention. “Who?” He licked his lips and squeezed the bed frame until his knuckles went white, like he was trying to grab ahold of the real world and pull himself back from this nightmare that his life had become.

“The Sleiger boys,” Bell said, and punctuated his words with another strike against the bars. “What have you done with them?” he said before the metal stopped ringing.

“I don’t know . . .” Elijah began.

“The Sleiger boys?” Lucille asked, releasing her hold on Corinne and stepping a foot or so closer to the sheriff. “They were just at the Judge’s house.”

“That’s right,” Corinne said, feeling a shimmer of hope rise within her. “The mortuary sent them to pick up the Judge’s body.”

“Them Sleigers ain’t got nothing to do with the funeral home,” the deputy said, his eyes widening, and his hand clutching his holster as if for reassurance.

Bell tossed a look of disdain at his deputy, then turned back to Elijah. “Okay, boy,” Bell said as he returned the baton to a loop in his belt. “How about you tell me what’s been going on around here, all nice and slow and honest like?”

“I don’t know,” Elijah stammered. “It don’t make no kind of sense.” His gaze lost focus as he seemed to consider all the possible explanations. A few moments passed, then his eyes darted up and locked on Bell’s.

Bell leaned back a bit and crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay, let’s start with you telling me why you killed your folks.”

Elijah jumped up from the cot and lunged toward the bars, grasping
them so tightly his knuckles began to whiten. “I done told you, I ain’t killed nobody. My ma . . .” His words died out. He looked to Corinne.
“That gun you brought with you.” His face flushed red as his tears begin to
fall. “My pa. He said things. Bad things. She shot him. She shot herself.”

The sheriff spat on the floor and drew closer to the cell. “You expect me to believe a fine woman like your mama would do something like that? Hell, boy.” He turned and walked back toward his desk, stopping before it and hooking the keys to his belt. He turned back to face Elijah. “If your mama did the killing, you tell me why you tried to hide that gun.”

“I didn’t hide anything. Honest, I don’t even know where it is.”

“Oh, don’t you worry. We got it,” Bell said. “We found it in the yard with the miss’s clothes and case.”

Elijah’s forehead creased, then his eyes drifted down as if he were trying to remember. He focused on Corinne. “Yeah. I was going to bring you your things. I was going to take you away from here.”

“So your intent was to flee.”

Corinne rolled her eyes. “Sheriff, I would hardly say that leaving the gun lying in the middle of the yard for all to see constitutes ‘hiding.’ And as for being a fugitive, he doesn’t seem to have put much effort into escaping. Where did you find him, parked in the Dunnes’ driveway?”

Bell flashed her an angry look and pointed his index finger at her. “Maybe you need to simmer down, little lady. If I felt like listening to a hysterical woman, I’d call my wife.”

Little lady, indeed.
She was not going to be silenced by this mustachioed ape, especially with Elijah’s life on the line. “Listen. I have no idea what happened at the Dunnes’, but you want to work your way to the bottom of things, I suggest you figure out what the Sleigers”—she cast a glance at Lucille to confirm the name, Lucille nodding her assent—“. . . what the Sleigers are up to. Why they’ve been hiding out. And why they’d take the Judge’s body, because I bet if you’d take the time to ring the mortuary, his remains are not there.” The sheriff ran his hand over his mustache. He was finally listening, so Corinne continued. “They are up to something strange, and it looks like they’re trying to implicate Elijah.” She stopped in midthought as a new realization struck her. “McAvoy. He never arrived to look after the Judge. Could these Sleigers have done something to him as well?”

“But by Elijah’s own account, they didn’t have anything to do with his parents’ deaths. As for Dowd and the others, what motive would they have?”

“Besides, I’ve known the Sleigers for forever,” the deputy said. “They ain’t killers.”

“You’ve known me forever, too, Fred,” Elijah snapped, the desperation of a cornered man biting through his words. “Am I a killer?”

“Under the right—or wrong—circumstances, I think we’re all killers,” Bell said. He didn’t seem ready to entertain even the slightest inkling that the man he had arrested could be innocent, even if the real killers were delivered gagged and bound at his feet. Corinne wondered if it was his pride keeping him entrenched in such certainty, or if he was just too intellectually lazy to care about uncovering the truth.

“I’m just saying the Sleigers sure ain’t criminal masterminds,” the deputy said. Bell shot him a sharp glance, and the deputy lowered his head and slinked away, taking a seat at one of the office’s two desks.

They all turned in unison as both of the double doors eased open to reveal the black emptiness of night. There was no movement beyond the doors, no wind to have opened them or kept them in that splayed position. Corinne took a step forward, intending to investigate.

“You just wait right there, Miss,” Bell commanded. The authority in his voice caused her military response to kick in; she obeyed the direct order.

The sheriff’s right hand slid down to his holster. “Rigby,” he said in a calm voice, and motioned with his left hand, his pointer and middle finger extended toward the door. The deputy shook his head as if he didn’t understand, but Corinne intuited it was sheer cowardice that kept him from rising. Bell’s face flushed and his eyes rounded beneath raised brows. He motioned once more toward the open doors, this time removing the gun from his holster as he did so. Corinne couldn’t tell if he did it to indicate he would cover the deputy, or if he was threatening to shoot Rigby if he didn’t obey. The look in the deputy’s pleading eyes told Corinne that she wasn’t the only one having trouble making the distinction.

Rigby’s chair squeaked as he stood, the sole sound in the peculiar silence that had descended upon the room. The deputy nearly tripped over his own dragging feet, recovering just before toppling over, and made a few slow and furtive steps toward the doors. Then he stopped and pulled his pistol from his holster, craning his neck in an attempt to peer through the darkness, even though he was only a yard or so from the position where he’d started.

“Rigby.” Bell’s voice spurred the deputy into taking a few more steps. But he punctuated each step by casting a glance over his shoulder at the sheriff, each pause a question as to whether he had gone far enough. Corinne didn’t know whether to feel sympathy or disgust when she saw the way the man’s hand trembled around his gun.

“Enough,” Corinne said, although she wasn’t sure if she’d actually voiced the word. She stepped forward, relieving the deputy of his weapon as she pushed past him. She strode toward the opening and looked out. Nothing. She took a step out onto the landing. “Corinne,” she heard Elijah’s voice call out to her. “Come back.” He was frightened for her. She was not. The only fearful thing in this moment was the thought of leaving the group’s safety in the hands of men like Bell and Rigby.

The doors were open so wide there was no room for anyone to hide behind them, and even if there had been, the panes on their upper halves would have revealed anyone over three feet tall. Still, she tugged on the handle of the one on her left. The door resisted at first, but a moment later it shut with a loud clack.

“There’s nothing,” she called, her nose turning up at the cloying scent of the pulp factory. She was about to reach out and close the second door when she noticed a bank of fog, the thickest and most pungent she’d ever witnessed, begin to coalesce and draw near. She stepped back over the threshold, the heavy night air pressing up against her. Underneath the skunky scent of pulpwood rode another smell. Sweet. Woody, but with a chemical undertone. She had smelled the odor earlier in the Judge’s room.

At the bank’s edge, she discerned an animal movement. Her eyes had
adjusted enough to the dark to make out a canine form lurking at the edge
of the miasma, almost like it was herding the fog to the station’s steps.

Sensing movement behind her, she looked back over her shoulder. Rigby and Bell had joined her at the entrance, Rigby having regained
enough confidence to step out from behind her skirt. The sheriff holstered
his gun, and then reached out and relieved her of the deputy’s pistol.

At the edge of the fog, the hulking beast drew close enough for those gathered just outside the station’s doorway to make out its brindle markings. “Isn’t that . . .” she began.

“Tac, is that you?” Rigby called out, taking a few steps out toward the dog. “Sheriff, ain’t that Charlie’s dog, Tac?” Rigby squatted on his haunches. “Come ’ere, girl.” The dog padded forward. “Where’s Toe, girl? Where’s your brother?”

“I ate him.” The words came from the dog’s mouth seconds before it lunged at the deputy, dragging him off behind the veil of fog. From his screams, Corinne could tell he was being dragged across the road and beyond the field; then the sound ceased abruptly. The sheriff shot wildly and indiscriminately into the fog, emptying his gun’s chambers. There was no sign that any of his bullets met their mark.

Faces began to appear through the mist. “Who are these people?” she asked Bell without taking her eyes off the arrivals. “These people,” she had said, because their forms appeared human, even though her instincts cried out that they were something else entirely. Many of them appeared to be limp puppets, incapable of ambulation under their own steam, and dragged along all the same by some kind of invisible strings. A few seemed to be more their own masters, standing taller and moving with more grace, but there was still something wrong with them. It was their eyes. They glowed blue like gas flames. All carried an assortment of pipes and pans, garbage can lids, sticks, which they began to sound and clack and clang in unison. Small fires began to sprout up among them, bobbing up and down in the distance. “Are those torches? Actual torches?” No sooner had the words escaped her than an odd cacophony began—car horns and clanging pipes, breaking glass. “Sheriff, what is this?” she asked, daring to look away from the spectacle before her to see the cross of confusion and concern that had spread over his face.