The Covenant (29 page)

“Well,” Lorio sighed shakily. He holstered his weapon. “It's getting late.”

As we turned to leave, a girl's voice cried out, “Mama, don't leave me here!”

Lorio dropped his flashlight. It rolled down the levee, gathering momentum until its beam was thrashing and flailing like a living thing. Finally it struck a rock and the bulb broke.

I could see his face in the moonlight, pale and drawn, haunted. Terrified. His fingers dug painfully into my arm. “Jackie,” he hissed. “That was Reece.”

 

40

L
ORIO ARRIVED DURING BREAKFAST
and of course Jenny made a plate for him, even though he had already eaten. He was a big guy. He always had room for more, especially home cooking, which he didn't often get, being a bachelor. It was his day off, but he wore his uniform because if Jenny went along with our little scheme, we would need the access and cooperation his uniform would buy.

He had also brought an exhumation order. It was already filled out. All it needed was Jenny's signature. She sat at the kitchen table with her face in her hands while Lorio told her why we wanted to dig up her husband. “Nothing else makes sense. The coroner said he didn't have a heart attack or a stroke. He hit his head and drowned. And I know he didn't jump in the water.”

“Because Jackie saw him fall.” Her bottom lip had begun to tremble and no matter how hard she tugged, it wouldn't stop.

“That's right,” I said.

“Do I have to be there?” she asked.

“Absolutely not,” Lorio said.

She pushed herself to her feet, slid the chair back, wiped a stray hair from her face. I thought she was going to leave without giving an answer. She crossed the kitchen and opened a drawer, rummaged, pulled out an envelope of coupons and a roll of tape and set them aside and grabbed the ballpoint pen she'd been searching for.

“Where do I sign?”

*   *   *

Brilliant white marble statues of Truth and Justice presided in the sun on opposite sides of the grand Adams Street staircases to the Shelby County Courthouse in Memphis. We buttonholed Wiley on the Washington Street side slipping out a small side door, where cops waited in the shade, smoking cigarettes and shooting the shit between courtroom appearances. The old bastard spotted me and tried to pretend he hadn't seen me as he hurried to the car parked at the curb. His office had told us he was in court.

“Dr. Wiley!” Lorio shouted, loud enough to hear him two streets away. Every cop and lawyer from Second to Third Street stopped to look.

Wiley's shoulders fell and he turned slowly, glowering at me for a moment before turning his eyes on to Lorio. “Yes, Officer … Lorio, is it? Aren't you outside your jurisdiction?”

“Dr. Wiley, I need your help. I was wondering if we could have a moment of your time.”

Wiley opened the door of his car, tossed his briefcase on the front seat, leaned back against the car with his elbows on the roof. He was a tall, ungainly bird of a man, with a thin wattle of skin dangling below his jutting chin. A few strands of long, unkempt gray hair floated in the heat rising off the asphalt. He shook his watch down to the end of his bony wrist and checked the time. “You can have five minutes of my lunch. I'm due back in court at two.”

It was only a little past twelve. I'd forgotten about the long, difficult hours put in by our dedicated public servants. Lorio explained the case to him in less than a minute, which just goes to show how little we had.

Wiley didn't even work up a sweat. “I've already told Mrs. Lyons to contact the Fayette County coroner regarding this.”

“I have reason to believe the coroner's report may be in error,” Lorio stated politically. Not that the coroner had lied. Not that he was covering up a crime. Just an error.

“That's a pretty serious allegation, Officer…” Wiley ogled his badge again. “… Lorio. No doubt when I contact your supervisor, he will state you've already brought this matter to his attention.”

“
Her,
sir,” Lorio said, “and, no,
she
knows nothing about it. I'm here on behalf of Sam Loftin's widow.”

“If this is a private matter and not an official investigation, then you shouldn't be in uniform,” Wiley said. He stepped to the side and put his hand on top of the car door. “You should have handed this off to an unlicensed private investigator. I would have then told her, as I told her before, to take her suspicions to the Fayette County coroner.” I stepped off the curb and blocked Wiley from closing the door.

“Sir, I'm asking you, as a favor…” Lorio began.

“Son, I don't know you from Adam's off ox.” He gestured that I should move out of the way so he could close the door.

I pretended not to understand, dug out a cigarette and stuck it in my mouth. “Got a light?” Nothing had changed since the days when I was a vice cop for the Memphis Police Department. Sometimes the facts of a case were only useful insofar as they agreed with the story some powerful person wanted told. Anything that didn't fit the narrative would be quietly gathered up, weighed down with a brick, and tossed like a bag of cats in a creek. Doctors, lawyers, judges, cops—they always protected each other. Wiley didn't want to stick his nose into Fayette County business because he didn't want Fayette County questioning his own findings.

Lorio thrust a piece of paper at Wiley. “What's this?”

“It's an exhumation order,” Lorio said. “Signed by the widow, Jennifer Loftin.”

Wiley shook his head and laughed at our hapless attempts to circumvent the law. “You know I can't order an exhumation in Fayette County without the approval of a Fayette County judge.”

“If you please, sir,” Lorio patiently explained, “Sam Loftin is buried in Eads. That's Shelby County.”

Wiley's eyes darted to the paper in his hands. He scanned it and, after a minute or so, furrowed his liver-spotted brow. “Tell me again what happened.”

Lorio went through it one more time. “As you can see, we don't have any proof, but Jackie and I both believe Sam Loftin was murdered. You can't lightly dismiss the informed opinion of two police officers.”

“One,” Wiley reminded him, without neglecting to give me a vicious sneer.

“Unfortunately, any evidence of the crime was buried with Sam and, quite frankly, sir, you're the only person we can go to about this. I've lived and worked in Malvern all my life and it's a close, tight-knit community, if you know what I mean.”

“I believe I understand your meaning,” Wiley muttered.

“Sir, I know you don't owe me anything. But I hope, if nothing else, you will want to see the truth revealed as much as we do. Sam Loftin was my friend.”

Wiley reached into his car, took out his briefcase, and opened it on the roof of the car. He slipped the exhumation order into one of the pockets. “I'm a very busy man, I hope you understand,” he said as he clicked it shut. I moved back to the sidewalk, nudged Lorio with an elbow and shot him a wink. “As soon as I have a free moment, I'll forward this to the funeral director listed on the order and have the remains delivered to my office.”

“Thank you, sir.” Lorio reached out to shake the good doctor's hand. Wiley stared at it for a moment without touching it, then walked around to the other side of his car and opened the door.

Before he ducked in, he said with a nod in my direction, “One more thing, son. You'd do well to find better company.” He started the engine and pulled away from the curb with a screech of tires, forcing a MATA bus to slam on its brakes.

When he was gone, Lorio turned to me. “I thought you said Wiley was your friend.”

I flicked my butt under the wheels of the bus as it rumbled by. “We had a falling-out. It's a long story.”

 

41

I
T HAD BEEN OVER A WEEK
since I shot any of Deacon's photos, so after Lorio dropped me off at the house, I grabbed my camera and headed out. If the sun was murder, the humidity was a mother drowning her children in a bathtub. I was glad to get under the trees, but even there the air was almost thick enough to swim through.

Deacon wasn't at the house and the door was locked. I knocked on the door but no one answered. His truck was parked next to the scuppernong arbor. I circled the house once, shooting photos of the stained glass in the upstairs windows, then walked home through the silent, empty woods.

Something had changed. I could feel it in my bones. Day or night, I usually heard, at the very least, a titter of childish laughter whenever I walked that path. Now there was nothing, neither living nor dead. I wondered if, somehow, the trees and the weeds, the brambles and briars, had died with Mrs. Ruth. It was just a place now, not a forest or a woods; it was just a collection of sticks and ashes waiting for a bulldozer to push them down.

I opened the door of Jenny's house to a sound I'd never heard before—Jenny shouting. “Your brother wants to go swimming!”

And Cassie. “I don't want to!”

“Put on your bathing suit and get in the damn water with your brother!”

“No!”

“You'll do as I say or I'll…”

Cassie pounded up the stairs, shrieking “NO! NO! NO!” with her hands clapped over her ears. Then down the hall, footsteps thumping, rattling the pictures on the walls, and finally the slamming door.

I found Jenny in a chair by the window, staring out at the lake. Eli was sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in his Thomas the Tank Engine swimming trunks, pounding down Cheetos out of a family-sized bag. I looked out the window at the pool and saw a dead girl in a red one-piece bathing suit floating in the deep end. I grabbed a beer from the fridge and another one for Jenny.

I popped the top and handed it to her. She glanced at the clock as she took the beer. “It's not even three.”

“Jenny, don't make her go in.”

“It's just a swimming pool. She's been in it a thousand times. She's a great swimmer. First she won't go in the deep end, then she won't go underwater. Now she won't even get in.”

“Trust me on this. When Cassie doesn't want to get in the pool, don't force her.”

She took a long, angry, savage pull at the beer, trying to kill it before the carbonated burn kicked in. She failed and set it down with a pained gasp. “Why the hell not?”

“She's scared.”

“Of what?”

I didn't say. I didn't have to. She didn't need to see the dead girl in the pool to know she was being unreasonable. She just needed a minute to get her head together.

It didn't even take that long. “I know. I'm sorry. It's just … all this about Sam…” She turned and rested her forehead against the window pane. “What happened?”

“Wiley will do it.”

She was neither relieved nor grieved by this news. Her response was mechanical. “And you're certain I don't have to be there?” I told her the funeral home would handle everything. “And where will they put him … after they…”

“He'll be returned to the funeral home.”

She sighed, her can of beer sweating, forgotten, on the arm of the chair. I finished mine and dropped the empty in the recycle bin. His fingers orange up to the second knuckle, Eli was finishing off the last of the Cheetos. “Did you eat that whole bag?” I asked.

“Un-uh,” he lied.

When I returned to the den, Jenny said, “Will you talk to Cassie?”

I suddenly felt ashamed for thinking Jenny might have killed Sam. If she had, she wouldn't have agreed to his exhumation. She could have played the hysterical grieving widow, begged us not to defile his remains. Her grief was as real, and still as raw, as the day Sam died. She didn't want him dug up, but she would have dug him up herself if she had to.

“Of course,” I said, and headed upstairs. Of course, I didn't know anyone else who might have had a motive to kill Sam. Jenny was the only good suspect I had, but I was happy to mark her off the list. I'd sleep better, anyway.

I found Cassie in her bedroom, under the bed with her feet sticking out, waiting for somebody to see her. I sat on the edge of the bed, picked up the Disney princess pillow and laid it across my lap. She didn't move from under the bed.

I didn't know what to say, so I said, “What's up?”

She didn't answer. I didn't expect her to. “She's in the pool right now.” I walked over to the window, which overlooked the pool. The girl in the red one-piece was still there, but she had sunk to the bottom. Jenny sat at the pool's edge, her feet in the water, watching Eli try to climb into an inflatable lifesaver. “I talked to your mom. She's sorry she yelled at you.”

Cassie's little blond head rose up in the space between the bed and the wall. Her eyes were as big as the knobs on her bedposts.

“I didn't tell her about this, or about us, what we see.” I sat on the bed, and Cassie climbed up beside me, curled up in my lap like a dog and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

“I won't tell her unless you want me to. But she won't make you go swimming now.”

She pulled out her thumb and whispered, “Thanks.”

“You don't have to be scared of them,” I said. I clumsily stroked her head, streaming her fine hair through my fingers.

“Aunt Jackie?”

I cringed. “Just Jackie.”

“Mama said to call you…”

“We don't always have to do what Mama says.” I cringed again. This is why I disliked children. It wasn't so much the kids as what I turned into around them.

“Can I tell you something?” I nodded that she could. “Reece made me promise never to tell.”

My heart climbed up my throat and tried to push past my tongue. I swallowed it down before saying, “I think maybe you can tell me. I won't tell anyone else.”

She thought about that for a bit, nervously gnawing on her thumb, while my shaking fingers continued to brush through her hair. Finally, it came out. “Reece had a boyfriend.”