The Killing Room (28 page)

There are four more churches to go.

THIRTY-TWO

The drive to West Virginia took just over five hours, but that was not according to Detective Jessica Balzano, who slept most of the way. When she awoke the car was stopped, parked on the side of a dirt road, with the strangest anomaly occurring. There was sunlight coming in the windows. Bright yellow sunlight. It was by no means warm, and there were patches of snow dotting the endless, rolling brown hills, but the sky was blue and the sun was dazzling.

Jessica glanced over at Byrne. He was staring out the window, lost in thought. When he noticed that Jessica was awake, he reached into the back seat, brought back a container of coffee.

Jessica sat up. ‘Don’t tell me I slept the whole time.’

‘Purt’ near,’ Byrne said with a smile.

‘Wow. We
must
be in West Virginia.’

Jessica rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She brought down the visor, opened the lighted mirror. ‘Oh, my God.’ She snapped it shut, took the coffee from Byrne. ‘Are you saying
we stopped, you got out, bought coffee, got back in, and we drove some more without me waking up?’

‘Actually we stopped
twice
.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘Last time was an hour ago. The coffee won’t be hot, but it’s strong and it’s pretty good. Sweet rolls are in the back if you want one.’

Jessica opened the coffee, sipped. Byrne was right. It was forty-weight.

‘You’re going to love this,’ Byrne said. He reached out, tapped a button on the navigation screen on the center console. Jessica put on her glasses, looked at the readout.

There were two lines. If they were in Philadelphia, or just about anywhere else, the entire screen would have been cross-hatched with streets, boulevards, expressways, turnpikes. Here, at the northeastern tip of West Virginia, there were two roads. One going north and south. One going east and west.

‘Have you ever seen this screen so empty?’ Byrne asked.

‘Never.’

Driving around Philly, with its one hundred neighborhoods and thousands of streets, Jessica quite often needed to pull over, put on her reading glasses, and scan the screen. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, navigation was a lot easier.

‘You said we stopped twice,’ Jessica said.

‘I stopped at the sheriff’s office. There’s only two deputies working. It’s really more of an outpost.’

‘They didn’t see me sleeping in the car, did they? Please tell me they didn’t see me sleeping in the car.’

‘No. I parked a block away. The whole town was only five blocks long, so we were pretty much on the outskirts.’

‘And you left me alone in the car? In the middle of such a hotbed of criminal activity?’

Byrne smiled. Jessica sipped her coffee again, then chugged half the lukewarm cup. She had to get it together. She rolled down her window, let some of the cold air in. ‘What did we get from the sheriff’s office?’ she asked.

‘Not much. The older of the two deputies was about twenty-five, and he said that the address we have used to belong to the Longstreet family, but no one has lived there for quite some time. He said our best bet was to see a woman named Ida-Rae Munson, who lives along here somewhere. He said if we couldn’t find it to call him and he’d come out.’ Byrne held up his cell phone. ‘I tried. No signal yet.’

Jessica glanced out all four windows. There were rolling brown hills in all directions, but not a single dwelling of any kind.

‘Did you get a map?’

‘No,’ Byrne said. He tapped the navigation screen again. ‘This is about as detailed as it gets.’

Byrne pulled back onto the road. About a mile away they came to a long thicket on the right.

‘Stop,’ Jessica said.

Byrne stopped, backed up. There seemed to be an opening in the thicket, which led to a long hardpan lane that headed up to and over a ridge.

Jessica looked at Byrne. As he pulled in, scraping the sides of the sedan against the dried bushes, she finished her coffee, and willed herself awake.

There was no way of knowing what they were going to find over this ridge.

The house sat atop a low rise, at the end of a 200-foot driveway. The closer they got to the structure, the more Jessica
began to wonder what kept it standing. It was a three-room shack, with a roof so patched and tar-papered it looked to be in danger of blowing off any second. The ridge of the roof was so bowed it looked ready to snap. There was a crumbling chimney to the left, one at the back. Smoke poured from the larger of the two. In the fields surrounding the shack were the rusted remnants of old trucks, stoves, car parts. A well pump stuck out of the ground at the end of a trampled trail through the weeds.

Jessica and Byrne got out of the car, walked to the house. The sun was still out, but a frigid breeze blew over the hill. They stepped cautiously onto the swayback porch. Jessica knocked. From inside they heard a dog bark. It was a high-pitched sound, which was good news. No one, outside of postal carriers, had more of a love/hate relationship with dogs than police officers. This did not sound like a big dog – Rottweiler, shepherd, or even an old redbone hound. This was a beagle at best.

The door opened, but there was no one there. Jessica looked down. There, standing in front of them, was a boy of five. He had light blond hair shorn so close to his head that there were red, abraded patches on his scalp. He wore dirty jeans, at least two sizes too large. They were rolled up almost to his scabby knees. He was barefoot, even though the temperature had to be hovering around twenty degrees.

‘Hi,’ Jessica said.

Instead of answering, the boy barked. Loudly. At first, Jessica thought the boy might have yelled for an adult to come to the door, but when he did it a second time, there could be no doubt in her mind. The boy was imitating a dog. At least she
hoped
it was an imitation.

There was no dog. The sound they heard had been the boy.

‘Is your mom or dad home?’ Jessica asked.

The boy studied them for a moment, then turned and ran. He disappeared out the back door. A few seconds later they heard: ‘Well, come if you’re comin’. Stove’s alight. Shake off the chill.’

Jessica and Byrne stepped inside. The main room was relatively uncluttered and organized, considering the home’s exterior. To the right was a long table, along with a wood-burning stove. Next to that was a sewing machine.

As they stepped further into the room, Jessica saw the woman sitting in a rocking chair. She was somewhere between thirty and fifty, had graying hair pulled back into a ponytail, held an embroidery hoop in her hands. Her right foot was in a cast.

‘Are you Ida-Rae Munson?’ Jessica asked.

‘I am in fact.’

Jessica produced her ID. ‘My name is Jessica Balzano. I’m with the Philadelphia Police Department.’

‘Phila
delphia
?’

Jessica heard a sound behind her. She turned to see the dog-boy crouched in the corner watching them, little terrier eyes studying them from the midday shadow
. When had he come back inside?
Jessica turned her attention back to the woman. ‘We had quite a hard time finding your place.’

‘House ain’t moved in thirty years,’ the woman said.

‘I guess what I meant is that it’s a bit sparsely populated in this area,’ Jessica said, for some reason feeling the need to explain herself, and do so with proper grammar, which was far from one of her strengths.

The woman shrugged, ran a hand across her chin. ‘There
just ain’t no more jobs, that’s the simple answer. Not in the mines, not loggin’, not pulpwoodin’. Nothin’, nowhere. Everwho had some sense packed and gone.’

Jessica and Byrne just listened. Jessica figured
everwho
meant
whoever
.

The woman waved a hand absently at the area behind the house. ‘We used to grow everything we needed, ’cept the ground got used up. All’s we used to go into town for was boots and nails. Coffee, some. Still ain’t no public water out here. When I heard y’all pull up I figured you was with the county, out to give me another shuffle.’

‘We just need to ask you a few questions, if that’s all right?’ Jessica said.

‘I ain’t expected. Ask what y’got.’

Jessica took out her notebook and pen. ‘Ma’am, do you know a man named Elijah Longstreet?’

The woman recoiled as if she had bitten into spoiled fruit. ‘
Elijah?
’

‘Yes, ma’am. Do you know him?’

The woman looked out the window, and back again. In this light Jessica could see the woman had once been pretty. She had high cheekbones, silver-blue eyes.

‘Weren’t none of them Longstreets no good,’ she said. ‘They say we’re kin way back, imagine. But I don’t believe it. Not a word.’

The woman rocked back and forth.

‘Ma’am? Elijah Longstreet?’ Byrne asked. ‘Do you know where we could find him?’

The woman snorted. ‘I’d look to Hell. Shouldn’t take too long.’

Jessica and Byrne exchanged a glance.

‘Are you saying Mr Longstreet is deceased?’ Byrne asked.

‘God-fearin’ people get
deceased
. Elijah Longstreet just
dead
.’

‘Do you know what happened?’

The woman looked at Byrne as if she were talking to a mule. ‘He died. That’s what bein’ dead
means
.’

Byrne took a deep breath. ‘Ma’am, what I’m asking is, do you know
how
he died?’

‘They say it was the lung got him, but it was the drink. It was always the drink with them Longstreets.’

‘How long ago did he pass?’

The woman looked skyward, perhaps doing the math. ‘Gotta be twenty year now. More, some.’

Twenty years
, Jessica thought. Then why was his fingerprint in a missal found in the hands of a dead man in Philadelphia this week?

‘Do you know if Mr Longstreet ever got up to Philadelphia?’ she asked.

‘Don’t know nothing about Elijah Longstreet’s comin’ or goin’.’

Jessica took out a photograph of a cleaned-up edition of the
My Missal
found in Martin Allsop’s hands. ‘Do you recognize this book?’

The woman squinted at the picture, focused. ‘Oh, Lord. Haven’t seen one of them in years.’

‘Do you own one of these?’ Jessica asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s a book for children.’

At the mention of the word
children
, Jessica looked around the room. Somehow the barking boy had moved again without
her seeing it. She wondered where he was.
Had they locked the car?

A knot in one of the logs in the stove popped. Jessica nearly jumped at the sound.

‘Elijah had a girl called Ruby,’ the woman said, resuming her rocking. Perhaps this was her storytelling mode. ‘Redheaded one. Funny girl. Touched some say. Too quiet, y’ask.’

‘Ma’am?’

‘Word was she had a devil-child.’

Jessica looked at Byrne, back at the woman.

‘Lots of stories come out ’round that girl,’ the woman continued. ‘I know she took up with that preacher.’

‘What preacher would that be?’

The woman laughed. ‘You got a nickel? You do, I’ll give ya five preachers and change. Ain’t never been a shortage a preachers in West Virginia.’ She tapped the photograph of the book, handed it back to Jessica ‘He used to hand them missals out like candy. Used to hand out a lot more than that, if you was young and fair.’

‘Do you recall the man’s name?’

She shook her head. ‘Don’t know nothin’ ’bout his name. But I know that Longstreet young ’un Ruby run off slap-quick with him and his church caravan.’ She rocked back and forth, just once, stopped. ‘And her boy like to be the devil.’

‘Not sure what you mean by that.’

The woman reached down next to her, picked up a rusted coffee can, spit into it. Jessica did her best not to look at Byrne.

‘Said the boy was a bad seed. Said the father had the devil in him and the boy come out evil.’

Jessica put her notebook away. Even if she found something
useful in this woman’s words, she was pretty sure she didn’t want to read her notes on the subject, or make it part of the permanent case file. What she
was
sure of was that she was good for about two more seconds of being in this house.

‘Where would we find this Ruby Longstreet?’ Byrne asked.

Another shrug, another spit. ‘Longstreet name’s tainted. She woulda changed it anyways, even if she ain’t got married. I know I woulda.’

‘Are you saying there are no longer any of the Longstreets living around here?’

‘
Long
gone from here. Anyone with sense long gone from here. Her momma is up to the state nursing home in Weirton. Their house, what’s left of it, is five mile up the road. More, a piece.’

‘We went by there, but we didn’t see anything,’ Byrne said.

‘Oh, it’s still there. You gotta ride that ridge for a spell. Pon m’onor it’s there. Nothin’ but spiders and whistle pigs though.’

At first Jessica didn’t know what the woman had said. Then she worked it out.
Pon m’onor
was
upon my honor
. She thanked the woman for her time. The woman didn’t get up, didn’t show them to the door.

Jessica took out a card, put it on the wooden table by the front window. She wasn’t even sure this woman had a phone. ‘If you can think of anything that might help us locate Ruby Longstreet, please give us a call.’

No response. Just the creak of the rocking chair.

As they reached the car, Jessica had the feeling they were being observed. After a few steps she turned.

The boy was sitting on the roof, watching them.

*

Jessica and Byrne headed south. They didn’t talk. The encounter with Ida-Rae Munson and the barking boy had pretty much taken the words right out of them. When they reached the five-mile mark, they came to the overgrown drive that led back toward what they assumed was the Longstreet property. Jessica stopped the car.

‘You sure you want to do this?’ she asked.

‘Well, we’re here, right?’ Byrne asked. ‘I mean, what would a trip to West Virginia be without a visit to the famous Longstreet Estate?’