The Third Hill North of Town (30 page)

The room was absolutely silent, and the silence became more strained with each passing second. Jon remained motionless, not daring to breathe, and Bonnor, oblivious to Elijah’s fingers floating near the base of his skull, let nearly a minute tick by, gradually regaining enough of his wits to realize that if he were to go ahead and kill both boys, he would have no time to come up with a plausible explanation for their deaths before Ronnie Buckley heard the shots and came running downstairs.

It’s a wonder Ronnie ain’t already been down here to see what all the fuckin’ screamin’ was about, anyway,
Bonnor told himself, tardily noticing his supervisor’s absence. It was hard to hear anything in the jail from the upstairs apartment, he knew, but the ungodly commotion the boys had been making in the cells before he drew his gun had surely been enough to get Ronnie’s attention, even through the concrete ceiling.
It ain’t like him to miss a chance to bawl me out for every goddamn thing he thinks I ain’t doin’ right.

Thus pondering the mystery of Sheriff Buckley’s truancy, Bonnor tilted his head ever so slightly from side to side in an effort to relieve the tension in his shoulders without lowering his gun. It was a far more benign motion than any he had made recently, yet the tiny movement of his square head proved to be too much for the overwrought fifteen-year-old boy in the jail cell behind him. Elijah threw himself in a panic against the bars and seized the back of Bonnor’s collar, desperate to save Jon’s life.

“NO!” Jon wailed, flinging his hands up.

And the Colt went off.

 

At 10:17 p.m.—exactly seven minutes before all hell broke loose in the jail cells—Julianna Dapper, upstairs with Ronnie and Dottie Buckley, found herself becoming restless. The sudden urge to go home was making her fidget on the sofa; she kept thinking about her mother and father, and how they would likely ground her for staying out so late without telling them where she was.

The late-night news had replaced
The Dupont Show
on television. Julianna was seated midway between the Buckleys, with Ronnie to her right in his armchair and Dottie to her left on the sofa. Sheriff Buckley was still fast asleep, with a half-full popcorn bowl balanced on top of his mountainous stomach; his mouth was open and he was snoring lightly. Dottie, on the other hand, was alert as always, twitching her head from side to side like a guinea hen hunting for deer ticks in the grass.

“Do you need something, honey?” Dottie asked, resisting the impulse to stroke Julianna’s freckled wrist.

Julianna nodded and smiled. “I’d like to have my dress back, please,” she said politely. “I’ve had a lovely time this evening, but I really do need to be going.”

Dottie’s mouth twisted with compassion. “Oh, you poor thing.” She could no longer restrain herself from touching Julianna; she reached over the seat cushion separating them and rested her hand lightly on the other woman’s vulnerable-looking knee. “I know it’s hard for you to understand, but you’ll just have to stay with us tonight.”

Julianna’s smile became fixed. “Don’t be silly. If Jon is still willing to drive us, Ben and I can be home in less than half an hour, safe in our own beds.”

Dottie blinked. Her own uninterrupted monologue that evening had prevented her from truly crediting the extent of Julianna’s mental illness, even though Ronnie had told her while Julianna was showering that he believed the woman was “nuttier than a whole goddam peanut farm.”

“That’s impossible, dear,” she said soothingly. “You’re from Bangor, Maine, and that’s, well, goodness, that’s at least a thousand miles from here.”

Julianna’s huge green eyes became even larger. “Who on earth told you I’m from Maine?” she asked, feeling strangely uneasy. “I’ve lived my whole life in Pawnee, Missouri. Surely you’ve heard of Pawnee? We’re practically neighbors!”

Dottie blinked again. “Oh, honey,” she said, hating to argue but afraid to indulge the other woman’s delusions, either. “I’m really sorry, but I can’t say as that does ring any bells. But I can be such a silly-billy sometimes and maybe I just . . . well, now, wait, hold your horses just a gosh darn minute, now that I think about it I do seem to recall hearing a few old stories about a little town called Pawnee that used to be down by Eagleville in Missouri ages and ages ago, but I can’t for the life of me remember what happened to it. I’m pretty sure it isn’t there anymore, though, because Ronnie and I go down that way all the time on Saturday mornings to have breakfast at a little hole-in-the-wall diner in Eagleville. It’s really only a truck stop coffee shop, but they’ve got the best doggone cinnamon rolls in the world, as big as your head and freshly baked every day! Anyway, I’ve never heard anybody say a word about Pawnee in I don’t know how many years and you’d think if it was still around I’d have met somebody from there by now. I may be wrong, of course, which would be just like me, I’m such a goose, but we should wake up Ronnie and ask him, just to be sure. He might know more than I do, but it seems to me that maybe there was a big fire or a tornado or something like that way back in the twenties and . . .”

Dottie had not been watching her guest’s face for the past few moments—she was admiring the other woman’s long, graceful fingers, instead—and so she hadn’t noticed anything amiss. But when she raised her eyes again she was stricken dumb by Julianna’s expression; the woman’s previously serene features were now twisted almost beyond recognition by alarm. Dottie gasped in dismay and reached out instinctively to offer comfort, but Julianna evaded her touch and surged to her feet, ripping the blue bathrobe from her shoulders as if it were scalding her skin.

“I need my dress back now, please!” she demanded stridently, fairly dancing with agitation in Dottie’s night slip.

Ronnie Buckley woke up mid-snore as Dottie sprang to her feet, as well; the sheriff gazed with bleary incomprehension at the two disturbed women standing over him.

“What’s wrong, Dottie?” he grunted.

“I don’t really know!” Dottie moaned, wringing her hands. “We were having the nicest little chat but I think I must have said something to upset her!”

She extended her arms again in a soothing gesture but Julianna backed away from her and looked around the room in distress. She saw the doorway to the hall and instantly made a beeline for it, nearly running.

“Is my dress down here?” she barked over her shoulder as she disappeared from view.

Ronnie rubbed his eyes, still trying to wake up. “Why does she want her dress back?” he asked, struggling to rise from his chair without upending the bowl of popcorn on his gut. “What’s going on?”

Dottie flipped off the television set and trotted over to the doorway to monitor Julianna’s whereabouts. “I don’t have the faintest notion!” she blurted, biting her lip. “I was just telling her about the cinnamon rolls at the Eagleville diner and she got all riled up and now she says she wants to . . . OH my Lord, the poor thing, she’s just taken off her nightie and is running around the house naked as a jaybird!”

She darted after Julianna, still wringing her hands.

“We can’t let her go anyplace tonight, Dot,” Ronnie called after her, galvanized by the notion of seeing Julianna naked but having undue difficulty getting to his feet. The stress and excitement of the big arrest earlier that night seemed to have taken more of a toll on him than he’d expected. “We’re supposed to keep her here until Social Services comes to get her in the morning.”

Julianna, who had indeed torn off Dottie’s night slip with no regard for modesty, had found the laundry room by this point. Her green evening dress (or rather, Nurse Gable’s evening dress, looking rather the worse for wear with a shredded, blood-stained right sleeve) was hanging neatly in the corner, and her underthings were folded neatly on top of the washer. She quickly slipped the dress over her shoulders, in far too much of a hurry to bother with her underclothes. Dottie came into the room before the dress was completely on; she stopped still and gaped at Julianna’s exposed buttocks.

“Oh, dear,” she said, feeling herself flush but unable to look away from the other woman’s smooth, shapely thighs. “You really should put on your panties first, honey. It isn’t proper to go about like that.”

Even though Jayne Meadows would be lucky to have a bottom half as nice as yours,
she added silently, her flush turning crimson. Dottie had always believed her own thighs were too slim and boyish, and she wished that she, too, could have such a softly rounded backside.

“Have you seen my shoes?” Julianna responded, tugging the dress down to cover herself and then reaching up behind her back to grapple with the zipper.

Ronnie showed up in the doorway of the laundry room, looking disappointed and out of breath.
If I wasn’t so damn fat I could have gotten here fast enough to see something,
he chastised himself.

“You better come on back into the living room with Dottie and me and sit down again, sweetheart,” he rasped. “Everything’s going to be just fine in the morning, you’ll see.”

“She’s not even wearing her underwear!” Dottie hissed at her husband. “We have to do something!”

Julianna spotted Nurse Gable’s black pumps on the floor by the dryer; she finished zipping up her dress and bent down to retrieve them. Her skin was pale and she was unsteady on her feet, but as she straightened again a pronounced change came over her. The worry lines in her face vanished and her hands ceased to shake; the bewildered look in her eyes was displaced by a keen, startling intelligence that unnerved Ronnie and Dottie as they gazed at her.

“You’ve been very sweet to me tonight, but I really must be going,” Julianna said. Her tone was gracious but left little doubt she intended to do exactly as she pleased. “My friends and I have a few miles yet to go tonight, and we have no time to waste.”

Straight across the hall from the laundry room was the kitchen, and on the other side of the kitchen was the door to the downstairs. Julianna’s eyes drifted toward the kitchen, then back to the Buckleys. Dottie was standing by the washer, but Ronnie was still planted firmly in the doorway, blocking access to the hall. Julianna studied the stocky sheriff for a moment longer, then smoothed the front of her dress and walked straight up to him with no outward sign of misgiving.

“Well, then!” she said brightly. “Thanks ever so much, but I really must say good-bye for now.”

She was almost as tall as Ronnie, and the expectation in her eyes that he would let her pass without a fuss made him feel like an adolescent bully for not immediately moving aside.

“I can’t let you leave here, sweetheart,” he murmured, shaking his head in a reflexive, nervous imitation of Ernest Borgnine. Ever since seeing
Marty,
Ronnie had practiced, in front of the bathroom mirror, many of his favorite Oscar-winner’s distinctive hangdog mannerisms, and he often mimicked them unconsciously whenever he felt unsure of himself. “I wish I could, but I just can’t.”

Borgnine’s ability to appear both resolute and lovable at the same time was what Ronnie most admired about the pug-faced actor; he now tried to convey these same qualities to Julianna, hoping this might convince her to listen to him. Regrettably, though, Julianna did not appear to be a fan of Ernest Borgnine.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked. She tried to edge around Ronnie but he put a hand on the door frame, barring her way. She glared down at his arm with indignation and raised her eyebrows. “You’re not behaving in a gentlemanly fashion, and I’ll thank you to let me be on my way.”

“Now, honey,” Dottie coaxed. “Ronnie’s just trying to help you. He’s the sheriff, you know, and that means he always knows best.” She took a tentative step toward the other woman. “How about I help you out of that dress again and into another nightie?”

Julianna opened her mouth to respond, but whatever she’d intended to say was lost in a high-pitched scream erupting from the jail cells below them.

Ronnie blinked in surprise, knowing full well how impossible it usually was to hear anything at all from downstairs once the thick steel door at the base of the stairs was shut. Yet for all the concrete flooring between them—not to mention Dottie’s plush rugs and several dozen handcrafted, sound-absorbing wall plaques—Elijah Hunter’s voice, though too muffled to hear distinct words, was coming through loud and clear.

Dammit, Bonnor,
Ronnie thought, grimacing as Elijah screamed a second time.
What in God’s name are you doing to those two boys?

“That’s Ben!” Julianna cried, her self-possession gone as abruptly as it had surfaced. “Oh my Lord, something awful must have happened!”

Elijah’s third scream seemed to ricochet around the laundry room, and Julianna, frantic to go to the aid of her friend, launched herself at Ronnie without warning. Dottie began to hyperventilate as Ronnie, knocked off balance by Julianna’s onslaught, flung his arms around the tall woman and attempted to restrain her without causing injury. From down below Elijah kept screaming, and each of his shrieks spurred Julianna to greater efforts to free herself; she started clawing at Ronnie in an attempt to weaken his hold on her.

“OW!” Ronnie yelped as one of Julianna’s fingernails dug a deep trough across his forehead.

“Oh, please, Julianna,” Dottie wheezed almost inaudibly, seizing her own breast with both hands and fighting for oxygen as a line of blood appeared above her husband’s eyebrows. “Please please please stop!”

“Let me go!” Julianna snapped, sinking her teeth into Ronnie’s flabby shoulder.

“OW!” Ronnie yelped again.

Deputy Bonnor Tucker’s howls of outrage now mingled with Elijah’s in the jail cells, and a moment later Jon Tate joined in, as well. Julianna—yanking ruthlessly on Ronnie’s left earlobe—finally managed to escape the sheriff’s clutches and squeeze around him; she dashed for the kitchen with Ronnie at her heels, cupping his ear with his hand and swearing. Dottie staggered after them but only made it as far as the hallway before losing her balance and overturning a small shelf of knickknacks by the kitchen entrance. A vase full of plastic purple flowers shattered on the floor in front of her; she stepped on broken glass in her bare feet and fell to the floor, wailing. A macramé-framed table plaque (inscribed in delicate gilt letters with
JESUS LOVES US, ONE AND ALL: THIN AND FAT, SHORT AND TALL!)
snapped into splinters beneath Dottie’s boyish thighs.