The White River Killer: A Mystery Novel (22 page)

In their car, Hubbard felt the railing behind their seat begin to vibrate as screws began to detach. Maria leaned forward, but jumped back when the foot rail collapsed beneath them. Their seat tilted a few degrees to the right as brittle fiberglass drifted away from metal fasteners. Hubbard looked down. Sixty feet looked like a mile.
Get Emily away from here
.
She can’t see this.

Maria held on to him, her nails digging deep into his arm in desperation. Surprised by the strength of her vice-like grip, Hubbard was in some pain as he tried to calm her.

“El . . . uh . . . Je vous ai. Je ne vous laisserai pas partir.” (I’ve got you. I won’t let you go.)

“Que s’est-il passé ?” (What’s happening?)

“Je ne sais pas.” (I don’t know.)

“Se cassera-t-il à part?” (Will it come apart?)

“Non. Je vous ai. (No. I’ve got you.)

Hubbard saw the younger of the two workers crawl on his belly like an infantry soldier under the malevolent ride. He made it to the center post, stood, and pulled the red emergency switch down with both hands. The big wheel ground to a halt.

A woman’s voice from below them floated up. “Thank God.” It took some time before the individual cars stopped swinging.

Hubbard and Maria were stuck at the top of the wheel where their car came to rest. He called down to Emily, telling her they were okay. He held Maria in his arms as she wept softly. He wanted to comfort her, but didn’t know what to say. He made a weak joke. “Encore?”

His head tilted to one side. His brow arched upward, and then down as he replayed what just had happened in his mind. In his panic to reassure Maria, he confused French with Spanish.

Wait a minute.

She had answered him. Hadn’t she? In French? That couldn’t be right. He was hallucinating.

“Parlez-vous français?” He asked in a tentative manner since the idea of an illegal immigrant from south of the border being conversant in French was far-fetched. Maria slowly lifted her head from his chest, looking as surprised as he felt.

“Oui. Faites-vous?”

“Oui.”

She sat up in the seat, looking at him as if he had announced he was a visitor from Mars. Perhaps finding an Arkansas farmer who knew français was equally unreal to her? They fell silent facing each other, stunned by the recent and literal turn of events. In the night sky directly behind Maria, Hubbard saw a roman candle soar into the sky, followed by another and another, each one exploding into a different shower of primary colors.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” a voice from the grandstand loudspeakers echoed across the fairgrounds, “the fireworks have begun!” It seemed like a totally unnecessary announcement. How could you miss the fireworks?

Now that the Ferris wheel had stopped, the men below brought out an iron bar, about five feet long and shaped like a square “S”. “This will take a few minutes,” the older of the two called up to the riders. Ignoring the heated questions to explain what had happened and what they were doing now, they inserted one end of the “S” bar into a hole in a large metal box at the base and turned the bar like an oversized key. The wheel began to turn, almost imperceptibly, accompanied by a metallic, tick, tick, tick, sound as gears inched forward. The men stopped turning the bar when a car had travelled far enough to unload passengers. As each pair of riders got off, they seized their moment to berate the hapless ride crew. This would be a slow process.

In the lower cars, Hubbard noticed a few heads crane upward to see the source of the animated French conversation.

“How do you know French?” Hubbard asked in a tone that sounded as if he was still a little uncertain that she did.

“Luis and I went to a private school to train for government service. Graduates would represent Guatemala in countries across the world . . .” Maria stopped speaking, swallowed hard, and then she shook her head and smiled. “Everyone was choosing English as their second language. I thought being one of the few who spoke French would help me stand out. What about you? Why does a farmer know French?”

Hubbard’s explanation was simple. “Back when I started in middle school, they still offered French as a foreign language. I only knew I wanted to be as far away as possible from Hayslip when I grew up. Paris is—”

Maria smiled like she understood. “A world away.”

“Yeah, that’s it. I had some crazy idea that one day I’d escape from here and sip coffee under the Eiffel Tower. And all this,” his hand indicated the miles of farm fields stretching out to the horizon, “would be a dream.” Hubbard shrugged. “Kid stuff, I guess.”

“Did you ever go to Paris?”

“No . . . um . . . Life happens, I guess. I did go to Montreal for a summer to study French.”

“I did too!” Maria exclaimed.

Hubbard’s mouth turned up in a half-smile to see her so pleased at this shared connection.

The conversation became quieter when Hubbard asked her why she had left Guatemala. Maria described her father’s sad fate at the end of her country’s long civil war. How one day soldiers came to their home and took him away. Her father was a ranking government official on the wrong side of history. They never saw him again. Instead of offering support, their friends abandoned them, afraid to be associated with the losing faction. Her mother became despondent, and her brother Luis wasn’t the same again—always angry, always in trouble. When her mother died, of grief, Maria thought, they were farmed out to relatives who didn’t want them. Luis told her that America would offer them a chance to start over. So she agreed to follow him here.

Hubbard then gave her the short version of his life. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her everything, not here, not now.

The hand cranking clicked noisily along, but it took time to revolve the giant wheel. Occasionally, Hubbard glanced down and waved to Emily and the patient Gibbons family.

Once he thought he spotted Luis and his bespectacled buddy observing them as they slowly descended. The pair was hard to see, though, almost hidden in the shadows of a far-away concession stand. Even from this vantage point, her brother and his pal were suspicious. If it was indeed them, why hide in the dark? Why not walk up and wait for Maria to reach the ground? After all, it was an opportunity to give him their version of the “evil eye” yet again. Maybe it wasn’t them and he was just being paranoid.

When they exited their car, Maria was telling Hubbard a charming story about Emily baking her first cake. As Hubbard stepped out, he offered Maria his hand and was surprised to realize his awkwardness was gone. Emily ran up to them and Hubbard scooped her up in his arms and spun her around in a circle, trying to lessen the effects of the frightening scene she had witnessed. He laughed and said, “That was so much fun.”

“It was?” she said hesitantly.

“Sure.”

Maria’s smile seemed to confirm her father’s interpretation of the wild ride.

“Daddy, you were talking French! We heard you,” Emily announced it like it was a newspaper headline. Her second thought was added like a subheading. “You found somebody who speaks your language—in Hayslip.”

“Oui, sí, yes.” Hubbard tried to wave it off. “Small world.”

Several couples remained at the ride entrance to see who the foreigners at the top of the Ferris wheel were. Their faces were varying portraits of surprise when they saw Hubbard, Maria, and Emily emerge.

You’d think they’d never seen a farmer speaking French with a beautiful Latino woman at the Hayslip Tomato Festival.

25

T
HE KILLER ON THE
W
HITE

R.J.
PARKED ON THE NORTH SIDE
of the old stone and brick church, which stood one block away from the town square. For almost five minutes, he remained in his Cadillac and gripped the steering wheel like it was a lifeline, taking several deep breaths in an effort to find new strength. It was past ten p.m. and these days there was almost no energy left in him by this hour. His hand went to the gun in his coat pocket, touching it for reassurance, as if it was a talisman. At one time, R.J. thought that he could handle anything unexpected that might come his way.

Now, he wasn’t so sure.

He didn’t know what he’d be dealing with tonight. Harper had lost his mind. The pastor’s drunken phone call thirty minutes ago confirmed it. “You wouldn’t listen to me at the café . . . So, I’m going to talk to John Riley. Expect him to come looking for you.
He has to know the truth before your surgery
.”

R.J.’s caller I.D. provided Harper’s location:
First Assembly
. Now, he had to stop the fool minister before he ruined whatever remained of his life. What did Harper think he knew? How could he know anything? It was impossible.

He opened the car door and got out, hoping the cool night air would revive him. In his peripheral vision he saw movement, barely visible in the night. He spun around, putting his hand on the pistol. There was the outline of a man in the gloom, walking unsteadily toward him. When the figure neared the light over the door, R.J. recognized the minister.

Raw emotion was obvious on Harper’s pink face, distorting his features, driving his words. “Don’t shoot . . .
or
go ahead and shoot
. Take your pick. I knew you’d try and stop me.”

He felt his pulse begin to race. This was more than the ramblings of a drunk. He took slow steps toward the preacher, his eyes darting to the shadows, checking to see if anyone was lurking there. “Small towns don’t take kindly to their church leaders becoming public spectacles. Your drinking is no secret as it is, let me get you back to the church’s first aid room. Is there still a cot back there? You can sleep this off.”

Harper held up his hand. “Stop right there. Don’t step any closer until I’ve said my piece.”

“You’ve said more than enough already.”

Harper looked at him for a long moment and seemed to be debating his next words. When he finally spoke, his words cut deep. “I know who killed your brother. I know that Tom Cole didn’t die in a fishing accident on the White River seventeen years ago.
I know everything
.”

He felt his throat constrict in response, as if he was choking.

The minister took a wobbly step forward. “I’ve got the evidence sitting on my desk. If you want to see it, come inside. These church walls won’t tumble if a sinner enters. After all, this holy house has seen worse than you . . .
I’m here every day
.”

He watched the reverend stumble to the side entrance, fling the door open, and enter. R.J.’s body was numb. He stood there, dumbly, and watched the door slowly close behind the preacher.

His mind was thick with questions. Was this a trap? Had Harper told this to anyone? What evidence did he hold?
Evidence could mean only one thing.
How did Harper find it when he couldn’t? In his nightmares, the red metal box was floating along the White, being pushed by the current toward the Mississippi River.

His hand reached into his pocket and felt the reassuring cold steel and then he followed Harper inside.

Small ceiling spotlights burned in the large sanctuary, thin fingers of yellow light that touched the hardwood flooring, but the remainder of the interior was murky and hard to discern, rows of pews in a misty gray darkness. If he remembered correctly, Harper’s office was behind the altar, accessible through an unobtrusive door next to the pulpit. R.J. hadn’t been inside the church in more than a decade but he guessed the layout remained the same. Things were slow to change in Hayslip.

He walked down the aisle to the front of the chapel and climbed the steps to the platform where Harper stood each Sunday to harangue the congregation about the torment awaiting sinners. R.J. felt his heart pound and the weakness grow in his left side. If he didn’t sit down soon, the room would begin to spin.

He got to Harper’s office door and saw light spilling out from underneath. He turned the knob and pushed, letting the door swing open.

Harper was slumped over the desk, his balding head propped on one arm, staring down at the metal tackle box, expressionless. A large door to a storage closet, just beyond the desk, stood open at a ninety-degree angle, blocking R.J.’s view of its inside.

R.J. struggled to slow his breathing as he sat down opposite the minister and his eyes fixed on the red case as well. Tom Cole’s dried blood was still caked on the upper corner of the box.

Harper didn’t look like he was going to break the silence, so R.J. prodded him. “Are you going to tell me about it or are we going to play twenty questions?”

The preacher leaned back in his chair. “Two weeks after Frank died, Tom Cole came to see me—
in this office,
as a matter of fact. He looked like a wild man, several days’ worth of stubble, bloodshot eyes, and filthy clothes.
But you know all that, don’t you.
You saw him that Saturday.”

R.J. forced himself to stand.
Was anyone else here?
He walked to the closet door and looked inside. The shelves held stacks of gold-colored collection plates and three cardboard boxes. One of the boxes, marked “Personal”, had been cut open, its seal broken; gray duct tape was wrapped into a ball on the floor beside the empty box. R.J. turned back to the reverend, “Are you recording this conversation?”

Harper closed his eyes and compressed his lips, as if he was embarrassed to answer the question. “No. I’m not. And we’re alone by the way, if you were wondering about that.”

He studied the preacher’s face, searching for signs of deception. His shoulders relaxed when he was satisfied Harper told the truth. “Why do you think I saw him before he died?”

“Cole had something to say, so I sent him to you.”

“
You sent him to me?
You knew what he was going to tell me and you
sent
him to me? Why the hell would you do that? What do you think would happen?”

Harper drooped forward and both his hands went to either side of his head, squeezing it like a vice. “I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry.
The guilt was eating Tom alive. He couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Oh, I’m so
sad
to hear that shooting my brother was
hard
on him.”

“He knew you were getting blamed for what he did, but he was too scared to come forward,” Harper said. “He was going to kill himself, but he wanted God to forgive him. You’ve got to understand what he looked like, how desperate he was.”

Harper pointed to a chair as if Cole was here, sitting with them. “He had a loaded pistol in his hand. He was seconds away from putting a bullet in his head and I couldn’t stop him.
And you’re the one who always knows what to do.
”

An ache grew at the center of R.J.’s chest. For years he had worked with this son-of-a-bitch on public projects, fending off the constant invitations to his church to lay his burdens down in front of the Lord but not a word about this. Not one word until now. The anger was burning through him, so hot, it was overwhelming. He fought the urge to pull the gun from his pocket. “No . . . No. You can’t put this on me.”

“But don’t you see, by then the whole town had made up their minds about who killed Frank. I thought if he told you, then you could . . .”

R.J. sat in the chair across from him and leaned forward. “I could what? . . . Could what? What did you think—?”

Harper exploded in tears. “I didn’t think! Okay? I screwed up
your life
.
John Riley’s life . . . Alice’s life . . .
I didn’t . . .
Tom said he couldn’t take life in prison and everyone in town looking at him the way they were looking at you. The only thing that reached him was when I said God would turn his back on him unless he talked to you.”

“
What profession are you in?
Why didn’t you call the State Police?” R.J.’s head tilted back and he grimaced with painful insight. “No . . . It makes sense now. You called Sheriff Conklin, didn’t you?”

“As soon as Tom left and I had time to think, I realized what I’d done. I got hold of the sheriff and he said that he knew the spot where you always fished. He’d head Tom off before he got there. He cursed me out for sending Tom to you. Conklin said you’d kill Tom if he didn’t get to the river first and stop him.”

“Too bad that thought didn’t occur to you.” R.J. leaned back, looking at the ceiling, remembering the tragic afternoon on the White.

“What happened when Tom got to you?”

“
Why should I tell you anything
?”

Harper lifted both arms, pleading. “Because I’ve lived with this as long as you have. Because it never leaves me either. Because . . .
please
. I have to know.”

R.J. inhaled then slowly released a deep breath. “I was fishing off the bank down by the big rocks when Tom came running up like the devil was chasing him. At first, he was incoherent. I told him to slow down so I could understand him . . . And it all spilled out. He said he went into the woods that day to practice his marksmanship because
I told him
he had to become better with a rifle or he’d . . .” R.J. had to pause for a moment, saying this aloud was more difficult than he anticipated. His hand went to his throat, trying to coax it to relax.

“Do you want some water?”

R.J. shook his head. “Tom was shooting at anything that moved, using up three boxes of shells, and when he heard a truck coming down the road, he turned toward it. He lied to me and said the gun went off all on its own.
He wasn’t to blame
.
It wasn’t his fault
. He was out there
because of me
since everybody does what I say . . . That’s when I hit him. He fell and his head hit the corner of my tackle box . . . Just like that, it was over . . . In less than a minute, he went from being my best friend to somebody I killed.”

R.J. looked at the incriminating box that haunted his dreams. “When I saw what I’d done, I went blood simple. The town already thought I had killed my brother. No one would believe that Tom confessed,
oh so conveniently for me
, before I hit him? I’d be put on trial for both murders . . . So I got out of there . . . Later, I regained my senses and I realized that I left my tackle box at the river.” Hubbard’s brow wrinkled. “How did
you
get it?”

“Conklin brought it to me.”

“Why?”

“He told me what happened and showed me the blood on your tackle box. He said that if
I hadn’t sent Tom to you
none of it would have happened. My testimony at a trial about what Tom said in my office wouldn’t do any good. A jury would think you were forcing my testimony, just like always, getting favors returned. Everyone knows you were responsible for convincing the deacons to let me keep my position here after . . .
you know
. You’ve got to remember what the world was like back then; Governor Parker was signing execution orders right and left. You’d get the chair . . . Conklin wanted to
save you
.”

“How?”

“
He needed my help to cover it up
. He said I could never say anything . . . not even to you. He wanted me to hold on to this,” he pointed at the tackle box, “until he could figure out what to do with it. So I put it in the closet in a sealed box by the collection plates . . . and time passed and here we are.”

“And you did nothing? Just had a drink or two, passing the time away?”

“Conklin said it had to be—”

“
Conklin
. How can you be that stupid? The minute you hid my tackle box you became an accomplice to murder after the fact. You were guilty, too. He could use that to stop you from coming forward if you ever developed a conscience. No church would hire a co-conspirator to a murder, no matter what the circumstances.
Don’t tell me that thought never occurred to you
. Maybe that’s what helped you stay quiet all these years.”

“No . . . I, uh . . .” Harper looked down at the desk. “I don’t know.”

R.J. shook his head. “Why didn’t anyone in this town ever wonder how the town sheriff could afford to buy part-ownership in a radio station? Or ever question how he could add so much new land to his farm on his salary?”

Harper’s mouth fell open. “Why? . . .
Oh, dear God.
Conklin was blackmailing you?”

“Conklin said he could get his hands on that tackle box whenever he wanted. I hired men to break into his house to look for it—
and
his office,
and
his car; his mother’s house—every place that I could imagine. But I never found it . . . So, I paid.”

Harper tried to say something, but no words came out. Tears began to roll down his cheeks.

“Stop crying! You don’t have the right” R.J. stood, his strength was returning and he decided to use it here. “
Listen to me carefully
. You’re not going to say anything about this to John Riley.”