Tumbleweeds (53 page)

“No, I just need to get away from the dog.” He tossed Mike the keys. “You drive. Will, thanks for your time. I’m sure there’ll be no need to bother you again.”

As they drove away, the deputy said, “I didn’t know you were allergic to dogs, Sheriff.”

“Lots about me you don’t know, son,” Randy said, fully restored and carefully holding the rim of the cup by his handkerchief.

W
ill watched the squad car disappear in a cloud of dust. Had he just been duped? Had Randy’s allergic fit been a ruse to get a sample of his fingerprints? He’d given the Styrofoam cup to him willingly. His deputy would testify to that. The cup was not an object of an illegal search, but as long as he’d known Sheriff Wallace and his family, he’d never heard anything about his being allergic to dogs.

Silva came to sit beside him, his expression asking pitiably if he was in trouble. “No, boy,” Will said, bending down to scratch his ears, “but I may be.”

Like a fool he’d left his fingerprints on the wristwatch, his tears on the shirt. He should have removed them both. He had no alibi for the time of the murder. Sheriff Wallace had known he was lying when he accounted for his whereabouts. His regret and sadness for a longtime friend of his son’s were unmistakable in his eyes.

Well, better he than his mother, Will thought, patting his leg for Silva to follow him back to the house so he could telephone his father.

They met at St. Matthew’s in John’s office. “What’s this all about, Son?” John asked, hoping—praying, as he’d done all night—that he hadn’t already guessed. The Jeep tracks and Will’s generally known antipathy for Trey were enough to draw attention to him as a sus
pect. John had been in a sweat all night going over the names of every possible person who had the cold-blooded nerve and motive to kill Trey after so many years. Who besides Cathy and Will and Deke knew where Trey was staying? Who would Trey have known and stopped his car for? He wouldn’t have recognized Will unless Will had flagged him down.

“I believe I’m going to be charged with the murder of Trey Don Hall,” Will said.

John was preparing to pour coffee. Carefully he replaced the pot to its burner beside the empty cups. Images of Pelican Bay Prison flashed into his mind.

“Confessions given to a priest, even if he’s a suspect’s father and the son’s not a Catholic, can’t be used in court, can they, Dad?” Will asked.

God have mercy
, John thought, his ear picking up on Will’s natural use of
Dad
through the boom of his heartbeat.
Was his son about to confess to the murder of Trey Don Hall?

“No, Son,” he said.

“Then let’s go into the confessional.”

Behind the wine velvet curtain of the confessional, through the grill, Will blurted, “I didn’t kill him, Dad. You’ve got to believe me.”

“I do, Son. I do,” John said, for a moment dizzy from relief, “but why do you feel you have to assure me of your innocence in the confessional?”

“Because I think I know who did.”

“Really? Who?”

“Mom.”

“
What?
Why on earth would you think that?”

Will’s face darkened. “I don’t want to think it. I can’t
bear
to think it, let alone say it out loud.”

“Okay, Will, take a deep breath, and tell me why you suspect your mother.”

Will described his discovery of the body, which satisfied John’s worry over the presence of the Jeep tracks, a detail not yet released to the press. He could imagine the boy’s shock and despair, his pain when he knelt beside the still form of the man he’d thought was his father. At such a moment, he would not be thinking of fingerprints or tread markings or DNA. “But why didn’t you call nine-one-one?” he asked.

Will averted his eyes. “Because… because of Mom.”

“Because she was on the road where Trey was killed?”

“Because I thought she may have been involved.”

John struggled to subdue his panic. “And what made you think that?”

Will’s tone grew bleaker. “I… saw her yesterday evening about six fifteen at the intersection to the road to Harbison House. She had come from that direction and was stopped at the light. I was at the gas station across the street. She didn’t see me.”

“But she admitted she’d gone to see Trey and changed her mind.”

“Yeah, well, if that were all, she wouldn’t have looked so strung out. She looked like she’d seen… a murder. I thought that maybe she’d gone to start something again with Trey. She’d changed out of her smock and was all dolled up, but from her face I thought he’d rejected her again, and that’s when I went to have it out with him and… came across the body. The bullet hole looked like a rifle shot to me—like the kind that old .30-30 of Great-grandmother’s would make.”

The confessional was suddenly too confining and stuffy. “How do you know she didn’t turn around before she came to the body?”

“Because I know my mother. Her public expression is trained. It takes a lot for it to slip. She’d been crying and looked pale as a lily.”

John reflected back on the evening. Cathy and Will had not seemed themselves. He’d attributed their agitation to the emotional upheaval of the day, but they’d been going through travails deeper than his.

“Have you spoken with your mother since last night?”

“No. I telephoned right after the news broke, but she didn’t pick up, and her cell was off. I had to leave a message. I’ve been worried about that ever since. She may have simply not wanted to talk to me right then. I can’t imagine why she’d leave the house unless… it was to get rid of her grandmother’s rifle.”

Will had reason to be worried. After Randy had left, he’d called Cathy, too, and gotten the answering machine. Concerned out of his mind, he’d gunned the parish truck back to her house, but the place was dark. There was no answer to the bell and no way to tell if her Lexus was in the garage. He’d left, hoping she’d closed herself away to deal with Trey’s death in her own way. It was completely unlike her to shut him out, especially now, but he’d had to hope that’s all there was to it.

“You didn’t try to call her this morning?” John asked.

“No, because… there’s more,” Will said, and related the early morning’s episode with the sheriff. “When Randy compares my prints on the cup to those I left on the body, he’ll have all the evidence he needs to arrest me. I didn’t kill Trey Hall. I’m telling you that under the seal of the confessional, but if I’m charged, I’m going to say I did it.”

“Will, listen to me!” John threw back the grill. “You have done nothing wrong, and neither has your mother. You can’t even for a second believe she’s capable of murder—”

“I don’t, but the police may.”

“They’ll have to prove it, and there’s nothing to put her at the scene of the crime. She probably came upon the body same as you did, which was the reason she looked upset, so there’s no need to confess to something you didn’t do. If Randy comes for you, say nothing—not one word—until I get you a lawyer. Your actions were perfectly reasonable, and your failure to call the police understandable. You did what any son would do who found his father lying beside the road and was afraid his mother would be charged with the crime. Your mother had no reason to kill Trey. Remember she knew he was dying.”

“But
I
didn’t know until after I found the body,” Will reminded him. “When Randy finds that out”—he shook his head hopelessly—“it will be one more nail to hammer into my coffin.”

John massaged his forehead in thought. Will was right. An autopsy would reveal Trey’s cancer. Randy would ask when Will had learned of Trey’s terminal illness. While the time frame of that information would serve in Cathy’s defense, it wouldn’t in Will’s.

His father could always lie for him, of course—a bad option. He’d sell his soul to protect his son, but as John well knew, lies beget lies that snared and entangled when the truth had the chance of setting you free.

“And by the same token,” Will said, “I didn’t know Trey wasn’t my father until after he was dead. I’ve been thinking that if that information gets out, won’t it make my motive to kill him look even worse if I go to trial? I killed a man out of vengeance for being a lousy father when he wasn’t my father at all?”

“W-w-w-ell, I—,” John stammered, rendered at a loss by Will’s astute reasoning. If he and Cathy announced the truth of Will’s paternity, they’d be adding weight to the murder charge. He didn’t dare lay claim to his rightful son publicly, at least not yet.

“Randy is not going to find that out,” John said. “We’re going to keep that information under our hats. Somebody killed Trey. It wasn’t you, and it wasn’t your mother. I repeat, Will, under no circumstances are you to admit to a murder you didn’t do. We have to keep the faith that the killer will be discovered.” He pointed to his neck and tried to grin. “I don’t wear this collar for nothing.”

“I hope it carries a lot of weight with the man upstairs,” Will said, but his eyes betrayed his doubt.

When Will had gone, John went to his office and telephoned a fellow Jesuit and graduate of Loyola University who was practicing criminal law in Lubbock. After he related the details of his concern, the attorney said that yes, Will’s arrest was probably imminent and to
let him know when he was taken into custody. He would leave immediately for Kersey.

John wandered back into the nave of the church and sat down in the same spot he’d occupied all those afternoons ago following the one that had changed his life forever. He’d not filled the seat since. Today he went to it automatically, the site where he’d poured out his greatest anguish and fear. Here in this eighteen-inch expanse he’d found peace. Here he’d found the answer he was seeking for his life. With the same desperate hope for deliverance, he knelt on the prayer bench and pressed his clenched hands to his forehead, but he could not pray past his horrible memories of Pelican Bay Prison or the mental image of his son confined in such a hell.

If Will was charged, Cathy would admit to the crime. John had no doubt of that. She would sacrifice herself rather than allow her innocent son to be found guilty of murder. The motive she’d give would be simple: She’d hated TD Hall. She’d never reveal her real motive for wanting him dead for fear of exposing Father John Caldwell, and Will had pointed out a reason she could not use his paternity as cause to kill him. It was doubtful the police would buy her confession in light of the evidence against Will, but it would certainly raise the possibility in the county that she was the killer.

For the first time in his ministry, John found he could not sincerely pray,
Thou will be done
. He wanted
his
will done, and that was to see the real killer found and his son and Cathy exonerated. God’s will was always right but not always just.

John returned home to hear from Betty that Trey’s lawyer, Lawrence Statton, would be flying in from California the next morning and had requested a meeting with her and Lou that afternoon. “Now what do you suppose that’s all about?” she asked.

Guilt
, he could have answered. Trey had left them a sop in his will. “We’ll have to wait to find out,” he replied.

“He asked if you’d help him make funeral arrangements. Trey’s
to be buried beside his aunt,” Betty said. “He also said that Trey had requested you officiate at his burial.” She handed him a notepaper. “He’s staying at the Holiday Inn on I-Forty. Got the last room. That’s the number where you can reach him.”

John took the slip of paper and studied it. What could he say over the grave of a man who even in his death continued to devastate his family?

T
he bishop of the Amarillo diocese had advised John to say and do nothing concerning his admissions until he had time to consider his counsel. His preliminary opinion was that John’s act had been committed before he took his vows and therefore did not fall under the Church’s purview to determine the course he should take.

As a result, Saturday evening John had resumed his place as presiding priest at the celebration of the mass at St. Matthew’s when Sheriff Randy Wallace filed a complaint with the county magistrate formally charging John Will Benson with the murder of Trey Don Hall. He presented as probable cause fingerprints from a Styrofoam cup the accused willingly gave him at his residence that matched the fingerprints taken from the scene of the crime. Warrants were issued for Will’s arrest and a search of his property and vehicle for further evidence linking him to the crime.

The sheriff and his two deputies found him feeding his horses at sunset, Silva at his heels. After reading Will his rights and allowing him to call his mother and Father John, Randy left him to finish his duties while a deputy stood guard and he and Mike searched the house and Wrangler. The only gun found was a .22 rifle in the house, but the Jeep’s glove compartment yielded a receipt for gas purchased
in the vicinity where Trey Don Hall’s body was found and on the date and time that corresponded with his murder.

“We’re going to have to impound your Wrangler, Will,” Randy said. “We’ll need to compare your tire treads with a mold that we took at the scene of the crime.”

“My keys are hanging inside the door,” Will said.

“And your dog can come with us, if you like. Either Father John or your mother can pick him up at the department and take him home.”