Unspeakable (11 page)

Poor bastard, Jack thought. He had had a taste of what he would be missing by dying young. Jack didn't know if it was a curse or a blessing to have something you love and lose it, or whether it was better never to have had it. Shakespeare had penned an opinion, but Jack wasn't sure he agreed with it. If the Bard had seen this picture of Dean Corbett, he might have written a different couplet.

Anna was watching him for a reaction to the photograph. "It's sad," he said. "But it's a great picture. You can tell exactly what he's feeling."

He turned the page. The second photo had an even greater impact on him than the one of Dean. Reacting to it like a sock in the gut, he took a sharp breath.

The film had been overexposed, creating extreme degrees of light and dark, but it was that contrast that made the picture so captivating. That and the subject matter. The background was a solid white sky. The foreground was inky black. On the horizon where the two came together stretched a wire fence, much like the one he'd helped Delray repair his first day. The rough cedar posts were uneven, some listing slightly. One of the strands of barbed wire had sprung, creating a cruel-looking curl. These imperfections didn't detract, however. They gave the fence character and told its story. They said that it had withstood years of hard use. But the fence was only a backdrop. The focal point of the photo was the woman leaning against one of the posts, her hands sandwiched between it and the small of her back. Her face was turned away from the camera, exposing her neck and throat to the harsh light, which formed deep shadows between the slender tendons and in the notch in the center of her collarbone. The wind had swept her hair across her face. The same strong wind—it had to be strong to have done such a good job—had molded her dress to the front of her body, delineating her shape so precisely and perfectly that she might just as well not have been wearing the dress. Against that sheet of sky, her breasts were high and small and provocative. The dimple of her navel held an innocent allure, while the vee at the top of her thighs was darkly shadowed and not at all innocent. The cloth seemed to have been liquefied and poured over her. It was an incredibly seductive photograph. Jack responded with a whispered curse and a dry swallow.

Anna grabbed the album from him and got up to put it away. "Hey, wait. Who was that? Was that you?" Realizing he was talking to her back, he waited until she came back around. He repeated the questions, but she ignored him and began working backward out of her software program and shutting down the computer.

Determined, he touched her arm to get her attention. "Was that you?" She pointed to her wristwatch, put her palms together, then rested her tilted head on her hands.

"Bedtime," he said with chagrin. "A convenient retreat. To keep me from asking about the woman in the picture. Who I hope to God I have real dirty dreams about tonight." Of course she missed all that, as he intended for her to. They left the study together and she led him to the front door, where she stepped aside, waiting to lock up behind him. Jack stepped across the threshold, but before she could close the door, he said, "I almost forgot the reason for that meeting. You don't want David to teach me any more sign language, right?" She nodded.

"Because that's your secret language. If people can't understand what you're saying, you have control. You feel superior. And you like to lord it over people that you're deaf. That sets you apart from us common hearing folk."

She angrily shook her head no and began signing a rebuttal that he figured must be chock-full of epithets.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," he said obtusely. "Well, I won't ask David to teach me sign because I don't want him to get into trouble on account of me."

She bobbed her head in agreement, believing she had won the argument.

But just as she was about to close the door, Jack tapped the porch lightly with the heel of his boot. Signing it perfectly, he said, " Good night, Anna. "

CHAPTER TWELVE

E
zzy awakened at four-thirty, his usual time to get up. Retirement hadn't reset his body clock or altered his sleep patterns. But where work had once consumed his days, now the hours of wakefulness were barren and seemed to last forever. Most folks toiled for decades to reach this point in life. Ezzy couldn't figure why. It baffled him that anyone would strive for uselessness.

Cora had it in her head that they should buy a Winnebago and strike out to see the country. There were a few spots on the national map that might be worth the trip. The Grand Canyon. The Tetons. Niagara Falls. New England in the fall. But he couldn't work up much enthusiasm for the endless driving that kind of trip would entail.

She also had mentioned a cruise. He couldn't think of anything worse than being stranded on a ship with a bunch of strangers and a hyperactive crew determined to see that he had a good time doing things he didn't want to do. He had patently ignored the colorful brochures Cora kept poking under his nose.

Eventually she would wear him down. Guilt would compel him to give in. Vacations weren't important to him, so he hadn't missed taking them. Cora had. Sooner or later he would have to accompany her on one of her fantasy holidays.

But he hoped to delay it for as long as possible. He felt—and this was the silly part—that he shouldn't leave town just yet. Although he had been formally retired and there was a new man already on the job, and things at the Blewer County S.O. seemed to be chugging along just fine without him, he had an almost eerie notion that his work wasn't finished. Of course, he was deluding himself. He was hunting for signs and omens that he could whittle down to fit his present situation. "I'm a goddamn crazy old man, is what I am," he muttered scornfully as he shuffled into the kitchen.

The preset timer on the coffeemaker assured him a hot, fresh cup. He carried it outside onto the redwood deck, a Christmas present from their kids a few years back. Even at this time of morning, well before the sun was up, the needle on the outdoor thermometer was nudging the eighty-degree mark. The moon was low on the western horizon. There wasn't a cloud in sight. Today would be another scorcher.

It had been exceptionally hot that summer, too.

Especially that August morning when Patsy's body had been discovered. The heat probably had contributed to the brash newspaper photographer's nausea. Responding to Deputy Jim Clark's summons, Ezzy had left him and the coroner Harvey Stroud at the crime scene and had sped to the lounge where Patsy had last been seen alive.

Clark and another deputy had already rounded up people who had been there the night before. By the time Ezzy arrived, they'd been questioned, but he conducted his own interrogations, taking notes on cocktail napkins imprinted with a wagon wheel.

"That's right, Sheriff. Cecil and Carl were here with Patsy most of the evening. They were having themselves a real good time."

"Patsy, she'd dance one song with Carl, then the next with Cecil. And when I say dance, I mean, you know, she plastered herself against 'em. Had 'em both heated up real good. I was kinda heated up myself, just watching."

"By 'provocative' do you mean she was leading them on? Yes, sir, Sheriff Hardge. She surely was. I think she enjoyed having an audience while she did it, too."

"I don't mean to speak bad of the dead, you understand, but Patsy... well, sir, she was making herself available, if you know what I mean."

"She and Cecil, they were giving everybody a real good show out on the dance floor. He had his hands on her ass—pardon the French—and his tongue down her throat."

"I thought she and Carl were gonna go at it right over yonder on the pool table. 'N front o' God and everybody."

"Jealous? No, Sheriff, the brothers didn't act jealous toward each other. They was sharing her and that seemed to suit them fine. 'Course they's trash."

The only witness who didn't cooperate was the owner of the club, Parker Gee. He resented having his nightclub invaded by "cops" and his clientele interrogated like criminals. All questions posed to him were answered with a surly "I was busy last night. I don't remember." Leaving deputies to take official statements, Ezzy put out an APB on the Herbolds, stressing that at this point they were wanted only for questioning. He drove straight from the tavern to the mobile-home park where they lived together in a ratty trailer. Their car was gone and they didn't answer his knock. He resisted the urge to search the trailer without a warrant. On this case, everything must be done by the book. If the brothers were charged with murder, he didn't want the case dismissed because of a technicality.

When he questioned their neighbors, they looked scornfully at the trailer and told the sheriff they hoped he arrested Carl and Cecil and locked them up for good. They were nuisances, coming and going at all hours of the night, speeding through the park and endangering the youngsters playing outdoors, terrorizing young women with crude remarks and catcalls. Their trailer was an eyesore in an otherwise neat community. Unanimously their neighbors would like to be rid of them. He then drove to the oil-drilling rig where the Herbolds were employed. "They didn't show up for work this morning," the foreman told Ezzy. "I knew they'd done time, but everybody deserves a second chance. Now I'm two hands short. So much for being a nice guy. What'd they do, anyhow?"

Ezzy had declined to answer. But even if he had, he wouldn't have known where to begin. The answer would have been long and complicated. The Herbolds had been getting into trouble since they were just kids still living with their stepfather.

Delray Corbett had married their widowed mother when the boys were in primary school. She was a pretty woman, shy and quiet, who was obviously intimidated by her boisterous sons. She never had exerted parental control over them. This made them all the more resentful of and rebellious against their new stepfather's stern discipline. After their mother died, leaving Delray their guardian, their hostility toward him had intensified. When he remarried, they became fullfledged incorrigibles, making life hell for him and Mary. The boys' first malfeasance was a suspected shoplifting of a six-pack of beer. "They weren't caught with the goods, Delray, so we can't prove it."

Ezzy remembered Delray Corbett's mortification when he delivered the two tipsy boys to his doorstep. "I'll tend to it, Sheriff Hardge. Thank you for bringing them home. You have my word that this will be the last time."

Delray was unable to keep his promise. The boys grew more unruly with each passing year, especially after Dean Corbett was born. He was the apple of his daddy's eye. Cecil and Carl seemed determined to be just the opposite.

Their misdeeds increased in seriousness until, in Cecil's sophomore year of high school—Carl was a grade younger—a girl accused them of exposing themselves to her on the school bus and forcing her to fondle them. The boys claimed that she was lying, that the incident had never happened, that it was wishful thinking on her part. Since it was her word against theirs, they went unpunished. The girl's parents were outraged and publicly blamed Delray for his stepsons'

behavior.

There followed a string of petty thefts, vandalism, and DUIs, but the boys were clever. None of the charges stuck. Then one night they were caught red-handed stealing auto parts from a salvage yard. They were sentenced to eighteen months in a juvenile detention facility. They were released after serving a year and returned to parental custody.

Delray had laid down the law: One misstep and they were out. Two nights later they got drunk, stole a car off a used-car lot, and drove it to Dallas, where they ran head-on into a van, seriously injuring the driver. They were tried as adults and sent to Huntsville. Delray washed his hands of them.

When they were released on parole, they didn't return to Blewer. Not until the spring of 1976. Earlier that year a drilling outfit had struck oil and in quick succession brought in three new wells. This incited a flurry of drilling, creating a demand for workers. Roughnecks looking for jobs flocked to the area. The Herbolds were among them.

One night a fight broke out in a local motel that catered to the transients. When Ezzy arrived on the scene, he was surprised to see the Herbold brothers in the thick of the fracas. They had always been good-looking boys, and prison had done nothing to detract from their handsomeness. The bleeding cut above Carl's eyebrow made him even more dashing and enhanced his natural charm.

"Well, I'll be goddamned. Sheriff Hardge." Carl grinned at Ezzy as he pulled him off a guy he'd been pummeling. "Long time no see."

Still making mischief, Carl? Didn't you learn your lesson up at Huntsville?"

"We sure did. Sheriff." Cecil elbowed his brother aside to address Ezzy. They were both rotten to the core, but Cecil was the least offensive. Ezzy doubted Cecil was any more righteous than his little brother, just more cautious. "This here was an accident."

"Accident. Your brother was beating the hell out of that guy." A deputy was trying to bring the unconscious man around by smartly slapping his cheeks. "My brother was only protecting himself," Cecil argued. "We're no more to blame for the fight than any man here. If you arrest us, you have to arrest everybody. I don't think your jail is big enough."

He was right, of course. If Ezzy questioned these men all night, he would hear dozens of conflicting versions of how the fight started. Trying to get to the truth would be a waste of time and manpower. Instead, he imposed a curfew, ordering everyone to clear the area and return to their rooms to sleep it off.