Unspeakable (53 page)

Ezzy looked at Jack. "He likes you, huh?"

"And I like him. He's a great kid. I hate like hell he was there yesterday, seeing all that, hearing all the filthy things Carl said." His regret was obvious, and so was his concern for the boy. "Anna should be with him instead of hanging around here fussing over me." He looked up at her. "But she refuses to leave."

They gazed at each other with such blatant affection and desire that Ezzy felt himself blushing. Jack took her hand, lifted it to his mouth and kept it there a long time, his eyes tightly closed. When he opened them, Ezzy noticed tears. "I guess it's the anesthesia," he explained in a gruff, self-conscious voice. "The nurse told me it makes some people emotional. It's just... every time I think of how it might have turned out yesterday..."

He didn't have to say more. Anna bent down and kissed his lips softly, then dragged a chair forward and pressed Ezzy's shoulder. More light-headed than he had expected to be, he sat down gratefully. Anna draped a blanket across his shoulders.

"Thanks."

She motioned toward his arm, a question in her eyes.

"It's okay. Might throw off my horseshoe game a bit, but other than that..." He shrugged. She sat down on the edge of the hospital bed and took Jack's hand.

Ezzy said, "I haven't asked about you yet. How's your wound?"

"Hurts like hell, but the doctor told me I was damned lucky. Bullet missed my spine and vital organs. Another fraction of an inch one way or the other, and I could have been paralyzed or dead."

"Ah, well, that's good."

That exchange was followed by an awkward silence. Anna began to sense it and divided a curious look between them. She wrote a note to Jack. He said, "No, you don't have to go. In fact, you might just as well hear this now. Then if you want to leave, I'll understand." A vertical worry line appeared between her eyebrows as she wrote on her tablet. After showing the message to Jack, he said, "No, it's got nothing to do with the poisoned cows. It's more serious than that."

"Y'all've lost me. Poisoned cows?"

"It's insignificant," Jack told Ezzy.

Their dialogue only increased Anna's confusion and concern. Jack Sawyer squeezed her hand.

"It'll be okay, Anna." He turned to Ezzy, locked eyes with him,
hesitated a moment, then said,
"That day you walked into the Dairy Queen and spoke to Delray, I nearly shit."

"I didn't recognize you, Johnny. You'd grown up, become a man. But even if I had known you on sight, it wouldn't have mattered. I didn't make the connection until yesterday."

"For all I knew, you had a twenty-two-year-old arrest warrant for me."

"No."

Jack looked at Anna, reached up and touched her cheek. "I took a real chance coming back to Blewer, but I... I had to. As long as Carl was in prison, my conscience stayed clear. He deserved the sentence he got for killing that off-duty cop during the convenience store holdup. But as soon as I heard he had escaped, I knew I had to be on hand in case he tried to make good his threat to kill Delray."

Anna made a quick sign.

"Why?" Jack said. "Because it's my fault that Carl issued that threat. Delray blamed Carl for something he didn't do. He thought his stepsons were connected to the death of a girl named Patsy McCorkle. They weren't. And I knew it."

Her lips parted in wordless surprise. She looked quickly at Ezzy. He lowered his eyes to his lap, where his hands were lying loosely clasped. The band of pressure he had felt around his chest for almost a quarter of a century began to shake loose.

"See, Anna," Jack was saying, "my mom raised me practically by herself. Occasionally my daddy would put in an appearance, but when he did there was always trouble. He'd get drunk. She'd whine. He'd get caught with another man's wife. There'd be a row. She'd cry. He'd flaunt his lovers. They'd have terrible fights."

He paused for a moment, and Ezzy could see the torment behind his eyes as he remembered unhappy times. "I won't bore you with the details. Bottom line, my old man was worthless. A lousy husband and a worse father. But don't feel too sorry for my mother. She put up with it. That was her choice. She loved her misery more than she loved either him or me.

"After she died, I was placed in foster care. My old man left me in the system for a while, then decided he wanted me to be with him. Not out of the goodness of his heart, or because he gave a damn what happened to me. He needed a playmate, an errand boy. He landed a job as a roughneck and was sent up here to Blewer. He made pretty good money. Things were all right.

"In fact, life got to be fun. Life with my mother had been drudgery. But with my old man, it was a constant party. More often as not, people thought we were brothers. He didn't look old enough to be my dad—he wasn't old enough to be my dad, except biologically.

"Discipline wasn't in his vocabulary. He let me do whatever I pleased, and after living with a couple of foster families where correction had been harsh, I loved the freedom. He never made me go to school. Once, When a truancy agent came by, he charmed her and they wound up in bed together that same afternoon.

"He took me out drinking with him nearly every night. For my fifteenth birthday he gave me a night with one of his girlfriends. After that, we shared women with no more regard than we'd split a candy bar. At sixteen I formally quit school and got a job with the same drilling outfit he worked for."

"I guess that's about the time I met y'all," Ezzy interjected. Jack nodded. "Daddy hadn't cleaned up his act any. He still got drunk and disorderly sometimes. On more than one occasion you brought him home, Ezzy. Remember?"

Ezzy nodded.

"One night he got in a fight over a woman in a bar. You called me to come get him or else you were going to put him in jail."

"You had a lot of responsibility for a boy that age."

"As I said, it was fun. For a while. And then, I don't know what happened exactly. I can't recall a specific event that woke me up to what a sordid life we were living. I guess the realization crept up on me. Gradually our lifestyle no longer seemed so sweet. In fact it turned sour.

"The older Daddy got, the younger the women he chased. His sexual innuendos and seduction techniques didn't seem clever and naughty to me anymore, just distasteful. The harder he worked at satisfying his appetites, the more it took to satisfy them.

"One night we brought this girl home with us. Daddy got rough and she got scared. I said I wanted no part of that kinky stuff. He cussed me out, called me a wimp, a pussy, an embarrassment to him. While he was ranting and raving, the girl gathered her clothes and ran out. After he sobered up, I don't think he even remembered what he'd tried to do to her." He paused and stared straight ahead. Ezzy figured he was too ashamed to look at either Anna or him.

"We met Pasty McCorkle at the Wagon Wheel. She ran around with a wild crowd, including the Herbold brothers. They hung out in the same taverns as Daddy and me, but they always meant trouble. Already they had spent time in reform school and in your jail, Ezzy, and were destined for bigger and better things. I steered clear of them.

"Patsy wasn't a pretty girl, but she had a spirit of adventure that appealed to my old man. He was way too old for her, but she was flattered by his attention. The first time they were together it was in the backseat of our car on the Wagon Wheel's parking lot. Later he described it to me in detail and told me that I shouldn't be put off by her looks, that I didn't know what I was missing, that if I closed my eyes it didn't matter what she looked like. Things like that, only in much cruder language. Looking back, I think he favored women who were emotionally needy, like my mother, like Patsy, because they fed his ego."

"What happened that night, Johnny?"

"Daddy had forgot to make the payments, so our car had been repossessed several days earlier. He was pissed and depressed, but he wanted to go out and party, take his mind off his troubles. When we got to the bar, it was already crowded. Daddy's mood didn't improve when he saw Patsy carrying on with the Herbolds. He tried to woo her away, but she had eyes only for them that night.

"Daddy drank steadily, until he had spent all the money in his pocket. When he ran out, he offered to sell this guy his knife for cash. Everybody was familiar with that knife because it was so unusual. He liked to brag about how it had been handed down through several generations of Sawyers. Whether or not that was true, I don't know. He probably stole it. but he'd had it for as long as I could remember.

"In any event, the guy wasn't interested in buying it, and Daddy took that as an insult to his family. They got into a shouting match. The bartender—I think he owned the place—"

"He did. Parker Gee," Ezzy interjected.

"Before they could come to blows, he told me to take Daddy outside. Try and cool him down. We were still out there when Patsy staggered out with the Herbolds. She was drunk, but not so drunk that she didn't realize they were dumping her. She expected to leave with them and continue the party somewhere else. They said they had business to attend to and she couldn't go."

"So their alibi was sound."

"I guess so, Ezzy. Because they left the Wagon Wheel without Patsy."

"She offered you and your daddy a ride."

"More or less. The details are foggy, but we left with her. To my knowledge no one saw us getting into her car."

"But every last person I questioned testified that she had left with the Herbolds. Including you."

"Yeah," he admitted, on an expulsion of breath. "I lied to you, Ezzy. She walked out with Carl and Cecil. But she drove away with my old man and me."

Ezzy remembered talking to Johnny Sawyer a couple days following the incident. The boy had told him the same story he had heard from other bar patrons. He'd had no reason to doubt him.

"Go on. What happened after y'all left?"

It was as Ezzy had surmised the morning he saw her body. Patsy and the two men went to the river and had a sex party.

Anna's face didn't reveal what she was thinking, although Sawyer appeared to be in pain when he admitted to his participation. "I took my turn with Patsy because I was a little drunk myself and didn't want to get Daddy riled again by saying no thanks. Then they went at it a couple of times while I just sat there drinking, getting drunker. I wasn't even alarmed when she got on her knees and he entered her from behind because he'd told me she liked it that way." Ezzy's cheeks flamed, not because he was embarrassed, but because he was embarrassed for Anna. To her credit she sat stoically, her features composed. But Ezzy knew she was catching every word because tears shimmered in her eyes.

Jack stared into near space for a moment. "They were... involved in what they were doing. She as much as my dad. He had her by the hair, sort of whipping her head around. Then, just like that," he said, snapping his fingers, "her neck snapped. Like a twig. I heard it. I don't think Daddy did. In any event he didn't stop till... well, you know." After another short silence, he blinked Ezzy into focus. "I swear to you, he didn't intend to kill her."

"Then why in God's name didn't you tell me that?" Ezzy demanded angrily. "Goddamn it, Johnny, do you realize how many hours I have anguished—"

"I'm more aware of the cost than you," Jack said, raising his voice to match Ezzy's. Ezzy tamped down his temper and took several deep breaths. "When I came to your house to question you, why in hell did you lie about leaving with her that night? Why didn't you clear up the matter then? If I recall, you covered for your daddy. You told me he was working out of town. God help me, I believed you and never even checked it out. I had no reason not to believe you. John Sawyer was a scoundrel, a drunk, and a womanizer, but he was no killer. If it was an accident, he would've been charged with involuntary manslaughter and probably gotten probation. No jury from Blewer County, Texas, would have sympathized with a reputed slut who engaged in anal sex with an older man while his underage son watched. Why didn't he come forward and explain what happened?"

"He couldn't."

"Nonsense. You said he didn't intentionally kill her."

"He didn't. But I intentionally killed him."

CHAPTER FIFTY–ONE

A
nna's quick intake of breath was audible. But she remained perfectly still and stared at Jack with the same stunned, unblinking dismay with which Ezzy was gaping at him. Jack Sawyer's features worked emotionally. "I said to him everything you've just said to me, Ezzy. Patsy was beyond the age of consent. It wasn't rape. She was willing. She participated. It was an accident. I begged him to do the right thing.

"He wouldn't listen. Refused to even talk about it. Said he wasn't going to get tangled up in a legal mess over a piece of tail. Words to that effect. We got into an argument that turned violent.

"After exchanging several blows, I pushed him into the river in the hope of cooling him off, sobering him up, restoring his common sense. But he dragged me into the water with him and held me under. I fought and fought. He wouldn't let up. He held me under. His own son. I thought, My daddy's killing me. He's going to drown me unless I do something to stop it.

"My lungs were burning, ready to burst, and he wouldn't let me up," he said, his voice cracking.

"I was clutching at anything. My hand connected with his scabbard. In seconds I had the knife in my hand and used it to cut his arm. He let go of me and I surfaced. But my cutting him only made him angrier. He called my mother and me every vile thing he could think of. Said he'd never wanted any part of either of us. Said we'd ruined his life and he was sick of being shackled to a sniveling little dick weed like me. Then he charged me again, put his hands around my throat, and pushed me under. So I killed him."