A Field of Poppies (26 page)

Amelia grabbed her chest as she began to sway. “I feel faint.”

“
Then lie down or die. Right now I don’t give a damn which turn you take,” he said softly, and walked out of the room.

He met Oral Newton lingering at the head of the stairs.

“
My mother will be leaving within a few days. At that point, your services will no longer be needed. In the meantime, you might go check on your bitch. She was threatening to faint.”

Justin watched shock on Newton’s face turn to rage. The man was torn between punching him and tending to Amelia.

Concern for Amelia won out.

Newton bolted down the hall as Justin went to his room to pack. He needed to get away from this house and everything it stood for. There was a small apartment on the top floor of his office building where visiting businessmen sometimes stayed. It would serve his needs until his mother got her sorry ass out of the house.

****

Prophet Jones liked the way small places made him feel – the way he’d always felt being cradled in his mother’s arms. It was also quite freeing to no longer live by the rules of polite society. He didn’t have bills to pay. He didn’t go to a job. He ate what others threw away, and when his garments became too rank or rotted and came apart, there was always a church charity closet to fix him right up. His only possessions were his bible and the clothes on his back, which made moving quite easy.

For the past few weeks he’d been sleeping in a spot under the bridge he called the nest. It was a nice water-proof niche about five feet wide and five feet deep within the under-structure of the bridge. He’d dug into the dirt embankment years ago and made himself a cozy little hidey-hole. The noise from the overhead traffic was somewhat muted by the depths in which he slept, but if the river was in flood stage it wasn’t safe to use. However, at this time, such was not the case.

He pulled the old quilt a little tighter around his shoulders and rolled over onto his side. Later after the sun went down, he’d run his route through the alleys behind the restaurants and find himself some dinner. For now, he needed to rest. One never knew when the Devil would show up again, and he wanted to be ready in case he needed to fight.

This was where he’d been the night the Devil came down to the Little Man. Even though it had just begun to rain that night, he’d witnessed it all - from the argument, to the gunshots, to watching the man fall backward into the river. A flash of lightning was all it took for Prophet to see the Devil’s face.

When the Devil drove off, he climbed down from the under-structure and raced through the rain, but not in time to save the man. He was already floating face down in the water and the rain had turned into a deluge. Prophet said a prayer for his soul then glanced at the dead man’s car. It was sitting on the bank with the lights on, the door open and the engine still running.

He kept looking back toward the city, afraid the Devil would return, but knew he needed something to prove what he’d seen. He didn’t intend for him to buy his way out of this evil deed like he’d done the time before. That’s when he saw the empty shells lying in an ever-growing puddle on the ground.

That was it! Footprints! The Devil had left his footprints. Prophet grabbed the empty shells and stuffed them deep inside an inner pocket. He needed to think about who he should tell. It had to be someone he could trust - someone who couldn’t be bought off like before. But he’d think about later, after he got out of the rain. He was running back toward the bridge when two men came out of nowhere.

“
Go back! Go back! The Devil’s on the bridge!” he shouted, but they acted like they didn’t hear him and ran past, and now here he was, days later with proof of the evil deed in his pocket.

A siren sounded somewhere off in the distance, rousing him just as he was at the point of drifting off to sleep. The sound made Prophet antsy. He didn’t trust the cops. He threw his covers back and crawled to the edge of the nest to peer out and saw a black and white cop car pulling up to the riverbank.

“
Too little, too late,” he muttered, thinking they should have been here three nights ago to catch the Devil in the act.

When he saw them getting out and looking toward his location, he panicked. After all these years, his first instinct was to run. He slipped out of the hidey-hole and went out on the opposite side of the bridge before disappearing into the brush and trees along the riverbank. The cops never saw him leave, and even though they eventually found where he’d been, he was nowhere in sight.

****

Poppy needed to sleep. Tomorrow was the funeral and all it entailed, but every time she closed her eyes, her thoughts went straight to Jessup, wondering if he’d quit loving her when he’d found out she wasn’t his. Her mother’s shame was seeping into every living pore of her body and she didn’t know how to make it stop. Even though Helen had been a good and loving wife, Poppy was living proof of Sunny’s lie.

Exhausted and heart-heavy, she finally got up and went to the kitchen to warm some milk. It had been Mama’s cure-all for restless sleep. Adding some chocolate syrup made it even better.

The floor was cold beneath her feet as she sat at the kitchen table waiting for the milk to warm. She should have gotten her slippers, but she didn’t want to go back now for fear of getting the milk too hot. She caught sight of the little brown mat in front of the kitchen sink and brought it back to her chair to keep her feet off the cold floor while she waited.

The quiet and the familiarity of the house enveloped her as she sat. This was home. She’d never lived anywhere else, and as simple as it was, right now there wasn’t another place on earth she would rather be. By the time she’d downed her warm chocolate milk, something within her had settled. She rinsed the glass and pan she’d used, replaced the mat in front of the sink and then ran back to her room.

The weight of covers against the chill of the night was comforting – warming both her feet and her heart. She thought she heard the clock in the living room begin to strike, but she was too near asleep to count the chimes.

****

John had fallen asleep easily, but was a long way away from resting. He was caught in a nightmare, watching his father’s murder from the opposite bank of the Little Man - catching glimpses of the act in progress through intermittent flashes of lightning.

Rain.

Thunder.

Lightning snaking across the sky as John saw his daddy drive his car up to the Little Man.

In another flash of lightning, Jessup was out and standing on the riverbank.

The rain was deafening. John tried to shout, but his daddy didn’t hear him, and in the darkness, couldn’t see him.

In the blinding flash of the next lightning strike a second man had entered the scene.

Before John could tell what was happening, they were swallowed back up by the night and the storm.

There were other flashes - the flash of repeated gunfire – and then one lightning flash lasting just long enough for John to see Jessup staggering, falling backward in the Little Man.

John was screaming as he ran toward the river.

Suddenly the light was in his eyes and Poppy was standing beside his bed, shaking him awake.

“
Johnny! Johnny! Wake up! You’re having a bad dream.”

John sat up in bed and touched his cheeks. They were wet. In the dream he’d felt the rain on his face and all the time it had been his tears.

Poppy sat down on the side of the bed. “Are you okay?”

He swiped his hands across his face, wishing he could wipe away the memory as well.

“
Hell of a dream. I’m sorry I woke you.”

“
You were screaming at Dad, saying his name over and over.”

John leaned back against the headboard and closed his eyes.

“
Talk to me, Johnny. Once you share the burden, it’s never as heavy, remember?”

Their mother’s words were all too familiar, but telling what he’d learned about Jessup’s death was horrifying. He kept thinking he needed to protect Poppy from the burden of anything else.

“
Please,” Poppy said. “No more secrets in this family.”

He reached for her hand. “Dad was still alive when he hit the water.”

Poppy jerked as if he’d just punched her. “No! Oh my God! How do you know?”

“
I went to the morgue, remember? I talked to the doctor who did the autopsy.”

“
Daddy couldn’t swim.”

“
I know.”

Her voice broke. “He was so scared of the water.”

“
I know, sister.”

He expected her to cry. He had not expected anger. Within seconds the expression on her face went from sad to fury.

“
The day the killer is sentenced, I will be in the courtroom facing him down and wishing him a slow journey to hell.”

“
Well, I have to say that’s a damn healthy way to look at it,” John said.

“
Would you like me to make you some hot chocolate to help you get back to sleep?”

John smiled gently as he ran his thumb along the curve of her cheek.

“
No, honey, I think I’ll be fine. I’ll just cover myself up with a corner of your sweet revenge and sleep like a baby.”

Poppy sighed. “It’s 3:45. I set my alarm to go off at 6:30. Is that early enough for you? Remember the service is at 10:00 a.m. and Truman said the family car from the funeral home will come pick us up at 9:30.”

“
Yes. Sleep well, little sister, and thank you for rescuing me.”

“
That’s what family is for,” she said, and blew him a kiss as she left the room, turning the lights out behind her.

John slid back down beneath the sheets and then closed his eyes. There was a moment when he feared the dream would come back, but in his mind, all he saw was Poppy’s face.

Chapter Fifteen

Mike had been dreaming of a tall slender girl with long black hair and dark eyes who couldn’t stop crying. He kept wanting to hold her, but she was always two steps away from his reach. He woke up, frustrated and feeling like he’d never gone to bed.

There was no getting around the fact that he’d taken a big step beyond police protocol in letting himself get this attached to Poppy Sadler, especially since the entire range of their relationship was based on nothing but a murder investigation.

He didn’t know how her future was going to play out, but there was a part of him hoping he was still in it. The detective in him wanted answers to the things he didn’t know about her – like her favorite food – or her favorite color. He knew what made her cry, but he wanted to know what made her laugh. The longing to be closer to her was growing, but this wasn’t the time, and it might never come.

Mike was a man who accepted the facts which included his shortcomings, and learning she had no interest in him whatsoever might be the biggest hurdle he would ever have to face.

He ate his standard peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich in front of the television, still in the gym shorts he slept in, and washed it down with re-heated coffee.

On his way to the kitchen to put the dirty dishes in the sink, it occurred to him that she was probably doing something similar. She’d be up by now and making breakfast for her and her brother. Either they’d be talking too much to ignore what lay ahead, or not at all as they faced burying their mother.

A quick glance at the clock was all it took to make him focus. He needed to get to work.

A short while later he pulled into the parking lot, anxious to get inside and play catch-up with new info on the case. But once inside, he wound up going through the morning with a bit of frustration. Kenny had called in sick, a case of food poisoning from the take-home food he’d had last night, which left Mike on his own.

The lead he thought he’d had on Prophet Jones hadn’t played out. The officers had found what appeared to be one of his hidey-holes, but he wasn’t there.

What he did have was the list of names Detective Harmon had worked up. There were a dozen names on the list of people who still lived in the area, including - Tom Bonaventure, Jessup Sadler’s boss at the mine, and Justin Caulfield.

Seeing Bonaventure’s name had been something of a surprise. Even though Tom had grown up on the north side, he lived in Coal Town now. They already knew Jessup had been angry at Bonaventure for firing him. Harmon had a notation next to Bonaventure’s name as a reminder to Mike that the man had no alibi for the night Sadler died, and had shown up at work the next day with a black eye.

There were also other names on Harmon’s list for which he could not account. One man had been diagnosed as bi-polar, and despite family care and medical help had opted to go his own way. According to the family, he came and went without notice.

Another had recurring drug issues and only intermittent contact with his family. Unfortunately for the police, he was, at the present, missing.

A third was a repeat of the second, but with a rap sheet longer than Kenny Duroy’s arm and had served time in prison. There was no current address for him although he was reported living in the area.