Flight of the Stone Angel (5 page)

Mallory was listening to her dog howling, reminding her that she had not yet made it all the way home.

At eight o’clock in the morning, Lilith Beaudare was officially sworn in as a deputy of St. Jude Parish, but her new job title was “girl.” This was what Sheriff Tom Jessop called her, sometimes using the variation “Hey, girl.”

At half past the hour, a gray-haired, beefy woman named Jane, of Jane’s Cafe, had expanded on this theme, saying, “Hey, little girl, I guess I can find the cell by myself. I don’t need no escort.” Jane had then brushed by Lilith to trundle the prisoner’s breakfast tray up the stairs to the holding cells, leaving the brand-new deputy with no way to stop the woman – short of a bullet in the back.

Oh, hadn’t
that
been a temptation.

And there were other disappointments. Lilith glared at an antique telephone, which predated push buttons by fifty years. This toy-size police department was a damn museum. Not one stick of furniture belonged to the current century, and there were only a few pieces of semimodern equipment.

Like everything else on her desk, the early-model computer was covered with a film of dust. The fax had scrolled out a dozen pages, and by their dates, she knew the machine had gone ignored since Deputy Travis’s heart attack. Apparently, the computer and the fax had been Travis’s domain, and now it was hers.

She had yet to see the famous prisoner. Sheriff Jessop was still upstairs in the small cell block, while Lilith was tied to a telephone that never rang.

Her desk faced the open door to the sheriff’s private office. The St. Jude Parish Historical Society had not spared this room either. The ornate mahogany desk was handcrafted. Antique guns of the early 1800s hung in glass display cases. The yellowed map on the back wall was made long before the levee was built; the winding Mississippi flowed on a different course, and the land was free of the chemical plants in the column of pollution that marched up the River Road to Baton Rouge. And every building framed in the office window was antebellum, offering a view on the past, when cotton was king and the unforgiven Civil War had yet to be waged and lost.

Lilith decided that Dayborn was definitely a town in denial – bad losers on a grand scale.

Beyond the sheriff’s cluttered desk was a credenza piled high with papers, books, and a black leather duffel bag which threatened to slide to the floor at any moment. She recognized the bright orange identification tag which marked the bag as evidence. This must be the prisoner’s property, surrendered by the hotelkeeper, Betty Hale, on the day of Babe Laurie’s murder.

Lilith glanced at the staircase to her right. The ancient steps could be depended upon to creak when the sheriff came down
again.
She softly padded into his office and opened the duffel. Inside was a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver. It had been placed in a clear plastic bag, though her law enforcement handbook clearly stated paper was the best way to protect fingerprints on a slick surface.

She shook her head in a sad commentary on the state of the older generation.

Now she examined the clothes. The running shoes were top of the line, and the blue jeans bore a designer label on the pocket. The blazer had all the fine detail of a hand-tailored garment, but there was only a rectangle of tiny holes in the lining where the maker’s label should be. Except for the silk underwear, there were no personal items, nothing to tie the prisoner to a name or a place.

In the side compartment, she found a bundle of wires and a small metal box the size of a pack of cigarettes. There was a silver pick clipped to one side to work a miniature keyboard, but it couldn’t be a palm computer. Without a light display, what good was it? Yet it had computer ports at the base. Perhaps it was a component for the laptop resting in the next pocket. She pulled out the more conventional computer and powered up, but when she tried to enter a file, the main directory dissolved, not even offering her one try at the lockout password.

Clever.

So the prisoner was computer oriented, fancied guns with maximum killing power, shopped in better stores than a deputy could afford, and she had taken some care to avoid being traced.

Lilith restored all the items to the duffel bag and returned to her desk. At precisely nine o’clock, as the sheriff had requested, she contacted the FBI to ask if they had made any progress on tracing the gun’s serial number. An FBI agent said no. After a few seconds of silence, she asked if they had gotten anywhere with the comparisons on the test bullet. Again, the agent said no, and there were other words to the effect of ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ On the pretext of delivering this latest bulletin of no value whatever, she climbed the staircase to the three holding cells, only one of which was occupied.

Lilith hesitated by the door at the top of the stairs. She opened it carefully, not wanting to squeak the hinge. She had already annoyed the sheriff once this morning with the squeal of the unoiled joints in her swivel chair. He had thrown a can of oil at her and shouted instructions for its use, as if she might be only half bright.

She had no memories of the sheriff from her childhood in Dayborn. His friendship with her father had been conducted over bottles in the Dayborn Bar and Grill. But this was surely not the same Tom Jessop her father liked to remember as a better man and a bigger one. Guy Beaudare had described him as a personality larger than life. All those years ago, even the sheriff’s blue eyes had been different – brighter – like onrushing headlights. Or so said her father, the storyteller, the myth-maker.

Somehow, Sheriff Jessop had regressed into a smaller man, or maybe he had become just another man like any other. Over the years since her family had moved away, there had been more profound departures from her father’s memories.

When she opened the door, the sheriff was standing in the narrow corridor before the middle cell. His gut paunched over his belt, and his once thick black hair had gone to the iron-gray widow’s peak of
a
receding hairline. Where his Stetson had protected his high forehead, it was ivory white in sharp contrast to his sunburnt nose and jowls.

The sheriff moved away from the cell to lean his back against the wall of the small corridor, and she had her first look at the prisoner called Mallory, who wore a gingham dress with ‘St. Jude Parish Jail’ stamped on the pocket.

Lilith sucked in her breath.

This was the cemetery angel come to life. The young woman’s hair crazed her shoulders in curls of burnished gold. Lilith could swear the blond aureole was leaching light from every quarter of the small cell, and growing brighter still. The eyes were an unnatural shade of green with the concentration of a stalking animal. The prisoner’s gaze fixed on Lilith – as though the new deputy might be lunch. But then Mallory’s eyes passed her over, apparently not that hungry – not yet anyway.

Though the prisoner was caged, Lilith’s hand reflexively touched her holstered gun, for she had erred. This woman was far removed from the stone angel. This one belonged to an entirely different god.

The sheriff was speaking to Mallory in the voice that adults reserved for innocent children.

Fool
. Didn’t he have eyes to see?

And now she realized that the sheriff was not seeing Mallory at all, but looking inward at a memory of little Kathy Shelley, who was not quite seven years old.

“So, Kathy,” said the sheriff, taking a cigarette out of his pocket and fitting it into the side of his mouth. “Tell me something.” With no hurried motions, he opened a box of matches, lit the cigarette and watched the smoke rise and curl into the bars of the cell. “What’s it like coming home again after all these years?”

It’s not so bad,“ said Mallory. ”If you don’t mind waiting around all day for people to finish their sentences.“ And now she said to the wall, ”Don’t call me Kathy.“

Sheriff Jessop’s head snapped right. He was suddenly aware of Lilith standing at the end of the corridor. “What is it? Speak up!”

“I called the FBI, sir.” Lilith’s voice had come out small and weak.

Shit.

She squared off her shoulders, and, louder, she said, “They don’t know where the gun came from, but they’re still working on it, sir.”

“Well, missy, thank you very much for dragging yourself all the way up here to give me that worthless piece of news. Now get back down there where you belong. Watch those phones.”

She bit down on her lip, lest some smartass remark escape. It wouldn’t do to get fired off the job on the first day. As Cousin Augusta had surmised, Lilith was a woman with ambitions.

The sheriff’s face was reddening, an early warning sign of foul temper. “What the hell are you waiting on, girl?”

And now the prisoner had her attention again. Mallory was smiling. It was not a happy smile, but disquieting and full of contempt. She was staring at Lilith when she leaned into the bars and said, “You shouldn’t let him call you
girl,
unless you get to call him
fat boy.”

The sheriff pointed his finger at the deputy and said, “Move, girl! Now!”

And Lilith moved, slamming the door behind her and taking the steps two at a time in her descent.

When she hit the bottom of the stairs, she found herself staring into the angry eyes of a middle-aged woman with a gray suit and an attitude problem. The woman yelled at her and jabbed the air with one finger, as if it were the barrel of a loaded gun leveled at the new deputy’s face.

Beyond the yelling woman was a slight young man near Lilith’s own age. He had the yelling woman’s same hazel eyes, rimmed with thick lashes, and the light brown hair was her coloring too. But, unlike her, his expression was utterly peaceful – too peaceful. Both his hands were bandaged.

Could he be on medication?

Then he began to move his hands in slow circles, one rolling over the other. This simple activity seemed to capture his whole attention.

I know you, don’t I?

Yes. He was still dressing in his trademark red socks and a red shirt neatly tucked into his blue jeans. Much of the familiar child still hung about him in the aspect of innocence and in this old habit of the rolling hands. The other children had called him the idiot, and at the age of six, she had believed this was his name. Her father had roughly corrected her, applying his large hand to the seat of her pants until she learned to call the boy by his true name.

“Hello, Ira,” said Lilith. “How are you?”

The yelling woman was suddenly mollified by this small courtesy. Her angry face relaxed into a smile, and she was almost pretty when she turned to her son. “Say hello to the deputy, Ira.”

“Say hello to the deputy,” Ira said.

Charles Butler stared at the drugstore window display. Stacks of multicolored Tshirts were emblazoned with the name and likeness of the murdered evangelist. One bit of T-shirt art depicted the Virgin Mary holding an infant with Babe Laurie’s adult face. Beyond this novel heresy was a rack of paperback books and shelves crowded with sunglasses and dental floss. Toothbrushes kept company with cellophane-packaged voodoo dolls and all the other little things that tourists might have forgotten to bring with them.

Charles turned back to the alley between the sheriff’s office and the fire department. The mute sculptor had located Mallory’s cell. Henry Roth was staring up at the second-floor window and making conversation with his hands. Charles walked across the square to listen in with his eyes.

As he neared the municipal building, his gaze was pulled toward another man seated on a wooden bench in front of the sheriff’s office. Charles noted the resemblance to the face on the Tshirts. The general features were the same, but not so dramatic. And unlike the wild-eyed Babe Laurie, intelligence was more in evidence here. He was perhaps thirty-five years old. His long hair was the color of sand, and it brushed the collar of his denim shirt. His eyes were blue and serene as he nodded a greeting in the familiar way of an old friend.

Charles found himself drifting toward this man, for the invitation was clear and compelling.
Come to me,
said the tranquil expression.
Sit and talk awhile,
said his glance to the empty side of the bench.

Then Charles remembered that he had business elsewhere, very pressing business, and he turned away with the slightly disoriented feeling of awakening. In the next moment, the man on the bench was forgotten as he moved closer to the mouth of the alley and concentrated on reading the silent language of Henry Roth.

The sculptor’s eyes were fixed on the second-floor window. A pair of white hands appeared at the bars, signaling back to him. Charles read the words off her fingers.
“Tell him to go away.”

Henry Roth glanced at him and shrugged, then turned his face up to her window, hands flying in conversation.

Charles was staring at his shoes.
Go away?
He had traveled more than a thousand miles for
that?

He turned his back on them and walked off to the fountain at the center of the square. Water flowed from ornate spigots and splashed into a large basin. Atop the fountain pranced a saddled but riderless bronze stallion. Charles was facing the horse’s rear end.

How fitting.

He paced one turn around the wide pool of water, ruminating over all the sleep he had lost on her account, all the anxiety she had caused. Done with feeling sorry for himself, anger won out over deeply ingrained good manners. He decided to disregard her wishes, and he fairly flew up the stairs to the sheriff’s office and pushed through the front door.

When he entered the reception area, the first person he saw was Augusta’s young cousin. Her short-sleeved tan uniform was so crisply starched, he knew the fabric would crack before it wrinkled. Lilith Beaudare was wiping the screen of her desktop computer. The dust cloth moved in listless circles, for her attention was focussed on the scene in the private office at the far side of the room. And now Charles also looked through this open doorway.

A woman in a gray suit was standing before a man in rolled-up shirtsleeves and jeans. A six-pointed golden star was pinned to the lapel of a wrinkled linen blazer which lay carelessly draped on a chair back. Though he was more casually dressed than the woman, he exuded authority. His arms folded across his chest to tell her that whatever she wanted, she wasn’t getting it. The woman’s hands were placed on her hips to say she would not be moved until she had satisfaction from this man.

Standing near this couple was a young man with vacuous eyes and no apparent relationship to either of them. He was slender with an innocent, unlined face and bandages on both his hands.

As Charles drew nearer to the office door, Deputy Lilith Beaudare glanced up at him, but she said nothing. They eavesdropped in easy companionship.

“I have a statement from Malcolm,” said the sheriff, addressing the woman with the light brown hair. “Malcolm says Babe asked your boy, real polite, if he would please stop playing the same damn five notes over and over again. The boy went wild and attacked Babe. Malcolm says his brother just defended himself.”

The woman stared at the sheriff as if he had just flown down from the moon, an alien land of strange custom and law. “Babe
defended
himself? By breaking Ira’s fingers with a
piano lid?”

Exasperated, she threw up her hands, perhaps wondering if these words had the same meaning in Lunarspeak. “When did you ever know my boy to do any violence? Ira hates any kind of physical contact, and you damn well know it! That should have been your first clue that Malcolm Laurie was lying.”

The young man with the bandaged hands stood just outside the fray in body and mind, utterly captivated by the slow-moving blades of the ceiling fan directly above him. Head tilted back, eyes trancegazing, his body moved in a circular sway. He seemed unconcerned with his mother’s complaint, or even aware that she was in the room.

“Well, seeing that Babe is dead,” the sheriff countered, “it doesn’t make much sense to file charges against him, now does it, Darlene?”

“That’s not what I come about.” Darlene was rummaging in a black purse hanging off her shoulder by a thin strap. “That young girl you arrested? I want to pay her bail. If she did kill that little bastard, it’s the least I can do to thank her.” Darlene produced a checkbook and a pen.

The sheriff waved her off. “There’s no bail for the prisoner.”

“Tom Jessop, you have no right to keep that child in jail. You don’t know she did it. For all you know,
I
could have killed him. You never thought of that, did you?”

Sheriff Jessop smiled. “Well now, Darlene, that just isn’t true. I thought so much of your prospects, I had you at the top of my suspect list – right in front of Babe Laurie’s widow and that youngster in the cell.

Hell, I ain’t got around to suspecting a single man
yet.
That’s how highly I prize a woman as killer material. The Dayborn Women’s Club is gonna make me damn Feminist of the Year.“

The sheriff sat down in the green leather armchair behind what was possibly the messiest desk Charles had ever seen. The man swiveled his chair to face the window, saying goodbye to Darlene with his back.

But she would not be dismissed. She walked around the desk to stand by the window and call his attention back to her. “Nobody asked where I was when Babe Laurie was murdered.”

“Didn’t need to.” His words were distracted, but now he smiled again and seemed to be gathering the energy he needed for one more round with her. “I know your car took off in the same direction as Malcolm and Babe. But they stopped at the gas station – you went flying toward the hospital. And I do mean flying.”

He swiveled around to face his desk and the sprawling loose piles of papers and folders. He reached into the mess, plucked out a sheet of handwritten text and held it up to her, waving it like a flag. “Manny, the gas jockey? This is his statement. He was just real impressed with your driving.”

The sheriff reached into the middle of another loose arrangement of paper and pulled out a second sheet. Charles wondered how he had managed that, for there was no discernible order to this paper storm which resembled the aftermath of vandalism.

“Now this is the doctor’s statement. He said you left the hospital sometime after dark.” The sheriff let this sheet waft back to the desk. Then he sat back and splayed his hands in the air, perhaps to show her that he had nothing up his sleeves – though Charles was convinced that the desktop filing system was a magic act.

“I
am
sorry, Darlene. Your alibi is solid. However, I do admire your competitive spirit.”

Though she did not stamp her foot, anyone could see that she wanted to. “Tom, you got to allow bail – that’s the law!”

“Not in a murder case I don’t. She was carrying a concealed weapon, a damn cannon of a gun.”

Darlene leaned down until her face was within a few inches of the sheriff’s, and now it was her turn to smile. “Exactly how many times was the victim shot with the
rock?”

“Shit.” And the sheriff did look as though he had just stepped on a dog turd. “Is there anybody in town that doesn’t know about that damn rock?”

Tom Jessop stood up now, the better to look down at Darlene. From this high ground, he said, “Rock or gun, it doesn’t matter – it was a very thorough job with clear intent to kill. I have to figure she had some purpose for that gun, whether she used it on him or not.”

Darlene folded her arms. “It’s all supposition. You don’t even have a motive. You can’t hold her.”

The sheriff countered, “Clerking for a lawyer don’t make you one, Darlene. It so happens I can hold her as a material witness. She’s already demonstrated willingness of flight.”

“If that is Kathy in there, then you know damn well she was a month shy of seven years old when she made that flight.”

“It still fits the criteria. But don’t you worry – I’m keeping an open mind. Haven’t charged anybody yet. So I’ll give some more thought to
your
alibi, if you like. Hell, I’d be happy to put you in a cell just to pacify you, but who’d look after Ira?”

Darlene smashed her checkbook back into her purse, and turned to her son. “Ira, we’re leaving!”

The young man continued to stare at the ceiling. Darlene moved one hand across Ira’s line of vision, dislodging his gaze from the blades of the fan. She was not touching him, but gesturing with both hands to herd him across the room.

Suddenly, she was caught up short by the sight of Charles filling out the doorway – all six feet, four inches of him. No one could help but notice him. It was like trying to avoid a Kodiak bear in the shower stall.

“Good afternoon. My name is Charles Butler.” He felt almost apologetic for looming over these people of normal size. “I’m here to see a woman called Mallory.”

“I would never have guessed that.”

But, by the sheriff’s tone, Charles gathered the man had grown weary of Mallory’s visitors.

“Now don’t tell me,” said the sheriff, closing the door behind the retreating Darlene and her son. “You’re from New York City, right?”

“Yes,” said Charles, standing before him in a Savile Row suit, handmade Italian shoes, an oxford shirt, and a silk tie from Galeries Lafayette in Paris. “How did you know?”

“Saw the license plate on your car outside of Betty’s. Had to be your car – it goes with that three-piece suit.” Sheriff Jessop sat down and motioned Charles to take a seat in the chair by his desk.

The sheriff picked up a stack of papers to expose an aged manila envelope with writing in faded blue ink. He opened it and pulled out a sheet of yellowed paper. Attached was a photograph which Charles easily recognized as Mallory the child. Her foster father, Louis Markowitz, had carried a similar portrait in his wallet until the day he died.

“When she was a little kid, her name was Kathy Shelley.” The sheriff dipped one hand into his shirt pocket and grasped a gold chain. “The only name we got for her now is Mallory. That’s the name engraved inside this watch, following a slew of Markowitzes.”

He was holding up Louis’s pocket watch – Mallory’s inheritance. It twirled on the chain, precious metal softly gleaming in the morning light. Charles would have known it from a thousand other timepieces. On the cover of its case was the familiar figure of a solitary wanderer crossing open country. Clouds had been wrought on the golden sky; a master engraver had given them motion and direction, and it was possible to see that the wanderer was walking against the wind.

“So, Mr. Butler,” said the sheriff, calling him out of his fugue. “Is she using Mallory for her first name or her last?”

Oh, I’m sorry. You misunderstand. I’m not here at the request of the prisoner.“ That was true enough – too true. ”I represent Augusta Trebec, the executrix of the Shelley estate.“

The sheriff sat well back in his chair, more wary now. “So what are you then – a lawyer or a private investigator?” It was more an accusation than a question.

“Neither one. I’m only doing a favor for Miss Trebec.” Knowing that Mallory, the consummate liar, would have cautioned him to mix in more than equal parts of truth with every lie, he said, “Generally, I work with government agencies and universities. I evaluate people with odd talents, and then I find applications for their gifts.”

“Odd talents? Well, you come to the right place.” The sheriff pointed to the window beside his desk. Charles could see the woman and her son crossing the square and heading for the cafe.

“That boy, Ira Wooley? He’s an idiot savant and a world-class piano player. He can rip off any tune he hears but once. Oh, but you should hear him sing. He has perfect pitch and a voice like a damn angel. Now what do you make of that, Mr. Butler?”

“Well, his mother mentioned a revulsion for physical contact. And then there was his preoccupation with the ceiling fan.” Charles leaned closer to the window to watch the boy’s progress across the square. “Judging by his rather good coordination, and without any evidence of retardation – I would have guessed he was autistic. So the correct term is
‘autistic
savant.’”

And now Charles realized he had been telling the sheriff what he already knew. He had also passed a test of sorts and allayed this man’s suspicions.