Pitch Black (7 page)

Why hadn’t he asked Jordan about it? Why hadn’t he
made
him talk?

Ethan knew why. Because he really hadn’t wanted to know, not that day. He’d been excited about this wilderness trip—he hadn’t wanted it ruined by seeing the very thing he was looking for.

Could things have been different? If he’d confronted Jordan, would Mr. McP still be alive?

The cafeteria bell rang, a screwdriver jabbing in Ethan’s ears. He didn’t cover them to muffle the sound because he deserved the pain.

Chapter 6

J
.D. HENRY’S MOTHER WAS A NERVOUS, underfed redhead who gave Gabe the impression that she ran solely on the “ines”—caffeine and nicotine. He had never seen her without a cigarette in her hand. Except in the hospital yesterday, which was a strictly non-smoking facility. Every time he’d laid eyes on her in the ER, the jittery woman was pacing around with a cup of black coffee in her hands.

When he knocked on the door of the Henry duplex, she opened it and peered at him through a ribbon of smoke that curled from the cigarette pinched between the first two fingers of her left hand.

“Mrs. Henry, I’d like to speak to J.D. for a few minutes, if I may.”

For a moment, she simply stared at him. He thought perhaps she didn’t recognize him. “I’m Sheriff Wyatt.”

“I ain’t blind. I seen the uniform. I ain’t stupid neither; you talked to me yesterday.”

Nervous
and
bitchy. Gabe felt a stab of sympathy for J.D. And, he thought, just maybe J.D.’s older brother had been driven to the crime he was sitting in jail for. “May I speak to J.D.?”

“Sorry, he’s at school.” She started to close the door.

“Mrs. Henry, I just left the school. He wasn’t there.”

Gabe heard J.D.’s voice from inside the house. “It’s okay, Mom.”

She spun around and said, “He don’t have a warrant. You don’t need to talk to him.”

Gabe didn’t need a warrant; he was simply taking a statement. “Mrs. Henry, your son hasn’t done anything wrong. I just need to ask a few questions about Steve McPherson’s accident. It’s just a formality to get the paperwork completed.”

She drew on her cigarette and blew the smoke out of her nose, shooting Gabe a mistrustful look.

J.D. wedged himself between his mother and the door jamb, forcing her to open the door wide enough for Gabe to enter.

She looked mad enough to spit nails. “Go on ahead then, James Dean, if you ain’t got no more sense than that. Have them lock you away like they did Jeffery.” She stomped up the stairs.

J.D.’s brother had been sent to jail last year for assault after he’d beaten up his girlfriend, breaking her nose and her arm. Gabe hadn’t had anything to do with that arrest, since it was in the city police’s jurisdiction.

Mrs. Henry slammed a door upstairs.

“Sorry,” J.D. said. “She gets worked up about Jeffery. She’s convinced it was Shelly’s fault.”

Shelly, the girlfriend Jeffery outweighed by fifty pounds. Gabe thought it was more likely leftover rage from living with his own mother.

“And you? What do you think?” Gabe asked out of curiosity.

J.D. glanced up the stairs. “I dunno.” He shrugged. “Sometimes Jeff can have a temper.”

“Can we sit down? I just want to go over what happened with Mr. McPherson’s accident for my report.”

J.D. led him into a living room that smelled like a bar after a Saturday night. Gabe sat on the edge of the recliner and J.D. sprawled on one end of the sofa.

“Okay,” Gabe said, “can you tell me what was going on before Mr. McPherson left camp that last time?”

“Jordan and Ethan had gone off to get more firewood. Me and Colin were supposed to get the stuff ready to cook supper.”

“About what time was that?”

“I wasn’t paying much attention. I guess around four or four-thirty.”

“Go on.”

“Mr. McP was checking the tents, ’cause it was getting windy. He said we had to have a small fire because of the wind, too. Once he got done with the tents, the guys were supposed to be back with the wood and he was gonna show us how to build a fire that would stay small. But then when Ethan and Jordan didn’t come back, he tried to call them on the walkie-talkie he’d sent with Jordan.

“Jordan didn’t answer. So Mr. McP—he was pretty mad—went off to find them. Me and Colin were supposed to stay in camp.”

Gabe hadn’t found a walkie on McPherson. “Did he take the walkie, or leave it with you two?”

“He took it. We were supposed to have Jordan call him if they showed up back at camp.” He picked at a hangnail. “But they didn’t show up. Later, we heard Ethan yelling for help.”

“How much later?”

“I’m not sure. It was starting to get dark.”

“Where was Ethan when you heard him calling you?”

“Somewhere between camp and the falls. I couldn’t see him or anything. When we yelled back, he didn’t wait for us.”

“And when you got there?”

“Jordan was going nuts. Ethan had his shirt off; it was all bloody and pressed against Mr. McP’s head. Colin started yelling, ‘What happened?’ and Jordan was walking around pulling at his hair saying, ‘It was an accident. It was an accident.’ Over and over. He wouldn’t stop, until Ethan finally yelled for him to shut up.”

“Do you know if Mr. McPherson was still breathing?”

He shook his head. “Ethan said he wasn’t . . . said he was dead, but neither me or Colin got close enough to tell.”

“Why?”

J.D. shrugged. “Didn’t really want to, I guess. Colin got one look at the blood on Ethan’s shirt and was puking in the creek. Ethan seemed to know what he was doing.”

“What about going for help?”

J.D. shook his head. “No way. It was getting dark. And up there, I mean it gets
really
dark. None of us thought we could find the way. We decided to stay there and wait for daylight.”

“Did Ethan tell you how he found Mr. McPherson?”

“He said he and Jordan were getting wood and heard a yelp. They found him on the ground by the creek.”

When Gabe stood, he had a couple of new questions in his mind. Where was the walkie that McPherson was supposed to have had? And why had Jordan been yelling, “It was an accident”?

“I appreciate you talking to me,” Gabe said pointedly.

J.D. looked slightly embarrassed. “Sorry about my mom.”

“No need to apologize.”

Next Gabe went to the Arbuckle house and got pretty much the same thing, minus the combative attitude of the mother. Colin Arbuckle’s mother had been a clucking hen, worrying over her son’s recent trauma and the long-term effects it might have at such an impressionable age. Gabe left wondering if there were any middle-of-the-road mothers anymore.

The more he contemplated the questions he’d left the Henry house with, the simpler the answers seemed to be. The walkie could very easily have bounced into the creek, especially if it had been in McPherson’s hand when he fell. And, although he couldn’t completely explain Jordan’s hysterical comment, he also couldn’t take it too seriously. From everything Gabe had gathered, the kid hadn’t said anything that made sense from the moment he’d seen McPherson’s body.

Once he confirmed all of this with Ethan and received the autopsy report, the case could be officially closed.

MADISON’S CELL PHONE RANG
just as she was leaving the office at five o’clock. She’d intended to get away earlier, to be home for Ethan. But one problem after another had cropped up and the afternoon was gone. She answered her phone as she simultaneously juggled her laptop tote, her purse, and the keys to lock the front door of the editorial office of the
Buckeye Daily Herald.

“M, can you pick me up at the hospital on your way home?”

“How’d you get to the hospital?” It was four miles from the high school to the hospital.

“Walked.”

A pinprick of guilt needled her conscience. “I told you I would take you as soon as I got home from work.”

“I know.”

She nearly asked how Jordan was, but realized if there had been any improvement, that would have been the first thing out of Ethan’s mouth. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

When she pulled her Saab up to the main hospital entrance, she spotted Ethan sitting with his back propped against the base of the flagpole. Exhaustion was written in every movement as he got up, picked up his backpack, and ambled over to the car.

He got in and she said, “Hi. How about some dinner on the way home?”

He ignored the question. Keeping his gaze out the windshield, he said flatly, “They’re moving Jordan to a stress center in Knoxville tomorrow.”

“Oh?” Not that she was surprised. She supposed she should have prepared Ethan for this possibility.

“His mom said the doctor said he needs psychological help.” He balled his fists in his lap. “They think he’s crazy . . . but he’s not.” He finally turned to look at her. “He’s just scared. That’s all . . . just scared.”

“Scared is a psychological and emotional state, Ethan. He’s going where they can help him.”

“But it’s so far from here.”

“Let’s hope he won’t have to be there long. And we’ll go visit him.”

He didn’t look reassured.

She reached over and brushed his hair away from his forehead. “You’re doing all you can. You’re showing him you’re there for him.”

He responded with a half-grunt.

She wished she could offer him more encouragement, but empty promises and hollow words would break their no-bullshit pact. And this was one of those important things; Ethan needed to know he could rely on her for the bare-assed truth. Unfortunately, the bare-assed truth was that it might take a very long time for Jordan to recover, if he ever did fully recover. That was something she decided she could ease Ethan into. He didn’t have to face the worst-case scenario today.

During the fifteen-minute drive home, out of the corner of her eye she saw Ethan’s head bob. She looked over and saw he’d fallen asleep with his head leaning against the window. Guess they’d skip dinner out and scrounge up something at home. Poor kid, more tired than hungry . . . that was a first.

Through diligent research she’d been able to prepare for lots of things about being a parent. But nothing in this world had prepared her for the piercing pain in her chest, the aching lump in her throat, the heavy sickness in her belly that came when she saw her son hurting and unhappy. Nothing had prepared her for the raging impotence over not being able to do anything to alleviate that pain or to lift that shroud of despair.

Her mother’s words echoed in her mind:
One day you’ll understand . . . when you have children of your own.
Jesus, it seemed like her mother could have done more to prepare her than quote platitudes.

An unwilling smile curved Madison’s mouth.
Like I would have listened.

With a deep breath, she realized how much anguish she’d dealt, both inadvertently and willingly, her own mother. (Deep down, she figured her dad deserved every heartache he’d received. Although she doubted he cared enough to notice the arrows she intentionally flung his way.) She supposed she was getting her due. But why did Ethan have to suffer for it?

In an effort to lift her spirits—she needed to be in better mental shape when Ethan awakened—she focused on her surroundings. She loved driving the narrow road to their house. It was mostly uphill, which was why she had such a great view from her kitchen window, and why it seemed so much farther out of town than it was.

She slowed as she approached the railroad overpass. It had been built so long ago that only a single vehicle could fit through at a time. It was situated in the middle of an S curve, which made it really difficult to see if there was oncoming traffic, not that Turnbull Road was heavily traveled. Still, caution was prudent.

One of the first times she’d driven this road she’d nearly had a head-on with a pickup that had a deer carcass strapped to its hood. She’d come around the corner too fast and there it was, a deer, stretched on its side, heading right for her windshield.

The old guy driving the truck had laid on the horn, then followed up by flipping her off as he passed her. Sitting stock-still in the road, she’d looked in her rearview. The only thing that jumped out at her was a huge “Jesus is Lord” sticker on the back bumper—not a rare thing in these parts. Consequently, she’d never figured out who the old codger was. Too bad, because it hadn’t been deer season. She could have paid him back for his kind gesture with a call to the Department of Natural Resources.

She threaded the eye of the needle beneath the railroad, tense as ever. Obviously today the peaceful scenery wasn’t doing the trick to unwind her.

Maybe deep breathing . . .

When she rounded that last curve, she got the emotional boost she’d been looking for—from a most unexpected source. Gabe’s SUV was parked in front of her house. He got out, smiled, and waved as she pulled into the drive. She shivered with a spark of sheer happiness.

Ethan didn’t stir when she shut off the engine. She got out of the car, closing the door softly.

Gabe walked up the driveway in that unhurried Southern gait of his. All of her nerve endings readily snapped to attention.

He gave her a crooked grin as he said, “Evenin’, Maddie.”

The warm roughness of his voice slid over each and every one of those eager nerve endings, soothing and exciting them simultaneously.

“Evenin’, Sheriff.” Her imitation of a Southern drawl was both pathetic and comical.

He was kind and didn’t laugh, but he did give her a smile that had probably scored him more points with women than he ever imagined. “Left the sheriff back at the office.” He pulled out a large brown paper bag from where it was tucked behind his back. “Gabe the Gourmet brought dinner.”

“Mmmm, from the grease spots on that bag, I’d say I’m gonna like what’s in there.”

“Baby-backs, bar-b-que beans, slaw, and home fries.”

“Hope you brought plenty. Ethan can eat two racks all by himself.”

“Well, so can I.” He cocked his head. “Maybe you’ll have to eat peanut butter.”

“Ha!” She snatched the bag out of his hand. “We’ll see about that.” She went around to the passenger door and tapped on the window.

Ethan lifted his head and blinked, as if he was reacquainting himself with his bearings.

She opened the door and waved the bag under his nose. “Gabe brought ribs, the universal language of all American males.”

Ethan’s nostrils flared as he took in the smoky aroma. “I’m starved.”

Looking at Gabe, she said, “Uh-oh. Looks like maybe we’ll both be eating peanut butter.”

Once inside, they sat down around the kitchen table with the food and a large stack of napkins. Ethan and Gabe started talking UT football. Although Ethan’s eyes didn’t shine with their usual light, his spirits seemed to be lifting.