Sweet Everlasting (31 page)

Sheriff Butts scowled at the interruption. Like most elected officials, he had supporters and detractors. The former said he was a proud man; the latter said he was a horse’s ass, and an aptly named one at that. In any case, his dignity meant a lot to him, and he didn’t suffer affronts to it graciously. He didn’t care to be contradicted, and he particularly disliked admitting he was wrong.

But he had a soft spot in his heart for Dr. Wilkes, who had drained an abscess from Mrs. Butts’s rectum last spring and put an end to her month-long, highly vocal suffering in about half an hour. So his frown disappeared when he looked up to see who had burst into his temporary headquarters in the town hall without so much as knocking. “Doctor!” he exclaimed, standing up to shake hands. “Nice of you to come by this late. I’d have sent a deputy over to see you tomorrow if you hadn’t, just to nail down a few details. You’ve heard all about the Wiggins murder, I take it?” He glanced at Mueller and Odell.

“Yes, I heard,” Tyler said shortly. “You’ve made a mistake, Sheriff. Carrie Wiggins is innocent, you’ll have to let her go.”

The two deputies glared at him. Billy Stonebrake’s freckled face turned red. The sheriff let out a hearty, artificial laugh and glanced around at his subordinates with an expression of fatuous tolerance. “Hear that, boys? We’ve got the wrong person! Well, I’ve said it for years—what the sheriff’s department needs is a good
doctor
to help us put the criminals away.” Forced chuckling greeted his quip.

Tyler made a terrific effort to relax his combative stance. “Listen to me,” he said more calmly, “she couldn’t have shot her stepfather because she was with me.

The sheriff stroked his upper lip in an attempt to appear thoughtful. “Well now, how can that be? She told us you took her up the mountain and left her there—she says you were gone by seven last night.”

“That’s not what happened. I—don’t know why she told you that. The fact is, she stayed at my house last night, all night.”

“Why did she do that?”

Tyler didn’t blink. His brain stayed an instant or two ahead of his tongue, no more, and so Butts and the others learned of Carrie’s alibi at almost the same moment he did. “She said she felt dizzy. Her head began to hurt again in the late afternoon, and I was concerned about the possibility of cerebral irritation, a condition which sometimes follows concussion. I wanted to monitor her for fever and nausea in case there was frontal lobe damage that hadn’t been evident earlier.”

Butts peered at him across his half glasses; Tyler tried, but he couldn’t read the expression in his steel-gray eyes. But the rest of his face looked skeptical.

“She signed a statement, this one right here—” Butts thumped a paper on his desk with blunt fingertips—”and there’s not a word in it about spending the night at your house. If she was sick, why didn’t she—say so? Why would she make up a story that was bound to get her arrested?”

Tyler’s creative tongue chose that moment to desert him. He stared back at Butts, toying with the idea of telling him that memory loss sometimes accompanied head trauma. He hadn’t committed perjury yet because he wasn’t under oath, but visions of the revocation of his medical license wouldn’t go away. And how the hell was
Carrie
going to confirm any of this unless they let him talk to her first? Before he could answer, Peter Mueller spoke up.

“Why don’t you ask Carrie?”

Ty didn’t like the sound of Mueller’s voice; it was too quiet, too deliberately expressionless. An instinct told him the lawyer had already guessed the truth, all of it; if he had, the others wouldn’t be far behind. “What difference does it make
why
she said what she said?” he demanded, trying the offensive again. “I’m
telling
you what happened. Carrie didn’t kill anybody, and you’re going to have to let her go.”

The sheriff leaned back in his chair and twined his stubby fingers over his potbelly. Another thing he didn’t like was being told what to do. “Where did Carrie stay in your house last night, Doctor?” he asked mildly. He wasn’t stupid, either.

“Where?” Ty pretended the question threw him off, took him by surprise. “In my waiting room, same place she stayed the night before. There’s a couch down there, it’s fairly comfor—”

“What time did she retire for the night?”

“What time?” He had to stop repeating Butts’s questions. “I’m not sure; I’d say around nine, nine-thirty. No later than ten.”

“And you stayed upstairs?”

“That’s right.”

“What time did you turn in?”

“Me? Around ten-thirty, I think.”

“Ten-thirty. Sleep well, did you?”

“What? Yes, as well as—”

“Didn’t hear anything in the night?”

“No. Hear anything? No. Like what?”

Butts sat up in his seat fast and glared at him. “Like the sound of Miss Wiggins getting up and going out.”

“Going out? Don’t be ridiculous, she—”

“I’ve seen your office—the door to your waiting room faces the street. How do you know she didn’t get up and leave by that door while you were upstairs snoring? It would take her about an hour to walk home. She could’ve shot her stepfather and been back on your waiting room sofa by one o’clock, and you’d never have known the difference.” He smiled unpleasantly. “Nothing you’ve said gives her an alibi at all, Dr. Wilkes.”

He heard the dare in the sheriff’s voice, and understood perfectly what he wanted him to admit next. Instead he asked, “Are you saying you’re not going to let her go?”

Mueller broke in before Butts could answer. “I’d like to talk to Dr. Wilkes alone for a minute, Lowell.”

“Fine, talk to him, I’ve got no—”

“No,” Tyler said flatly. He took two steps toward Butts and planted his fists on the edge of the desk. “Carrie didn’t go anywhere.”

“And how would you know that?”

“For God’s sake, Lowell,” Mueller tried again, “can’t you just let it go now? If Ty says—”

“No, I can’t just let it go! Damn it, this is a murder investigation. If the doctor’s got evidence that bears on the case, then he can damn well say it, right here and now.”

Mueller sighed, raised his arms, and dropped them back to his sides. “Say it, then,” he muttered, resigned.

Besides Tyler, there were six men in the room. If he’d thought it would make any difference, he’d have asked everyone but Butts to leave, so he could ruin Carrie’s reputation on a smaller, less public scale. But the time for discretion had come and gone. He hadn’t chosen it last night or the night before, and it was a little late to start wishing for it now. He took his hands off Butts’s desk, stood up straight, and told the truth.

“Carrie couldn’t have gone anywhere last night because she was with me. All night. We were together.”

The pause that ensued was hostile but not shocked, which confirmed his suspicion that he’d only corroborated what they’d all figured out by now anyway. Butts looked profoundly disgusted. Frank Odell, mild-mannered to a fault, muttered a string of obscenities that left everyone on edge. Ty and the sheriff engaged in a brief staring contest.

The sheriff looked away first. “Get her,” he snapped, jerking his chin toward Officer Stonebrake. The startled policeman mumbled, “Yessir,” squeezed past the others, and left the room.

Everyone stared at Stonebrake’s empty chair as if it were a unique and fascinating artifact. Motivated more by duty than hope, Ty finally broke the silence by asking, “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of this remaining confidential, is there, Sheriff?”

Butts didn’t trouble to hide his dislike. “If the girl confirms what you’ve told us, she won’t be charged with a crime. Naturally people will want to know why. There’ll be talk—”

“You’re saying no?”

“I’m saying people will be wondering—”

“Not even a gentlemen’s agreement, for Carrie’s sake?”

Butts put the tips of his fingers together and looked at them. “Reports have to be filed. You’ll have to make a statement and swear to it. And don’t forget that Frank here runs a newspaper—”

“Damn it, Lowell, you won’t be reading about this in the
Clarion
!” Odell’s voice was reedy with anger.

“Well, fine, that’s fine. All I’m saying is that this is a small community, gentlemen, and we all know it. A thing like this, there’s bound to be talk, you can’t contain it, and once—”

“Forget it,” Tyler snarled, turning his back on him. But it wasn’t the sheriff he was disgusted with, it was himself.

Butts bristled with antagonism. “Maybe you should’ve thought about what was best for ‘Carrie’s sake’ a little sooner, Dr. Wilkes. Eh? What about that?” His voice rose as he warmed to it. “Maybe where you come from this kind of thing doesn’t mean much, maybe it’s an everyday occurrence, but around here it’s a little different, see?”

“Gentlemen,” Peter Mueller interjected smoothly, on the verge of a diplomatic lecture.

Ty spun around. “This ‘kind of thing’ means exactly the same where I come from as it means here. Not that it matters, and not that it’s any of your business, but Carrie and I are engaged to be married.”

The floored silence didn’t last long. In a matter of seconds the door opened again, and Officer Stonebrake ushered Carrie into the room.

She held herself carefully, but the long day of deception had begun to tell. She was waxy-pale from fatigue and strain; her eyes looked haunted and her mouth made a tight white line. How much longer would she have been able to keep it up, Tyler wondered, forcibly resisting an all but overwhelming need to touch her. She looked close to breaking—but she was strong; she might have gone on indefinitely. For five years she’d convinced the whole world she was mute, after all. He thought Carrie knew altogether too much about self-control.

She jolted when she saw him. Her carefully composed features gave way, and she took a step toward him, then halted, recollecting herself. It was painfully obvious that she was attempting to pretend he was nothing to her but her doctor, someone only peripherally involved in her unfortunate predicament. She even said, “Hello, Dr. Wilkes,” trying to feign surprise. Frank was right: she was the worst liar he’d ever seen.

“Have a seat, Miss Wiggins,” invited the sheriff, stern-faced. “Here, if you please.” He placed her in front of the desk, with her back to Ty—deliberately, so he wouldn’t be able to coach her. Butts sat back down and leaned his bulky torso toward her, his version of an intimidating posture. He nodded to one of his hovering deputies, who began to write in a tablet. Mueller, standing at Carrie’s shoulder, gave her a comforting pat. She looked up, but the smile she tried to return was unsuccessful.

Not a man to mince words, Butts went straight to the point. “Miss Wiggins, Dr. Wilkes has given us some new information and we’d like you to confirm it—or not—if you can. It concerns your whereabouts last night, especially during the time between 10
P.M
. and 2
A.M
. Is there anything you’d like to add to what you’ve already told us? Or anything you’d care to change?”

““You weren’t under oath before,” Peter Mueller pointed out carefully, “so if you weren’t being totally truthful when you made your statement, even though you signed it, you won’t be in any trouble. Understand, Carrie?”

She nodded slowly.

Tyler couldn’t see her face, just her rigid back, and her long neck looking thin, taut, and breakable. A wayward vision materialized unexpectedly, of her in his bathtub; he saw his fingers massaging that slender neck while she told him about the rape of a child. “Tell the truth, Carrie,” he said softly.

“That’s enough out of you,” Butts snapped.

But Ty didn’t give a damn. “Tell him,” he instructed her, louder.

The deputies shifted, restless, looking to Butts for direction. “Fine, then, tell me,” he barked. “The truth, Miss Wiggins,
now.
Where were you last night?”

Carrie’s hands flexed and relaxed on the arms of her chair. Ty imagined the debate going on in her mind, the guessing, the weighing of unthinkable alternatives. When she bowed her head, he knew she knew the game was up, because she’d figured out what he’d told them. Damn it, he thought with a flash of irrational anger, she’d
better
know.

“I stayed at Dr. Wilkes’s house,” she said, in a voice so low he could barely hear it.

Butts couldn’t either. “You stayed where?”

“At Dr. Wilkes’s. I …” There was a long pause. “I wasn’t feeling well.” The next silence was a curious one, as everybody waited to hear what interpretation she would decide to put on her tale. She didn’t know
exactly
what he’d told them, so she was thinking it was still possible to put a different complexion on things. Nobody uttered a sound; suddenly it was as if seven gentlemen were deferring to a lady.

“I wasn’t feeling too well,” she resumed, in a murmur still so low they all had to lean toward her to hear. “I—my—head was hurting again. Dr. Wilkes thought I should stay quiet for one more night. And so …” She couldn’t finish. She wanted to leave it vague, to accommodate whatever he might’ve said. Specificity was the enemy.

No one looked at anyone else. But Ty had a feeling they were all smiling the same slight, sad, faintly amused smile that he was. Carrie was a terrible liar, but he wasn’t much better; it seemed comically ironic, now that it was over, that they’d both tried exactly the
same
clumsy lie. But her fragility had affected them all, he saw, including the sheriff, who didn’t even ask her why she hadn’t told this harmless story in the first place. They were all in on the conspiracy now: the conspiracy to save her from any more pain.

“Well, Sheriff?” Peter Mueller said, subdued. “Any further need to hold my client tonight?”

Butts cleared his throat and said after only a moment’s hesitation, “No, I guess not.” He frowned, no doubt thinking of all the work that lay ahead of him now to discover who had really killed Artemis. He glared at Carrie, annoyed with her—but still not enough to chastise her. “You can go, Miss Wiggins. We’ll want to speak to you soon about your stepfather’s acquaintances, his habits, and so forth. But for now, you’re free to go.”

She mumbled something that sounded like thanks, and stood up.