The Ninth Step (32 page)
Authors: Barbara Taylor Sissel
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Women's Fiction, #Domestic Life, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers, #Genre Fiction, #Family Life
“I’m a house painter.” He half turns to gesture across the street. “I’ve been working at Miz McKesson’s and before that I painted the Nelson’s house, around the corner?”
“I’m not interested in having my house painted,” she says, although she’s well aware that the house needs work. In fact, she and Russ had discussed getting bids last fall.
“Oh, I thought--that is Miz McKesson told me you might be putting the house on the market, that you mentioned it would need a bit of sprucing up beforehand.”
“I’m sure she meant to be helpful.” Sophia averts her glance.
Nosy woman.
It was true; she had told Lily McKesson that she was considering a move. Into something smaller. A rabbit burrow maybe or a tree hollow. Someplace small and obscure where life never fell into uncertainty.
“Painting isn’t just for looks, you know. Can you see there?” His gesture describes an area of siding over the backdoor. “The old paint is flaking. Plus, I noticed a lot of mildew and just an overall chalking.”
Sophia thanks the man for the information. She comes down the remainder of the steps. She’s thinking how warm it is for autumn, as if summer is reluctant to give up its tenancy. She’s thinking if she were rude, she would cut the painter short, tell him she has something more pressing to do.
“What if I come back later and talk to your husband?”
“He died a year ago,” Sophia announces and then wishes to bite off her tongue. What has gotten into her that she would blurt out to a complete stranger that she lives alone? Russ would be appalled.
Cort Capshaw apologizes and says he had no idea.
Sophia is murmuring the obligatory reassurance and thinking Nosy Lily must have failed to inform him of her loss when Lily’s Cadillac pulls to the curb.
Speak of the devil. . . .
“You said you needed a painter,” she calls through the lowered car window.
“Yes, I suppose I did.” Sophia raises her voice.
“Cort does excellent work, all by hand. There wasn’t a speck of damage or a drop of paint to be found on a single one of my azaleas. You won’t find anyone better, Sophia.”
The painter hollers his thanks.
Lily waves and drives off.
Cort hands Sophia a business card.
Capshaw and Company
it reads in addition to his name.
House painting, custom remodeling and renovation. Quality service.
“If you like, you could call the historical society in town. I do a lot of preservation work for them. Actually it’s what I prefer, but circumstances being what they are, you know, with the economy. . . .”
Sophia angles her gaze toward the house.
“Why don’t I work up a bid and leave it with you along with a list of references? In case you change your mind,” he adds.
She hesitates, feeling herself frown even as she agrees. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.” She isn’t sure what prompts her. His talk of hard times, perhaps, her inclination to be helpful.
She asks how long the job will take, “Assuming I accept your bid,” she cautions.
He paces the drive, eye to the roofline. “A couple of weeks, if the weather holds, which this time of year. . . .”
She nods. He could mean because it’s the tag-end of hurricane season, or perhaps he’s referring to the vagaries of south Texas weather in general.
A pause falls. One heartbeat’s worth of silence is followed by two and three. A hot wind scoots a swirl of sun-dried leaves along the driveway, scattering them over the grass where it verges on the concrete.
Sophia lifts her hand indicating the iron-railed steps she had, minutes ago, descended. “I have an office upstairs. People coming and going. Will they have access?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll use a ladder over here instead of scaffolding. It’ll take up less room.”
“I’m keeping a limited schedule of appointments at present.”
“That’s understandable, considering your recent loss.”
“I’m a psychologist.”
“I know,” he tells her. “I know who you are.”
Their glances clash. His look is searching as if he’s waiting for Sophia to recognize him. Should she?
“Two years ago,” the painter says, “I followed Jody Doaks’ trial; you were interviewed on TV. The story was big news.”
Sophia shifts her glance, thoroughly regretting now that she has encouraged him. What is it about appearing on television that causes perfect strangers to assume you welcome their attention? In the months since the trial she has been approached in the grocery store and the dentist’s office; people have followed her across parking lots, argued with her over the median at the gas pump. Once, a woman blocked Sophia’s exit from the ladies room at the mall threatening to hold her there until she agreed to recant the testimony she’d given on Jody’s behalf. The woman had ranted that Sophia was the devil incarnate. If only, Sophia had thought. She would have whipped out her pitchfork and prodded the woman in her ample behind.
“I’m against the death penalty, too,” the painter says, assuming, erroneously, that Sophia shares his opinion, when, in all honesty, she isn’t certain. “I don’t think it works as a deterrent to anything other than our humanity, do you? Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I think Doaks should ever get out.”
Sophia thinks of Jody. Poor demented, pathological Jody. Charming in the extreme. A baby-faced man who called his sister Momma because she’d raised him. A man who professed to love children, but who, in actuality, loved having sex with children. When the police searched the farm where Jody lived, they turned up the bodies of eight children buried John Wayne Gacy style in a crawl space under an old shed on the property. Jody had given Sophia this detail along with others that were more horrifying when he’d broken down during his third session with her in as many days. She is still uncertain how she managed to stay calm, handing him tissues to dry his copious tears, while he confessed he was doing things, hideous things to children, and he couldn’t stop. Sensing there was more, Sophia had prodded him very carefully and gotten him to confide in her about three-year-old Benny Chu, who at that very moment had been locked inside a room of Jody’s house. Jody hadn’t cleared the driveway before Sophia called the police.
Without a single thought of the ramifications. It had been like running into a burning building. That was how she explained it to Russ. She hadn’t considered the risk. Hadn’t reckoned that as a result of her impulse she would be caught up in a maelstrom of publicity, hounded by reporters for weeks on end and subpoenaed by the State to give expert testimony, all of which, as Russ had pointed out, left her, and by association, Russ, himself, vulnerable to exposure. Which was unfortunate, but they both knew there was no question of letting Jody go. And in any case, for all Sophia knows, the very fact that Jody chose her to confess to, and not some other psychologist, might very well have been a test, the gift of a second chance to do the right thing.
Not that it absolves her. She can never be forgiven for her past wrongdoing. But at least Benny was found alive and relatively unharmed, to his parents’ eternal gratitude. But that’s something else Sophia doesn’t deserve.
“It was a good thing you did saving that boy,” the painter says now.
Sophia doesn’t respond. Admiration is one more thing she isn’t comfortable with. A lot of it turned sour anyway when during the punishment phase of Jody’s trial, she made the controversial statement that she was unsure whether it was right to execute a man who couldn’t understand why he was being put to death. Certainly what Jody had done was of the blackest evil, but should he die for it? Who is she to judge? She of all people?
“Do you still see him?”
Sophia glances sidelong at the painter. Suppose he isn’t a painter but a reporter? That would explain the overly meaningful looks he’s been giving her. But in all likelihood he’s merely curious like the countless others who have no qualms about approaching her. “If you could leave the bid on the patio table under the hurricane lamp. . . ?”
“That’ll work,” he says. “It was nice meeting you,” he adds. “Interesting.” The word is tacked on.
Sophia has no idea what he means. Not then.
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