The Spider's Web (28 page)

Roseanne pulled in behind the truck, got out, and slammed the door. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mervin bolt upright and bang his head against the edge of the hood. “Berta around?” she called.

“Whered’ya get off, sneaking up like that,” Mervin said, shuffling toward her, rubbing his head.

“I’m here to see Berta. You got a problem?”

He shook his head and started backing up. “Inside,” he said. “Look out somebody don’t shoot you, sneaking up like that.”

“Berta?” Roseanne said, yanking open the door and stepping inside the dim, cluttered living room. “Where are you?”

A scraping noise came from somewhere in the house. There was the slightest movement through the shadows at the end of the hallway, and then Berta emerged into the living room as if she were sleepwalking, her white tee shirt and blue jeans as rumpled as pajamas. “Where you been?” she said. “I went over to the house and Martha said she didn’t know where you were.”

“Nowhere,” Roseanne said. “I’ve got to talk to you. I’ve got to find the girl.”

Berta sank onto the sofa. “I pulled the late shift at the nursing home last night. Didn’t get home ’til five this morning. I need some sleep. Who are you talking about?”

“The white girl. Marcy Morrison. She killed Ned and now she’s killed Hawk and Lookingglass. She’s just gonna keep on killing ’til she’s found.”

“You know that for sure?”

“She’s the only one could’ve done it.” The words hung in the air, and Roseanne could hear the doubt running through them. She dropped onto the wobbly seat of a side chair. “Who else would’ve done it?” she said, feeling the helplessness rising inside her.

“The fed came around yesterday,” Berta said. “Asking questions about the burglary ring. Who was in it, that kind of thing. Wanted to know if Mervin was part of it.”

“What a load of crap.” Mervin stood in the doorway, and Roseanne wondered how long he had been there. “No way is the fed gonna lay that on me. I never had nothing to do with stealing.”

“Then why’d he come here, Mervin?” Berta’s voice was like a long wail. “You promised me you wouldn’t have nothing to do with Dwayne and Lionel. You knew they were trouble. Then you went and told ’em about the party.”

“I told you the same as I told the fed,” Mervin said, running a black-smudged cloth over his hands, “Dwayne asked me if I wanted in on a good deal. He could fix it.”

“Fix it with who?” Roseanne said. She could almost hear Father John’s voice. Who else is mixed up in the ring? Who’s in charge? Who’s calling the shots? Now the fed was looking for the same answers.

“I don’t know and I don’t care. I figured anything them guys was mixed up in was gonna mean a one-way ticket to prison for me, just like Ned told me. So I told Dwayne to forget it.”

“Why’d they come to the party?” Berta said.

Mervin shrugged. “It was just a stupid party. They was always looking for parties, but Dwayne was acting crazier than usual that night. After I heard the white girl said him and Lionel was the ones that shot Ned, I believed it. They probably got into some beef over the stolen stuff. It wouldn’t surprise me none if she was the one that killed them ’cause she was so mad.” He took a moment. “Berta! You listening to me?” he shouted.

Roseanne flinched and shifted sideways to look up into his face. “I was never mixed up with any of that stuff. The burglary ring, none of it!”

It was true, Roseanne thought. She could hear the truth in what Mervin said. And that meant the rest of what he said could also be true, that Dwayne and Lionel had killed Ned, just like the white girl said, and that she had killed them because they took Ned away from her. The white girl would come after her next—the thought gripped her like a vise. The last time she had seen Ned, he had told her things were gonna be different. If the white girl thought Ned wanted to leave her, she would blame Roseanne. Oh, yes, Marcy Morrison would come after her next. But who would believe that? Not the fed. No matter what she tried to tell him, the fed believed that she was involved in the burglary ring, that she had gone to the barn and shot Hawk and Lookingglass. She had to stay hidden, locked up in the secret house.

Roseanne got to her feet and brushed past Mervin, hooking her backpack over her shoulder. She stopped at the door and looked back. “If the fed comes around again, you haven’t seen me, right?”

“Why’s he looking for you?”

“He’s not, okay? Just keep quiet.”

Berta started toward her, one arm outstretched. “You in trouble?” she said. “You should stay here with us.”

Roseanne swung herself about so fast that the backpack slammed against the doorjamb, knocking her off balance. She lurched outside and ran for the car. In five minutes, she was speeding down the dirt road, glancing every few seconds into the rearview mirror, half-expecting the fed’s white SUV to appear.

“YOU OKAY, MY boy?”

Father John glanced up from the stacks of phone messages and bills he���d been staring at on his desk, unable to start through them. He wondered how long the bishop had been standing in the doorway. He didn’t say anything, and the old man headed into the office and took one of the hard-backed chairs.

“Heard you up last night,” the bishop said. “The two men who paid us a visit were murdered.” He was shaking his head. “Doesn’t lend itself to sweet dreams.”

“Nothing makes sense,” Father John said. He had spent most the night wandering between the kitchen and his study, brewing pots of coffee and trying to put pieces of information together. He hadn’t been able to shake the sense that something was eluding him, dancing in front of him, then behind him, like a shadow, always out of reach. “The only conclusions I can come up with are illogical.”

“Ah.” The bishop sat quietly a long moment, as if he had run into such problems in the past, and they were meant to be contemplated with single-minded attention. “In the words of St. Paul,” he said, “we see through a glass, darkly. We are often blinded by our own suppositions.”

Father John stared at the old man. He felt a coldness moving through him, a certainty taking hold. Roseanne Birdwoman was in great danger. Whether she realized it or not, she knew who had killed Hawk and Lookingglass. The killer was probably looking for her now. He stood up and crossed the office. “I’m going out for a while,” he said. He could hear the bishop rising out of the chair as he headed into the corridor.

“Do be careful,” the bishop called.

In the pickup, he called Roseanne’s cell, then made a U-turn on Circle Drive and sped toward Seventeen-Mile Road, listening to the tinny ringing noise, followed by Roseanne’s voice saying that she wasn’t available and he knew the drill.

 

 

ROSEANNE LEFT THE car a quarter mile away in a stand of cottonwoods and hurried toward the house, running, walking, gasping for breath. The backpack banged against her shoulder blades. At one point her cell started ringing in the backpack. She had ignored it and kept going. She glanced back as she cut across the sagebrush fields. The fed’s white SUV wasn’t anywhere in sight, but it could show up at any moment. He could take her in for questioning, turn everything she said against her, arrest her for murdering Dwayne and Lionel. Who else knew where to find them? No one, no one. She shouldn’t have gone to Berta’s; it was too risky. She cursed under her breath. She had to think straighter, stay strong, if she was going to stay alive and out of prison.

She swung around the rear of a house where the door banged in the wind and kept going, darting through another cluster of cottonwoods and coming out behind Betty’s house. It looked vacant, the way she had left it. Curtains pulled in the bedroom windows, shade pulled halfway in the kitchen window.

She stopped in the trees and checked all around. No traffic on the road, no tire prints in the dirt yard. No one had been here. She sprinted for the back door, let herself in with the flimsy key, and closed the door softly behind her. A kind of relief swept over her, the relief of the prisoner back in her familiar cell. The phone rang again. “Shut up!” she screamed. “Shut up!” She couldn’t talk to anyone. She couldn’t take the chance of anyone guessing where she was hiding.

She dropped the backpack on the table, then turned on the faucet and waited until the cell stopped ringing and the water ran cold. She filled a glass and drank until it was empty. She was about to refill the glass when the thumping noise started at the front of the house. She turned off the faucet and listened. The noise came again. She could feel her heart fluttering, a bird trying to get out of her chest. She made herself walk past the table and the two chairs pushed in at the ends to the doorway into the living room. She had a clear view of the front door with the window curtain pulled back a little way. Someone was outside on the stoop.

The figure moved toward the window, like a shadow on the other side of the curtain. Roseanne backed into the kitchen. The edge of the table bit into her hip. She kept her eyes on the doorway, reached for the backpack, and fumbled with the zipper until she had jerked it open. Her fingers closed over the cool metal of the Colt.

“Roseanne! You in there? Open up.” It was Aunt Martha’s voice, as real and familiar as Roseanne’s own breath, hot and tight and painful.

Roseanne jammed the pistol into the backpack and crossed the living room. She cracked open the door and stepped back, her voice stopped in her throat. Aunt Martha lurched inside and kicked the door shut. “I been calling your cell, leaving messages,” she said. “You never call back. I was worried you were dead or something.”

“How did you find me?”

“I went to Berta’s and seen you driving off. I followed you, ’til you took off on foot. I guessed you might be hiding out at Betty’s house, since she’s in California.”

“You shouldn’t have come here.” Roseanne moved sideways and glanced around the edge of the curtain, forcing herself to stay calm. She tried to block the images in her head. The fed could have been watching Aunt Martha’s house. He could have followed her to Berta’s and seen Roseanne’s car. He could show up
here.
And the white girl. She could be out there somewhere, watching.

She faced the woman: pale and drawn, eyes circled with black shadows, a look of terror shining out of her black pupils. She wasn’t sure whether Aunt Martha was drunk or just hungover. Usually it was easy to determine which point on a long continuum from sobriety to dead drunkenness Aunt Martha had landed on, but now Roseanne wasn’t sure. She was losing the sure-fire touch acquired from living with an alcoholic.

“I’m not drunk, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Aunt Martha said, looking at her out of the corners of her eyes, and it struck Roseanne as the truth. “I been real worried about you. Agent Gianelli come by early this morning, got me out of bed. Wanted to talk to you. I said I didn’t know where you were. I said you was ungrateful for all I done for you, and you just took off, not even telling me good-bye. Oh, I was real good, Roseanne. You would’ve been proud. He thinks I don’t know where you went.”

Roseanne tilted her head back and closed her eyes. Now the fed would be convinced she had something to run from, something other than fear for her own safety. She wondered if he suspected anyone else of shooting Dwayne and Lionel, or if she was the only one he was looking for. And what about the white girl? She was the one he should look for.

“Okay,” Roseanne heard herself saying. “Okay, okay. You have to leave now.”

“Something else.” Roseanne waited. It was a long moment before Aunt Martha went on. “I seen that same man outside last night, parked across the road, watching the house.”

“Who is he?” Roseanne had thought Dwayne was the man, but last night . . . Last night, Dwayne and Lionel were dead.

“I don’t know. He’s in a dark truck, and he stays slumped down, keeps his cowboy hat low.”

“You gotta go,” Roseanne said. “Don’t come back, okay?”

“How am I gonna know if you’re all right if you don’t answer your phone?”

“I promise to call. Just stay at the house. Soon’s this is all over . . .”

“When’s that gonna be, Roseanne?” Aunt Martha’s eyes were filling up, little black pools of water. “First Ned, then those killers get shot to death. Who’s gonna be next? I’m real worried about you. What’ve you got to do with all this?”

“Nothing, Aunt Martha. I swear to you.”

“Then why are you hiding?”

The knocking on the door sounded as if someone had started beating a drum, loud and insistent and angry. Roseanne saw the way Aunt Martha’s expression froze, the way she seemed to turn into stone, and she felt the same thing happening to herself. She was like a statue, unable to move, barely able to glance sideways at the opening in the curtain. She tried to take in the front of the dark truck jutting past Aunt Martha’s pickup. When had it rolled into the yard? She hadn’t heard anything past the sound of Aunt Martha’s voice, the arguments and panic erupting in her own head, and the dim noise of the ringing cell.

The knocking came again, followed by a man shouting, “Open up! I know you’re there. Open up before I bust the door down.”

“Don’t go to the door,” Roseanne started to say, but the sound of a boot crashing against wood filled the air and the door burst open. She recognized the man looming in the opening—the sunburned face, the permanent squint in the blue eyes, the black cowboy hat and starched pink shirt and pressed blue jeans. Someone was screaming, and she wasn’t sure whether it was Aunt Martha or herself, her whole attention focused now on the black pistol in Jerry Adams’s hand.

 

 

“ANSWER YOUR CELL!” Father John shouted into the sound of the wind crashing through the cab. He tossed his own cell onto the passenger seat and pressed down harder on the accelerator. The pickup bucked and shimmied. As soon as he had gotten past his own supposition—that Jerry Adams had looked out for Ned, found him jobs because his wife and her sister had asked him—the pieces had fallen into place. Jerry Adams, the man who had hired Hawk and Lookingglass on his ranch last summer, had placed his nephew in jobs that gave him access to houses where he could check the security systems and figure out how to dismantle them. Jerry Adams, an ex-army man with connections, the kind of connections who would know how to move stolen jewelry, cameras, TVs, computers— whatever Ned and Dwayne and Lionel took from the houses. A man who wouldn’t have tolerated anyone cheating on him. A man who would know how to kill.