Tumbleweeds (45 page)

Her general dislike of Trey could flare to hatred, and she might want him exposed and punished for what he had done, the torment he’d put them through, and report him to the authorities.

If that should happen, an investigation would unearth Father John Caldwell’s part in the crime.

John got up from his desk, his unease roiling in his stomach, and went out onto his balcony. He had considered laying out to Trey the possible ramifications of his confession, but as a priest he could not. He would not deny Trey this last opportunity to redeem himself and cleanse his soul. A while ago, as he was drawing a blanket over him, Trey had grabbed his hands and begun to cry, the tears trickling into his gray sideburns and filling the sick lines around his eyes. “Please forgive me for what I did to you and Catherine Ann and the boy, John. I’ve suffered a penance, too. After I left for Miami, I was never able to make anything like you and Cathy happen again—nothing as
good and sweet and sure. Nobody else came along to save me from myself.”

John knew that to be true. “I understand,” he said.

“I left my heart back here. That’s why no one was ever able to find it, not even me.”

“I know, TD.”

“And will you let Cathy know?”

“I will.”

“And will you tell her that I didn’t come to Aunt Mabel’s funeral because I didn’t want to embarrass her and Will. I’m not that much of an asshole.”

“I’ll tell her, TD.”

“You’re going to her now, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

Trey’s hands slipped away. He crossed them over his chest and closed his eyes. A small sigh escaped his pale lips. John turned to go. “Tiger?”

“Yes, Trey?”

“I love you, man… you and Catherine Ann. I’ve loved you always, no matter how it seemed.”

“I know,” John said, patting Trey’s crossed hands. “Go to sleep now. Rest.”

“And do you forgive me?”

“I do.”

“You’re my man, John.”

John looked out on the vista where he had so often found wisdom and peace. Would these be the last hours he would perform his duties as the Father John that all those who loved and believed in knew? He was not worried how his flock would take the surprise of Will’s parentage or how Will would receive the news. His son loved him, and he’d be thrilled to be rid of TD Hall for good. The uneasiness in the pit of his stomach he could shrug off if God had not warned him
that another scandal was approaching far more staggering than that he was Will Benson’s father. From it there would be no recovery, not for him as pastor of St. Matthew’s Parish and as director of Harbison House.

Well, so be it.
He’d always known there would be a reckoning, but in the presence of God after his death. How naïve of God’s ways he’d been to think he could leave this life untainted with his sin undiscovered and his work completed without blemish. The shadows had gathered at last. He felt their presence like dogs circling for the kill. He made the sign of the cross.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Thy will be done
. He stored up a last look of the unbroken prairie and went inside to make several telephone calls. The first was to Cathy at the café.

“We have to meet,” he said.

“Oh, oh, I don’t like the sound of that.”

“It’s best if we meet at your house.”

“I’ll give you a half-hour head start and be there by the time you arrive.”

The next call was to St. Matthew’s associate pastor alerting him that he might have to conduct the weekend masses. “You’re going out of town?” Father Philip asked on a note of surprise.

“Something unexpected has turned up, Philip. You may be required to fill my shoes for a while.”

“Impossible,” Father Philip said.

The next was to the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Amarillo.

“Yes,” the bishop said, “I can see you at three this afternoon. What’s this all about, John?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you, Your Grace.”

John looked into his bedroom to see that Trey was still sleeping peacefully, then went downstairs to the kitchen carrying the tray, embarrassed at the food uneaten. The rich smell of broth announced there would be chicken pot pies for supper. Betty stood at the counter
removing the flesh from a pile of boiled carcasses, Felix at her feet vigilant for a fallout. From outside came the squeals of children splashing about in the watering tank.

A sudden attack of emotion made John’s eyes water, and the tray tilted. Startled, Betty grabbed it from him. “Father, what’s wrong?”

“Oh, a few things that should have been made right long ago, I’m afraid.”

“It’s him, isn’t it?” She jerked her head toward the ceiling. “He’s gotten you upset. I could tell when I went up.”

“Don’t blame him. He’s sick, Betty, and his visit is long overdue. I’ve left him sleeping. When he wakes up, will you see that he drinks a cup of that broth I smell? He couldn’t keep down his lunch, good as it was.”

Rinsing the remaining soup from the bowls, Betty said, “I see you didn’t eat much, either, good as it was. Are you going out?” She’d noticed he’d changed back into his clerical shirt, but there had been no call for his services.

“Yes,” he said, “and I won’t be home until late tonight.”

Her worried eyes searched his face. “What’s the matter, Father?”

“Betty—,” he began, but he let die unspoken the words he wished to express. They would mean nothing to her anyway if what he feared came to pass. He pushed the bridge of her glasses higher on her nose, moist from working over the simmering pots.

“Yes, Father?”

“I was only going to say that Trey will be leaving us in the morning. He has a plane to catch at noon.”

B
ETTY REMAINED
at the kitchen counter after John had gone. Now she was sure of it. Something was afoot, brought into this house by Trey Don Hall. She’d lay a wager that it wasn’t good, if she were a betting woman. It might have to do with his illness, but he had looked fine to her when she took up lunch, not much changed since he’d
brought his insolent airs and handsome face to her front door, acting so put upon that his aunt had sent him to pick up her vegetables and eggs—as if he didn’t owe everything to the aunt who’d raised him and then, when he was rich and famous, discarded like wilted lettuce.

Betty had been surprised, though, when he’d inquired after her and Lou. Trey was really asking how they were doing without Donny, but his sympathy didn’t make her like him any better. He’d acted so superior around Donny on the several occasions they met at the house.

Her instincts were seldom wrong, and they were telling her now that something serious was bothering Father. Lou had sensed it, too. “Distant and distracted,” he’d described Father when he went to the garage to get his truck this morning. She thought
worried
and
distraught
more like it, the kind of look a farmer gets when he’s about to lose his land.

Cracking the bones she’d use for making gelatin, Betty cocked an eye in the direction of the upstairs bedroom. Sick or not, Trey Don Hall better think twice if he’d come here to cause trouble for Father John. Neither she nor Lou would stand for it.

C
ATHY STOOD
at the front window of her house watching for John’s Silverado. She unlocked the nervous clench of her hands and eased them down her smock. What was John coming to tell her that he couldn’t say over the phone? Why hadn’t he given her some inkling of Trey’s plans? It wasn’t like John to keep her in suspense, any more than it was typical of her to bombard him with questions when his tone had made clear he must speak to her in person. At least, though, she wished she’d asked if Trey would be coming with him. Just in case, disgusted with herself, she’d tidied her hair and refreshed her lipstick.

The Silverado swung into her driveway, and she saw only John in the cab. Her half second’s disappointment was swept away at the sight
of him getting out, still with a wide receiver’s lithe grace, his black, short-sleeved clerical shirt and Roman collar inexplicably adding to his sexual attraction—the allure of the unattainable, she supposed. How could she still carry a smidgen of feeling for Trey Don Hall when she grew more in love with John Caldwell every year?

When she opened the door, a sudden wave of déjà vu struck her. She had lived this exact, imperishable moment before. It was the afternoon she’d opened the door to find a dejected Trey Don Hall on her doorstep, his face wearing John’s expression now, a look begging her to forgive him and to take him into her arms. It was the afternoon Will was conceived. A longing so powerful, it tasted like gunpowder, drove through her body, but she caught herself before she made the mistake she’d made then. “Hello, Father John,” she said with her usual composure. “I know it’s early, but you look like you could use a shot of whiskey.”

“I believe I could,” he said.

After she’d mixed the drinks, she sat next to him on the couch. It seemed the place to be. John stared down at his glass. “I recall drinking whiskey with you at this time of day once before,” he said.

“We did?”

“Uh-huh. Once upon a time when our hearts were young and sad.”

“Ah, yes,” she said. “Trey had dumped me. I vaguely remember getting loop-legged drunk and falling asleep on your bed.”

“Twenty-two years ago this month, as a matter of fact.”

She had other reasons to recall that June of twenty-two years ago. “The things we remember after so much time,” she said.

John sipped his drink. “Trey tells me that Will is not his child, Cathy. That’s one of the confessions he’s come home to make.”

Her head spun from the fury that filled it. “The conscienceless bastard! You mean he
still
denies he’s Will’s father?”

“You remember that bout Trey had with the mumps at sixteen?” John asked.

Something ominous—confounding—was taking shape in her mind. “Yes…,” she said. “I remember. He was… very sick.”

“The mumps left him sterile. Trey could never father a child.”

She set her drink down sharply, mindless of the water mark it would leave on the fine burled wood of her coffee table. “That’s impossible, John. He’s lying. Will has to be Trey’s child. I’d never been with anyone else.”

Calmly John picked up two coasters from an end table and slipped them under their drinks, then took her hands. “Yes, you had, Cathy. You had been with me.”

I
n the forensics lab of the Department of Public Safety in Amarillo, before the eyes of Deke and Charles Martin, Sheriff Randy Wallace broke the seal and poured out the contents of the requested evidence box. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what this burr under your saddle is all about, Deke?” Randy said.

“Not yet, Randy.” Deke picked up the dismembered foreleg and joined it to the mounted bobcat he’d brought in. A perfect fit. “Aha!” he said, unsurprised. He then separated out two small plastic bags of unidentified fingerprints from those marked as Donny’s, taken before the body was removed, Lou Harbison’s and others. One bag, marked
X
, contained two cards bearing the same fingerprints found on the magazines and cord. The other sack, marked
Y
, contained one unidentified set of prints taken off the ligature but missing from the pornographic material.

Deke handed the bags to Charles. “Let’s see if the prints in these match any on this trophy.” With latex-gloved fingers, he lifted a brass football from the paper sack. Charles and Randy peered at the inscription commemorating Trey Don (TD) Hall as the Texas Sports Writers’ most valuable high school player of the 1985 football season. Randy whistled. “Holy Toledo! Are you kidding?”

“I’m afraid not,” Deke said. He had taken the trophy from a glass case with the hope that Mabel Church’s dusting rag had never touched it.

“Well, let’s go see,” Charles said, and led the men into a room of computers, X-ray machines, and other analysis equipment. After conducting the procedure of transferring the prints from the trophy, he ran them through a screening device to compare them to the ones on the three cards. Within seconds, the system beeped:
MATCH
. “Looks like your guess is right, at least regarding X’s prints,” Charles said. “There’s no doubt that the person who handled the magazines and cord handled this trophy.”

“Hot dog!” Deke yelped.

“But also,” Charles said, pointing to the card bearing only the cord’s fingerprints, “Y’s fingerprints are on the trophy.”

“What?” Deke cried.

“See for yourself.” He stepped aside to let Deke and Randy study the images projected on the computer screen. The ridge characteristics of Y’s fingerprints matched those taken from the trophy.

“Good lord!” Deke exclaimed.
So Trey had an accomplice—probably a classmate! He hadn’t gone out to the Harbison place alone!

“Come on, Deke, what’s this all about?” Randy begged.

“Sorry, Randy. I can’t afford to tell you until I’m sure of a few more details.”

Charles, too, looked mystified. “Twenty-two years is a long time,” he said. “If TD Hall was involved in something that happened back then, he’d have been… what? Seventeen at the time?”