Unspeakable (12 page)

Cecil tried pulling Carl toward their room, but Carl resisted. "Hey, Sheriff, you ever see our stepdaddy?"

"Sometimes."

"Next time you do, tell him to go fuck himself." Carl jabbed his finger for emphasis. "You tell that cocksucker I said that."

"Shut up, Carl." Smiling apologetically, Cecil dragged his brother across the parking lot. The next day Ezzy had called Delray. He didn't relay Carl's message, but he asked if Delray knew his stepsons were back in the area.

"I'd heard, but I haven't seen them. They know where they stand with me. I want no part of them."

Ezzy had seen them on only one other occasion, and, again, they'd been at the epicenter of a disturbance. It had taken place at the Wrangler, one of the few remaining drive-in movie theaters in East Texas. Alcohol was prohibited anywhere on the premises, but enough alcohol to float a battleship was consumed there just about every night during the summer. Admittance was a dollar a carload. At that price, the drive-in was cheap entertainment for teenagers from Blewer and surrounding towns. It didn't matter what movie was playing; kids by the hundreds flocked there, moving from car to car to visit, neck, drink. On that particular night, for reasons that were never determined, the crowd at the drive-in became polarized. Those parked on the north end went to war with those parked on the south end. The graveled acreage was split right down the middle in the manner of the Mason-Dixon Line.

By the time it was all over, some blood had been shed, several cars had been vandalized, a fire had been started in the projection room, and the sheriffs office had dispatched all five patrol cars to the scene.

Ezzy spotted Carl stanching a bloody nose while trying to pack a hopelessly inebriated woman into the front seat of a station wagon. "You just can't stay out of trouble, can you, Carl?" Immediately defensive, he sneered, "Hey, I didn't start it."

"That's the God's truth. He was just defending his girl's honor. You can't arrest him for that." Ezzy turned toward Cecil, who once again had come to his brother's defense. "He's in violation of parole," Ezzy remarked. "I can arrest him for that."

"Give him a break, Sheriff Hardge. What was he supposed to do? Some asshole called his girlfriend a fucking whore."

Ezzy recognized the woman slumped in the front seat. She was in fact a well-known whore whom he'd had to jail a few times for boldly soliciting on the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly store. "Get on out of here, you two. But this makes twice. From here on, I've got my eye on you." Carl retorted, "Yeah, which one?"

Later Ezzy castigated himself for not cuffing them that night and taking them in. He should have reported them to their parole officer. He should have used the slightest infraction as an excuse to put them in jail. If he had, Patsy McCorkle might have lived.

Those two encounters with the Herbolds would haunt Ezzy for many years to come, but never more so than three days after Patsy's body was discovered. Harvey Stroud had been wearing a linen suit the color of sweet cream when he huffed into Ezzy's office and tossed a manila envelope onto his desk. "That's it."

" 'Bout time," Ezzy grumbled as he lowered his boots from the corner of his desk and opened the envelope.

"Couldn't rush something like this, Ezzy." The coroner removed his hat and fanned himself with it. "You got a cold Co'Cola you could spare?"

A deputy brought the county official the requested soft drink. He had drunk half of it before Ezzy raised his head from the reading material. "She died of a broken neck?"

"Snapped like a twig. Clean in two. Death was instantaneous."

"What do you think happened?"

Stroud said, "Well, for starters, she had sexual intercourse with at least two partners."

"Forced?"

"I prepared a rape kit just in case. It's included there. But rape would be tough to prove because there's no forensic evidence to support it. Besides, from what I hear about this girl, a young man wouldn't have to force himself on her."

"I'm concerned with her mortality, not her morality. That statement is unworthy of you, Harvey."

"Maybe," the coroner replied without taking umbrage. "But don't you know it to be true?" He did, and for that reason he didn't pursue the argument. "What about the bruise on her neck?"

"It was a hickey. There was one to match it on her left breast. Caused by deep kissing, but nothing violent."

"It says here you found semen in her vagina as well as her, uh..."

"Rectum. Only one donor there. I ran the tests several times on the specimen I took from there. Only one man ejaculated into her rectum." Stroud belched and set his empty soda bottle on the edge of Ezzy's desk. "There were abrasions and tearing around the anus. Light bleeding. So she was alive when she was penetrated there. My guess... If you're interested in my guess, Ezzy." He motioned for Stroud to continue, although each word out of the coroner's mouth was making him a little sick to his stomach.

"My guess is that she went willingly with the boys. They had themselves an orgy."

"And then one of them raped her anally."

The coroner frowned and thoughtfully tugged on his earlobe. "Again, that's an iffy call. She could have been game. It could have been something new and untried for her. For all we know she even initiated it."

Ezzy thought about Mrs. McCorkle in her daisy-patterned housecoat and hoped to hell she never had to hear this about her only child.

"What happened from there is anybody's guess," Stroud continued. "She might have balked and said no, and the boy held her down. But, again, there's no significant bruising or scratching to suggest an all-out fight."

"That's what you'd testify to in court?"

"If it came to that, yeah, Ezzy. Under oath that's what I would have to testify. Maybe she said yes initially, then changed her mind when it began to hurt. She put up a struggle; he killed her. Simple as that.

"But it is just as likely that the girl was enjoying it. Even people who engage in that particular sexual activity on a somewhat regular basis can experience irritation and bleeding." Ezzy rubbed his temple. Head down, he asked, "Then how did she wind up with a broken neck?"

"My theory? It happened in the throes of passion. The young man got a little carried away and unintentionally broke her neck."

"You can't be certain it was an accident."

"True. But I can't be certain that it was deliberate either. The only thing I know with certainty is that he completed the act."

Ezzy stood and stretched his back. He wandered over to the window and needlessly adjusted the blinds. "Say it was an accident; why didn't he report it?"

"And own up to the fact that he screwed her to death?" The coroner snorted skeptically.

"Anyway, motivation is your department, Ezzy. I've done my part." Stroud replaced his hat and heaved himself out of the chair. "I heard through the grapevine that the Herbold brothers are your prime suspects."

"She was last seen in their company."

"Hmm. Well, I'd say it could be either way, then. Unreported accidental death. Or rape and manslaughter."

"Or murder."

"Could be. What do the boys say?"

"They've run to ground."

"Disappeared?"

"They were last seen leaving the Wagon Wheel with Patsy."

"You don't say? Hell of a thing for Delray, huh? Well, happy hunting. Thanks for the Coke." One of the reasons Ezzy hadn't arrested the Herbolds when he'd had the opportunity was to spare Delray Corbett the embarrassment. As it turned out, he had done Delray no favors. The next time he saw him, Ezzy had to inform him that he was looking for his stepsons in connection with Patsy McCorkle's death.

"Do you know where they are, Delray?"

"If I did I'd hand them over to you," he had said, and Ezzy had believed him.

"It's going to kill you, you know."

Ezzy had been so lost in thought he hadn't heard Cora's approach. Her voice didn't jolt him back into the present. His reemergence was a struggle, like working himself out of a spiderweb. Guilty memories clung to him with sticky tenacity.

When finally free of them, he smiled up at his wife. "Good morning to you, too." Apparently Cora didn't consider it a good morning at all. Maintaining a stony silence, she filled his coffee cup from the carafe she'd carried out to the deck with her, then poured herself a cup and sat down in the lounger next to his. He could smell her talcum powder. She had dusted with it after every bath for as long as they'd been married.

"What's going to kill me?" he asked.

"This obsession."

"I'm not obsessed with anything except you." He reached across the narrow space separating the chaises and covered her knee with his hand.

She promptly removed it. "That girl's been dead more than twenty years." Dropping all pretense, he sighed. For several moments he stared out across the lawn and sipped his coffee. "I know how long she's been dead, Cora."

"Her daddy's gone. For all we know Mrs. McCorkle is, too."

McCorkle had followed his daughter to the grave five summers later. He had simply dropped dead one day at his desk at the Public Service Office while running an audit on someone's electric bill. His widow had moved to Oklahoma. She hadn't returned to Blewer, not even to decorate the graves of her daughter and husband. Ezzy couldn't blame her. The town hadn't left her with too many good memories.

"The only person blaming you for what happened to them is you," Cora said, emphasizing the last word. "When are you going to let it go, Ezzy? When are you going to stop thinking about it?"

"How do you know that's what I'm thinking about?"

"Don't insult me on top of making me mad," she snapped. "I know you snuck out the other night so you could go through those old files. And I saw through that fishing lie before you were out the back door."

"I went fishing," he argued lamely.

"You went to the place on the river where she died." Setting her coffee cup on the small table between the chaises, she clasped her hands in her lap. "I could fight another woman, Ezzy. I would know what to do about that. But this... I don't know how to fight this. And..." She paused and drew a deep breath. "And I'm tired of trying."

He looked at her, saw the stubborn angle of her chin, and all of a sudden his heart felt like a lump of lead inside his chest.

"I'm leaving you, Ezzy. I'm leaving you to the damn ghosts I've had to share you with." She began to cry.

"Cora—"

"No, don't say anything. We've talked about it a thousand times. Those talks don't do any good. We've fought about it too, but fighting hasn't solved anything either."

"It's this prison escape. Carl's in the news and that's brought it all back. Soon as he's caught—"

"No, Ezzy. When he was sentenced to prison in Arkansas, you told me that was the end of it. But it wasn't. For years you've been promising me that you would give it up, that you would forget about it. Yet here you are, retired and free to enjoy yourself. Free to enjoy me," she said, her voice cracking. "But you're not enjoying anything. You're miserable. You're mired in the past, and that's your choice. But it's not mine. So, as the kids nowadays say, I'm outta here." He tried to keep his voice calm. "You can't mean that."

"Oh, yes I can." She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her housecoat and stood up. "I've loved you since the night we met. I'll love you as I draw my last breath. But I'm not going to live with you any longer, Ezzy. I refuse to stand by while this thing eats away at you until there's nothing left. I've watched it haunt you, but damned if I'll watch it kill you."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

D
elray hadn't spoken a word since discovering the dead cows. He came slowly to his feet. He removed his dozer cap and used it to dust off the knee of his pants leg, on which he had been kneeling. He swiped his shirtsleeve across his sweating forehead, then stared out across the pasture, lost in thought, silent.

Finally Jack asked, "What do you make of it, Delray?"

"Well, they're dead," he replied, stating the obvious.

"I mean, any ideas on what killed them?"

Corbett replaced his cap, then turned and looked across at Jack. "A few. None of them good." Jack shifted from one foot to the other, feeling uncomfortable. It was hard to look innocent under such an accusatory stare. "Coyote, you think? Or bobcat?" Jack was groping to find a feasible explanation for the three carcasses growing stiff in the morning heat. But he didn't believe this was an animal attack. There wasn't a mark on the cattle, no bites or wounds. A hungry predator would have killed one cow and eaten his fill, leaving behind a bloody mess for the buzzards to pick clean. Instead the remains of the Herefords were seemingly untouched. As though reading his thoughts, Delray said, "It wasn't a four-legged animal that got them." His point, clearly, was that a two-legged animal was responsible. Jack wanted to disclaim the subtle accusation but decided it would be better if he said nothing. To declare his innocence before he was even accused would make him look all the more guilty. He ventured another guess. "Disease?"

"Maybe," Corbett said. "I won't know till the vet takes a look."