Unspeakable (7 page)

"Get all your errands run today?"

His question roused her from her thoughts. Suddenly remembering something, she held up her finger to indicate that she would be right back. She fetched a business card from her handbag and brought it back to Delray.

"Emory Lomax." His lips formed the name, then a curse, which she hoped he spoke beneath his breath so David couldn't hear.

" I went into the bank," she told him. " Mr. Lomax made a point of crossing the lobby just to comeover to say hello. "

"Oily bastard."

Although the word was strangely out of context, she understood what Delray meant. "Oily" was a perfect word to describe the loan officer. Whenever he touched her, which was each time she saw him, she felt the need to wash right away. " He asked that teller who knows sign to interpretfor him."

"What did he have to say for himself?"

" He reminded me that an interest payment is past due—"

"I mailed it yesterday."

" That's what I told him. He said the two of you need to meet and discuss how and when you 'llstart reducing the principal of the loan. He offered to come here for the meeting."

"I bet he did."

" To save you a trip into town, he said."

"More to the point, to give him a chance to look the place over." Delray took a toothpick from the glass holder in the center of the table and clamped it between his teeth as he stood up. "I'm going to watch TV. Maybe there's some good news tonight."

He was angry over the loan officer's conversation with her. Possibly a little afraid about the news from Arkansas. As he left the kitchen, Delray resembled an aging bear, one who had lost his claws and feared he could no longer protect himself.

"Is Grandpa mad at me?" David asked.

Anna reached out and drew her son close, hugging him tightly. " Why would he be mad at you? "

" 'Cause I talk too much."

" He's not mad. He's worried about grown-up stuff. "

"That man at the bank?"

She nodded.

David made a face of distaste. "I don't like him. He smells like mouthwash." Laughing, she signed, " Grandpa doesn't like him either."

"Do you?"

She shuddered. " No! "

Emory Lomax couldn't carry on a conversation without rubbing his hand up and down her arm, or holding her hand too long after shaking it. Certainly she had never encouraged his attention. She had been nothing except polite. But Lomax's ego couldn't separate common manners from a flirtation. The next time he touched her she should call him what he was—an asshole—and tell him to keep his hands to himself.

Could she get the teller to interpret that? she wondered.

" Bath time" she told David, shooing him up the stairs. As he splashed in the tub with his fleet of plastic ships, she went through her face-cleansing routine. Usually she approached it as a necessary, no-fuss procedure, which she performed without thinking too much about it.

Tonight, however, she took a few extra moments to study her face closely in the mirror above the sink. The hated dusting of freckles was responding to the summer sun. She must remember to apply sunscreen before going out. Her deep blue eyes were her father's. Her small nose was her mother's. Luckily she had inherited the best of both of them.

Unluckily, she had lost her parents far too early. They had died, months apart, shortly after she married Dean—her mother of liver cancer, her father of heart disease.

She wished they had lived long enough to see her healthy, hearing son. Of course she wished Dean had, too.

Impatient with herself for dwelling on sad things, she pulled David from the tub. He took forever to dry off, put on his pajamas, and brush his teeth, delaying bedtime until she had to scold him mildly. When finally his head was on the pillow, she sat down on the edge of the bed for his prayers.

He closed his eyes and folded his hands beneath his chin. She watched his lips form the familiar words. "God bless Daddy who's already in heaven. God bless Grandpa. God bless Mom. And God bless Jack."

Anna wasn't sure she had read his lips correctly. David seldom changed his prayer. Since the nighttime ritual had begun, there had been very few extra "God bless"es. Once for a raccoon. They had treated the scavenger like a pet, scattering Lucky Charms on the porch for him every evening, then watching from inside when he came to feast. One morning Delray found him dead in the readjust outside their gate. He'd been run over. David had prayed for him for several nights.

Another time he had asked God's blessing on a teddy bear he'd accidentally left at McDonald's. By the time they discovered the toy missing and went back for it, it was gone. The teddy had been remembered for about a week.

Those were the only two exceptions she could recall.

But was it really all that surprising that David should include Jack Sawyer in his prayers? His arrival was the most exciting thing to happen to David in a long time.

To a boy David's age, Sawyer must seem like a character from an adventure story. He wasn't as old as Delray, not by twenty years or more. He wasn't soft and pale like the pediatrician who had treated David since he was born. He didn't have the gentle mannerisms of the minister who sometimes came to visit them even though the last sermon they'd heard from him was Dean's burial service, Jack Sawyer wasn't like any other man within her son's small world. With his boots, his Indian-made knife, his knowledge of dinosaurs, and his battered pickup truck—a faded orange Chevy that bore its scars as proudly as a war veteran—it was little wonder that he had made such a striking impression.

After saying a final amen, David opened his eyes. "Do you think he liked me, Mom?" It was pointless to play dumb and pretend that she didn't know he was referring to Jack Sawyer.

" I'm sure he did. Who wouldn't like you? " She reached out and tickled his belly. Usually he enjoyed the tickling sessions and wanted them to continue even when Anna was ready to call it quits. But tonight he didn't respond with his customary giggles. Instead, he rolled to his side and stacked his hands beneath his cheek.

"When I grow up, will I be as tall as Jack?"

" You may even be taller."

"I wish I could show him my dinosaur book." Then he yawned hugely and closed his eyes. Anna remained seated on the edge of his bed, stroking his hair, her heart and throat feeling tight as she gazed down at him and wished Dean could have known him. Dean would have made a wonderful father. David had been cheated out of that.

Delray was the only adult male in his life. Delray was a good man. Although outwardly stern, underneath he was kindhearted. But he wasn't a daddy to David. It was difficult for him to show affection. He couldn't be silly for silliness' sake. He seldom laughed. David's constant activity annoyed him. Worse, he let his annoyance show.

He never spoke of his first marriage, or of the problems it had created, or of that summer when all the difficulties came to a head. It was as though his life had begun in 1976 and the years prior to that had belonged to another man. Wishing to forget that life, he had buried the bad memories deep within himself. No doubt there were days when he actually did forget them. Unfortunately, Carl Herbold's escape from prison yesterday had brought them to the surface.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"N
ot many biting, Ezzy. Too damn hot." Burl Mundy flapped open a brown paper sack and dropped a bag of Fritos and a Peanut Pattie into it.

"You're probably right, but I needed something to do."

"Ain't you adjusted to retirement yet?"

"Don't think I ever will."

"I know what you mean. I've been running this bait shop here at the point practically all my life. They'll carry me out of here feet first."

"I'll need some of those crickets," Ezzy said. "And put a couple of soda pops in here." He set a portable cooler on the cloudy glass countertop.

"How 'bout a coupla beers instead?"

"No way. I gotta go home tonight."

Mundy chuckled. "Cora's still against drinking, huh?"

"Baptist to the bone." Ezzy paid in cash. "That ought to cover the gas, too." He'd pumped fuel into the motor of his small bass boat before coming inside. He picked up his sack of snacks, the carton of crickets he'd bought for bait, and the cooler, which now contained two Dr Peppers.

"Thanks, Burl."

"Happy fishing, Ezzy." Before Ezzy got through the door, Burl had readjusted his oscillating fan and returned to his recliner and a well-thumbed Louis L'Amour paperback. Ezzy set his purchases in the bottom of his boat, where he had already stowed his fishing gear. It wasn't expensive or sophisticated equipment; he was an indifferent fisherman. Because emergencies arose on every day of the year and at all hours, scheduling leisure activities was impossible for a county sheriff in a poor county. Ezzy's office had always been understaffed and over budget. Consequently, for fifty years he'd been overworked and on call twenty-four, seven, three-hundred-sixty-five.

Even if his demanding schedule had allowed him more time for recreation, he doubted he would have indulged in fishing, golfing, hunting, or any of the hobbies that other men lived for. He just flat wasn't interested. Nothing had engrossed him more than his work. He had loved it. His life had revolved around it. Even when asleep, he had thought about it.

Today, as he trolled the river, he yearned to be working still.

The spring had been uncustomarily dry, so the water level was low, the current sluggish. The river seemed in no hurry to empty into the Gulf waters a few hundred miles south. Sunlight turned the still surface into a glaring mirror that put his RayBans to the test. Where the river narrowed, tree branches formed a shady canopy. Those patches of momentary coolness were welcome. There was no breeze. Not a leaf stirred. Plants along the banks had wilted in the oppressive heat, making the landscape look forlorn. Turtles and water snakes were detectable only by their heads barely breaking the surface of the murky waters near the shore. They were too listless to swim. Even the cicadas were halfhearted in their music-making. Ezzy's shirt was soaked with perspiration by the time he angled his craft toward the riverbank. Stepping from the boat, he pulled it into the tall, dry reeds. He hadn't even had to search for the spot. It was as familiar to him as his own face. Actually, he had spent much more time exploring this terrain than he'd ever spent looking at himself.

Over the past twenty-two years, he had lost count of the number of times he had come here alone. Like a pilgrim to a shrine, he faithfully returned. He didn't examine this compulsion of his too closely, afraid that he would see that it was a sick preoccupation and that only a man possessed would continue it.

But he came anyway, begging the goddamn place to give up its secret.

Many times while here he had even got down on his knees. Not to pray, but to crawl along the ground, inspecting it a fraction of an inch at a time, imploring it to divulge even the slightest hint of what had happened to Patricia McCorkle.

This insignificant plot on the planet had become the center of Sheriff Ezra Hardge's universe. That's why Cora had hated the McCorkle case so much. She cursed it for the toll it had taken on him, first in terms of the time he devoted to it. He had pursued every avenue of jurisprudence to bring to justice those he believed were responsible for the girl's death. Then, when it became obvious that that goal would elude him, he had lapsed into a depression that had almost destroyed their marriage.

Cora threatened to leave him and take the kids if he didn't snap out of it. He snapped out of it. Or pretended to. The daily grind of his job kept him occupied most of the time. But when he should have been free to relax and enjoy his family, he continued to brood over the unresolved case. The case had kept him from being a good father to his children. Cora had reared them with little influence or interference from him. He barely remembered their childhoods, and then only the troubled times. The worst was when their son had experimented with drugs. Thank God his usage had been discovered in time to save it from becoming a life-altering problem. Now married with two daughters, he was a high school principal, a pillar of his community. Their daughter, two years younger than her brother, got out of Blewer as soon as she graduated high school. She went to college to find a husband she considered worthy of her, and did. She married a stockbroker from Dallas. Childless and glad to be, she was president of half a dozen societies and clubs and spent her days organizing luncheons and fund-raising galas. Ezzy hated the life she had made for herself with that stuffy, snobby butthole she was married to. But she seemed happy, and Ezzy supposed that was what counted.

He claimed no credit for how well the children had turned out. It belonged to Cora. Left to him, they would have been human disasters.

His obsession with Patsy McCorkle's death had been a strain on his home life for the past twenty-two years, and it still was. Cora was giddy about the freedom his retirement allowed them. But Ezzy knew that he would never be free as long as this case remained open. To most folks it was ancient history. No one remembered or cared. But he did. Even if he had deluded himself into believing he could let it go, the news of Carl Herbold's escape two days ago had shattered that delusion.

He'd never lied to his wife, and he didn't intend to start how. Many times lying would have made things easier and more harmonious, but Ezzy felt that deception had no place in a marriage. Besides, Cora could see straight through the most innocent fib.