Mystery Walk Page 4

  “Are you goin’ somewhere?”

  “I have to go into town to see what those sirens are for. I want you to stay here with your mother, and I’ll be back in a few…” He stopped speaking, listening to the fading echo of another siren.

  Billy asked, “Can I go too?”

  “No,” John said firmly. “You’re to stay right here. I’ll be back as soon as I find out,” he told Ramona, and she followed him with the oil lamp out into the front room. He unlatched the door, and when he opened it frost cracked on the hinges. Then John was walking toward his beat-up but still reliable ’fifty-five Oldsmobile, made up of different colors and different parts from several wrecked car dumps. Ice crystals seemed to hang in the air like sparks. He slipped behind the wheel, had to wake up the cold engine with a heavy foot on the gas, and then drove along the frozen dirt road to the main highway with a cloud of blue exhaust trailing behind. As soon as he turned onto the highway and started toward Hawthorne he could see the red comet flare of spinning lights. He knew with a sickening certainty that the police cars were parked in front of Dave Booker’s house.

  He felt numbed as he saw all the trooper cars and ambulances, and the dark human shapes standing out front. The Olds’s headlights picked out an overcoated state trooper talking on his car radio; Hank Witherspoon and his wife Paula were standing nearby, wearing coats over their robes. They lived in the house closest to the Bookers. Lights blazed through the Bookers’ windows, illuminating the bundled figures who went in and out through the open front door. John stopped the car, leaned over, and rolled down his passenger window. “Hank!” he called out. “What’s happened?”

  Witherspoon and his wife were clinging to each other. When the man turned, John saw that his face was gray, the eyes sick and glassy. Witherspoon made a whimpering sound, then he staggered away, bent double, and threw up into a steaming puddle on the icy concrete.

  The trooper thrust a hawk-nosed face into the window. “Move along, fella. We got more gawkers than we need.”

  “I…just wanted to know what was goin’ on. I live right down the highway, and I heard all the commotion…”

  “Are you related to the Booker family?”

  “No, but…they’re my friends. I thought maybe I could help, if…”

  The trooper braced his Smokey the Bear hat to keep it from flying away in the wind. “Move on,” he said, and then John’s attention was caught by two white-coated men bringing a stretcher down the steps from the house; there was a brown blanket over the stretcher, preventing him from seeing who lay on it. A second stretcher was borne down the steps as well, this one covered with a bloody sheet. John felt the breath rasp in his lungs.

  “Bring it on down!” the trooper shouted. “Got another ambulance on the way from Fayette!”

  The first stretcher was being shoved into the rear of an ambulance not ten feet away from where John sat; the second, covered with the bloodied sheet, was laid down on the ground almost opposite his window. The wind caught at the sheet, and suddenly a white arm fell out as if trying to hold the sheet in place. John clearly saw the wedding ring with its heart-shape of diamonds. He heard one of the attendants say, “Holy Christ!” and the arm was shoved back underneath; it looked stiff and bloated and hard to manage.

  “Bring ’em all down!” the trooper shouted.

  “Please,” John said, and reached for the man’s sleeve. “Tell me what’s happened!”

  “They’re all dead, mister. Every one of them.” He whacked the side of the Olds with his hand and shouted, “Now get this damned piece of junk out of here!”

  John pressed his foot to the accelerator. Another ambulance passed him before he turned off the highway for home.

  4

  THE COALS IN THE cast-iron stove at the rear of Curtis Peel’s barbershop glowed as bright as newly spilled blood. Chairs had been pulled up in a circle around it, and five men sat in a blue shroud of smoke. There was only one barber chair at the front of the shop, a red-vinyl-padded monstrosity. It tilted backward to make shaving easier, and John Creekmore had always kidded Peel that he could cut hair, pull teeth, and shine shoes from that chair at the same time. A walnut Regulator clock rescued from the abandoned train depot lazily swung its brass pendulum. On the white tiled floor around the barber chair were straight brown snippets of Link Patterson’s hair. Through the shop’s plate-glass window the day was sunny but bone-chilling; from the distance, seeping in like the whine of an August mosquito, was the sound of saws at work up at the mill.

  “Makes me sick to think about it,” Link Patterson said, breaking the silence. He regarded his cigarette, took one more good pull from it, and then crushed the butt in an Alabama Girl Peaches can on the floor at his side. His smooth brown hair was clipped short and sheened with Wildroot. He was a slim, good-natured man with a high, heavily lined forehead, dark introspective eyes, and a narrow bony chin. “That man was crazy in the head all the time, and I saw him near about twice a week and I could never tell a thing was wrong! Makes you sick!”

  “Yep,” Hiram Keller said, picking at his teeth with a chip of wood. He was all leathery old flesh and bones that popped like wet wood when he moved. Gray grizzled whiskers covered his face, and now he stretched his hands out toward the stove to warm them. “Lord only knows what went on in that house last night. That pretty little girl…”

  “Crazy as a drunk Indian.” Ralph Leighton’s ponderous bulk shifted, bringing a groan from the chair, he leaned over and spat Bull of the Woods tobacco into a Dixie cup. He was a large man who had no sense of his size, and he could knock you down if he brushed against you on the sidewalk; he’d played football at Fayette County High twenty years before and had been a hometown hero until his knee popped like a broomstick at the bottom of a six-man pileup. He’d spent bitter years tilling soil and trying to figure out whose weight had snapped that knee, robbing him of a future in football. For all his size, his face seemed chiseled from stone, all sharp cutting edges. He had hooded gray eyes that now glanced incuriously toward the opposite side of the stove, at John Creekmore, to see if that comment had struck a nerve. It hadn’t, and Leighton scowled inwardly; he’d always thought that maybe—just maybe—Creekmore had stepped on that knee himself for the pleasure of hearing it crack. “Sure ain’t gonna be no open coffins at the funeral home.”

  “I must’ve cut that man’s hair a hundred times.” Peel drew on a black pipe and shook his head, his small dark eyes narrowed in thought. “Cut Will’s hair, too. Can’t say Booker was a friendly man, though. Cut his hair crew in summer, gave him a sidepart in winter. Anybody hear tell when the funerals are going to be?”

  “Somebody said tomorrow afternoon,” Link replied. “I think they want to get those bodies in the ground fast.”

  “Creekmore?” Leighton said quietly. “You ain’t speakin’ much.”

  John shrugged; a cigarette was burning down between his fingers, and now he drew from it and blew the smoke in the other man’s direction.

  “Well, you used to go fishing with Booker, didn’t you? Seems you knew him better than us. What made him do it?”

  “How should I know?” The tone of his voice betrayed his tension. “I just fished with him, I wasn’t his keeper.”

  Ralph glanced around at the group and lifted his brows. “John, you were his friend, weren’t you? You should’ve known he was crazy long before now…”

  John’s face reddened with anger. “You tryin’ to blame me for it, Leighton? You best watch your mouth, if that’s what you’re tryin’ to say!”

  “He ain’t tryin’ to say anything, John,” Link said, and waved a hand in his direction. “Get off that high horse before it throws you. Damn it, we’re all tied up with nerves today.”

  “Dave Booker had headaches, that’s all I know,” John insisted, then lapsed into silence.

  Curtis Peel relit his pipe and listened to the distant singing of the saws. This was the worst thing he’d ever remembered happening in Hawthorne, and he was privileged
with more gossip and inside information than even Sheriff Bromley or Reverend Horton. “They had to take Hank Witherspoon to the hospital in Fayette,” he told them. “Poor old man’s ticker almost gave out. May Maxie told me Witherspoon heard the shots and went over to find out what had happened; seems he found Booker sittin’ naked on his sofa, and the room was still full of shotgun smoke. Must’ve put both barrels under his chin and squeezed with his thumbs. ’Course, Hank couldn’t tell who it was right off.” He let a blue thread of smoke leak from one side of his mouth before he puffed again. “I guess the troopers found the rest of ’em. I liked Julie Ann, she always had a kind word. And those kids were as cute as buttons on a Sunday suit. Lordamighty, what a shame…”

  “Troopers are still at the house,” Leighton said, risking a quick glance at John. He didn’t like that sonofabitch, who’d married a women more squaw than white; he knew the tales told about that woman, too, just as everyone around this stove did. She didn’t come into town much, but when she did she walked like she owned the whole street, and Leighton didn’t think that was proper for a woman like her. In his opinion she should be crawling to the church to pray for her soul. That quiet dark-skinned whelp of hers wasn’t any better either, and he knew his own twelve-year-old son Duke could whip the living hell out of that little queer. “Cleanin’ up what’s left, I suppose,” he said. “What they’re puzzlin’ over is where the boy might be.”

  “May Maxie told me they found blood in his bed, all over the sheets. But could be he got away and ran off into the woods.”

  John grunted softly. May Maxie was Hawthorne’s telephone operator, and lived attached to wires. “Thank the good Lord it’s over with,” he said.

  “Nope.” Hiram’s eyes glinted. “It ain’t over.” He looked at each man in turn, then settled his gaze on John. “Whether Dave Booker was crazy or not, and how crazy he was, don’t make no difference. What he did was pure evil, and once evil gets started it roots like a damn kudzu vine. Sure, there’s been calamities in Hawthorne before, but now… You mark my words, it ain’t over.”

  The front door opened, jingling a little bell that hung over it. Lee Sayre stepped in, wearing his brown-and-green-splotched hunting jacket with stags’ blood still marking it like a badge of honor. He quickly shut the door against the cold and strode back to the stove to warm himself. “Colder than a witch’s tit out there!” He took off his brown leather cap and hung it on a wall hook, then stood beside John and kneaded his hands as they thawed. “I hear Julie Ann’s mother came to town this mornin’. They let her go in there and she had a fit. It’s a shame, a whole family killed like that.”

  “Not a whole family,” John reminded him. “Maybe the boy got away.”

  “Anybody believes that can whistle ‘Dixie’ out his ass.” Sayre drew up a chair, turned it around so he could rest his arms across the back, and then sat down. “Next thing you’ll be sayin’, the boy did the killing himself.”

  That thought caused a sudden shock, but John knew it wasn’t true. No, Will was either wandering in the woods or buried somewhere. He cursed himself for not seeing this before, in the rages of temper Dave had displayed sometimes when they were fishing. Once Dave had become infuriated with a tangled line and ended up throwing a perfectly good tackle box into Semmes Lake, then cradling his head and breaking into tears as John had nervously steered their rowboat back to shore. Lord, he thought, she was begging me to save their lives yesterday! He’d told no one that he’d been there; fear and shame had stitched his mouth shut.

  “Yeah, it’s a shame,” Lee said. “But life’s for the livin’, huh?” He swept his gaze around at the others. “It’s time we talked about what’s to be done with Preacher Horton.”

  “Damned nigger-lover”—Ralph leaned over and spat tobacco juice—“I never liked that blowhard bastard.”

  “What’s to be done?” Lee asked the group. “Are we going to have a regular meetin’ to decide on it?”

  “Lieutenants are all right here,” Hiram drawled. “We can decide now and be done with it.”

  Curtis said hesitantly, “I don’t know, Lee. Horton may be associatin’ with the niggers, but he’s still the minister. He was awful good to my Louise when her mother took sick, you know.”

  “What’re you talkin’ about, boy? Horton’s tryin’ to get niggers to come to white services! He’s been hangin’ around Dusktown, and Lord only knows what he’s up to!” Lee lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I hear he fancies some black tail, too, and he knows where to find it when he needs it. Are we gonna stand for that?”

  “Nope,” Ralph said. “No way in hell.”

  “John, you’re mighty quiet today. Guess I can’t blame you, seein’ what went on last night and you were Dave Booker’s best friend and all. But what do you say about Horton?”

  John could feel them waiting for him to respond. He didn’t like to have to make decisions, and he hadn’t wanted to be a lieutenant anyway but they’d forced it on him. “I think we should wait until after the funerals,” he said uncertainly. He could feel Ralph Leighton’s wolfish gaze on him. “Horton’s going to conduct the services, and I think we should show respect. Then…” He shrugged. “I’ll go with whatever majority vote is.”

  “Good.” Lee clapped the other man’s shoulder. “That’s just what I was going to say. We wait until the Booker family is buried, then we pay a visit to Mr. Horton. I’ll get things ready. Curtis, you start callin’ everybody.”

  They talked on for a while longer, the conversation turning back to the murders. When Curtis started going into the details he’d heard from May Maxie again, John abruptly rose to his feet and put on his coat, telling them he had to be getting home. The men were silent as he left the barbershop, and John knew all too well what the subject of conversation would be after he was gone: Ramona. Her name was never mentioned in his presence, but he knew that as soon as he’d gone they would turn their minds and tongues to the subject of his wife, and what they disliked and feared about her. He couldn’t blame them. But he was still a son of Hawthorne, no matter who he’d married, and they were respectful in his presence; all except that fat pig Leighton, John thought as he walked to his car.

  He slid into the Oldsmobile and pulled away from the curb. Slowing as he reached the Bookers’ house—help me help me, Julie Ann had said—he saw two state-trooper cars parked out in front; a trooper was walking up in the woods beyond the house, poking a stick into the ground. Two others were methodically ripping up some of the front-porch boards underneath. Never going to find that boy, John thought. If he ran away he’s so scared he’ll never come out, and if he’s dead Dave did away with the corpse.

  Returning his attention to the highway, he was startled to see two figures standing on the roadside staring across at the Booker house. Ramona wore her heavy brown coat and clenched Billy’s gloved hand; her eyes were closed, her bead tilted slightly back. John screeched the brakes in stopping the Olds, and he had his window rolled down as he backed up and yelled, “Ramona! Come on, both of you! Get in this car!”

  Billy looked at him fearfully, but the woman stood very still for a moment more, her eyes open, gazing across the road at the house.

  “RAMONA!” he thundered, his face flaming with anger. He was amazed that she’d ventured out from home in this numbing cold, because she rarely left the house even at the height of summer. But here she was, and he was furious because she’d dared to bring the boy. “Get in this car right now!”

  Finally they crossed the road and climbed in. Billy shivered between them. John put the car into gear and drove on. “What’re you doin’ here?” he asked her angrily. “Why bring the boy? Don’t you know what happened there last night?”

  “I know,” she replied.

  “Oh, so you thought you’d bring Billy to see it, did you? Lord God!” He trembled, feeling like the sputtering wick on a stick of dynamite. “Don’t you think he’ll find out quick enough at school?”

  “Find out what?” Billy said i
n a small voice, sensing the sparks of a fight about to explode into flames.

  “Nothin’,” John said. “Don’t you worry about it, son.”

  “He needs to know. He needs to hear it from us, not from those children at school…”

  “Shut up!” he shouted suddenly. “Just shut up, will you?” He was going too fast, about to overshoot his dirt driveway, and he had to fight the brakes to slow the lumbering Olds enough to turn it. Ramona had looked away from him, her hands clenched in her lap, and between them Billy had slunk down low with his head bowed. He wanted to know what those police cars were doing in front of Will’s house, and why Will hadn’t been at school this morning; he’d heard whispered stories from the other children, stories that made him feel sick and afraid inside. Something bad had happened, but no one was exactly sure just what it had been. Billy had heard Johnny Parker whisper the words murder house, but he’d shut his ears and hadn’t listened anymore.

  “Just can’t leave it alone, can you?” John said between gritted teeth. The Olds was racing along the driveway, throwing up rocks and snapping sticks in its wake. “Woman, haven’t you had a gutful of death and evil yet? Do you want to rub your own son’s face in it? No, no, you can’t leave it alone, you can’t stay in the house where you belong when you smell death in the air, can you? You can’t act like everybody else, and—”

  Ramona said quietly but firmly, “That’s enough.”

  The blood drained from his face for a few seconds, then his complexion turned an ugly mottled red. “HELL IT IS!” he roared. “You don’t have to get out and go about the town! You can just stay put and hide, can’t you? But what about me?” He wheeled the car to a halt in front of the house and yanked the key from the ignition. “I don’t want you ever goin’ back to that house again, do you hear me?” He reached out and caught her chin, squeezing it so she couldn’t look away; her gaze was dulled and distant, and that made him want to hit her but he remembered Billy and so stayed his hand. “I don’t want to hear any of your damned ravin’s, do you understand? Answer me when I speak to you, woman!” In the sudden sharp silence he could hear Billy sobbing. He was pierced with shame, but there was still anger in him and he had to get it out. “ANSWER ME!” he shouted.