Eventually, the fundamentalist lady found a new target: she said that the new Catholic priest was not only a Satanist, he was also an alien, and recruited people for abduction.
But hilarious as some of her accusations were, Jimmy had heard them and had taken to hiding out in the cellar of his shack. A century ago, people had stored fruits and vegetables in their cellars. Whenever Jimmy felt bad, or scared, he climbed down the rickety ladder to the cellar.
Amy wondered if he might be down there now.
She’d been knocking on the shack door for the past five minutes and had received no answer. What was strange was that Jimmy’s ancient red Schwinn bicycle, complete with mud flaps and a tiny American flag that sat atop the light, was laid against the side of the shack. Jimmy never went anywhere of any distance without his Schwinn.
She knocked again, and nothing.
And then she heard the sound of something scraped against the faded linoleum floor inside.
Amy walked over to the lone front window and peeked inside.
At first, she didn’t see anything untoward, but then, looking more closely, she saw the white tips of fingers on the floor, sticking out from behind the overstuffed chair.
Jimmy was hiding.
“Jimmy,” she said, “it’s Amy. I know you’re in there. I need to talk to you, Jimmy. I really do.”
“I’m not feeling so good,” he called back.
“What’s wrong with you?”
The flu, she answered to herself.
Jimmy always said that when he didn’t want to tell you something.
I’ve got the flu and my throat is kinda scratchy, he always said.
He said, “I’ve got the flu, Amy, and my throat is kinda scratchy.”
She had to smile.
Oh, God, Jimmy. You poor guy.
“I wouldn’t want you to catch it, Amy,” he said. That was how he usually finished. Not wanting you to catch his ravaging flu.
“You know what, Timmy?”
“What?”
She continued to peek in the window.
Jimmy was still crouched behind the chair, half shouting over the top of it.
“I’ve got the flu, too.”
“You do?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh.”
“So you can’t give it to me because I’ve already got it.”
“You didn’t have it yesterday when I was mowing your lawn.”
“Oh, I had it, all right. I just didn’t tell you.”
“Oh.”
“So if you’ve got the flu and I’ve got the flu, I guess you can open the door and let me in.”
If Jimmy could fib, so could she, though she felt guilty deceiving him. It was like lying to a child.
He stood up slowly, as if he were having difficulty moving. He looked around the dusty room at a pile of wrinkled shirts. He quickly grabbed a blue turtleneck sweater and pulled it over his head.
He walked slowly over to the door and opened it up.
“Hi, Amy.”
“Hi, Jimmy. You want to go up and see the horses?”
“Sure.”
To the west was pastureland where the nearby horse ranch grazed its animals.
A colt chestnut mare followed its mother around by the eastern edge of the white fencing. The tiny animal walked on heartbreakingly wobbly legs.
They leaned on the fence and watched her. This was a very nice ranch, the outbuildings clean and new in the sparkling sunlight.
“You remember last night, Jimmy?”
“Last night?”
“Yes. The storm and the rain.”
“Oh, sure, Amy. I remember that.”
“Did you stay home last night?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did you hear anything?”
“Hear anything?”
She hadn’t been looking at him, had been watching the colt. Now she angled her face toward his.
“You know, somebody in trouble. A scream or something like that.”
“Gosh, no, Amy.”
He seemed nervous. Very nervous, in fact. She wondered why. And he’d been hiding behind the chair. That was something he did only rarely.
She sensed something wrong.
“Jimmy?”
“Yes.”
“We’re friends, right?”
“Why, sure.”
“You trust me?”
“Why, I sure do, Amy.”
“And I trust you.”
He smiled. “You’re not going to ask me about that cookie the other day, are you?”
“Cookie?”
“You put those two cookies out for the ground squirrel who lives under your back porch.”
“Oh. I’d forgotten about that.”
“You know what I did?”
His cheeks were red. He averted his eyes.
“I’ll bet it wasn’t very bad, Jimmy, whatever you did.”
“When you went back inside?”
“Yes.”
“After setting those two cookies on the bottom step of the back porch?”
“Right.”
“Well, I picked up one of those cookies and ate it myself.”
She laughed. “I’ll bet that made the ground squirrel mad.”
“I shouldn’t’ve done that, Amy, and I’m real sorry.”
She touched his arm. “It’s all right, Jimmy. It really is.”
“You sure?”
“I’m positive.”
He sighed deeply. “Wow, I’m just glad you’re not mad.”
“But that isn’t what I came to talk to you about, Jimmy.”
“It isn’t?”
“We need to talk about last night.”
She saw it in his face, sensed it in his entire body, a tension that put a sickly expression in his eyes. “Last night?”
So he does know something, Amy thought. He wouldn’t have reacted that way if he didn’t.
“Yes,” she said. “Last night. I’d like to ask you a few questions, Jimmy.”
She was so surprised by what he did next, she didn’t even react until there was nothing she could do.
One moment, Jimmy was standing next to her at the fence watching the horses — and the next, he was running down the hill back to his cabin.
Even from all the way up here, she could hear his front door slam shut.
By now, he’d be hiding again, and there’d be no coaxing him out this time.
Leaving her to wonder just exactly what he did know about last night, and the death of Darcy Fuller.
Twelve
1
Amy made the decision on the drive back to town.
Once she was in her office, and had dealt with the blizzard of minor problems that awaited her, she buzzed Dick Wilson and asked him to come in. He said yes but he needed a few minutes. He’d just now walked in the office for the day. He’d been in court.
Wilson was a tall man with curly dark hair and a somber face. He was especially good as a prosecutor. It was assumed by the local political observers that once Amy gave up the DA’s office, Dick Wilson would step in, even though he was still considered by many to be an Outsider. Which translated to somebody who hadn’t grown up here. Wilson had had the temerity to grow up in Cedar Rapids, to never have spent more than a single day on a farm, and to drive a weird-looking SAAB. He also played classical music on his SAAB tape deck. His wife, a willowy beauty, had set up Crystal Falls’ first ballet school. He was one strange dude, Dick Wilson.
He wore the vest and trousers of his three-piece blue serge suit. His tie was power yellow instead of power red. He’d once explained to Amy that he preferred yellow because it hid mustard stains better.
Just as he was about to set his bottom on a chair across from Amy’s desk, her phone buzzed and she spent the next five minutes trying to pacify a crotchety old judge who insisted that one of her prosecutors was failing to be properly respectful to him. On and on it went. Amy knew that Dick had plenty to do and felt guilty about making him sit there and listen to her talk.