Right away, she could see he was scared.
“Talk to me about what, Susan?”
“You acted very odd when Richie asked you about last night. I got the feeling there’s something you weren’t telling us. And I want to know the truth.”
“I’m scared, Susan.”
“I know you’re scared.”
“They’ll hurt me again.”
“Who’ll hurt you again?”
“The people. The bad people.”
She was angry, thinking that Jimmy might be withholding information from her.
But then she saw that Jimmy was crying, and she slid her arm around his shoulder and hugged him to her.
“Nobody’ll hurt you, Jimmy. I promise.”
“I’m scared of them, Susan. I’m real scared.”
And indeed he was. He was trembling and clinging to her like a child.
“Come on inside, Jimmy. And I’ll make you some hot chocolate.”
She had said exactly the right thing. His mind flitted instantly from his fear to the hot chocolate.
“Can I have white bread with lots of butter on it, too?”
She smiled. “I guess I could arrange that.”
“Arnette’s a bad man, isn’t he, Susan?”
“Yeah,” she said, wondering where Arnette would go now. “Yeah, he is.”
4
What happened was, one of the more eager searchers saw something moving in a stand of trees and blasted away at it, leaving a sweet little doe with a considerable amount of buckshot in her sweet little bottom. Fortunately, most of the men there were farmers — responsible men who knew and loved all God’s creatures — and so two of them bundled up the doe and drove her ass over appetite to the vet’s, which was about six miles away.
Right after hearing the gunshots, David and Helen got into Helen’s Land Rover and drove to the approximate vicinity of the echoes that caromed around the valley.
Seeing a group of men standing on a hill, they raced up there, visions of a dead Richie lying on the ground filling their heads...
Then they saw the doe. Saw all the blood. And heard all the terrible, sickening, frantic noises made by the soft-eyed creature...
They joined up with some of the merchants who were out here now in the posse.
They swung west, along cornfields that ran right up to tall red clay hills.
The men were distracted by their presence, of course. They had a lot of questions about how things were going in Washington, D.C. And what better time to ask those questions than now, when they were isolated on posse duty?
When they came to a road, Helen saw a Channel 3 station wagon, and a plump woman in too-tight jeans videotaping the valley below, where a few dozen men were still searching the cornfields. The woman swung her camera up to the sky a couple of times to catch some crows arcing down the air currents.
When the camerawoman looked in her direction, Helen waved. At first, the woman didn’t seem to know who she was... and waved back... but without much interest or enthusiasm.
But then when David came along and stood next to his sister... the camerawoman trotted over right away.
Helen said, “Have you heard anything new?”
The woman shook her head. “Afraid not. Nobody’s spotted him.”
Then, “You think I could get some shots of you two walking past me up this hill — you know, like you might have seen something up there and were suddenly hurrying. Be pretty dramatic with your rifles and everything.”
“Shotguns,” Helen said.
“Oh, yeah, right, shotguns.”
Helen almost said something snide: You’d think a woman as butch as you would know the difference between a rifle and a shotgun.
Helen hated butch women. She always felt them watching her, probing her.
But she needed to be cooperative.
She had instructed David’s local office to make sure that they got on all three stations when a story was breaking.
And God help the office person who didn’t get them on all three.
“We’ll be happy to,” David said.
“You think he’ll do it?” he said as they jogged past the camera.
On screen, this would look like they were just having a nice, normal conversation.
The camera wasn’t rigged up for sound.
“Think who’ll do what?”
She knew what he was talking about but she never liked to make things easy for him. He’d had way too many things easy for him already.
“Think Steven Arnette will shoot Richie?”
“Of course he will.”
“You said he seemed a little reluctant.”
“He needed to think about it a little is all. That’s a lot of money I offered him.”
They trotted on, winded by now, both of them, passing a stand of fir pines that smelled sweet on the autumn air.
“You know what?” he said.
“What?”
“I think we’ve jogged far enough. I’m getting winded.” Then, a note of panic in his voice. “You think that means anything?”
“Does what mean anything?”
But of course, she again knew what he was talking about.
“You know, is it a sign of anything? A symptom?”
“Oh, God.”
“What?”
“You’re worrying about your doctor’s appointment tomorrow again, aren’t you?”
They were walking back down the hill, toward the camera-woman.
“I guess I kind of am.”
“I suppose it could be,” she said.
“Could be a sign of something?”
“Yes, but they’re good doctors — even if there is a little something there, they can take care of it.”
“A little something,” he muttered, sounding absolutely terrified. “A little something. Oh my God.”
He didn’t see his sister smile.
She was very good at keeping things from him. And always had been.
5
“God, Jimmy,” Susan said. “You should’ve told me this morning.”
Jimmy had a chocolate-milk mustache. His lips were slick from all the butter she’d slathered on his toast.
“I was scared.”
She wanted to be angry with him but couldn’t be. Several years earlier, Jimmy had gone through a period of depression. Not even drugs seemed to help him all that much. Even with his medication, Jimmy could still get in trouble from time to time.
Helen had known exactly what threat to use with Jimmy. Locking him away again.
Susan couldn’t blame Jimmy for not telling her.
And even though he had told her, she knew that this didn’t necessarily mean that the authorities would believe him. Jimmy had his flights of fancy. He had told people about trips to Mars he’d taken. He had told people that he had been invited to appear on the Grand Ole Opry — after watching the Opry faithfully for years. And he had told people that President Clinton called him sometimes and said hello.
Now he was saying that he had seen Senator Cummings and his sister dump Darcy’s body behind Richie’s cottage last night. But Jimmy had started to hyperventilate a little — something he never did when telling one of his “stories.” Jimmy was telling the truth.
Who else would believe him?
“Jimmy.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I want you to think carefully now.”
“All right.”
“You know how you make up stories sometimes.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you making this one up?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Think hard, Jimmy.”
He closed his eyes to show her how hard he was thinking.