The sheriff leaned over the deputy’s bed and read from a card. “Travis, do you make this confession in the full knowledge that you are about to die?”
Travis looked up at the sheriff, stunned. He had clearly not expected this, despite the six times he had already died and his own written plea not to interfere with his next death. The deputy’s wide eyes had suddenly taken on the fixed and dulled aspect of a corpse, and so Riker was disturbed by the tears.
Tom Jessop repeated the question, and Travis slowly moved his head to indicate that he believed it now.
The sheriff’s face had no emotion as he crumpled the card in one fist, dispensing with formality. “Were you in that mob? Did you murder Cass Shelley?”
“I threw a rock at the dog. He was coming for me. I don’t even know where that rock came from. It was just in my hand, and the dog was coming for me.”
“You were there when she died.”
“I didn’t go there to hurt anybody. Cass was going to accuse me of – ”
His hand rose to make weak circles in the air. “It was all in the letter – the lab tests. She was gonna hang me with science. I knew it was a mistake, and I was gonna tell her that. I never hurt a kid in my life. And I didn’t want to hurt Cass. But Christ, you just whisper a thing like that in a small town – ” He stopped with a look of sudden pain.
An alarm went off, and a line on the monitor broke into jagged spikes. The doctor approached on cat’s feet, and the sheriff pushed him away without needing to touch him, only nodding him back to the wall.
Now a nurse appeared at the bedside. She was a large woman, dark and round. One pudgy hand held up a syringe and squirted fluid into the air. Now she bent over her patient to probe him for a likely vein among the bruises on his arm.
“What’s that?” Jessop demanded.
“Morphine for the pain,” she said, looking up at him as though he had just crawled out of a roach trap. And now her glare included the doctor at the wall in the same sentiment.
“You can’t give him that!” Jessop shouted at her, moving forward. “Drugs invalidate the – ”
“Fuck off,” said the nurse. And then she shot the needle home.
Riker gave the sheriff points for recognizing the voice of ultimate authority in this room, and for having the grace to know when to quit. The man kept his silence for all the minutes it took the nurse to satisfy herself that the drug was doing its work on her patient and destroying a prime piece of evidence.
Riker marked the nurse as a class act when she refrained from spitting on the doctor as she majestically sailed out of the room.
Travis’s face was relaxed. His mouth sagged open and his words came slowly. “Then the rocks were flying, and the dog was coming for me.”
“Tell me about the letter.”
“That’s all I know about the letter.”
“Who else was there?”
“Ira’s father. Then I had a rock in my hand, but I never picked one up from the ground till after I threw that first one at the dog. I never – ”
“Who else? Was Babe Laurie there?”
Travis nodded.
“You saw him throwing rocks?”
“No. He could’ve, I guess. I was busy with the dog.”
“Malcolm and Fred Laurie?”
“Not Malcolm. Fred was there, and I did see him chucking rocks. Malcolm had walked off before Jack Wooley threw the first one. I picked up more rocks to hit the dog. He was still coming at me.”
“Forget that dog. What about Alma Furgueson?”
He was drifting for a moment. The sheriff grabbed his shoulder to call him back, and then Travis nodded.
Riker leaned in and asked softly, “Did Babe Laurie ever threaten you? Did he have anything to do with your heart attack? Were you in a fight with him the day he died?”
“I had nothing to do with that. I never killed a living thing in my life. I stoned the dog, but the dog lived.”
“What brought on the heart attack?” asked Riker.
“I was out at the Shelley house to pick up Good Dog and take him to the vet. Henry Roth always helps me with that, but he wasn’t there yet. And the dog was jumping up and beating his head into the window glass. Then I had the pain in my chest. I was driving back to town, when I saw her walking in the road.”
“Mallory?” asked Riker.
“Kathy,” said Travis. “She looked just like her mother. Then I felt like I’d been stabbed by lightning, and I ran the car off the road. Kathy saved my life. She should’ve let me die.”
“You got that right,” said the sheriff. “Why did that mob murder Kathy’s mother?”
“I don’t know. It was me Cass was after. But it was a mistake – I swear to God. She barged into the meeting and said – ” His hands were rising, flailing about.
“What meeting?”
“But I’d never hurt a kid. I don’t know why she – ”
“I don’t think that mob assembled to save your sorry ass from a charge of child abuse. I want the truth, Travis!”
“You might as well go ask the dog.” Travis’s eyes closed.
The sheriff reached down and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Don’t you die on me, you son of a bitch!” He shook the deputy’s thin body with real violence. “Why did they murder Cass?” He was yelling to be heard above the scream of the monitor alarm.
The question went unanswered. The monitor’s flat line and loud noise said that it was now wired up to a corpse, and the other machines agreed that the heart was no longer beating. The doctor stepped to the bedside. He flipped all the switches to the off positions and cut the feed on the oxygen line. Then he looked at his wristwatch and penned a note on the chart, marking the exact time when the technology died.
Charles slowed the car just beyond the gas station. Mallory turned to the rear window. “The car is stopping. It’s not a tail. Gun the engine, Charles.” She kept the gas station in sight for another few minutes as they barreled down the road and joined the highway.
All around them, sugarcane stalks were moving with the wind, rippling like water on the surface of a vast green sea. The car sped toward an unnatural structure on the horizon; it bore the logo of a chemical company. Waves of stalks lapped up against this skeletal monster of towering dark steel pipes and girders, a specter from the future, a taste of world’s end. White smoke plumed from the stacks and joined up with the wind. Charles knew the whiteness was deception. What was smoking into the air was not something Augusta’s birds should be breathing. He better understood her ruthless ambition to give them sanctuary.
It was a good fight.
He pulled off the highway and onto a side road marked with the hospital sign. “What makes you think they’d keep the records this long? Don’t most hospitals toss them after ten years or so?”
“Not anymore. Computers solved the storage problem.” The hospital was in sight now, a bland building of straight lines. “Augusta’s favorite cashier at the Levee Market has a part-time job scanning the old hardcopy into a data bank. If she’d only worked a little faster, I could’ve lifted everything I wanted from my laptop.”
He slowed down and pointed out the sheriff’s car parked near the entrance. “We could come back later.”
“No, I need this stuff now. Don’t worry about it, Charles. They won’t ask questions. You told Riker you wanted to visit Alma, didn’t you?”
“But what about you?”
He didn’t hold out much hope for this disguise of hers. She would have seemed less out of place on horseback in another century. The long black duster was wide in the shoulders and covered most of her body, stopping short of the riding boots and a bit of the blue jeans. The black hat was also an antique, short in the crown but wide enough in the brim to resemble a cowboy hat. Beneath the hat a black scarf covered every strand of her hair. The incongruous aviator sunglasses made her look even more dangerous. He thought the costume was actually more revealing of her character than disguising of person.