Arvin put the photograph in his shirt pocket and dropped the wallet on the fat man’s chest. Then he opened the glove compartment, finding nothing but road maps and rolls of film. He listened again for any cars coming, wiped the sweat out of his eyes. “Think, goddamn it, think,” he told himself. But the only thing he knew for sure was that he had to get out of this place fast. Picking up his gym bag, he took off walking west through the parched rows of corn. He was twenty yards out in the field when he stopped and turned around. He hurried back to the car and took two of the film canisters out of the glove box, stuck them in his pants pocket. Then he got a shirt out of his bag and wiped off everything that he might have touched. The insects resumed their humming.
48
HE DECIDED TO STAY OFF THE ROADS, and it was after midnight when Arvin finally walked into Meade. In the middle of town, right off Main Street, he found a squat brick motel called the Scioto Inn that still had its VACANCY sign on. He had never stayed in a motel before. The clerk, a boy not much older than himself, was gazing wearily at an old movie, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, on a small black-and-white TV sitting in the corner. The room was five bucks a night. “We change the towels every other day,” the clerk said.
In his room, Arvin stripped off his clothes and stood in the shower for a long time trying to get clean. Nervous and exhausted, he lay down on top of the bedspread and sipped a pint of whiskey. He was goddamn glad he’d remembered to bring it along. He noticed on the wall a small picture of Jesus hanging from the cross. When he got up to take a leak, he turned the picture over. It reminded him too much of the one in his grandmother’s kitchen. By three o’clock in the morning, he was drunk enough to go to sleep.
He woke around ten the next morning after dreaming about the woman. In the dream, she fired the pistol at him just like she did yesterday afternoon, only this time she hit him squarely in the forehead, and he was the one who died instead of her. The other details were vague, but he thought maybe she took his picture. He almost wished that had happened as he went to the window and peeked out the curtain, half expecting the parking lot to be filled with police cruisers. He watched the traffic go by on Bridge Street while he smoked a cigarette, then he took another shower. After he got dressed, he went over to the office and asked if he could keep the room another day. The boy from last night was still on duty. He was half asleep, listlessly chewing a wad of pink bubble gum. “You must put in a lot of hours,” Arvin said.
The boy yawned and nodded, rang up another night in the register. “Don’t I know it,” he said. “My old man owns the place, so I’m pretty much his slave when I’m not in college.” He handed back the change from a twenty. “Better than getting shipped off to Vietnam, though.”
“Yeah, I expect so,” Arvin said. He put the loose bills in his wallet. “Used to be an eating place around here called the Wooden Spoon. Is it still in business?”
“Sure.” The boy walked over to the door and pointed up the street. “Just walk over there to the light and turn left. You’ll see it across from the bus station. They got good chili.”
He stood outside the door of the Wooden Spoon a few minutes, looking across at the bus station trying to imagine his father getting off a Greyhound and seeing his mother for the first time, over twenty years ago. Once inside, he ordered ham and eggs and toast. Though he hadn’t eaten anything since the candy bar yesterday afternoon, he found that he wasn’t very hungry. Eventually the old, wrinkled waitress came over and picked up his plate without a word. She barely looked at him, but when he got up, he left her a dollar tip anyway.
Just as he walked outside, three cruisers sped past going east with their lights flashing and sirens blaring. His heart seemed to stop for a moment in his chest, and then began to race. He leaned against the side of the brick building and tried to light a cigarette, but his hands were shaking too much to strike a match, just like the woman yesterday evening. The sirens faded into the distance, and he calmed down enough to get it lit. A bus pulled into the alley beside the station just then. He watched a dozen or so people get out. A couple of them wore military uniforms. The bus driver, a heavy-jowled, sour-faced man in a gray shirt and black tie, leaned back in his seat and pulled his cap down over his eyes.
Arvin walked back over to the motel and spent the rest of the day pacing the green, threadbare carpet. It was only a matter of time before the law figured out he was the one who killed Preston Teagardin. Taking off from Coal Creek so suddenly, he realized, was the dumbest damn thing he could have done. How much more obvious could he have been? The longer he walked the floor, the clearer it became that when he shot that preacher he had set something in motion that was going to follow him for the rest of his life. He knew in his gut that he should attempt to get out of Ohio immediately, but he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving without seeing the old house and the prayer log one more time. No matter what else happened, he told himself, he had to try to set right those things about his father that still ate at his heart. Until then, he’d never be free anyway.
He wondered if he would ever feel clean again. There was no TV in the room, just a radio. The only station he could find without static was country and western. He let it play softly while he tried to go to sleep. Every once in a while, someone in the next room coughed, and the sound made him think of the woman choking on her blood. He was still thinking of her when morning came.
49
“I’M SORRY, LEE,” HOWSER SAID as Bodecker approached. “This is all fucked up.” He was standing next to Carl and Sandy’s station wagon. It was Tuesday around noon. Bodecker had just arrived. A farmer had found the bodies approximately an hour ago, flagged down a Wonder Bread truck out along the highway. There were four cruisers lined up behind one another on the road, and men in gray uniforms standing around fanning themselves with their hats, waiting for orders. Howser was Bodecker’s chief deputy, the only man he could depend on with anything beyond petty theft and writing speeding tickets. As far as the sheriff was concerned, the rest of them weren’t fit to be crossing guards in front of a one-room schoolhouse.
He glanced down at Carl’s body, and then looked in at his sister. The deputy had already told him on the radio that she was dead. “Jesus,” he said, his voice nearly breaking. “Jesus Christ.”
“I know,” Howser said.
Bodecker took several deep gulps of air to steady himself and stuck his sunglasses in his pocket. “Give me a couple minutes here alone with her.”
“Sure,” the deputy said. He walked over to where the other men were standing, said something to them in a low voice.
Squatting down beside the open passenger door, Bodecker studied Sandy closely, the lines in her face, the bad teeth, the faded bruises on her legs. She’d always been a little fucked-up, but she was still his sister. He pulled his handkerchief out and wiped at his eyes. She was wearing a pair of skimpy shorts and a tight blouse. Still dressing like a whore, he thought. He climbed in the front seat, pulled her close, and looked over her shoulder. The bullet had gone through her neck and come out at the top of her back, just to the left of her spine, a couple of inches below the entry wound. It was buried in the padding of the driver’s-side door. He used his penknife to dig out the slug. It looked like a 9 millimeter. He saw a.22 pistol lying near the brake pedal. “Was that back door open like that when you got here?” he called out to Howser.