The sheriff sighed. “It’s hard for an old fellow like me to bend over to squint in every hole. You know, you got to like Piggott. He don’t trust nobody.”
They returned unescorted to the first floor. “I best make my good-byes,” the sheriff said. “Not fit for a guest to leave without he thanks his host for all those blessings.”
Ralston followed him to the rear of the white hall. The watcher there, a burly youngster with a face like half a ham, stared at them eagerly. The sheriff asked, “Piggott up?”
“Oh, Lordy, sure,” the youngster said. “He don’t hardly ever sleep.”
He clubbed the door with his fist, opened it, saying, “Mr. Piggott, it’s the sheriff.”
A cheerful voice bawled, "You tell him to bring himself right in here.”
It was a narrow, bright room stretched long under a hammered-tin ceiling. The walls were crowded with filing cabinets and messy bookshelves, stuffed with as many papers and magazines as books. A worn carpet;: the color of pecan shells, led to an ancient wooden table flanked by straight-backed wooden chairs. Behind the table, Piggott lolled in an old leather chair.
He bounced up as they entered. He burst around the table, vibrating with enthusiasm, grinning and loud. He had curly black hair over a smooth face, deeply sun-burned, and he looked intelligent and deeply pleased to see them. “Didn’t expect you up till noon, Tom.” He smiled brilliantly. “Lordy, you’re tough.”
He pounded joyously on the sheriff’s shoulders, then seized Ed’s arm. “Now you come over here and look at this picture. You’ll like this.”
He extended a large color photograph. Sue Ralston beamed from it. She stood close to Piggot, arms clutching each other, heads together, delighted with themselves.
Through rigid lips Ralston said, “Nice photo.” He felt nauseated.
Piggott burst into his rolling laughter. “That’s our engagement photo, Ed. Listen, don’t look so sour.” His arm slipped around Ralston’s shoulders. “It’s OK. I’ll make a great husband. I grow on you.”
Ralston swallowed, standing stiff within the embrace. “Piggott…”
“ ’s all right, Ed. I know.” He smacked Ralston's shoulder amiably. “It’s a funny world. Who wants a postage-stamp Capone for a brother-in-law?”
He emitted a howl of joy, throwing back his head, opening the deep hollow of his mouth. “Even us booze merchants fall in love, Ed. We even get married. Ain’t it a crime?”
Ralston forced, “Congratulations, then,” from his closed throat It was now imperative to tell them about Sue. But he could not. He listened to Piggott and the sheriff bantering. He could not.
Piggott had set it up, sometime, for some purpose. And she was dead because of it. Somehow. Set a trap and what dies in it is your responsibility.
“Fleming!” Piggott was saying. “I can’t believe it. Who’s Moneybucks Richardson going to run for sheriff now?”
Laughter. The sheriff edged toward the door.
The need to tell them about Sue, the urgency of it, tore at him. At the door, he blundered to a halt, said, “Piggott…” Terrible pressure locked his throat. He said, instead, “Piggott — what about that ancy-fancy recording stuff in Sue’s basement?”
Fleeting hardness in Piggott’s face softened to laughter. He flung out joyous arms. “Wasn’t that something. We told some friends we were engaged. Then I went out to the car and let them warn her about me. Then we played the cassettes back to them. Funny! Hell, they’ll never speak to me again. Hey, you got to hear those tapes. And they’re my good friends.”
Joy wrinkled his big face. He bellowed laughter like a furnace. “I mean, funny.”
They sat in the sheriffs car behind Piggott’s house. Rain rattled on the hood and glass.
Ed asked, "What are they doing with Tommy Richardson?”
“Son, you probably don’t want to know anything about that.”
“I got to. It’s important.” Their eyes met, held, strained, force against force. “Yes,” Ralston said. “I mean it’s important. It’s important to me.”
The sheriff shrugged. “ ’Tain’t but a trifle. They’re just roping the boy a little. Just a little business insurance.”
“Business insurance?”
“Why sure. Here’s a nice respectable boy gaming around with beer runners. Well, shoot, people game and people have a drink now and then. Least I’ve known them to do it in Pinton County. Don’t expect they’ll change. No harm in it, less they get mean. The mean ones is what sheriffing is about. But you can’t never tell when sin’s going to get a bad name. So maybe Old Richardson goes and gets a hard-on against sin. Then they got something for him to listen to while he gets calm. Or maybe not. You can't ever know.”
“That’s all?”
“All there is. Nothing a’tall.”
“Merciful God,” Ralston said. “Is that all?”
He got out into the rain. He stood staring blankly, hunching up his shoulders, rain smearing his glasses, distorting the world so that it appeared twisted and in strange focus. He circled the car and tapped the sheriffs window, and rain ran in his hair, wet his forehead, ran from his chin.
The sheriff's window rolled down.
Ralston said, “Sheriff, Sue’s dead. At home. Fell and hit her head. I couldn’t tell Piggott.”
He turned away and walked toward the front parking lot The cement driveway danced with silver splashes.
Behind him, a car door slammed and heavy footsteps hurried back toward the house.
The Honda streaked toward Pintonville. He had, perhaps, a ten-, even fifteen-minute start on them. More if Piggott delayed. The road flew at him, glistening like the back of a wet serpent. Soon they too would think of questions to ask Tommy Richardson.
If it had been Tommy who was with Sue last night.
If he had read the evidence correctly.
If Sue had got herself up, polished and shining, to dazzle the son of Old Man Richardson, the fun and indiscretion funneling into the cassette’s hollow maw.
If the boy had found the mike. If his suspicions blazed…
But Fleming. He could not understand Fleming’s presence.
The Honda slid on the shining asphalt, and the back end fought to twist around. He corrected the wheel, iron-wristed, jabbed the accelerator.
First, talk to Tommy Richardson. Before Piggott.
The car leaped. The rain came down.
“I’m Tommy Richardson,” the boy said in a low voice, affirming that being Tommy Richardson was futile and burdensome. His head drooped, his shoulders slumped, his body was lax with self-abasement “I’m Sue Ralston’s brother Ed. I’m with the Sheriff’s Department. I’d like to talk with you.”
“I guess so.” He pushed open the screen door separating them, exposing his consumed face. He was unshaven, uncombed, unwashed. He smelled of sweat and cigarettes, and despair had drawn his young face and glazed his eyes. “Dad says you guys are incompetent but you got here quick enough.”
He looked without hope past Ralston’s shoulder at the rain sheeting viciously into the apartment complex. Lightning snapped and glared, blanching the pastel fronts of the apartments and rattling them with thunder. “Come in. You’re getting soaked.”
Ralston stepped into the front room, saturated trousers slopping against his legs. Tension bent his tall frame.
Stereo equipment, lines of LPs, neat rows of paperbacks packed the cream-colored walls. A table lamp spilled light across a card table holding a typewriter and a litter of typed pages, heavily corrected.
“I’ve been up all night” Richardson said. He gestured toward the typewriter. “Writing out my incredible… stupidity.”
He turned away, reaching for a typed page. As he did so, Ralston saw, behind the boy’s left ear, a vivid pink smudge of lipstick.