Fatal Flaw (26 page)

“You know where Grady Pritchett is now?” I asked finally.

“He owns a car lot out in Lewis County. Left to him by his daddy in the will.”

“How’s it doing?”

“Not so good, I hear,” he said with a slight smile.

“You know what kind of car he drives?”

“Black Chevy pickup, front right wheel well all beat to hell.”

“I bet, Mr. Sterrett, you know the license plate, too?”

“I won’t deny it. No telling what things you might learn through the years that turn doubts into certainties.”

“You know, maybe I’m crazed, but I could have sworn you told me you knew who did it?”

“No, I did not,” he said, sitting back.

The black dog raised his head, let out a contented moan, and turned over to let Skink scratch his belly. The brown dog followed suit and Skink subdued them both with soft rubs. “He didn’t say he knew
who
killed his son,” said Skink. “He said he knew
why
.”

I turned from Skink’s seduction of the dogs to look back at the old man. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

Sterrett rubbed his thumb along the edge of the jar.

“So tell me, Mr. Sterrett, why did your son die?”

He waited a moment, took a drink, let the alcohol settle. Maybe he had taken too much of the liquor, because as he sat there and thought, his jaw began to quiver.

“I loved my boy,” he said. “But it’s not always an easy thing to show. And when you’re working too damn hard and fighting to feed and clothe a family, sometimes you figure the showing can wait. When he was young, Jesse had a friend he could go to, but then they got confused about things and the friend died, and Jesse, I think Jesse was never the same. I tried, I did. But I knew things then maybe I shouldn’t have known and wasn’t under as much control as I might have been. How do you show a boy that you love him still when every look out of his eyes is full of sorrow and every word out of your mouth comes out in anger? I didn’t know the answer,
and I live with it every day of my life. It weighs me down like it weighed down my Sarah until she just let go. I thought I was showing what I felt by arguing with him. I thought he could tell from the volume how much I cared. But volume ain’t enough. Listening maybe might have been better. That’s why he died. ’Cause I didn’t know how to show him that I loved him.”

“You blame yourself,” I said.

“What you don’t find at home, you look elsewhere for. And generally you find it in the worst places possible. And that’s what he done. He found hisself a girl that had nothing in her but pain and hurt and the seeds of destruction. You could almost tell it just by looking at her, that might have been the attraction, for all I know. But that’s where he went looking for what he wasn’t finding at home.”

“You’re talking about Hailey Prouix,” I said. “You think she killed him?”

“Don’t know who it was, I told you. But I know she was at the heart of what happened to him, know it in my bones. I won’t say I’m not sorry she’s dead, but I know where she’s going. And I’ll tell you this: Even the devil he best stay clear of her. Yes, sir. Even the devil.”

33

I DROVE
unsteadily down the rutted drive that fell from the Sterrett house, weaving more than I meant to and skirting the sheer edge of the ravine as we bounced around the ruts. The two dogs kept us company, running alongside, yelping their good-byes to Skink.

“You made yourself a couple of friends,” I said.

“Steeling my nerves to cozy up to a pair of bloodthirsty hounds, I was. Best advice I ever got from my daddy: Muster your courage and face your fears.”

“Looked to me what you were mustering was that corn liquor?”

“Nah, I was just being polite. But truth to tell, I could use myself a nap right about now.”

“We’ve got someone else to see. You know, I can’t get that image out of my mind, Lucifer sliding respectfully out of the way as Hailey exits the elevator at the bottom floor.”

“That was the liquor talking.”

“I don’t think so. He truly thinks she was evil.”

“He’s entitled.”

“What do you think?”

“Girl I knew,” said Skink, “was hard as dog’s teeth and twice as sharp, but she wasn’t evil. There was a softness in the middle, is all.
There was too much need to her. When something’s soft and needy like that, it ain’t much of a trick to twist it around.”

“You think she was manipulated?”

“Don’t know.”

“By Grady Pritchett and his rich father?”

“Money has a way, don’t it?”

“So what do you think of our little murder case now?”

“You mean the boy in the quarry? The cop says it was an accident. The father says it was murder. Hard to tell, though what you told me of them letters makes it seem the father might be more on the right. Still, I don’t see what this one has to do with the other.”

“Neither do I. That’s why I think it’s time to go to church.”

“You reduced to looking for a sign from the Almighty Himself?”

“Pretty much,” I said.

THE BUILDING
was solid and white with narrow arched windows and a steeple high enough for you to know it was a church but not so high as to look unduly prideful. Beside the door was the symbol of a cross with a red sail attached.
PIERCE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
, read the sign out front.
REV
.
THEODORE H
.
HENSON
.
SUNDAY SCHOOL
10:00
A
.
M
.
WORSHIP SERVICES
11:00
A
.
M
. 1
AND
3
SUNDAY
.
WE BLESS HIS NAME
,
HALLELUJAH
.

The Reverend Henson, as one would expect, was on his knees, but not in supplication. We found him outside in the rear of the church, tending to the flowers in the beds alongside the path that led from the church to its well-shaded cemetery farther up the hill. His hands were moving like creatures in the loam, weeding, smoothing, pulling out withered stalks to make room for those still thriving.

When he heard us coming, he looked up and his face registered dismay for just a moment, as if the harbingers of a doom he had long been expecting had just arrived, before his features lit up in an inviting smile. He was a short, thin man, with nervous hands and pointy features that had aged sourly. He stood up when he heard his name, brushed the dirt from his palms, reached out to shake.

“You’d be the gentlemen from Philadelphia,” he said in a sharp, high voice.

“Yes, we are,” I said.

“Good. I’ve been expecting you. Why don’t you wait inside the church, give me a chance to clean myself a bit before we talk.”

“Don’t be changing for our benefit, Padre,” said Skink.

“I was pretty much done here, but if you’d like instead, we could take a walk.”

“That would be perfect,” I said. We followed him through the path defined by the beds he had just been working in, and I made the introductions.

“I hope you don’t mind if we take our walk here,” he said as he led us into the quiet of the church’s graveyard.

The headstones were a mixture of weathered limestone markers, narrow and thin, and newer, thicker memorials, the smoothed granite still shiny. The grass was long and uneven, oaks were scattered among the plots like sentinels standing ramrod straight.

“When I first joined this congregation a few decades ago, I was intimidated by this place. It wasn’t the fact of death that it so starkly represented as much as the history. I didn’t know these people, didn’t know these families. My parishioners came to me as blank slates that left me feeling inadequate to their needs, and I felt that sense of inadequacy most strongly here, in this place, where the pasts of which I knew nothing were represented by these stones.”

As he walked, he gestured to the stones and the names upon them: Carpenter, Bright, Skidmore, McKinnon, Perrine. The older had the dates of birth and death carved on them, though the printing on some was so weathered as to be unreadable.
ROY CUDDY
, said one I could just make out.
BORN JULY
1907,
DIED MARCH
1908. It was impossible not to feel the same history the reverend talked about as we walked alongside him.

“But now that I have a surer sense of the past, now that I recognize the names and the people buried beneath the earth, I find this to be a place of great comfort. As many as I’ve buried in this dirt, I’ve baptized more, boys and girls with the same surnames as on these stones. You want to learn of the circle of life, Mr. Carl, you
don’t need see a Disney movie. Just come and take a walk within any church graveyard in any small town.”

It was a nice little talk from Reverend Henson, touching and real, but it was clear he had choreographed it for our benefit. Having learned from his poker buddy, Chief Edmonds, that we were in town, he decided to spend the day gardening so that we would find him out back and we could take this very walk and hear this very speech. Because the subtext of what he was saying was as clear as his words themselves. There is history in this town, Mr. Carl, centuries of history that you neither know nor could possibly understand. Be careful what you conclude, be careful how you judge, for in the scheme of all things you know nothing.

“I was so very sorry to hear about Hailey,” said Reverend Henson. “She had such promise and had overcome so much.”

“Overcome what?” I asked.

“The death of her father. He’s buried over there, along with his wife.” He pointed to a headstone in the corner of the yard. “The death of Hailey’s friend Jesse, which I understand you’ve been asking questions about. That’s his stone over there. He’s buried next to his mother, brother, and sister Amy, who was born with serious problems and didn’t make it past the third week, bless her tiny soul. Jesse’s death had a profound effect on Hailey, I can attest, and sent her into a spiritual crisis I’m not sure she ever came out of. And then of course there was the general level of the poverty into which she fell after her father died, which drags down so many of our best and brightest.”

“Were you close to Hailey?”

“I don’t think anyone was ever truly close to Hailey. She was very tight within herself, but we talked on occasion, and I tried to help her as much as I could.”

“Getting through his death.”

“And other things, yes.”

“I heard she won a church scholarship for her education.”

“That’s right,” said Henson, beaming. “She was a very smart girl, and I was glad to get it for her. She deserved it.”

“You mentioned a spiritual crisis.”

“I did, didn’t I, but I can’t really talk about it now, can I? That was between Hailey and her God.”

“You know I’ve been asking not only about Hailey but about the death of Jesse Sterrett.”

“You believe there may be some connection?”

“I think there must be, yes. What do you think happened to Jesse in that quarry, Reverend?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Carl. The police said it was an accident. Jesse’s father has other ideas. All I know is that it was a terrible tragedy. I don’t think it’s my place to go around assigning blame.”

“Do you think Grady Pritchett was involved?”

“No,” he said quickly, with a sureness I hadn’t expected. “No, he was not involved. And if there is anything you bring back from our conversation, I want you to know that.”

“How are you so sure?”

There was a pause while Reverend Henson reached down and pulled out a weed that was sprouting next to one of the headstones. “He had an alibi.”

“Hailey was his alibi.”

“That’s right,” said the reverend. “And she wouldn’t have lied to protect Grady if he had been involved.”

“No, maybe not. I’ve been looking for Hailey’s sister, what was her name?”

“Is. Roylynn. A very sweet girl, smart as a whip, smarter than anyone, maybe even than Hailey, but she was never as strong as her sister. I’ve tried to help her, too, but her problems proved to be beyond my talents.”

“Do you know where I could find her?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you mind telling us?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why is that?”

“Because, Mr. Carl, you are bringing trouble that she doesn’t need. We’re a strong town, we handled the deaths and we can handle your questions, but Roylynn has always been a fragile girl. We watch out for our own, even the weakest, and we tried to take care of her as best we could, but she was always very tender, too tender. She had pretty much slipped out of the world anyway when word came about Hailey. I fear its effect upon her.”

“You don’t know? You haven’t spoken with her?”

“I have, yes, but the answers are not always clear. She is being well taken care of, that I know. She is in a place that’s more home to her than here.”

“Where?”

“Mr. Carl, I know you have your job to do, and I respect that. I have no opinion about who did what up there in Philadelphia, whether the man you represent really killed Hailey. I have faith in the workings of our legal system, and I’ll leave it to that. And I don’t mind you coming here and stirring pots, acting all self-righteous as if you’re the only one interested in pursuing justice in a case fifteen years old, chasing after ghosts. We all do what we need to do. But I’m not going to send you on to that poor girl. I’m not. You’ll break her in two without even knowing what you’re doing, and then you’ll leave and go back to Philadelphia, and who would be left to pick up the pieces? Leave her alone and let her heal.”

I was about to tell Reverend Henson that I understood his concern, I was about to apologize for our intrusion and rudeness. He was right, I had been going on my little hunt without concern for whom it might have affected. And the news about Hailey’s sister had thrown me. Why hadn’t I been concerned for her? Why hadn’t it ever crossed my mind how hard it must have been for a twin to lose her sister? He had succinctly put me in my place, shamed me, actually, and I was about to slink away like the worm under the rock I felt myself just then to be when Skink spoke up.

“You play cards, Padre?” asked Skink from the center of the graveyard. He had wandered away during my questioning, sauntered from grave to grave as if totally uninterested in what I was doing, but now here came his question, so simple and yet so sharply pointed: Do you play cards?

“I know how.”

“I’m not talking crazy eights here,” said Skink. “I’m talking poker. Seven stud, Texas hold ’em, Maltese cross. You ever play poker for money?”

“Not anymore.”

“But you used to, didn’t you, Padre? You played in that game, didn’t you, with that fellow Edmonds, and old Doc Robinson, and
Larry Cutlip, and this Pritchett, the rich one we been hearing so much about?”

“I sat in once or twice, yes.”

“How’d you do?”

Henson laughed. “Not so well, I’m afraid.”

“How about the others?”

“Gus Pritchett knew how to handle himself, and Larry, well, he took it seriously.”

“It sounds like a tough game, it does. Sounds like one I’m glad I missed. But here’s the thing, Padre, did all you chums, you poker buddies, ever get together over a nice friendly hand of five-card draw, jacks to open, trips to win, ever get together and talk about Jesse Sterrett being murdered and Grady Pritchett being a murderer and what you all was going to do about it?”

“No, of course not. I told you that Grady did nothing.”

“You sure? Because something here, it seems funny to me. You got Edmonds and Robinson deep in poker debt to Cutlip, a man who likes to get paid. And then this Jesse Sterrett gets his head smashed and he falls into the lake at the quarry. Edmonds said he looked like some pale German banger when they pulled him out. And it’s after they pull him out that all the strange happenings, they happen. Like first Cutlip falls into money and leaves. And Edmonds and Robinson, their foul-tempered creditor suddenly gone from town, call the whole thing an accident. And then you tell us you know it’s not Grady, like you know it for sure, and I begin to wonder
how
you could know it for sure, and then I begin to wonder how high was your gambling debts from that friendly little game. And to get me even more curious, I learn that Hailey stands up and alibis this Grady Pritchett. Grady Pritchett, who had just been put into the hospital by our friend Jesse, probably because of Hailey in the first place. See, I knew her, too, and she had that effect on men. Grady Pritchett, whose dad is the richest man in town. Grady Pritchett. Now, why would Hailey make up an alibi for Grady Pritchett if he killed her friend Jesse? She wouldn’t, would she? Of course not, except after she alibis Grady, she ends up winning a church scholarship. How does that happen? How does a bare-arsed small-town congregation like this one happen to get its hands on
enough money to give a girl like Hailey a scholarship? You don’t even gots enough money to mow the lawn of your damn graveyard, and yet there you are stuffing enough cash in her pockets to put her through college and law school. How does that happen, Padre? Tell us that.”

Henson stared at him for a long time. “You’ve gotten it wrong.”

“Maybe,” said Skink, smiling broadly with his pearly teeth, a look of triumph on his scarred face. “But not all wrong, did I?”