Fatal Flaw (35 page)

“Yes.”

“All right,” she said. “Let me know when it is all agreed, and I’ll talk to the police.”

“Where will you be?”

“Here, I’ll be right here. I’ve got no place else to go.”

I MADE
the deal. When I proposed it to Mr. Pritchett, he snarled at me, a Scotch in his hand, and nodded, and that was that. I ran back to the quarry and took Hailey with me to the police. I expected then that she would tell them what had happened, tell the truth, that the evil would be taken care of, I was certain of it. But, as always with Hailey, she betrayed my expectations. She insisted on seeing Grady first, and only then did she tell her story to the police, and a clever story it was. She saved Grady, financed her college and law degree, gave her sister a chance, everything she said she would do, but she did it all with a lie.

It wasn’t enough, I couldn’t just leave it at that. I had no evidence of what I thought had really happened, nothing more than the rantings of a suicidal poet, no witnesses who would back up my suspicions, but still I could not do nothing. I was compelled to do something. And so it was that I summoned Lawrence Cutlip to meet me in the chapel on a sunny Thursday afternoon.

He stood before me with his dangerous forward lean, a fresh wound on his cheek, his overalls spattered with the blood of slaughtered cattle. He held in his huge, hairy hands a rusted spade with a long wooden handle. We were in the center aisle of the chapel, the door to the outside world behind him, the cross behind me. He stared and smiled, and I felt a fear I had never known before and have never known since.

“I don’t have much time,” he said. “I’ve got some digging to do. So let’s have it, then.”

I didn’t even want to know what he was digging or why, the possibilities that flitted through my mind were terrifying enough. I braced myself against the side of a pew to stop my shaking, and then, without pleasantries, I brought up the purpose of our conversation.

“You need to leave this town. This town, this county, this state, those girls. You need to leave, now, and never come back.”

He tilted his head at me like a dog. “What are you saying there, Reverend?”

“I know what you are and what you’ve done. I know everything.”

“You’re kidding with me, right?”

“I am serious as my faith.”

“Aw, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about you and those girls. You and that boy. Leave now, or I’ll tell all.”

He stared at me, a realization dawning in his eyes. “Who you been listening to? Hailey? Has she been blabbing? She’s a lying bitch, always has been. You can’t go around listening to a mongrel bitch like her.”

“You need to leave.”

“Leave, hell, that would be the best thing for me. Don’t you think I want to leave? Don’t you think I wanted to leave ever day of the past eight years? I done everything for those girls. They’d have nothing without me, nothing. They’d be on the street, starving or whoring, I wasn’t taking care of them. I gave the best part of my life to them, sacrificed it straight up, spent my days butchering cows and my nights tending to their wants. But does anyone ever care about
my
wants? I’ve given up everything for them, and this is what I get in return, lies and accusations. They’re both a couple of halfbreed ingrates. Their father wasn’t a hundred percent, I told my sister that before she ever married that boy. Any wonder then at what is going on with his demon offspring? One slices her wrists because she wants to be the center of attention, the other’s now telling lies about me. They’s bad kids, that’s just the way they is. Everything that’s happened is their fault. There’s something wrong with them, I’ve always knowed that, something sinister. But you, Reverend, believing them lies. You should be ashamed.”

“You leave now, right now, take your truck and go and never come back, or I’ll make the calls.”

“Aw hell, go ahead and make your calls. No one’ll believe your ass anyways.”

“Yes, they will. I’m a man of God. And Hailey will back me up. And Roylynn from the hospital will back me up. And your sister will back me up, you know she will, when you’re in jail and she’s no longer afraid of the back of your hand. And as for the boy?
Where was it you received that slice on the cheek? Did it bleed much? It’s a wonder what they can do now in matching up blood.”

He stared at me hard, and his eyes grew cold, he hefted the shovel in his hands. “I could kill you right now,” he said. “Stick this shovel in your chicken neck and pop your head right off.”

“I know you could, without a second’s thought, kill me now in this house of God. But you know that someone’s seen you come in, that someone knows you’re here. If you kill me, they’d lock you up for sure, lock you up till they pull the switch. And you want to know something?” I took a step forward. “I hope you do. It would solve the problem for good. So don’t just talk about it, do it. Do it or leave.”

I stood face to face with evil for that moment, watched the shovel twitch as if it wanted to launch itself into my neck, watched as the anger played like a screeching chord across his face. He was ready to hit me, crush me, do anything to bend me to his will, but I stood as steady as my feverish fear would let me and held my ground.

And then a smile, a lean, cold smile. “I’ve been thinking of leaving anyway,” he said. “Them girls is growed up enough. It’s time to be on my way. I guess I will go, head out west, just as soon as I pick up my stake. Edmonds and Doc Robinson owe me enough to get a good start out there in Vegas.”

“They don’t owe you a thing. You’ve been cheating them for years, dealing from the bottom.”

“Lies, lies, and more lies. You you’re just a damn thief of lies.”

“I’ve seen it, watched it happen over and over.”

“They won’t believe you. They know me. They’re my friends.”

“You have no friends, and I’m a man of the cloth. They’ll believe every word of it. Who would they believe more? If you’re not gone by tonight, I’m going to tell them about you dealing from the bottom of the deck. I’m going to tell them about you killing that boy. I’m going to tell them about you and the girls. I’m going to tell them everything.”

There was a moment more of silence, where I could see a fire raging inside him. I fought the urge to back up, to back away, to run from his ungodly presence. I fought and won and held my ground, even as his body tensed, even as he brought the shovel back as if to
land a great blow, even as that shovel rushed at me and past me and rang with a brutal clang on the steps of the altar behind me.

I turned around to glance at it lying there, at an oblique angle on the stairs, and when I turned back to Lawrence Cutlip, he was walking out the door.

And, all praises to God, I never saw him again.

43

“SO THAT
is the story, gentlemen,” said the Reverend Henson, sitting behind his desk, his forefinger sliding back and forth across the bevel on the desktop’s edge. “That is all I know. No facts underlay my accusations, no secret confessions, just a series of my own surmises. I knew nothing for certain. Had I known anything for certain, I would have done all in my power to put him in jail where he truly belonged, but I guessed well enough and knew enough about bluffing to banish this evil from our lives.”

“That was pretty damn brave,” I said. “He might just as easily have killed you.”

“What else was I to do? And in the end, I supposed it all worked out well. Hailey did go to college, as you know, and to law school, too. She never confided in me in any way after that, treated me like a business acquaintance, which I suppose I had become. She simply took her money and went off into her new life, God bless her. Roylynn took a few courses at the community college, but that was all. There were three more attempts at suicide which halted her formal education, but she seems to be fighting the urge successfully, for now. The money from Pritchett has been used to finance a continuing series of rest homes, like the one she’s in now. I visit her when I can, I myself gave her the physics book she clutches so fiercely. I
thought it would be a diversion, but it has become something to her like a Bible, and I don’t suppose that is so bad a thing. We all need something to believe in.”

“I met with Roylynn after I spoke to you,” I said.

“Yes, I heard. I had hoped you would honor my request, but she said nice things about you.”

“She told me that something called a primordial black hole killed Jesse Sterrett and her sister, something from the beginning of time with the power to obliterate anything that comes close.”

“Yes, I’ve heard her say that. It’s hard to understand, but I think I have an explanation. I believe that what she calls a black hole is simply her expression for the evil I saw in her uncle. He left that night and never returned, and I only knew of his whereabouts through the occasional references from Roylynn, who learned what she knew from her sister. It was she who told me of the nursing home in Henderson, a place I called as soon as I heard about Hailey. No, he had never left the property, I made sure of that before ever you came upon the scene, Mr. Carl.”

“If I need you to testify, Reverend, would you come up to Philadelphia?”

“I would, yes, but what could I say? What do I have for you, really, except my suspicions, and from what I can glean from the lawyer shows on TV, my suspicions are not much use in a legal case.”

“What exactly are your suspicions, Reverend Henson?” asked Breger. “Do you really think he killed the Sterrett boy?”

“Yes, I do. I saw it in his eyes as he held that shovel, but I own not an ounce of proof.”

“Why did he do it?”

“Jealousy.”

“Of Hailey?”

“Of course.”

“But why? What exactly do you suspect was going on between Cutlip and his nieces?”

“You ask for a surmise when I gave you all the facts at my disposal. I don’t think you have a right to anything more than that, and I won’t put my darkest fears about those girls into words. But she was a young girl in bad circumstances and terribly confused. Whatever
it was that had infected her and that she was trying, in her way, to tell me about, it had nothing to do with love. It was something else, something monstrous and ungodly. And if it survived his leaving this town, it did so in the dark recesses of a dark heart that never allowed itself to catch a glimpse of light.”

OUTSIDE THE CHURCH,
Breger I and took a slow walk in the graveyard. I weaved among the tombstones reading the now familiar names. Breger examined this stone, stared at this flower, this path, searched the cemetery as if it were a crime scene. While I stood among the graves, the harrowing lines of a dead poet rang in my ears.

“A white Camaro ran me down on a rocky road outside Henderson, Nevada,” I said finally to Breger.

“I read the police report when I was out there.”

“And it was a white Camaro with Las Vegas plates that was ticketed for speeding on the night before Hailey Prouix’s murder.”

“I thought you’d find the coincidence interesting.”

“Who is he, this Dwayne Joseph Bohannon?”

“Just a guy from Henderson.”

“Who works at the Desert Winds nursing home?”

“That’s right.”

“Let me guess. Long, scraggly blond hair, bad skin, worse teeth, scratching his arms like he’s got the mange. A lovely young man in every respect. Bright, too. Goes by the name of Bobo.”

“Cutlip’s toady.”

“That son of a bitch,” I said. “That vampire.”

“I met with Cutlip in Vegas. Bobo, too, standing behind the wheelchair. Followed some bank payments to the Desert Winds and found Cutlip. I asked the basic questions, showed him the picture of the corpse, had him identify his niece. He broke down when he saw it, and then his anger flared. A hard case for sure, but I didn’t find him evil.”

“Neither did I, actually, but my partner sensed something. What are you going to do?”

“I’ll make a call to my contact in Nevada. Have him ask Cutlip some tougher questions.”

“And what will that get you? You might shake him up a bit, but if he suspects he’s a suspect, you won’t get very far. He’s a tough old bird. He’ll clam up, shed crocodile tears over his niece, claim ill health, deny everything. I know, I’ve seen him do it. Better to leave him alone.”

“Then maybe I’ll ask my contact to give Bobo a roust.”

“Bobo killed her. It seems clear now, doesn’t it?”

Breger merely looked away.

“He killed her. And I’ll tell you something else: He’s the mystery man in black rushing out of the house. He was inside looking for something, and when the Forensic Unit technician showed up, he rushed out and beat her all to hell. With his hands scratched up like they were, you couldn’t see the bruises from the beating. But he’s the one.”

“It’s possible.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“I told you.”

“What about you convincing Jefferson to drop the case?”

He shook his head.

“You’ll at least tell him what you heard.”

“Jefferson wants evidence or nothing. What I heard is not evidence.”

“What more do you need?”

“Facts, maybe. Proof. If my guy grabs a confession out of Bobo, I’ll talk to Jefferson, but I can’t without that. You’ve raised a lot of questions, but there still aren’t many answers, including the big one. Cutlip may be a murderer, he may have killed Jesse Sterrett fifteen years ago out of jealousy or hate, but why would he send Bobo off to kill Hailey? Why would he want her dead?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Maybe when you find an answer we can do some business. But I’ll tell you flat-out, Carl, without a confession Jefferson is going to stay on after your boy to the end, that’s just the way he is. And the way the trial is going now, it looks like he’s going to get him.”

“I’ve been making some headway.”

“Some,” he said. “But not enough to overcome the fingerprints. Not enough to overcome the motive. Not enough to overcome the
fact that only your client was in that house. And it doesn’t help you blaming some mystery lover for the crime if you think Cutlip did it.”

“A lawyer’s got to lawyer.”

“That’s the problem with you guys. A surgeon’s going to cut, a hunter’s going to shoot, a lawyer’s going to lie. I’ll make the call to my contact. If Bobo says something interesting, I’ll give it to Jefferson, who has to give it to you under
Brady
. That’s all I can do.”

“And if Bobo gives you nothing?”

“Then start gathering character witnesses for the sentencing phase, because you’ll need them.”

“You’ll tell me what happens in Vegas?”

“I’ll tell you.”

I stood in the cemetery, thinking things through. I thought of the trial, what had happened already, what still needed to be proved. I was at a loss. What could I do? How I could raise the level of doubt?

“Detective,” I said finally, “I might need a favor.”

He didn’t say anything, he just stood there with his shoulders hunched as if waiting for the weight of the world to drop down upon him.

“There might come a moment when Troy Jefferson gets sputteringly angry at something I do, and he’s going to come to you for some additional proof.”

“Same old same old.”

“When he does, this time I want you to whisper something in his ear.”

“Go ahead.”

“Just one word.”

“Go ahead.”

“Will you do it?”

“I’ll consider it, maybe, depending on the word. And in exchange.”

“In exchange for what?”

“Your phone logs.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t go there.”

“That’s the deal.”

“I’m asking for one little thing, one word in his ear, just one word.”

“I understand what you’re asking. And it is not any little thing.”

“The logs aren’t even mine to give up. It’s up to the client.”

“Talk to him. Tell him that’s the deal.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Let’s go, we’ve got ourselves a plane to catch.”

“You have no idea what you are asking.”

“Oh, I have an idea,” he said. “I have plenty of an idea. Yes I do.”

And I believed then that he did.