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  Nell felt a sudden pang. She wanted to hold her daughter in this moment, when the worst that could happen was Mom saying no to dinner at Jennifer’s, and a yes called forth a bounding exuberance.

  As Nell headed back to her own car—not so old, she thought, remembering Dolan’s comment. Yet given the number of miles she put on it, her opinion about years of use might be optimistic.

  A sheriff’s car was cruising through the school parking lot. Nell noticed it in passing—an occasional display of law enforcement was routine near the adjacent middle and high schools—but then the car stopped next to her.

  Sheriff Hickson himself got out. “Miz McGraw,” he said, as she somehow expected he would. “Can I talk to you for a bit?” He didn’t wait for her assent, but continued. “I was just having a chat with my friend Wendell Jenkins. I got to tell you, Wendell’s not a man to be crossed lightly.”

  “He does little advertising in the Crier, so he can’t hurt me there. What else are you suggesting that he might do, Sheriff Hickson? I can’t think of any legal way he can do anything to me,” Nell retorted, only a thin patina of politeness in her tone.

  “Miz McGraw, I just felt I needed to warn you that Wendell’s buzzing worse than a hornet’s nest a snake slithered into. He put a lot of his future into Boyce—he won’t let it go easy.”

  “Are you threatening me, Sheriff ?” Nell asked bluntly. “What kind of deal does Wendell give you on his cars to get you to be his bully boy?”

  After the words were out of her mouth, she wondered at her temerity. This was a man with a gun and only the football team, on a far away practice field, was in sight.

  But a look of surprise, not anger or calculation, came across the sheriff’s face.

  “Oh, no, ma’am, no, ma’am, you got this all wrong. Wendell didn’t tell me to talk to you … and if he did, I’d tell him where to shove his car deals. Beggin’ your pardon, Miz McGraw.”

  “So why are you here?” Nell demanded.

  “Just to give you a warning. Let you know the score, so to speak.”

  “Sheriff, I didn’t think that Wendell Jenkins left my office as a happy man this morning. Being a woman doesn’t make me stupid or naïve.”

  “Miz McGraw, I’m not saying you’re stupid.” He didn’t mention naïve, Nell noticed. “And Wendell and I may be friends, but he’s got to obey the law just like anyone else.”

  “A friend who discounts cars to the sheriff’s office.”

  “He don’t give us straight wholesale. I figure, he makes a little money, we save a little money, and that’s it.”

  “And that has nothing to do with why Wendell’s good friend Clureman Hickson is trying to get me to drop charges against his son Boyce?”

  The sheriff let out a sigh. “You and I might not quite agree, but I figure it’s my job to keep the peace, make things run smooth. I just don’t see how putting Boyce in jail is gonna do that.”

  “Letting a man who tried to assault me go free doesn’t do much for keeping my peace.”

  “Now, Miz McGraw, I can see your point, but I know both Wendell and Boyce, and Wendell may be a hot-head, and Boyce a hotter head, but when they’re cool, they’re not a worry.”

  “So why are you warning me about Wendell Jenkins? Or does he take a few years to cool down?” Even if the sheriff believed he was talking to her purely on his own initiative, Nell suspected he might not be such a proactive mediator on behalf of someone who didn’t have discount cars to sell.

  “No, he’ll cool down right quick unless his son goes to jail. You see, Boyce already got a small drug rap, so this is gonna hurt him more than just the first-time thing. And that marijuana thing was a while back, but still it’ll hurt him. Wendell and I started out in the state troopers together, way long time back. Wendell got in a motorcycle wreck and bummed his leg, so he washed out. He always wanted a son to succeed where he didn’t. Now that just won’t happen, but it’s one thing not to have your son make it as an officer of the law, a whole other thing for him to go to jail.”

  “So, he should get away with attempting assault?”

  “I’m not saying get away with, I’m just saying not go to jail.”

  “Daddy gives him a talking to, cuts his allowance for a few weeks, is that what you’re saying? And six months later he shows up as a deputy sheriff and you can get your cars at straight wholesale.”

  “No, ma’am, it won’t work that way. I wouldn’t have Boyce in my department. The deal I’m offering is—”

  But Nell cut in to ask, “You wouldn’t hire Boyce?”

  The sheriff looked down at the ground, as if weighing how disloyal he wanted to be and if it would help appease Nell. “Wendell asked me a while back to take on Boyce. Had to tell him no. Too hot-headed. Bad judgment in smoking dope—did it at his high school prom, but he was over eighteen by then. Just should of known better. I gotta admit that he’s used to having his daddy take care of things and that don’t work when you’re out patrolling.”

  Nell was surprised at this admission, admitting to herself that she’d labeled Sheriff Hickson as someone who would never put professionalism before patronage.

  “Wendell got hot-headed about it, and I have to tell you I didn’t get a campaign contribution that year,” the sheriff continued. “But in the end, even he had to admit that his boy just wasn’t ready. And, after this stunt, I’d think he knows there’s no way Boyce’s ever gonna be ready for a lawman’s responsibility.”

  “What’s going to happen to Boyce?”

  “Time for him to move on out of Pelican Bay. If you agree to drop the charges, I’ll have a little talk with the boy. It might do him some good to be somewhere where he isn’t Wendell Jenkins’s son, but just another guy.”

  “And if he doesn’t want to leave? You can’t force him to move.”

  “Well, I can’t pack up his suitcase and drag him to the bus, but Wendell might only set him up somewhere else, and cut the purse strings if he hangs around here. Don’t you think that would be better for everyone? Boyce stays out of jail and gets a chance to straighten himself up. You don’t have to worry about him being here with nothing better to do than harass you, and you don’t have to go through being grilled by his defense attorneys and the mess of a trial. All you gotta do is drop the charges.”

  “I’ll think about it,” was all the reply Nell gave. With that, she turned and walked away. Even if she did agree to the sheriff’s proposal, she wasn’t going to do it immediately. She was angry at being caught in a web of connections and favors and the good ole boy way of doing things. While she wasn’t going to make it hard on herself, she wasn’t going to make it easy on them, either.

  A trial would be a difficult ordeal to put herself through. She had no doubts that Wendell Jenkins would buy the best lawyers for his son and they would do everything they could to discredit her and to make it look like she’d “asked for” what she got. But she found it hard to just hand Boyce over to the back-room school of justice—a slap on the wrist and a bit of daddy waving money to make him behave.

  She would have to think long and hard about it.

  eleven

  Tuesday morning brought back the interrupted story meeting.

  “I’ll write the story about Saturday’s incident,” Nell said. At least that decision was made.

  “And what do I get, the dog catchers’ meeting?” Carrie muttered, just loud enough to make sure she was heard.

  “If you want to,” Nell answered calmly, knowing it was time to throw Carrie a bone, a doggie bone in this case. “Why don’t you do a story about the animal pound? Something more in-depth than our usual pet of the month story. Perhaps a day-in-the-life thing, like a day-in-the-life of an animal at the pound, or one of the workers. Or you could do a more hard-news angle, something about how unwanted strays affect a community—birds eaten by cats, the possibility of disease spread.”
Nell knew that she had to give Carrie concrete ideas but also let her have enough choices to find something she liked. With Jacko, she could just say, “Do a feature about the pound,” and he would come up with something interesting. “If you get some good pictures, we can make it front page,” she added to further mollify Carrie. Then she turned to Jacko. “What have you got on the killings of Rayburn Gautier and Tasha Jackson so far?”

  “The usual behind-the-scenes backstabbing. The sheriff is claiming that the Gautier case is his, sort of ‘finders keepers,’ and Chief Shaun is arguing that his office should handle it. At the moment, the sheriff is taking things in—the evidence from the scene, interviewing the family—then handing it over to the chief. As you can imagine, neither of them is very happy. The sheriff is still holding to his theory that it could be some bizarre accident, with no relation between the two deaths.”

  “What does the chief think?”

  “That it’s murder and the sheriff is dragging his feet and possibly letting a murderer get away. Although he won’t say that on the record. And maybe the two cases are related.”

  “Not surprising. Keep digging. We’re going to be low-key about this story. Probably no more than a small blurb along the lines of ‘still investigating a suspicious death.’ I want to keep it small until something major breaks. But when it does, I want us to have the inside story.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Jacko said, his earnestness mixed with a bravado he could only have picked up from the movies. Nell knew this had to the first murder investigation he’d covered.

  She intended to follow the story closely. It was one thing to send reporters to the pound and give them free rein—if that didn’t work, you simply spiked the story. But Rayburn Gautier’s death had to be covered, and she wanted it done right. She didn’t want to leave Jacko out on his own, for the paper’s sake as well as his sake, but make sure he was heading in the right direction, asking the questions that needed to be asked, walking the line between not involving the family at all and invading their privacy.

  Also, Nell had to admit, the phone call in the night had made it personal. How she covered the murder was her only way to fight back. She didn’t intend to give the killer the glory of seeing his deed splashed across the front page until there was something more to report than a dead boy and a dead girl but no leads in either case. He’d called her because he wanted that kind of coverage. She had no intention of giving it to him.

  The paper lay by the door, as if waiting to be read, still folded neatly. It was last week’s paper. As if he’d intended to read it but was just too busy. The small blurb happened to be facing up, so he could see it every time he entered or left.

  It wasn’t the mechanical act of killing that gave him pleasure; the hands around the throat, the quick blow to the head were only means to an end to him. It was the power reflected in the eyes of the victims when they realized that their life or death was his to choose. Not all of them understood that—too stupid, too young. From them he derived other satisfactions.

  The next issue of the paper would have bold headlines heralding his act. Parents would lock their children up, the town council would meet, the police would step up patrols. Like a stone rippling along water, his act would have many repercussions. The killing was easy, but now he wanted death that would reach out and disrupt as many lives as possible. Kill the right person, and he could walk down the street and see the fear he inspired in the eyes of the passersby.

  That was his challenge now—to not just kill, but to find a killing that would cause as many aftershocks as possible. He wanted more than just a death that people read about in the paper, but a murder that crept into their lives.

  The first had been a mistake—no, not a mistake. It had gone as he planned, except for how long it had taken them to find the girl’s body. He knew where it was, but it would have been a slip-up to have been the one to discover her body. He didn’t make those kinds of mistakes.

  Her death hadn’t had the effect that he’d hoped for. The boy was another matter—a brutal murder in a small town that didn’t even know what a barroom brawl was, let alone the deliberate killing of a child.

  That kind of death would send out many ripples. He prided himself on not going the easy route, killing the most favored child of the most prominent citizen. Of course attention would be paid to that. No, he preferred to find that border line between the obscure and the easily noticeable. Which people seemed to be merely background, unimportant, until they were killed? In some ways, he was doing his victims a favor, making them more important in death than they ever had been in life. He did it well, giving them news and TV coverage that most people would never have in a lifetime.

  He scored himself. The little blurb on the untouched paper was worth only one point. He routinely made the front page with banner headlines, which was worth fifty points. Extra things like the editorial page or special columns on how to protect yourself, or your child, got bonus points. He expected to easily score over a thousand points this time. It was very important to him that each murder have a higher score than the one before. He was a logical, scientific man and the numbers were his way of judging himself.

  He wanted to be in next week’s paper. Between the passing mention on the TV stations and the small story already in the paper, he had barely ten points. That was way too low. Two murders and only ten points. Not good enough, not good enough by far.

  twelve

  “Nell, can I talk to you for a moment?” Chief Shaun called to Nell as she was leaving the Crier building.

  “Of course,” she answered. “But it has to truly be a moment, otherwise my kids will be left standing on the street.” A week ago, that would have been just banter, Nell realized, but now it was important her children not be left waiting with no one she trusted to watch over them.

  “The sheriff and I had a chat, and we both agreed that holding Boyce wouldn’t be the best thing. So we decided to let him go, with the deal that he would get out of town. I hope you understand.”

  Nell stared at him, reining in her fury. “I understand that you have let someone who attempted to assault me go and didn’t bother to let me have any say on the matter.”

  “I know you’re upset,” he said with what she suspected was a supercilious calm.

  “Don’t patronize me,” Nell snapped back. “Are you going to escort him out of town? And guarantee he doesn’t come back? What’s he doing right now? Packing? Or torching my house? Would you even know?”

  Chief Shaun seemed taken aback by her vehemence. Maybe he’s not much better than Sheriff Hickson, Nell thought, expecting the little woman to be glad that the men were taking care of things. And I have to get my kids and I don’t want to stand here arguing with him.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll make sure nothing happens.”

  “Fine,” she said. “When he comes in the middle of the night, I’ll dodge him until you can manage to get there to beat the crap out of him again.” She turned away from the chief and strode toward her car.

  “Nell, be realistic,” he said, following her. “If you press charges, Wendell won’t let it go, and it’s going to be one of the bloodiest legal battles this town has seen in a long time.”

  “Yes, it might bring up the fact that the chief of police engaged in a needless fistfight, a bit of bloody macho posturing. Not a legal battle you want to fight, I’d guess.”

  “I explained to you why I had to do that.”

  “Rationalized, you mean. You didn’t need that fight, you chose it.”

  “Wendell Jenkins isn’t a man to take on lightly.”

  “I expected that kind of talk out of Sheriff Hickson. I didn’t think you were so bought. Tell me, what kind of discount does he give the police on new cars?”

  “Not fair. Remember, I’m appointed, not elected. And we don’t get our cars from Jenkins. It’s a bidding process done through the city comptro
ller. I’m trying to do you a favor, even protect you, although you seem not to want that. We’d get along much better if you weren’t so suspicious of my motives.”

  “We’ll also get along better if you don’t make my decisions for me, Chief Shaun. I really do have to get my children. I presume there will be a police car outside my house until Boyce Jenkins is very far out of town.”

  “We do our best to serve, ma’am,” he said with a mock salute.

  Nell didn’t reply, just unlocked her car and got in. There wasn’t much to say. The boys had made their deal and she would have to live with it. I should have seen this coming, she chastised herself. If she pressed charges against Boyce, it was guaranteed that Boyce would press charges against Chief Shaun. No lawyer would let that one go. And of course Chief Shaun wasn’t going to let his beating of Boyce Jenkins be paraded in front of a court room.

  When Nell got to the school, Lizzie was where she was supposed to be, but Josh wasn’t.

  “Oh, he offered to ride Joey’s bike to the shop to do some maintenance on it,” Lizzie explained.

  “You let him go off by himself ?” Nell demanded.

  “You didn’t tell me to tie him down,” Lizzie mumbled.

  “I told you to wait with Josh and meet me here.”

  “What was I supposed to do? Throw myself in front of the bike?” Lizzie retorted.

  “Did you remind him that I told him to wait here?” Nell could feel herself sliding into one of those irrational mother moments. She was angry at Shaun and Hickson and their deals, and now scared about Boyce Jenkins as well as the voice behind her late-night call. All these weights were turning what should have been a minor transgression by her child into a major problem. “Get in the car. Let’s go find him,” she snapped at Lizzie.

  “You go. I’ll just walk behind. I’m sure you’d like to leave me here anyway,” Lizzie grumbled, picking the wrong time to turn into her truculent teenage self.