4
In the night the
Mexican prisoner and the white boy had taken a keen dislike to each
other. Dodds was in the cell with the Mex kid trying to get him to
talk about what had happened.
“I rolled over, and I
fell out of bed,” the Mex kid said. He looked over at the white boy
and grinned.
The white boy had a
narrow, feral face. He wore jail denims. He badly needed a shave
but wouldn’t accept the razor Dodds had several times tried to give
him. He had eyes that were a mirror of all the things that had been
done to him by others before he could defend himself, and all the
things he wanted to do to people now that he was big and strong and
dangerous. Once in a while Dodds felt sorry for kids like this but
then he always reminded himself what a luxury such pity was. It had
cost more than one lawman his life.
Dodds wanted the Mex
to talk, but there he was intruding on the most sacred pact you
found behind bars-no matter how much prisoners might hate each
other, they hated a lawman more.
“I’d like to get this
sonofabitch,” Dodds said. “First because he snuck himself a knife
into my jail. And second because he committed a felony while in my
custody. That’s the kind of thing that can really piss a man
off.”
“I don’t know nothing
about it. Nothing.”
“What happens
tonight?”
“Tonight?”
“Sure. When he gets
another crack at you. Maybe you won’t be so lucky tonight.”
The white boy sat in
the corner of his own cell, glaring first at Dodds then at the Mex
kid.
For the first time,
the Mex looked as if he just might believe what Dodds was
saying.
The Mex raised his
head and stared over at the white boy. “You s’posed to protect me
while I’m in here.”
“What the hell you
think I’m trying to do?”
The Mex looked at the
white boy again. “Let me think it over, okay?”
“Okay. But I wouldn’t
think about it much past sundown.” Dodds grinned over at the white
boy. “Not if you want to keep that punk off your back. He managed
to stab you through the bars. That means he’s got a good chance of
killing you next time whether you’re in separate cells or
not.”
“Sheriff,” the deputy
said through the barred door leading to the front office. “You got
a visitor.”
“Thanks,” Dodds said,
standing up. “If I ain’t here, you give your statement to Eulo out
there, okay?”
The Mex nodded.
The white boy
grinned. Obviously he figured he had the Mex scared away.
Dodds hoped the Mex
would surprise everybody and turn the white boy in. Assault with
intent to commit great bodily injury would land the white boy in
prison, where he belonged. All the white boy was doing time for was
drunk and disorderly, but you could see that if somebody didn’t
stop him, he was the kind of kid who’d kill somebody for
sure.
He started to make an
obscene gesture behind Dodds’s back at the sheriff headed for the
front door.
Dodds turned around
just in time to see what was about to happen. He grinned at the
kid. That was one thing about punks. Mentally they never got much
beyond second grade.
***
Dodds had always like
Mae Kittredge. To some she was too religious, to others too
strange, but she bore her disappointment over her lost child with a
gentle dignity that touched Dodds. He remembered how Mae had helped
the victims of the factory layoff, going door-to-door every few
days to make sure that everyone had sufficient supplies of food and
medicine, and sufficient supplies of tenderness for each other.
Dodds had always joked to her that she’d make a fine sheriff; she
could settle down riled-up husbands faster than any lawman he’d
ever seen.
Now Mae sat in his
office, her clothes damp from the rain. Her hands were folded in
her lap, her eyes shaded by the bill of her bonnet. The way her
lips moved softly, it was easy to tell she was praying.
Dodds came in and sat
across from the desk and said, “Nice to see you, Mae.”
As he said this, he
realized he was going to be seeing a lot of the woman in the coming
weeks. Her husband was, after all, implicated in a killing and a
bank robbery.
“Nice to see you,
Sheriff,” she replied.
“How can I help
you?”
“I just wanted to
check up on that special deputy. After he left, I got
suspicious.”
“What deputy you
talkin’ about Mae?”
“The one who came out
to the house. The one who works for the governor. The one who’s
helping you.”
“My deputy’s in back,
Mae. He didn’t go out to see you.”
In her somber gray
eyes came the realization that she’d been tricked.
“He asked about
Dennis,” she said.
“What about
Dennis?”
“He wanted to know
where he could find him.”
“He say why?”
“He said Dennis had
witnessed a jewelry robbery and he thought Dennis could testify
against the robber.”
“I see.”
“It was a trick,
wasn’t it?’
He wanted to keep her
calm. No reason to excite her. She’d had enough grief in recent
years.
“I’m sure everything
is fine, Mae,” Dodds said, taking his pipe from his drawer. He
stuck it between his teeth and inhaled it. He could taste the sweet
and satisfying vapors of tobacco burned days ago. “He ask you where
he could find Dennis?”
“He did.”
“You tell him?”
“I did.” Pause. “I
shouldn’t have, should I?”
He sucked a little
more on his pipe. He tried to remain as composed as possible. The
hell of it was he felt a little tic troubling the corner of his
eye. He always got it when he got scared and he was scared now.
Ryan was a crazy sonofabitch. Just in case he forgot how crazy, all
he had to do was read the letter Ryan had written and left in his
carpetbag. “Where’d you tell him he’d find Dennis, Mae?”
“Out on Lambert
Creek. Up near Grovers Pass.”
“Fishing, huh?”
“Umm-hmm.”
This was the part he
had to make sound really relaxed and nonchalant. “Why don’t you let
me do you a little favor, Mae?”
“A little
favor?”
“Why don’t you let me
ride on out there and just see if I can find this fella. Ask him if
there hasn’t been some kind of mix-up or something.”
She sighed. “I’d sure
appreciate that, Sheriff.”
“By the way, Mae, you
haven’t told me what this fella looks like exactly.”
“Oh, he’s a
nice-looking man. You can tell he’s successful and you can tell
he’s educated. He doesn’t look like a criminal or anything.”
“Could you be a
little more specific, Mae? How tall he is and what color his hair
is and what kind of clothes he’s wearing.”
She shrugged her
narrow shoulders. “Sure, Sheriff. If you want me to.”
The man she then
proceeded to describe was, or course, Septemus Ryan.