The Winslow Incident (58 page)

The ballroom has turned to
bedlam—teeming with bodies and the murmurs of the unsound.
A madhouse
,
her very soul cringes. Vertical shafts of brilliant sunshine leak through
cracks in the drapes at either end of the long room, illuminating a wretched
tableau of suffering. Tangles of human beings overflow sofas and chairs, or sit
slumped against the walls. The worst off lay strewn across the floor, writhing and
restless. She guesses eighty people in all, a good portion of the population of
Winslow.

Except for the children.
No
place for children
, is all she can think.

She’s always pictured hell to look
like this, especially during one of Ben Mathers’ long-winded Sunday sermons on
how the whole lot of ’em are headed straight there in a handbasket. No longer
looking the harmless old coot, Ben Mathers now appears to be meting out earthly
justice from the podium at the head of the ballroom, his back to the window so
that the sunlight stealing between the drapes shoots out behind him. “All out
in the open now!” Mathers bellows.

I shouldn’t stay long
, she thinks.
Only long enough to make sure there is no
other way, only long enough to get my grandmother out before Mathers hangs her
too.

She presses her hand harder over
her nose. Nobody else seems to notice how entirely foul it is in here. Or that
nestled in his wingback chair, Gus Bolinger suffers from gangrene to both his
hands, the skin black and open and oozing at the knuckles. Survived the Battle
for Bloody Ridge only to be struck handless by tainted bread. “They burn,” Gus
groans.

Impossible to take in all at once,
Hazel’s mind breaks down the panorama into macabre snapshots. Rose Peabody
curled tight as a roly-poly pillbug, bare patches revealing irritated pink
scalp. Kohl Thacker bashing his head against the fireplace mantle. The whites
of Laura Dudley’s eyes showing. Bald Billy heaped against fleur-de-lis print
wallpaper, his white t-shirt soaked in blood.

Hazel does not see her
grandmother.

“Don’t stay,” Jay told Hazel
yesterday.

Don’t stay
, she thinks now.

Then she whispers, “Yesterday . .
. was that only
yesterday
?”

She spots Owen Peabody tucked into
the corner across from Ben Mathers at the lectern. Owen’s thick arms and ankles
are strapped tight to the legs of the chaise lounge formerly occupying her
grandmother’s bathroom. Neck stretched beyond conceivable limits, he gnaws on
the wide band of cowhide wrapped around his left wrist. The soles of his bare
feet are encrusted with dried blood.

What are they doing to you,
Owen?
She remembers her dad once telling
her that an animal will chew off its own leg to escape a trap. Hazel dashes
into the ballroom. Rushing, she trips over someone on the floor and they squawk
in pain. “Sorry!” she cries. When she reaches Owen, she crouches beside him and
gently pushes his head back from the strap. “Don’t, Owen, don’t.”

Blood drips from one corner of his
mouth. “Hazel,” he sputters, then gives her a gap-toothed grin.

“Hey, Owen,” she tries to sound
calm. “I’ll get these straps off for you.”
One, two, three
, she silently
counts the number of his white teeth embedded in the leather restraint.

Ben Mathers loudly demands,
“You’ve heard the evidence, now who’s with me?”

She glances up. The old man is
trembling with exuberance.
I shouldn’t have dismissed it when my grandmother
told me he’d come to see her
, Hazel realizes.
I should’ve known Mathers
meant trouble.

Darting her eyes around, anxious
as hell to leave especially now that she’s deep inside the ballroom, she tries
to loosen the strap. Men spook the perimeter of the room: Tiny Clemshaw, Doc
Simmons, Chance Mathers, others she can’t make out in the gloom. They rest
against the walls in casual poses but with guns conspicuously drawn. Evidently
they’re the bailiffs of these proceedings, present to keep order in the court.
And they’re watching her.

She’s doing something
wrong—the strap won’t give. What she wouldn’t give to be fully functional
again. Everything’s so difficult one-armed.

Owen moans frightfully.

She really shouldn’t stay a second
longer.

Two hands join her one on the
leather restraint.

Muddy hands, with chipped pink
polish on long fingernails packed with debris.

Hazel raises her eyes to take in
the Queen of the Rodeo. Long hair plastered in leaves, skin mud-streaked, the
corners of her eyes and mouth caked in dirt, the most beautiful girl in Winslow
grimaces and grunts with the exertion of trying to undo the fat strap binding
Owen’s wrist.

Patience seems to sense Hazel’s
gaze upon her and looks up. “I knew you’d need me,” she says. “I’m sorry I made
you cry.”

Hazel feels about to cry again,
touched by her friend’s selflessness. “I’m sorry I didn’t help
you
when
you needed
me.
” She fishes the bracelet out of her pocket. “I’m sorry I
didn’t believe you.”

Patience stares at Hazel’s hand,
transfixed by the charms she holds. “I’d rather be wrong. I never wanted any of
this to come true.”

“If only I’d listened to you,”
Hazel says. “Terrible things
are
happening here.”

“And Hawkin Rhone
is
back.”
Patience totters drunkenly.

“You didn’t tell anybody what
happened at Three Fools Creek, did you?”

“No.” Her expression is soft.
“Never.”

Hazel hands her the bracelet.
“Here you are, I’m sor—”

Ben Mathers booms, “Who can deny
that the Winslow family has brought ruin to this town?” His sudden change in
tone brings people in the ballroom to attention.

“What is he talking about?” Hazel
asks Patience.

Patience looks scared. “I warned
you.”

“Ruin!” Mathers shouts.

As though he’s ruining her nap,
Rose Peabody uncurls herself on the sofa and gets up to a wobbling stand. “What
on earth have the Winslows ever done to harm you, Ben?”

“What have they done?” Mathers
echoes, sounding utterly incredulous. “They’re murderers!”

You’re the murderers
,
Hazel thinks.
You murdered Fritz Earley.
Her
need to find her grandmother grows even more desperate.

“I don’t believe that,” Rose says,
aghast.

“Believe it.” Tiny Clemshaw steps
forward, looking even more pie-eyed from ergot poisoning than the last time
Hazel saw him. “Sheriff Winslow locked Cal up in jail. I sprung him but the next
thing you know, Cal’s lying stiff in the dirt. Punishment for escaping, I
suppose.”

“And Sheriff Winslow ordered
quarantine but won’t let any doctors into town,” claims Mathers.

“Turned them away at the bridge, I
heard,” Doc Simmons adds.

“That is not true,” Hazel says
quietly, catching the looks of surprise that flash her way.

Patience places her arm around
Hazel’s waist. It’s hard to tell who’s trembling more.

Just as Hazel readies to voice her
protest, she spots Kenny Clark by the fireplace—and freezes.

What has he been telling them?
Dread dawns with terrible certainty.
About me?
She
puts shaking fingers to her lips.
About Sean?
Her grandmother’s words
shriek across her mind: “Once placed, right or wrong, blame is hard to shake.”

Kenny looks much worse for it at
least, from the kicking she gave him in the Buckhorn Tavern. Blood cakes the
nostrils of his swollen nose and he’s got a rag bandaging his head like a
wounded Civil War soldier. But he’s practically salivating, giving her a look
that says,
Here comes the icing on my cake.

And Hazel realizes—
He’s going
to kill me.
Her lungs clamp shut.
Breathe, breathe, keep breathing or else
you’ll pass out and then they’ll strap you down like Owen.
She manages a
staccato inhale.
I have to get out of here.

“And where the devil is Nathan
Winslow now?” Mathers demands.

That’s a good question
, Hazel thinks.
Where are you, Dad? I need you. I really
need you. Come out, come out, wherever you are.

“Sheriff Winslow’s protecting us!”
Patience cries. Leaving Hazel’s side, she approaches her grandfather at the
podium. “Protecting us from the dogs!”

Tiny Clemshaw says, “Honey Adair told
me Sarah Winslow plans to shut the hotel for good after this. What will happen
to us then? No hotel means no tourists and no income for anybody.”

Hazel glares hatefully at him. Why
must he keep stoking the fire?

Kenny shouts, “The Winslows think
they own this town! Ever notice that?” Slowly he turns to look at Hazel. The
way he taps his rifle against his thigh makes her think he’s enjoying himself,
that he sees no cause to hurry this savory situation. Kenny’s completely off
the leash now, and she recognizes the brutal irony that it’s largely her fault
that her Uncle Pard cut him loose.

Ben Mathers has followed Kenny’s
gaze to where Hazel is trying to shrink into the corner. “About time you showed
your face, Miss Winslow.”

“Stop this, Gramps.” Patience stands
before him, sobbing.

Hazel edges toward the doorway.
Don’t
ever let yourself get backed into a corner
, her dad had taught her
.

She musters bravado. “Careful, old
man—if Winslows kill Mathers, then aren’t you about due?”

More people turn to look at her,
then all commence to talk at the same time.

“Everybody—settle down!”
Mathers says.

Places, everyone
, she thinks, her back against the wall.
All of you know
your parts.
In fact, Hazel suspects that some of them have been waiting
years for this show to begin. She watches Mathers, hunched over the lectern,
eyes shiny with anticipation.
He has his role down pat
, she sees,
been
preparing for some time.

As she continues to slink along
the wall she notices that another hangman’s noose dangles from the chandelier
in the sitting area, hovering between twin velvet sofas. This one doesn’t look
like it has been used. Yet. Or maybe it’s the same one they used to hang Dinky
Dowd in 1889. The courtroom is the same.

She flashes on Fritz Earley’s dead
eyes bulging with the question,
Who’s next?

Clearly there has been a shift in
power in the tower. A bloodless coup. For different ghosts haunt the hotel now:
Sadie, Sterling, and Lottie Mathers. Fritz Earley and Zachary Rhone. Looking to
settle their scores, since all other scores seem to be coming due right here,
right now.
This business bodes seriously ill.

She keeps her eye on Kenny across
the room. His posture makes clear he intends to give chase if she tries to dart
away, his rifle shot sure to catch up to her no matter her lead.

“How do you plead, Miss Winslow?”
Mathers asks in a perversely gentle tone.

“Gramps, please,” Patience pleads.
“Let’s just go home.” She looks around for support.

But everyone is staring at Hazel.

She stops her crabwalk toward the
doorway and searches the ballroom for a rational face. Patience and Rose are
the only ones who don’t glance away when their eyes meet.

Except for Kenny Clark’s rat eyes
daring her to make a quick move. How she wishes she’d kicked his rat ass into
an irreversible coma back at the Buckhorn.

“We’re waiting.” Mathers taps his
fingers on the podium with a sound that’s enormous over the sudden hush.

Despite the high ceiling, the
ballroom closes in on Hazel and claustrophobia tightens around her throat,
squeezes—she can’t breathe, she has to get out.

“I’ll start for you then,” Mathers
says in a voice so mockingly mild and sympathetic she wants to tear his face
apart at the mouth. “We all know how greatly you dislike our town. Hated it
ever since your mother left you.”

Hazel’s head is spinning.

“And Doc Simmons told us you knew
the bread was making people sick,” Mathers continues the inquest. “You came to
him at church and told him all about it. How could you know such a thing?”

Her heart pounds so hard she’s
amazed it doesn’t burst free and scamper away without her.

“And why,” he asks, “pray tell,
didn’t you tell us
before
our friends and neighbors took sick?”

“No no no!” Tiny Clemshaw shouts.
“Owen Peabody’s been saying all along it’s the water. Haven’t you, Owen?”

Hazel glances over at Owen in the
corner. The Popeye muscles of his arms strain against the leather restraints;
his face contorts with effort.

“And a dozen people saw her up on
the water tower platform,” Tiny continues. “Opportunity, that’s what that is.
Isn’t that right, Ben?”

Hazel refuses to defend herself to
this kangaroo court, sees how entirely hopeless it is.