I had to hold traffic court down in south Hope County late that afternoon. Coming home, I had just gotten back inside our city limits when I saw blue lights flashing. Disgusted at myself, I pulled over. I do speed sometimes, but generally I keep a weather eye out for troopers. I was downright embarrassed when the cruiser’s door opened and Ike climbed out. This was going to be awkward for both of us.
“I was late getting back from traffic court and not paying attention,” I started as soon as he came to my window.
He held up one huge hand. “For a wonder, you were no more than five miles over the limit, Judge. I pulled you over because I have some news for you that I knew you’d want right away, and I suspected you wouldn’t want Joe Riddley to hear. Come sit in my car a minute.”
I shifted the paraphernalia he had spread out on his passenger seat and settled in, expecting him to say Slade had called him. Instead, he said, “As much as I hate to admit it, you were right. DeWayne Evans did not kill himself. He was murdered.”
For a minute I was so shocked I couldn’t think of anything to say. Finally I managed, “Are you sure?”
“Real sure. I started where you suggested—looking at where DeWayne was hanging. He was near the lavatories, but I took some measurements, and the rope wasn’t quite long enough for him to have stood on the lavatory to jump. He’d have choked himself first. You understand?”
I grimaced. “Well enough to picture it.”
“So I called in the forensics folks and they started looking at things we hadn’t checked when we thought it was suicide. They found several curious things. Two doorknobs were a lot cleaner than the school janitor ever keeps them—both the one from DeWayne’s room to the hall and the one on the outside door to his room. Part of that doorjamb was wiped, too. And the knobs to the locker room on both sides were smudged like somebody was wearing plastic gloves.”
“Gloves?” I blurted. “It was premeditated, then?”
He nodded.
“But how?”
“We think he was killed in his own classroom. They found traces of urine and feces in the seat of his desk chair—which had been carefully cleaned, by the way, just not quite enough—which makes us suspect he was choked there, then taken to the bathroom to be strung up. The hall was pretty much a mess—nobody had bothered to preserve it as a crime scene, since nobody thought it was part of anything—but forensics picked up a couple of traces that look like his heels were dragged. ”
I sat there trying to take it in. “So he wasn’t even hanged?”
“Not in the technical sense. He was choked by the rope, then hauled over the pipe when he was dead. Not a pretty way to go, but better than twitching at the end of the rope waiting for the end.”
“But DeWayne was so strong. Who could—?”
“We don’t know, but it would have to be somebody who both surprised him and had the strength to hang on until his air was gone.”
I couldn’t help picturing bulging biceps with dragons crawling up them. “Could it have been Smitty? Ridd says DeWayne flunked him last semester.”
Ike shrugged, which was hard when you were his size and sitting behind a steering wheel. “We’ll check his alibi for Saturday morning, but you can be sure he’ll have one, and we’ll have a tough time breaking it.”
I climbed out of his car feeling two hundred years old. “Thanks for filling me in, but what the heck is going on in this town?”
He shook his massive head. “If I knew, Judge, I’d put a stop to it. You know I would. Looks like the devil got tired of hell and has decided to take up residence in Hopemore.”
22
Talking to Tyrone was now my number-one priority, but finding him took a while. Finally, Tuesday afternoon, on my way back from the jail where I’d held a bond hearing, I stopped by the Bi-Lo. Tyrone’s mother, Florence, worked in the produce department.
When I asked if I could talk to her a minute about Tyrone, she didn’t stop putting apples in rows in a bin. “I don’t see enough of him anymore to recognize him on the street.” She’d never been a beauty, but back when she was in high school with Walker, she’d had nice blond hair and a figure she took pains to show off. Now her hair hung limp and shaggy around her face, her body carried a lot of extra weight, her shoulders slumped, and she spoke in a perpetual whine.
“You were at court with him Friday, weren’t you?” Surely she hadn’t missed that.
“Yeah. That was one of the worst ordeals I’ve faced since the night he was born. I never thought I’d see the day when my son would stand in front of a judge and admit he defaced a school. And did you see what he drew?” Her eyes were so pitiful, I hated that I had to nod. “He wasn’t brought up like that—you know it. We have all sorts here”—her eyes wandered to the registers, which were currently staffed by two African American women, a Mexican woman and a white woman—“and we get along just fine. I never taught Tyrone to think bad about anybody.” She sighed. “But now, everybody probably thinks I did.”
I patted her husky shoulder. “I’m sure everybody knows where you stand. We do the best we can, but none of us is responsible for the way our children turn out. Do you have any idea where I can find Tyrone?”
She dropped an apple. “Is he in more trouble?”
“Not that I know of. I talked to him Thursday and we didn’t finish our conversation.”
She bent to retrieve the fruit with obvious relief. “You might try Smitty’s. Tyrone’s been hanging out with him some lately, and to tell you the truth, it worries me to death. Something’s got to be done about Smitty, Judge, and that’s God’s own truth, or he’s going to take over this whole town.”
“I keep hearing that,” I told her. “You got any idea what anybody can do? He’s never been convicted on any charge.”
She shook her head. “He’s slippery like a water moccasin, and twice as bad.”
“Do you have any idea where he lives? I don’t.”
“Yeah, he ’n’ his mom live in that trailer out on the Waynesboro Road. The one that looks like it might fall down any minute, but somehow never does.”
That was as good a description as anybody could give. I recognized it as soon as I saw it sitting in what must have once been a small pasture surrounded by piney woods. This was definitely a trailer—far too old to have ever been called a mobile home, much less a modular home. It sagged in the middle. Its screens were torn and patched with duct tape. The steps were cement blocks and had been there so long that a determined yellow flower grew between them. The lawn was adorned by two rusting lawn mowers, an abandoned washing machine, and a pile of beer cans and bottles at exactly the right angle to have been tossed through the door.
I parked by the chain-link fence—which also sagged—and headed for the gate, listening to see if a dog would crash around the corner and make my life difficult. I heard nothing except a television turned up way too loud. I rattled the gate. Still nothing. I took a hesitant step inside.
That’s when it occurred to me to wish I’d brought somebody with me. I generally don’t walk into risky places alone, even in broad daylight, but I had been so focused on finding Tyrone that I hadn’t stopped to think that the most likely person I was going to find at Smitty’s was Smitty. Or Smitty’s mother—whose first language was profanity and her second, threats. I was fixing to go back to town and return with a deputy when I heard a shot.
I fell into the tall grass flatter than one of my infamous cakes. I lay belly to the ground, head down, and thought I remembered that if you hear a shot, you won’t get hit, because the bullet reaches you before its sound. That might not be true, though, and wasn’t particularly comforting anyway, since whoever shot once was probably reaching for the trigger again right that minute.
Besides, the way my ears were pounding, I could die of other causes. Fright, for instance.
“It’s Judge Yarbrough,” I called without raising my head. “Don’t fire. I’m looking for Tyrone.”
A bullet whizzed by to my left. It hit the ground with a thud, and I shook so hard, the grass above me must have waved like little flags. I strained to listen, but I heard nothing except the TV and a cardinal calling
cheer! cheer!
somewhere over in the woods. I am much older than you think, because I lay in that grass without moving for at least a hundred years.
Finally I heard a snicker. “You can get up. I ain’t shootin’ at you. Was shootin’ squirrels.”
I looked up cautiously. Smitty leaned against one corner of the trailer, a rifle resting across one arm. It was probably a .22. Lots of boys around Hope County owned them for hunting squirrels and rabbits or killing rats around their parents’ farms.
Three of his buddies stood off to one side, all grinning.
Smitty jerked his head down the yard. “Them squirrels been botherin’ our peaches.”
I raised my head and looked that way. At the far end of the yard stood a scrawny tree with small hard peaches clinging to the branches by sheer determination. They would never be any good, because that poor tree probably hadn’t been fertilized since Smitty was born.
Why was I worrying about peaches at a time like that? To avoid worrying about Smitty with a lethal weapon, in easy killing distance.
I climbed slowly to my feet, aware that his dead gray eyes were watching my every move. His friends looked edgy and excited, waiting to see what he’d do. At my age, getting up off the ground is an accomplishment. Getting up gracefully is practically impossible. I heard another snicker, but it stopped when Smitty snarled something over his shoulder.
Shaking like I was, I was amazed I could stand at all. “I’m looking for Tyrone.” A car passed behind me. The driver probably thought we were having a neighborly visit.
Smitty sighted and fired a couple of yards to my right. “Squirrels are real bad this year.” He was having himself a fine old time.
“Stop that!” I yelled. “You could hit somebody on the road.” One of the boys drew back a little, so I must have sounded right fierce, but I was no Genghis Khan. My hands trembled so badly, I had to clutch my pocketbook to my chest to keep from dropping it, and my knees were about to drop me.
Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees.
We’d just studied that part of Isaiah in Sunday school. It came to me like a prayer. I tacked on a verse of my own:
Help!
No angels descended to take away Smitty’s gun. I did hear that voice that lurks in my head, though:
He wouldn’t kill you on his own property with three witnesses.
How reliable do you think those witnesses would be in court?
I demanded.
Anybody can have a hunting accident.
I sure hated to go to my grave murdered, labeled an accidental death.
He won’t have a hunting license,
the voice insisted.
Face him down. Don’t drop or run.
He’s on his own property,
I pointed out.
You know any officers of the law zealous enough to arrest somebody this far outside the city limits for scaring squirrels away from his peaches? They’d have to arrest half of Hope County.
Don’t let him know you’re afraid.
With that last piece of advice, the voice disappeared. I felt unexpectedly bereft, considering that it and I seldom agree on anything. Still, I didn’t have any better advice to offer myself, so I straightened my shoulders, lifted my chin, and repeated, “I came looking for Tyrone.”
“He ain’t here.” Smitty fished in his pocket for more shells and reloaded. He glanced up and down the road, sighted along the barrel, and aimed straight at me.
I’d learn some time later that Smitty considered me a gutsy lady, that he told folks, “She faces a gun cooler than any woman I ever saw.” I would preen a little at that accolade. And I wish I could tell you I stood there calmly because I was ready to receive my heavenly reward. I’ll never get it, however, by lying, and the truth is, I wanted to run, even if that meant getting shot in the back. The trouble was, my body had petrified. Even my head had petrified. I didn’t feel a thing while Smitty fired off another shot over me, grinning all the while.
Help came from an unexpected source. “Stop that!” Tyrone clomped down the trailer steps, clutching his pants in front of him. “Stop it! She’s a judge!” He reached Smitty faster than either Smitty or I knew he could run and wrested the gun from Smitty’s hands. The others watched in astonishment as he yelled, “You stupid, dumb—” I won’t repeat the rest of what he said. It’s not language I generally use, but it was certainly language Smitty understood.
To give him credit, though, he didn’t cower, just snickered up at Tyrone. “I wasn’t hurtin’ her—just shooting squirrels.” Several of his henchmen guffawed. Tyrone stomped away from him and glared, his big face flushed and furious. He still held the gun in one hand and clutched his pants with the other.
Smitty turned and swaggered toward the backyard. With a jerk of his head he drew those puppets after him. “She came to see you, anyway,” he informed Tyrone over one shoulder.
Tyrone laid the gun on the steps and lumbered over to where I was firmly planted in the soil and sending down roots for support. “You okay?” He peered down at me between two ripples of long black hair. His worried face looked very like his mother’s.
“A little shook up,” I admitted. “I was afraid he might miss a squirrel and hit me.”
“Oh, no, he’s a real good shot.” Pride flickered in his eyes, which was then chased away by shame. “He shouldn’t have scared you like that, though. I was in the bathroom and the TV’s on. I didn’t know the shots were real at first.” He looked down and saw he was still clutching his unzipped pants. He turned bright red, showed me his back, and zipped up. “Excuse me.”
“Honey, I’ll excuse you anything. I expect you just saved my life.”
“He wouldn’t have hurt you. He was just foolin’ around.”
My laugh was pretty shaky. “He sure fooled me.”
“Were you really lookin’ for me?” His breath came in short, anxious gasps. I wondered how he could breathe at all with those tight leather strings and beads around his thick neck.