Custody of the State (25 page)

“Harry,” Will spoke up, “I owe you a debt of gratitude.”

“Don't get mushy on me,” Putnam countered. “I still plan on beating you in this case. Don't forget that. I just don't want to see one of my legal brethren treated like this. And one more thing…”

“What is it?”

“We've been investigating that Neanderthal who worked in the auxiliary jail. A grand jury just issued an indictment against him for abuse of authority, battery—you can imagine all the charges. We're going to need your testimony. I assume you'll be more than happy to provide it.”

“You figured that one right,” Will replied firmly. “On the other hand, maybe prison would be too good for that guy.”

“How so?”

“If you want real punishment, forget prison—instead, let my girlfriend, Fiona, go after him.”

Will and Jacki had a good chuckle, at the expense of Will's aching skull.

Then the attorney narrowed his eyes and looked straight at Harry Putnam.

“I want those two thugs put away—the guard
and
the motorcyclist. I'll be watching you to make sure that happens. And I expect you to find out who was
behind
their attack on me.”

Putnam nodded nervously.

After his two visitors said their goodbyes, Will was alone in the room—but only for a few minutes. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone stop in the doorway. It was a woman. Then he noticed the dark hair and radiant smile.

Fiona ran to the bed with a huge basket of flowers. She hugged him and kissed his forehead gingerly.

“Thank you, God. Thank you for keeping Will alive.”

She was laughing and crying, and after a moment she had to grab in her suit pocket for a Kleenex to blow her nose. She executed that task so loudly that both of them burst into belly laughs.

With that, Will's head began splitting again, but he kept laughing and wincing all the same.

After sitting down next to him, Fiona raised his hands to her face and kissed them.

“It's funny,” she said wistfully, “how all of the things that bothered me—that upset me about how things were between us…the things you forgot to do…even my questioning whether you were really over Audra's death. They all seem so small and stupid now when I realize how easy it is to lose someone you really love—someone you love more than life itself.”

Will stared into her dark eyes, taking in her face, and her dimples, and the funny way her lips turned when her feelings were coming to the surface.

“Do you realize,” Will said slowly, “what you just said…it's the first time you told me you loved me like that?”

Tears were streaming down Fiona's face, and she laughed about her make-up smearing. But Will was indifferent to that.

“How in the world did you get here?”

“The minute I found out you were in the hospital I told my producer it was an emergency—I needed twelve hours off. I chartered a private plane. That was a miracle of sorts. All the charters are getting booked up. Everybody thinks there's going to be a big airlines strike. The pilot is sitting downstairs, so I'm afraid I have less than an hour.”

Will didn't care. He told Fiona how much he loved her—and that, when he returned to Virginia after this case, how the two of them needed to do some serious decision-making.

The two of them talked a little more about their lives, and then, too soon, Fiona rose slowly, saying she had to go. When she kissed him again, he could taste the hot tears that were running down her face.

“Better check your make-up on the way out, dear,” Will said with a smile. “I can't wait till we're together again.”

And then she was gone.

Glancing over to the other side of the room, he realized for the first time that he was not entirely alone. There was another patient sleeping quietly in the other bed, behind the curtain.

Father Godfrey, at the hospital on visitation, entered the room slowly, threw a casual smile and nod in Will's direction, then pulled the curtain fully around the bed of the other patient.

A nurse breezed into the room to check Will's vital signs.

The nurse turned to the drawn curtain. “There's Father Godfrey again. He sure is faithful to his people. He's here all the time.”

“How's the other guy doing? He's not getting the last rites, is he?” Will asked a little apprehensively.

“No, nothing like that—just a hospital visit. In fact, I think he'll be ready to be discharged tomorrow. And I think you will too,” the nurse replied.

From behind the curtain, Father Godfrey was speaking in low, gentle tones and the patient was responding, but Will couldn't make out any words. The nurse finished her work and hurried out of the room.

Some of the pain pills were kicking in. With the muffled sounds of the conversation across the room in the background, he drifted off. For a little while, at least, he could forget about vindicating Mary Sue Fellows—or wondering who was behind the attack in the jail and really wanted to locate her.

Will's eyes closed as he fell into a deep sleep, oblivious to the ritual of confession being administered discreetly behind the nearby curtain.

37

T
INY
H
EFTLAND
, all two hundred thirty-five pounds of him, was tired and hot.

As the private detective sat in his new Cadillac convertible, he wiped his brow and loosened his tie. Then he checked the notepad lying on the passenger seat next to him, thanking his stars again that he'd decided to drive to Georgia rather than fly, now that the big airline strike was almost certain to occur.

Pursuant to Will's instructions from a week before, Tiny had followed up a number of leads in the Mary Sue Fellows case.

His contact with attorney Stanley Kennelworth had been a bust. By the time Tiny had talked to him, Kennelworth had been fired by Joe Fellows as his attorney, and was in no mood to talk.

But Tiny did follow up on the ownership of Continental Motors, the car dealership from which the local attorney had gotten his brand-new Jaguar.

Continental Motors was owned by a two-man partnership consisting of Ambrose Deacon, a flashy multimillionaire and owner of several sports franchises, and Jason Bell Purdy.

Social worker Liz Luden had been surprisingly cooperative when Tiny had contacted her. According to the written demand that Will had served before his incarceration, Luden had to permit Tiny, as an official investigator, to peruse through her file on Mary Sue Fellows.

Most notable in Tiny's review of the four-inch stack of documents was a small, handwritten phone message. The name of the caller was absent, but the note had been taken by “LL” (Tiny
presumed that was Liz Luden), and it documented a phone conversation. The caller had indicated that he or she had some reason to believe that Mary Sue Fellows was “poisoning her little boy Joshua—with hydraulic brake fluid.”

Bob Smiley, the insurance agent, had been playing a persistent game of dodgeball with Tiny, not answering his phone calls, and complaining that he was just on his way to a “meeting” the one occasion Tiny had cornered him at his office. The agent had indicated he'd been unable to locate the file he'd discussed with Will Chambers but would continue looking for it.

Tiny finished jotting down a few notes, glanced at his watch, and then decided he would breeze by the Delphi hospital to give his greetings to Will, thinking he ought to pay the injured man his respects.

As Tiny maneuvered his huge frame through the hospital room door, Will had just finished dressing and was ready to be discharged.

“My oh my,” Tiny exclaimed, “aren't you a sight for sore eyes!”

“Hey—I've been out of things for a while. So I hope you have some great news about our case.”

Tiny walked up closer and checked out Will's black eyes, his gauze-covered broken nose, and the bandage around his head. After a few seconds of solemn silence, Tiny spoke up.

“Will, my man, there's one thing they did not teach you in law school.”

“What's that?”

“How to duck.” Tiny enjoyed his own joke with a belly laugh.

“Well, I
thought
I was glad you'd stopped by,” Will remarked. “But anyway, I need a drive over to my car at the courthouse. I hope it hasn't been towed away.”

On the way over, Tiny reviewed the results of his investigation. The lawyer was particularly interested in the anonymous telephone message accusing Mary Sue of poisoning her child.

After he'd studied a photocopy of the note that Tiny had obtained, Will muttered something.

“What was that?” Tiny asked.

“Just something that keeps going around in my mind. Something on this note. Something that's at the bottom of this case.
Hydraulic brake fluid.
”

As they got within a few blocks of the courthouse Will turned to him with an idea.

“Tiny, before you drop me off, let's go out to the Fellowses' farm. There's something I want to look at.”

Tiny pulled into the drive of St. Stephen the Martyr Catholic Church. As he was turning the car around, Will noticed a sign that announced the time of daily masses. Below, the sign also bore a pastoral message, which Father Godfrey would post for the encouragement or edification of passersby.

This week's message read,

CONFESSION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL

Tiny pulled his big Cadillac back on the road, and they headed out to the countryside and the farm.

Tiny unlocked the house with the key he'd picked up from the jail, where Joe Fellows' belongings were being kept. The two men walked in. The two-story farmhouse had the musty smell of not having been occupied for several weeks. The windows were closed, and everything was silent.

They walked up to the second floor, and as they reached the top of the stairs, Will noticed a pair of child's yellow plastic binoculars lying on the carpet and glanced out the hall window that gave a good view of the winding dirt road that led from the main highway to the front yard. Will and Tiny looked through each room—not knowing exactly what they were looking for, but finding nothing significant in any event.

Walking downstairs to the kitchen, they noticed a few dishes in the sink from some forgotten breakfast.

It was then that Will walked to the garage, which was connected to the kitchen by a door that had been left ajar. The two-car garage contained only one vehicle there—an older-model
pickup truck. The front hood had been left propped open and two oily red rags were lying over the radiator.

Will stood staring at the truck, until he noticed Tiny's large bulk looming behind him.

“Okay, chief—what's the deal?” he asked.

“Joe and Mary Sue had two trucks.”

“So?”

“The other truck was the one that broke down on the highway when Mary Sue was trying to escape. I know that truck was impounded by the sheriff's department. It says so in their report.”

“Well—what's the big mystery?”

“No mystery,” Will said. “It's just that Mary Sue never mentioned the second truck. This truck was being worked on before the deputies arrested Joe.”

Tiny did not see the connection or the point and simply shrugged.

They locked up the house, climbed into Tiny's big Cadillac, and headed back to Delphi, where Will would pick up his Corvette.

He was anxious to get back to the houseboat, take a shower, and then start his frantic last-minute preparation for Mary Sue's trial, which was now only a few days away.

38

A
S
T
INY WAS PULLING UP
to Will's Corvette in downtown Delphi, he was suggesting something to his passenger.

“Look, I've got a room in a motel here, but maybe I'd better stay on the houseboat where you are. You may need a bodyguard.”

“Bodyguard? Where were you when I really needed you?” Will asked with a chuckle.

“I'm serious,” Tiny protested. “Look, can't you tell I've dropped twenty pounds? I've been trying to exercise—get back into shape. You know there was a time in my former life, when I was a cop in the military—you know, I was a lean, mean, fighting machine!”

“Thanks anyway,” Will replied. “I really don't need a bodyguard. On the other hand, if you like the Huckleberry Finn life of living on a high-class raft, why don't you join me? There's only one bed, though—you may have to try to make yourself comfortable on the couch.”

“Me on a couch?” Tiny said with a laugh. “Look, if you don't need protection, I think I'll pass on that and stay at the motel.”

Tiny headed off while Will climbed into his Corvette and gunned it off in the direction of Eden Lake. It seemed as if he had been gone for weeks. He recognized the familiar “Tex, the Flying Cowboy” sign and the road that led down to the water.

It was late afternoon, and the sun was getting low on the horizon over the quiet surface of the lake when he pulled up to the dock, looking forward to getting settled back into something normal.