Prayers the Devil Answers (24 page)

“The relatives? You think they might storm the jail to get at him?”

Galen sighed. “Well, I don't. That kind of thing usually happens when some stranger has raped a local girl, which hasn't happened for as long as I can remember, either. But we didn't think you'd want to take any chances.”

“You mean lock the door and pass out the rifles?”

He smiled. “Cowboy movies don't have a lot to do with real life, do they? I expect, though, that just having all of us here in the office would be enough of a deterrent to any crew of drunks. Of course, unlocking the gun cabinet wouldn't hurt.”

Unless the mob was to get inside
, I thought
.
But the idea of a gang of local folks
trying to break in and lynch a prisoner seemed more farfetched to me than any movie. Especially if the killer wasn't a stranger preying on an innocent girl, which apparently he wasn't. “But this murder—why did the man do it, Galen?”

He just shrugged. “I asked Tyree that myself. People always want to know why, don't they? But sometimes even the killer himself doesn't know why.”

“Somebody must have asked him about it, though.”

“Asked, but not answered. Tyree said the man hadn't responded to any questions at all. Tyree said he reckoned that what he did was cheaper than a divorce.”

I didn't say anything. By now I had come to understand that peace
officers often made grim jokes about the tragedies they had to deal with—like whistling in the dark, I guess.

When we got to the office, Falcon and Roy were also there. Tyree must have sent someone to fetch them, too. They were sitting around the reception desk, with mugs of coffee in front of them, watching the front door and talking quietly among themselves. When Galen and I came in, they all stood up, which wasn't something they did for me as a rule, but I suppose the seriousness of the occasion seemed to call for it.

Tyree nodded toward the door that led to the cells. “Prisoner's in there.”

I hesitated, because I wasn't sure whether I ought to sit down and get a briefing from Tyree as the arresting officer, or interview the prisoner for myself. A stranger and a killer—we didn't often have either one to contend with. “Should I go to talk to him now?”

“I wouldn't bother. When I brought him in an hour ago, the fellow was crying so hard I reckon even your boy Eddie could have arrested him singlehanded. He couldn't have fought a June bug by then. Then ten minutes after we clapped him in the cell, he was sound asleep. Guess throwing his wife over that cliff took everything he had.”

The Hawk's Wing wasn't anywhere near the settlement where Albert and I grew up, but like everybody else in these parts, we had gone out there every now and again, usually for a summer picnic or a church outing. You could see all creation from the rock, but it wasn't hard to imagine what would happen to somebody who fell off it. I wondered if the man's poor wife had any idea what was happening, or if her last conscious thought had been
Why?
I shuddered.

Tyree caught my expression. “That's right. Threw her off The Hawk's Wing. And the dern fool did it in front of a couple of witnesses.”

“Well, I expect that will save the prosecutor some time at trial.” It
shocked me, but I couldn't let on. “Too bad
you
weren't out there on the rock with the fellow instead of the wife.”

Falcon laughed. “That would have been a different story, all right. I don't think anybody could throw Tyree here off a cliff with a pitchfork.”

Roy took a swallow of coffee. “The killer wouldn't have tried to attack Tyree, though, you know. I've noticed that the kind of man who beats up on women or children doesn't usually have too much sand when it comes to taking on grown men. Bullies are cowards.”

“And he didn't ever say why he did it? Did it look like they were fighting out there on the rock?”

“Witnesses said not. You can talk to them in the morning too. A college boy and his girlfriend were the ones who saw it happen. Spoiled their walk in the woods, that's for sure. But they did just fine. The boy stayed with the killer while his girl went to get help.”

“So the college fellow spent time with the prisoner? Did he have any idea why he did it?” I wasn't really asking those questions as part of my job. I just wanted to know, same as every old gossip in town would come morning. Maybe it was because until a few weeks back I had been a wife, and whenever there was violence between a married couple, women couldn't help but have a
there but for the grace of God
feeling.

“The killer hasn't said anything to anybody. Period.” Tyree smirked. “I expect it was the woman's fault, though—bound to be. She wasn't pretty, by the way—I saw the body before they took it away to the morgue, and her face was blood-streaked, but not much damaged, but, I mean, even before she hit the ground she wasn't pretty.”

“That might have been reason enough,” said Galen, but he laughed as if he wanted us to think he was kidding.

Falcon considered it. “The guy married her, though, so he must have thought she looked all right at one time—unless he married her
for some particular reason, like maybe her daddy had money or there was a baby on the way.”

Tyree shrugged. “Maybe she was unfaithful, or ill-tempered, or a sluttish housekeeper—one way or another, you have to figure she must have had it coming.”

Galen nodded. “Stands to reason. You don't just pitch a woman off a cliff unless she was asking for it, one way or another.”

I didn't rise to the bait there, but I was tempted to say that if the woman had killed her husband, instead of the other way around, the men in the community would have found a way to blame her just the same. At that point I don't remember having an opinion at all about the whys of the incident. It's amazing how many things are none of your business when you get right down to it. Most people don't feel that way, though, more's the pity, especially when it comes to big news in a sleepy little town. Pretty soon everybody I met on the street would be asking me for all the gory details about the killing, and the whys and wherefores besides. If they didn't get any answers, they'd invent them.

“I'll go back there and see the prisoner first thing in the morning,” I told the deputies, stifling a yawn. “Maybe I can get him to talk.”

Galen shook his head. “You can try, Sheriff, but he doesn't seem real partial to women.”

He was making another joke, but I didn't laugh.

It was nearly dawn by the time I got home, but I wrapped myself in our old bear-claw quilt and slept on the sofa, because I was too tired to lie awake thinking up ways to interrogate the suspect. I wasn't even sure it was my job to question the man. We had eyewitnesses, so it hardly mattered why he did it. That was a problem for the court to hash out. But I wanted to talk to him, and I had the right to do so, so I would. I was thankful that the Aldridges had kept Eddie and George for the night, because it gave me an extra hour of sleep.

I didn't know what to expect at the office, having a bona fide
murderer locked up in the jail, and on the way to work I wondered what sort of folks I would have to deal with—newspaper reporters, bossy defense lawyers, anguished relatives, or worried county commissioners. None of them were on hand when I arrived, though. Tyree, looking rumpled and cross, was just getting off work when I came in.

“It's been quiet since you left, Sheriff,” he said between yawns. “Roy stayed over, because we figured we ought to have somebody watching the prisoner, in case somebody tried to break him out of jail, or if he finally realized the seriousness of what he'd done and tried to do away with himself in his cell. I thought a woman-killer might take the coward's way out. Not that a suicide wouldn't have saved the state a lot of time and effort, but it would have looked like he outsmarted us if he died on our watch.”

“I guess it would. Is the prisoner awake yet?”

“I doubt it. I came back last night and drank coffee with Roy for an hour in case the killer tried to give us any trouble, but he never even woke up. This morning Roy told me that he went back there to check on the prisoner a time or two during the night, but every time he looked, the fellow was sprawled out on his cot, dead to the world. Best thing for everybody, I reckon. I'd hate to be him when he wakes up, though, and remembers where he is and why.”

I looked back at the closed door, bolted now as an extra precaution. “He slept? After what he'd done? How could he sleep?”

Tyree yawned again and scratched his head. “Well, I'm not sure I can make sense of it for you, but it happens a lot with prisoners. You'd be surprised. A fellow spends weeks stewing over something he's mad about, and then when he finally lashes out against whatever was deviling him he gets more relaxed than a baby bottle-fed on bourbon. It's over then, and the pressure is finally off for him, I guess.”

Maybe the pressure was off then, but I thought that was the place where conscience ought to come in. Apparently it hadn't. “Well, it's
morning now, and this is a jail, not a resort hotel, so go wake him up and tell him I'll be back there to question him.”

“By yourself, ma'am?”

“Yes, by myself. The cell door is locked, isn't it? And you can hear me if I yell. Now roust him out.”

At a little crossroads east of Elizabethton, there's a gas station that keeps a full-grown black bear in a cage of iron bars. That old bear must weight two, three hundred pounds, but people buy candy bars and bottles of soda pop and hand them to him inside the bars, and he gulps them right down and smacks his lips, just as if he were an old man instead of a beast. Now if that bear was to get out of the cage, I reckon he could tear those gas station cowboys limb from limb, but he's been in that cage as long as I can remember, and all he wants these days is his afternoon treats. Things in cages aren't as fearsome as they are in the wild. So was I afraid to face this man who had pitched his wife off a mountaintop? Not particularly, I decided. Right now he was a caged bear, and anyhow, he wasn't the first murderer I'd ever been acquainted with. He'd be the first one I ever saw in jail, I guess, but when Albert and I were growing up in the settlement, there was a farmer who had got into a feud with his neighbor over a calf that had been killed by the other one's dog. The cussing gave way to shouting, and the shouting gave way to shooting, and in a trice the other fellow was as dead as his slaughtered calf. All the relatives were mad about it, of course, but the farmer never did go to jail for the murder. He claimed the shooting was self-defense and since nobody could prove otherwise, they didn't even arrest him. The folks at church were leery of him ever after, though. When he was a youngblood and a drinker, the farmer had been known for having a fearsome temper, and some people said that getting away with murder might teach him a lesson he hadn't needed to learn. But although the settlement waited a long time to see if he'd strike again, that turned out to be the end of it. The farmer went right on about his business as if nothing had ever
happened, and now, years later, there's hardly a one of us who hadn't shaken his hand or passed the time of day with him at the store, same as if he was just anybody. He didn't ever seem sorry about what had happened, but he treated everybody else just fine, so by and by people came to forget that he had ever done murder at all.

I guess it's not always like a dog killing chickens. Maybe some people just get caught up in a bad situation . . . maybe it wasn't even their fault.

But that cell door was going to stay locked all the same.

Instead of heading home, Tyree insisted on staying an extra half hour and walking me as far as the locked door that led to the cells. He unbolted it and stepped back, sitting down behind the extra desk beside the door. He swiveled the chair toward the door. “I'll be out here cleaning my weapon, then. If I hear anything going on in there, I'll be inside in two seconds.”

I smiled. “With a disassembled gun, Tyree?”

“I'll clean a rifle then.” Even the gentlest teasing rankled Tyree, especially when it came from women.

“All right, Tyree, but I'll be fine.” I tried to smile, knowing he meant well. His overprotective attitude might be a sign of things to come, though. When the commissioners appointed me sheriff, they hadn't bargained on this either.

chapter thirteen

T
he jail corridor wasn't more than forty feet long, which didn't give me much time to think about how I expected the prisoner to be, or what I was going to say to him. It didn't matter, though. I wasn't there to interrogate him, but just to see him for myself, since he was housed in my jail. Just before I went in, it crossed my mind to ask Tyree for a weapon to take with me, but I decided that a gun would be more dangerous than helpful. If I was unarmed, the prisoner could not reach through the bars and take a pistol away from me. I would stay past arm's length from the bars and take things as they came.

The reek of ammonia and washing powder in the corridor almost masked the stale odors of urine and sweat, but there wasn't a lot we could do about that, since the only toilet in the cell was a bucket in the corner that was emptied once a day. Although I didn't go back to the cells any oftener than I had to, the sour smell didn't disturb me after the first shock to my senses. It had knocked me back at first, but when I realized that the smell reminded me of Georgie's diaper pail from a year or so ago, I didn't mind it so much anymore. It might be a different story in here, though, come summertime.

No sound was coming from that one occupied cell, but I stopped a few feet away and watched. The prisoner wasn't sleeping. He was
sitting hunched over on the end of his bunk, staring down at the floor. If he had heard me come in he gave no sign. I stood there for a bit, watching him out of curiosity.

I didn't know him, had never laid eyes on him before as best I could remember. Galen had already checked the records in the file cabinets, but he hadn't been arrested before—at least not in this county. He was a short and wiry fellow—the men from around here generally are. His hair was straight and dark—not Indian black, but the walnut brown that is also common around here. I'd have bet that when I could see his face, his eyes would turn out to be blue. He kept staring at the floor—not weeping, or praying, or doing anything that gave me indication of his state of mind. How are you expected to act after you've killed somebody and gotten caught? How do you feel? Sorry you did it, or just sorry you didn't get away with it? I didn't know what to say to a jailed murderer. I was too busy telling myself not to be afraid.

“Do you need anything?” As soon as I said it, I thought,
Now there's a typical woman's question
. Acting as if he was a houseguest, and I was ready to bring him a bar of soap and some fresh towels.

The prisoner turned to look at me then, and I could see that he was somewhere around thirty, but because of what he'd been through he looked older: ashen-faced and haggard, with dark circles under his eyes. Though he had slept last night, it hadn't done him much good. I thought back to the days after Albert died when I must have looked like that. It struck me as odd, though, that the prisoner would seem so distraught over his loss when he had been the cause of his wife's death. If I could have saved Albert, I would have; surely I was more entitled to mourn than someone who had not just lost his mate, but killed her. Or maybe he looked haggard from grieving over himself, knowing that his life was over as surely as hers was.

He looked at his scratched and grubby hands. “I'd like to wash up, if that's allowed.”

I nodded. “I'll see that you get a pan of warm water, and some soap and towels. I'm the county sheriff.” I thought I'd better make that clear, in case he mistook me for a housekeeper. I reckon to most people I looked more like one of them than I did a sheriff. “Name's Robbins.”

That news seemed to take his mind off his troubles. “A woman sheriff?” He peered at me through the bars as if I were an apparition. “Never thought I'd see the day. And in these mountains too. Who did you run against? A billy goat? No, wait, I remember. You're the last sheriff's widow, aren't you?”

“Appointed to finish his term. But, be that as it may, I am the one in charge here.”

He rubbed his eyes, seeming to be searching his memory. “Appointed. That's right. I heard about that. Nothing against you, ma'am, I'm sure you're doing a fine job. It's just that in the general way the men around here don't seem too partial to putting a woman in charge of anything.”

At least they don't usually kill them
, I was thinking. But there wasn't any point in baiting the prisoner. “And you are Lonnie Varden, according to the arrest warrant.”

That reminded him of his situation, and he stopped looking at me and went back to staring at the floor. “The
late
Lonnie Varden, maybe. I don't reckon I'll be anybody for much longer.”

I didn't know what to say to that. Was he trying to tell me he was planning to kill himself in the jail cell? I glanced down at his feet. Muddy boots. No shoelaces. I ought to have a word with the deputies, just in case. I thought about asking a minister to step in and have a word with him, because counseling murderers was something I had no idea how to do and didn't have much taste for anyhow. A wife-killer. How was I supposed to react to that? I couldn't very well tell a killer that what he did would be forgiven—at least not in this world—and I couldn't assure him that everything was going to be
all right, because he and I both knew that it wouldn't be. There are people who get away with murder sometimes, but mostly they are either rich or well-connected, or else they have the good sense to kill somebody that nobody much minded about, like a horse thief caught in the act.

“You asked me before if I needed anything.”

“Yes. You asked if you could wash up. I'll arrange it directly.”

“I guess a bottle of whisky is out of the question. Or a steak. But how about some paper and pencils or colored chalk?” He must have seen my surprise, because he hastened to add, “I'm by way of being an artist.”

“Paper and drawing pens? I don't know if that's allowed.” I didn't know what was allowed. Most of our prisoners didn't stay long enough to want anything, other than a few hot meals. Once in a while someone would want a pencil and paper to write a letter, or a magazine to help pass the time, but little else.

“Would that worry you?” He smiled. “In case I was to draw a door over there in the wall, open it up, and escape through it? I'm an artist, but I'm not that good.”

I smiled to be polite, but I didn't approve of a killer making jokes in a jail cell. I knew that his lightness didn't necessarily mean he was heartless, though—not if he was from around here, and I thought from his way of talking that he was. Among mountain folk, if you got your foot shot off and people asked you how you were, you were supposed to say something like,
“It only hurts when I laugh.”
I thought that was likely to be the prisoner's code of conduct: never show your pain, no matter what. Maybe that was because you didn't want people pitying you on top of everything else, or maybe it was supposed to prove how tough you were. Sometimes I think that men came up with codes of bravery because they didn't have childbirth to provide them with the opportunity to suffer pain and risk their lives.

After considering his request for art supplies, I offered him an alternative. “I could get you a book.”

“Instead of paints and canvas, you mean?” He shook his head. “I doubt if I could keep my mind on the story. But drawing makes me concentrate. Maybe if I could draw, I might manage to forget—”

“So you're a real artist?” I wanted to keep him talking about things that wouldn't upset him. “Are you from around here?”

“Used to be.” He shrugged. “Am I from here? Same mountains, anyhow. I've lived here a couple of years, though. I don't make my living being an artist anymore—mainly because you can't make a living as an artist these days—not that it was ever easy, even at the best of times. I expect you have seen a sample of my work, though.”

I shook my head. “Couldn't have. There aren't any museums around here.”

“You won't find my work in any museums. My painting is over in the post office. The mural of the pioneer fort on the wall above the post office boxes. It was the first one I did when the government sent me to this area to paint scenery in public buildings. Well, one of the last ones, too, because that's when I met Celia and decided to settle down. Can't support a wife and family on what an artist makes. I couldn't, anyhow.”

“You have children?”

“No. But back when we got married, we thought we would—same as everybody, I guess. But no babies had come yet. If I had known different in the beginning, I guess I could have kept trying to be a painter. We could have gotten by for sure if the state would let lady schoolteachers keep working after they got married. When I first met her, Celia was making ninety dollars a month. Then we got married, and it was all on me. So I got a real job working at the sawmill. Instead of having a gallery full of paintings, I have a wall in a backwoods post office.”

“I've seen it many a time,” I said. “It's a good picture. Folks can
tell right off what it's supposed to be, and you drew it just the way I always thought it would look. I think I mighta had an ancestor in that fort; at least I told my boys that, and they like going to see it.” I wanted to ask him how somebody could paint such a beautiful scene and yet treat another human being so cruelly, but I guess it only takes a minute to do something evil that you can't take back, and, fair or not, that one action can cancel out all the years of your life you spent doing good. If that was what happened to him, I could feel sorry for him, but I didn't know anything about why he had killed that woman, and even if I had known, forgiveness was no part of my job.

“My youngest boy always wants to go with me to the post office so he can look at the Tennessee cowboys, as he calls them. Georgie's a great one for westerns.”

He looked pleased at that. “I'm happy he likes it, and glad you think the mural is good. Being from around here you'd be more likely to know if I got the details right. My—my wife helped me figure out how the fort ought to look.” His voice shook a little when he said that, and I knew that for a few minutes he had forgotten she was dead. I tried to think of something else to say on another topic, but it probably didn't matter: sooner or later whatever we talked about would lead his train of thought back to the killing.

“Celia. My wife,” he spoke very softly now, staring at the floor. “She liked it too. When we were courting she helped with the planning of it, so I put her in it as a way of thanking her. One of the pioneer women down by the river has her face. The one in the brown dress.”

“I remember.” I did recall the figure in the brown dress, but not what her face looked like. Next time I went to the post office I would look again. Had she been pretty? Did it matter whether she had been or not?

“I guess you could say that painting of the fort is my legacy. I don't reckon I'll ever paint any more murals now.”

I couldn't think of anything to say, because I was pretty sure he
was right about that, so I said, “I just came to look in on you, now that you're awake. I wanted to see how you're faring. They tell me that last night you said you didn't need a doctor.”

“A doctor?” He shrugged, rubbing a scabbed-over scratch on the side of his face. “I walked into some briars on the way down the mountain. It was near dark by then. Felt like a horsewhip at the time, but I reckon I'm all right now.” He looked around him at the tiny cell. “Considering.”

The meal tray, on the floor beside the cell door, held an untouched metal bowl of watery oatmeal and a tin cup of cold black coffee.

“You weren't hungry?”

He managed a wry smile. “It wasn't too hard to resist this morning's offerings.”

A few more hours in captivity would make him less finicky about what he ate. Or maybe he just didn't want to admit that what he had done had taken away his appetite. Anyhow, he had other things on his mind—or he ought to have had. I wanted to ask him why he did it, but nobody around here asks prying questions if they can help it. It's not fitten. We keep ourselves to ourselves. Whys aren't any of my business. Such questions are for courts and judges. It did seem odd, though, to have a soft-spoken, cultured painter locked up for murder. I thought artists were peaceable sorts. Now a likkered-up logger or a young lout with a temper and a mean streak—that wouldn't have surprised me, but a mild-mannered artist is not what small towns usually get in the way of killers.

“Have you got you a lawyer yet?”

The question didn't seem to interest him. “A lawyer? Don't know any. Don't trust any either. Besides, I doubt they accept payment in the form of a painting—unless one of 'em is mighty fond of his dog.”

“You're charged with murder. You have to have a lawyer, like it or not. Maybe your family can contact somebody for you. Do they know you're here? Do we need to get word to anybody?”

“I left my family a long time ago. I don't want to see anybody. Not anywhere, but especially not here.”

“If you have people, they're bound to find out, so you might as well get word to them. Even if you parted with them on bad terms, like as not, they'll come through for you now. Families mostly do. I hope they can help you, because the sooner you get a lawyer the better off you will be, it seems to me.”

“I'll think on it.”

“Do that. It's not my place to give you legal advice, but common sense ought to tell you it won't do you any good just to sit here and do nothing.”

He stifled a yawn. “I'm tired. I just want to sleep. When I sleep, all this goes away. The nightmare is being awake.”

Sleeping wouldn't solve anything, but I knew how tempting it was, because I remembered those days after I lost Albert, when sleep was the only refuge there was from sorrow and pain. After a few weeks it got better, but I wasn't sure it ever would for this prisoner, because his grief was tempered with guilt. “If you'd like a preacher to stop in and see you later today, I think we could arrange that.”