Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

said, things can get outta hand so quick it’s like the world’s in fast-forward. But the way you feeling now, Larry? And how you felt when you put that gun to your chest and pulled the trigger? That ain’t going away. It’s only gone get worse. I been in law enforcement a long stretch now, and the one thing I can tell you for sure is that the only way you’ll ever feel better about this is to own up and pay the price.”

“Okay,” Larry said.

twelve

SILAS FULL OF dread, switching his hat one hand to the other, waiting for the hospital elevator, its third-floor light lit so long he imagined somebody must be holding the door. He knew what was going on up there now, Lolly and French coercing Larry, wheedling him, crafting a confession, French so damn smooth at what he called interviewing that people said he could make a stump confess to saying “timber.”

Finally the elevator doors slid open and Silas stepped in, pressed “3” and the doors closed. On the third floor he excused himself between a pair of nurses holding cigarettes and lighters and hurried down the hall, Skip rising with his newspaper to meet him. A doctor talking on his cell phone, finger in his other ear.

“Hey, 32,” Skip said.

“Skip.” Nodding at the door. “They in there?”

“Yep. Bout twenty minutes, this time.”

The doctor snapped his phone shut. “Can I help you? I’m Dan Milton, Mr. Ott’s physician.”

Silas offered his hand. “32 Jones.”

They shook.

“The officer who found the Rutherford girl?”

Nodding, looking from Skip to Milton. “Can I go in?”

Before either could answer, he’d entered the room, Skip and the doctor saying “Wait,” together, following him in.

French turned and Lolly rose from his chair, his hand on his pistol.

“Speak of the devil,” French said. He pointed to the door and Skip nodded and left, but the doctor stayed.

Larry raised his head and, when he saw Silas, smiled, his eyes misted with drugs, but he still moved his hand up to his lips, covering his mouth, like he did when he was a kid, his wrist red from the restraints.

“Hey, Silas. There you are.”

“Hey, Larry. Here I am.” He wondered should he offer to shake his hand. “How you feeling?”

“Not too good. They say I shot myself and killed that girl, but I can’t remember doing either. And now they want me to say I killed Cindy Walker, too.”

“You had enough, Mr. Ott?” Dr. Milton said. “You want me to ask these gentlemen to come back tomorrow?”

Larry said, “No, sir. I’m glad Silas is here.”

“Press your buzzer,” Milton said, “if you need me.” He glanced at French, then the sheriff, and left the room.

“Chief,” Silas said. “Can we have a moment or two? Me and Larry?”

“Not right yet,” French said. “But you can stay and witness our interview.”

Interview.

“Did you come in my room at night?” Larry asked Silas.

“Yeah.” Silas willing him to shut up, not say more, wait till they could be alone. He focused on the bed rail, long, stainless steel, one of the restraints looped on it halfway up. He felt like a kid caught in a lie. “Sometimes.”

“You was feeding Momma’s chickens, too?”

“Yeah. I never did move the pen, way you do.”

“Did you bring me Night Shift?” The men followed his eyes to the book on the table between the beds. The gauze-wrapped hand on the cover, the eyes in its palm gazing out, seeing all.

“Yeah,” Silas said.

“Thanks.”

“You welcome.”

“Did you ever read it?”

“Yeah.”

“You like it?”

“No,” he said. “Horror, it ain’t my thing. Too much of that in real life.” He wanted to say how Larry’s versions, way back when, were better, but French cleared his throat.

“If we can end our Oprah book club, we was just telling Larry here that his guilt won’t go away till he owns up to what he’s done. Ain’t you found that to be the case, 32?”

“Only if he’s done something.” Silas sensed French stiffen, heard Lolly squeak in his chair.

“Tell em, Silas,” Larry said, “that we used to be friends.”

“Yeah,” French said. “Tell us, Silas.”

“We was,” he told Larry.

“Friends, huh?” French kept his eyes on Silas. “Yall meet at school?”

“No.” Larry seemed stronger now, buoyed, a splotch of color coming into his cheeks. He shifted in his sheets, flexing his hands. “We couldn’t be friends there cause Silas was black. We used to play out in the woods. Remember, Silas?”

“This might,” French said, “be a good time to get back on track. You want to tell us what really happened to Cindy Walker, Larry?”

“Wait,” Silas said.

The sheriff coughed behind them and French fixed him with a hard gaze, one that said, Don’t fuck up.

“I took her where she asked me to,” Larry said, oblivious, it seemed, to the tension mounting in the room. “And I let her out. Then I drove off.”

“That’s what you’ve been saying all these years,” French said. “Tell us the rest. It’s time, Larry. Like I said, it ain’t going away, this guilt.”

“It wasn’t him,” Silas said.

“Constable Jones,” the sheriff now, “you want to wait in the hall?”

“No, I don’t.”

The room quiet except for the tick and beeping of Larry’s machines. Silas aware of the chief’s hot eyes on his face and the sheriff’s on his back like the red dots of laser sights.

“Is there something you want to say, then?” French asked.

Here it all came. A quarter of a century bunching up on him, bearing down, a truck slamming on its brakes and its logs sliding forward, over the cab, through the window, the back of his head, shooting past him in the road.

“It was me,” he said, turning away from French.

“You.”

“I’m the one picked her up after Larry dropped her off. In the woods. I’m the one let her off at her road.”

Larry said, “What?”

French clamped his fingers on Silas’s shoulder and turned him so he could see his face. “Wait,” he said. “It was you that Larry took her to see in 1982?”

Yes, it was him.

“You mean,” French said, “he’s been telling the truth all this time? And that you, in fact, were the last person to see her alive?”

Silas nodding.

“It was you?” Larry asked.

“Yeah.”