“She was pregnant,” Larry asked, “with
Silas had taken hold of the bed rail.
“Is that why you left?” Larry staring at him. “Went to Oxford?”
“Part of why.”
“To meet her?”
Silas said, “Larry-”
“Was it a boy or girl?”
“What?”
“The baby. Your baby.”
“There wasn’t,” Silas said, “a baby.”
French pulled his hand away in disgust. “Jesus Christ.”
“Roy-” Lolly said.
Larry looking puzzled.
“Larry.” Silas made himself face him. “I’m the one owes you an apology. More than that. See, Cindy, she wasn’t ever pregnant. She just…said that cause she knew you’d bring her to see me. I didn’t know that’s what she was doing, then. We were in love, or thought we were.”
Larry saying nothing, his open face.
“That night,” Silas went on, “after you dropped her off? We drove out to a field we used to go to, and we argued. She wanted to run away together, but I-” How to say it. “I had my baseball career ahead of me, and my momma was after me not to see her. It wouldn’t have worked, for half a dozen reasons. So I just took her home.”
Larry said, “Took her home.”
“Yeah.”
“You got there early.”
“Yeah. She didn’t wait on you cause she was mad at me. She just run off down the road, in the dark.”
“Where Cecil was.”
“Yeah.”
They stared at one another, Silas aware of what Larry must be thinking, how Cecil would have stood up as she came in the door, her face red, tears streaking her cheeks, him holding his beer, stumbling forward, toward her, yelling. Outside, Silas driving away in his mother’s car, faster and faster, Larry heading there at the same moment, the two boys missing each other by a few minutes, maybe their cars even met on the dark highway, lights on high beam, both too distracted to think of dimming, both flinching against the oncoming bright.
“He killed her,” Larry said.
The doctor was back in the room, tapping his watch.
“This interview”-Lolly stepping between Silas and French, putting an avuncular arm over both their shoulders-”might need to be concluded, fellows. For now.”
“Wait,” Larry said as French began to fasten his restraints. “We were friends. Weren’t we, Silas?”
“You were, Larry,” he said. “I don’t know what I was.”
SILAS FOLLOWED FRENCH and Lolly to the Sheriff’s Department and parked next to French’s Bronco. The chief got out and dropped a cigarette on the asphalt and ground it with his boot toe, looking up to where a reef of dark, swollen clouds, like a tidal wave, seemed ready to tumble over the building, wind on Silas’s cheeks, the Mississippi flag snapping on its pole and the asphalt freckled with rain. Lolly hurried back to his reserved spot by the handicap space to roll up his windows and then French held the door and the three of them walked inside, Silas like so many others summoned down to this redbrick building, to be questioned. Interviewed. They stopped at the receptionist’s desk, French and Lolly getting their messages, as Silas stood numbly behind.
He followed them to French’s box of an office lined with filing cabinets. The CI tossed his recorder on his desk with cardboard evidence boxes stacked beneath and, overhead, a bookshelf lined with videotapes and manuals and three-ring binders. To the left a dry erase board on which his current cases were listed, Tina Rutherford first, M &M second, a string of burglaries, a car theft, a rape, and, at the bottom, Larry Ott’s shooting. Silas sat in a folding chair while Lolly closed the door and French clicked on his coffeemaker. The sheriff stood with his arms on the top of a filing cabinet and took a can of Skoal from his pocket and fingered himself out a dip.
French rolled his chair from under his desk and sat, the coffee starting to drip.
“Okay,” he said. “Talk.”
“THAT’S A HELL of a story,” French said when he’d finished, telling everything but being Larry’s half brother.
He’d poured a cup of coffee and handed it to Silas, then made another and given it to Lolly. “But you want a little advice? If I was you? I wouldn’t go too public with it. You know what I mean? Back in 1982? Might a been a good time. Then they could’ve made Cecil Walker the suspect. Questioned him at least. But since he’s been dead awhile-”
“Cancer,” the sheriff said. “If it’s any consolation, he had a tough go at the end.”
“And now,” French went on, “here you been carrying this information around with you for a quarter-century. I understand your reasons. But considering they never found the Walker girl’s body, and Ott never did no time-”
“Shit,” Silas said. “Larry’s done time his whole life.”
“Well, you reaching into ethics here, I’d say. Or civil law one. And both of them’s a tad outside our jurisdiction. But considering he never went to prison, it might be best to let sleeping dogs lie. We’ll focus on the current case. If he’s innocent, it’ll come out.”
“So none of what I’ve told yall changes anything,” Silas asked, “about Tina Rutherford?”
“Like what?”
“Like whoever killed her’s probably cashing in on Larry’s reputation. If I’d killed her,” Silas said, “guess where I’d bury her?”
“We know where you would,” French said, “but it wasn’t a lot of folks aware of that little tomb, was it? And Ott, before you busted in and started fucking everything up, he’d give what I’d consider to be a preliminary confession. What about you, Sheriff?”
“Sounded like one to me. Enough to keep him clipped to his bed. Keep Skip by the door.”
“But not you,” French said to Silas. “I think you’ll understand why, as of now, I’m taking you off guard duty.”
“Yeah,” Silas said.
AT THE HOSPITAL, his shoulders and hat wet from rain, he stopped and talked a moment with Skip, who got up from his chair by the door.
“You early,” he said. “You hear he confessed?”
“Yeah.” It was the day for it. “I ain’t staying.”
“Can you babysit him a minute? I need a smoke.”
“Go on.”
Silas watched him hurry down the hall, and when he was sure the man was gone and wasn’t coming back, he slipped into the room. Larry lay with his eyes closed, turned toward the window, his bandaged chest rising and falling.
Silas said, “Larry.”
He shifted. Opened his eyes and peered up where Silas stood holding his hat.
“Hey,” Silas said.
Larry lay watching him. Then he opened his lips and said something, his voice so quiet Silas came forward, leaned in.
“Do what, Larry?”
“All this time,” he said, “she’s been dead?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.”
“And all this time, you’ve been the one that dropped her off.”
“I’m sorry.”
“All this time people thinking it was me.”
“Look,” Silas said, “we can talk about that. We will. I got a lot to say to you. Hell of a lot, more than you know.
