“I was just wondering what you had in mind, Deputy.”
Walter wiped his mouth with his napkin. “My ulterior motive, you mean.”
“That’ll do,” Delroy said.
Narrowing his eyes in irritation, Walter asked, “You always been this suspicious?”
“No.”
“Well then, you should get away from it. It ain’t becomin’.”
Embarrassment stung Delroy and turned his face hot.
Walter returned his attention to his plate. “I say anything to you that makes you think I got some ulterior motive?”
“Not yet.”
The deputy shook his head. “I ain’t got but a couple things I want to make sure of.” He counted them off on his thick, blunt fingers while maintaining his hold on the knife and fork. “One: that you ain’t gonna hurt nobody in my county.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Well, now since I only just met you—and not under the best of circumstance, I might add—I don’t know that, do I?” Walter’s gaze was fierce.
“I’m not going to hurt anyone here.”
“I found you at your son’s grave site,” Walter went on. “You wasn’t exactly plumb on the bob when I found you. You looked like you’d been beat near to death, and that’s the flat-out gospel.” He mopped his plate with a biscuit, picking up bacon grease, jelly, eggs, and gravy. “Then I did some checking around. Found out you were from here. Found out your daddy was a preachin’ man. Found out he was killed—”
“He was murdered,” Delroy said, and was surprised at how hollow his voice sounded in his ears.
Walter nodded. “They never caught the man who did it, did they?”
“No.”
“But they figured they knew who it was.”
Delroy remained quiet and still. His chest suddenly felt so tight he couldn’t breathe.
“Man named Clarence Floyd was the man Sheriff Dobbs thought killed your daddy,” Walter said.
“Where are you going with this, Deputy?”
“Walter. Call me Walter. I told you that.”
Delroy waited.
Walter sighed and shifted his equipment belt. “Ain’t no way but the hard way with you is there? Shoulda known that from all them knots on your face.”
“Now who’s being unbecoming?”
Frowning, Walter said, “I blame you. Yes, sir, I do. It’s like you bring out the worst in me.”
Delroy let the accusation hang between them. Anger stirred restlessly within him. He forced himself to breathe out. Give me patience, Lord. This here’s a good man, and I’ve got no cause to make his life any more complicated than it already is. Slowly, the anger fizzled out. He broke the eye contact with the deputy and reached for his fork.
“I’m sorry,” Walter said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s all right. I’m pretty sure I had it coming.” Delroy broke open a biscuit, added butter and grape jelly, and ate.
“Biscuits still as good as you remember?” Walter asked.
“Melt in your mouth,” Delroy answered. For a time, they ate in silence.
Delroy watched the news and saw fitful bursts of information regarding the military effort in Sanliurfa. More interviews with Nicolae Carpathia, the Romanian president scheduled to speak at the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City, spun across both televisions.
“Reason I asked you about Clarence Floyd,” Walter said.
Delroy looked at him.
“Three years ago,” Walter said, eyes level and steady, “Floyd moved back to Marbury. He lives here now.”
The news slammed into Delroy.
“You didn’t know that, did you?” Walter asked.
Delroy didn’t try to lie. He knew his angry disbelief had been too strong. “No.”
“I didn’t think you did. But if you’re gonna stay here a couple days, chances are you’d probably find out once folks in town figure out who you are.”
Delroy sat quiet and still. His father’s murder had happened over thirty years ago, but the grief and anger over the act had never truly dimmed. If he hadn’t been so worn out emotionally from last night, he didn’t know what he might have done.
“Why did he come back?” Delroy asked when he could talk again.
Walter studied him, then scooped up more jelly and scrambled eggs to spread on a biscuit. “He just come home. Like you, I suppose. Wasn’t nowhere else to go, maybe. His life, it ain’t been like yours. He doesn’t have no navy career, no calling to keep him busy. He’s just a mean seventy-three-year-old man who’s afraid of dying.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“Not today,” Walter said. “But I have. I take a look through Sheriff Dobbs’ cold-case files from time to time. When Floyd moved back into his folks’ home, I looked him up.” He ate the biscuit. “Wasn’t nothing ever brought up against him regarding your daddy’s murder.”
“His father paid off the judge.”
Walter shrugged. “That wasn’t ever proved either.”
“That’s what happened.”
“That may be. I can’t say. But one thing I gotta tell you, Chaplain Harte. As long as you’re around here, I don’t want you seeing Clarence Floyd. Now normally, the city, why that’s the police chief’s concern. But what with everything going on that’s been going on, the sheriff’s department and the police department are working on a share-and-share-alike basis. We help each other out because we know most of the same folks around here. I brought you into town, and I decided to release you on your own recognizance. That makes me somewhat responsible for you.”
Delroy sat back for a moment. “This breakfast isn’t turning out the way I thought it was going to.”
“No, sir.” Walter nodded. “I expect not. Usually these eggs settle on my stomach better’n they are right now. From what I see of you, you’re a good man. Just a little lost right now. In my experience, that’s when men make bad decisions that can haunt them the rest of their lives. I ain’t here to save Floyd’s neck so much as I am to save yours.”
Delroy didn’t speak, didn’t really know what he would have said if he had been so inclined.
“You can believe that or not,” Walter said. “But something
