neckerchief in my coat pocket, and went over the fence, across the yard and over the fence on the other side. I started walking back toward my car. I pulled off my gloves and put them in my pockets.
When I got to the car, I drove out toward San Augustine, a nearby town. I drove on out that way until the woods got thick. A few miles before I came to the town I came across a little red clay road and I took that. I parked alongside the road next to a slough of water, shining silver in the moonlight. I took off my tennis shoes and put on the leather shoes I had brought. I got out of the car and took the tennis shoes and tossed them out into the slough. If the police found my tracks back at the house, printed in some of the blood I might have accidentally stepped in, and if anything led them back to me, I didn’t want to have the shoes in my closet for them to look at. When I got home, I had to remember to clean the gas and brake pedals with paper towels and flush them down the commode, in case any of the blood from my shoes had ended up there. It wasn’t exactly a superhuman effort to elude the police, as I couldn’t imagine them having anything that might lead them to me. But it was something to do, and it was all I knew to do, and it made me feel better to think about doing it.
I got back in my car, and when I put my hands on the wheel they were trembling. I drove down the road a ways because it was too narrow to turn around, drove with the window down, letting air blow on me, keeping me alert.
I imagined I could still smell that stink of death from the house. I even paused and pulled over to put some more Vicks up my nose. I drove until I found a narrow drive with a cattle guard. I pulled in there, backed out, got on the road and went back to the highway and drove into town.
I tried not to do it, but I drove by Gabby’s. I didn’t get the rush I usually got. Sometimes it was an angry rush, sometimes a nostalgic feeling. But tonight what I got was nothing short of a dead sensation, as if all my nerves had died and been hauled off for incineration.
When I got home, Jimmy’s motorcycle was parked out front and he was sitting on my doorstep under the porch light.
28
I opened the car door and was getting out, but before I could, Jimmy was over by the car.
“While you were out screwing around,” he said, “I been sitting here waiting on you. Do you know how late it is?”
“You sound like Mom.”
“Have you seen the news?”
“Unless you’re upset they’re not going to be filling potholes on Lufkin Street anytime soon, I’m going to surmise you’re here about the murdered kid and the kidnapping.”
“Smartass.”
“I left you a message, you know.”
“You didn’t say about what.”
I shouldered past him and unlocked the door, and we went inside. I went straight to the refrigerator, got out a bottled coffee for both of us. I wanted whiskey straight, a beer chaser to tamp it down, but I knew better. Besides, I didn’t have a drink in the house. I had purposely tried to make sure it wasn’t handy.
I brought the coffee over and gave it to him. Jimmy twisted off the top. “Whoever got to those kids, what if they told them about us?”
“We don’t know they did,” I said.
“Got to figure, whoever did that to him, they didn’t borrow Tabitha to take to the prom. They’re asking her some questions. They could be coming for us right now.”
“Chief of police thinks she killed Ernie and is on the lam.”
“The chief is an idiot,” Jimmy said.
“That’s what he said…Isn’t Trixie going to miss you this time of morning?”
“I have learned to be quite the liar.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“This thing, with Ernie and Tabitha. It’s got me chilled to the bone, baby brother.”
“You were wishing them dead before,” I said, and sat down in my most comfortable chair, twisted the top off my cold coffee and drank.
“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “I was wishing them dead. And I thought about doing it myself. But I didn’t. They got hit by a truck, something like that, I don’t know I’d feel real bad. They’d be out of the way. This is different. It’s not that they’re dead, it’s that them being dead could somehow connect to us if they talked.”
“For a minute there I thought you’d got Jesus, but no, you’re still the asshole I thought you were.”
“I know. I’m a shit. It’s all about me.”
“Agreed,” I said. “As for what they might have talked about to whoever did this, my guess is there wasn’t a lot of talking. Least not with Ernie. I visited with the chief of police today, and I went over there and had a look for myself tonight.”
Jimmy raised his eyebrows. “You went in the murder house?”
I nodded. “I snuck in when it got dark. I don’t know exactly why, but I did. I looked around, and what happened there was pretty damn brutal. I think Ernie was taken by surprise, in his sleep.”
“And the cops think Tabitha did it?” Jimmy said.
“Chief likes her for it, but even he thinks he’s got crummy detecting skills. Right now, a case this big, he’s probably wishing he had a job jacking off sailors. Here’s an oddity among many. In the house, on the wall, in blood, were crude paintings of birds. Or maybe it was supposed to be one bird, different views, rising up toward the ceiling, each one slightly off center of the other.”
“Birds in blood?”
“Someone took time to stand on the bed, in the blood, near the hacked-up body, and draw those birds on the wall. It had to be important to them.”
“Birds don’t make any sense,” Jimmy said.
“You got me there, but I’m sure that’s what it was.”
“You think it was a taunt of some kind?”
“I think whoever did it has some kind of agenda we can’t begin to figure. And there were more than birds. There were words too, and they mentioned birds. The words were written in blood.”
“What kind of words?”
I told him.
“You think it was one person?” Jimmy asked.
“No.”
“How many do you think?”
“My guess is at least two. There were bloody prints and some drag marks. I think whoever did it had a stun gun of some kind. One person stunned the girl while the other hacked the boy. They dragged the girl out the front door. That’s what the prints indicate anyway. Carried her out the front door and put her in a van parked in the drive and drove off.”
“Surely someone saw the van.”
“Next-door neighbor. Said it was a dark color and they didn’t think anything about it when they saw it. I don’t think the neighbor got the year or model, and I’m sure he didn’t get a license plate.”
“They were just lucky.”
“I think playing poker online isn’t near enough for these folks. They know exactly what they’re doing, and they’re not afraid to do it. They gamble big. They’ve maybe been doing this awhile, or something like it, and they’re getting bolder.”
Jimmy took in a deep breath of air. “Trixie has been wanting to try out that lake house we bought with Mom and Dad. And she’s off for the summer. I’m finishing up the first summer session tomorrow. I just decided. Supposed to go two days beyond that, but I’m going to end the class early. Give everyone an A on the final, and then I can go.”
“I want you to get Mom and Dad to go with you. They’ll go easy. Dad has already mentioned it to me. Just don’t tell them why.”
