11
The next morning I sat in Marvin Pomroy's office. He was reading the homicide report filed by one of Hugo Roberts's crime scene investigators. He was reading it for the third time, his elbows propped on his desk blotter, his forehead resting on his fingers.
He blew out his breath and tapped a pencil on the blotter.
'Hugo's calling it homicide, Billy Bob. His work's sloppy, but I can't argue with him on this one,' Marvin said.
'She's blind. He broke in her house. He had a. 38 on him. He was probably going to rape her, then kill both her and her husband.'
'Why would Grimes want to kill them?'
'Because Wilbur won't cop a plea and let Earl Deitrich collect from his insurance company,' I said.
'Kippy Jo blew out both the victim's eyes. You think that might show deliberation?' Marvin said.
'I'll say it again. She's blind. From birth.'
'You told me she sees things inside her head,' he said.
'You're going to tell a jury that?' I said.
'When they shoot once, maybe it's self-defense. A second shot, point-blank in the head, is an execution.'
'How'd you like to have Grimes in your wife's bedroom with a. 38 revolver?' I asked.
'Just get out of here, will you?' he said.
I walked down the corridor to the concession stand by the stairs, drank a root beer, and used the pay phone, then went back into Marvin's office. He was talking angrily on the phone, the overhead light shining on his close- cropped scalp, his face bright with a pink glaze.
'Who was that on the phone?' I asked after he hung up.
'Hugo Roberts, who else? What do you want?' he said.
'I called the FBI and a homicide cop in Houston. I thought they ought to know another associate of Earl Deitrich has shown up dead, this time while breaking into the house of a man Earl accuses of stealing from him.'
'You did that?'
'Sure.'
'Those dope transporters y'all went up against down in Coahuila? You ever take any of them prisoner?'
'Everybody kept the lines simple, Marvin. The winners got to see the sunrise.'
I thought he was going to make a point, but he didn't. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, his chin propped on his fingers, and looked at me reflectively.
'We're cutting a warrant for Kippy Jo Pickett's arrest,' he said.
'What was that blowup with Hugo Roberts about?' I said.
'None of your business. But I'll tell you this much. Kippy Jo had traces of Grimes's blood on the tips of her left hand. I think she felt his face before she parked the second round in his other eye. Forget the blind-girl defense, Billy Bob.'
'You're hiding something,' I said.
That evening my little friend Pete walked from his house through the back of my property to my back screen porch. He carried a huge straw basket that was loaded with fruit, chocolate wrapped in gold foil, and cellophane bags of cactus candy and Mexican pralines. The strap of a brand-new black fielder's glove, with white leather thongs through the webbing, was buttoned around the basket's handle.
'What you got there, bud?' I said, opening the screen door for him.
'Ms. Deitrich brung it by the house this afternoon. My mother told me to bring it over here and leave it. She says she ain't letting no rich people look down on us.'
'I'm not following you.'
'She says Ms. Deitrich don't care two cents about me. This has got something to do with y'all.' He hefted the basket onto the plank table and sat down on a bench and looked at his tennis shoes. The yellow cellophane and red ribbon that enclosed the basket were undisturbed. A greeting card hung halfway out of an envelope taped to the basket's handle. It read:
Dear Pete, I don't know if you remember me from church or not. But I know you're a friend of Billy Bob's and that he is very proud of you. Please accept this gift as a congratulations for your hard work at school and your fine performance with your baseball team.
Your friend,
Peggy Jean Deitrich
'I believe Ms. Deitrich has high regard for you, Pete,' I said.
'It don't matter. I cain't take none of this back home. My mother'll throw it in the garbage.' His eyes lingered on the fielder's glove, then he twisted his mouth into a button and looked into space, as though the glove meant nothing to him.
'You want to saddle up Beau?' I asked.
'No. I got to weed the garden. Things ain't too good at the house right now.'
I nodded, then watched him walk past the chicken run and along the edge of the irrigation ditch, stopping to throw dirt clods at the water. Then he crossed the small wood bridge that spanned the ditch and climbed up the hill into the pine trees that concealed the dirt yard and clapboard house where he lived.
Peggy Jean sometimes did volunteer work in the evenings at the library. The sky was piled with rain clouds and the sun was a dying orange fire between two hills when I drove into town. The library was a one-story, peaked-roof building with the tall, domed windows that were characteristic of public buildings at the turn of the century. The lights were on inside the windows and the oak trees on the lawn were black-green with shadow.
Peggy Jean was behind the circulation desk, wearing a flower-print dress and horn-rimmed glasses. I set the candy and fruit basket on top of the desk. The library was almost deserted.
'Pete's mom won't accept this. He can't keep the glove, either,' I said.
'Is she angry at the boy?'
'She's a drunk. She's angry all the time.'
'I'm sorry. After that situation at the courthouse, I mean, the way the Mexican girl was treated, I wanted to apologize in some way.'
'You don't owe me one.'
'I didn't say I did. How do you think I felt, watching that girl patronized and dismissed like that? But I couldn't do anything about it, not without starting a fight right there on the street,' she replied. She took off her glasses and let them hang from a velvet cord around her neck. 'I'm thinking of leaving Earl.'
I felt my hand close and open at my side and a tingling sensation in my throat that I didn't understand.
'You'll do the right thing,' I said.
'I haven't done the right thing in twenty years, Billy Bob.'
Then I realized who was sitting at one of the reading tables against the far wall, his hands clasped like paws on edges of a huge Life pictorial history, the top of the book obscuring the lower half of his face, so that he resembled the World War II cartoon drawing of Kilroy.
'That's Skyler Doolittle,' I said.
'The man who claims Earl cheated him out of his watch?'
'Does Skyler know who you are?' I asked.
'No, he comes in here all the time. Poor soul, I feel sorry for him.'
The overhead lights blinked to indicate the library would close in five minutes.
'I guess you have a ride home,' I said.
'Earl's picking me up,' she said.
'I see. Well, good night, Peggy Jean,' I said.
'Good night,' she said.
Outside, a moment later, as the rain clouds pulsed with veins of lightning, I witnessed one of those improbable incidents that you know will result in grave harm to an innocent party, one whose life seems destined to be governed by the laws of misfortune. Skyler Doolittle, in his wilted seersucker, walked down the library steps
