Up Jumps the Devil dk-4 Page 12

  Jamison stepped aside and Merrilee and Pete entered with the rest of us close behind.

  “Poor Uncle Jap,” she whispered and knelt on the dirty concrete floor to hold his hand for a moment as her eyes closed in silent prayer.

  When she opened them again, Pete held out his big hairy paw to her and she came to her feet as gracefully as swansdown.

  “You could look that delicate and graceful, too, if you always had a two-ton Mack truck around to hoist you up,” the pragmatist whispered snidely into my ear.

  “For shame!” scolded the preacher.

  Merrilee’s eyes fell on the wrecked safe. “So he was robbed! Did they take all his money?”

  “We didn’t find any cash,” said Dwight. “Did he keep much on hand?”

  “Just what he got from Social Security and from selling vegetables at the flea market.”

  “If that’s the only money he had, it doesn’t seem worth going to all that trouble cutting the safe open with the torch,” said Dwight. “What about papers? Could you tell if anything’s missing?”

  She shook her head. “He never opened it for me. I’d forgotten it was even out here. Dallas may’ve kept his deeds in it, but except for that, I never knew him to have anything worth taking.” She looked around the shabby garage hopelessly and her eyes came sadly back to the body still sprawled on the concrete floor.

  “When did you last talk to your uncle?” asked Dwight.

  “Wednesday night,” she answered promptly. “Pete and I come by every Sunday morning and I call him every Wednesday night to see if he’s all right. We live just below where Forty-Eight and Old Forty-Eight join up, and sometimes we drop by on our way in and out from work, but Sunday and Wednesday, regular as church bells, he knows—knew—he could count on me.”

  “Did he sound normal Wednesday night?”

  “Well, actually—” After all that bragging, she seemed a shade embarrassed to admit that maybe it was Pete that talked to Mr. Jap that night, not her. “I got home late and then had to get ready for prayer meeting.”

  “How’d he sound to you?” Dwight asked her husband.

  “Same as ever,” said Pete. “Allen answered the phone and put Uncle Jap on and—”

  “Allen!” shrieked Merrilee. “That’s what’s missing— Allen Stancil!”

  Dwight looked around at the rest of us, but no one had seen Allen that day.

  Daddy didn’t remember seeing Allen’s pickup when he came through the lane on his way to the crossroads. “ ’Course, I won’t looking for it, but I believe I’d’ve noticed if it was there.”

  Adam said he hadn’t seen anyone except Dick Sutterly come through the back lanes while he was out by the creek, and I’d come Old Forty-Eight by way of Cotton Grove from the north, which meant I hadn’t passed the Stancil place on the way to Daddy’s.

  “I’ll bet he did this,” Merrilee insisted. “I bet he and Uncle Jap had a falling-out and he hit Uncle Jap and took his corn money and ran.”

  “Corn money?” asked Dwight.

  “He raises ornamental corn,” said Merrilee.

  It was clear that Dwight didn’t think this amounted to much, so I briefly described my encounter with Mr. Jap and Billy Wall a few weeks ago. “The Wall boy was supposed to sell the last of it this past week. I think they expected to net about ten or twelve thousand.”

  Merrilee was sure this was all the motive a user and taker like Allen Stancil needed and she insisted that Dwight put out an arrest call on him.

  Dwight doesn’t jump to conclusions, but he agreed that it probably wouldn’t hurt to have a talk with Allen.

  “Prob’ly wouldn’t hurt neither to find out if Billy Wall ever actually paid Jap,” Daddy told Dwight reluctantly.

  As we walked back outside, we saw Blue and Ladybelle trotting down the lane toward us.

  Daddy seldom gets as flustered as he was at that moment. He hollered at the dogs, gave a sweeping motion of his hand, and they instantly veered off and went and jumped up in the bed of his pickup.

  “Dwight, I’m plumb ashamed of them,” he apologized.

  Dwight gave a rueful laugh. “Don’t worry about it, sir. Everybody else has been up and down this lane. Couple of dogs can’t do much more damage.”

  “Wonder what they did with Hambone?” I said. Aunt Zell wasn’t going to be too happy with me if I lost her beagle pup. “If you’re finished with me for right now, Dwight, maybe I’ll walk back and see if I can find him.”

  “Just try to walk in the middle of the lane and stay off any tire tracks,” he said.

  He had a few more questions for Daddy, so Adam said he’d wait and ride back in the truck.

  I gave Merrilee my condolences again, then skirted the yellow tape and struck off down the lane. Almost immediately, I noticed something that I hoped Dwight wouldn’t: the dogs had been around the garage sometime after the rain stopped last night and when they arrived just now.

  They could have wandered over in the early morning hours, of course. Blue and Ladybelle are never chained up at night. On the other hand, at their age, they don’t usually roam far from the house unless they’re with one of the family. I thought back to my earlier conversation with Adam. He never actually said that he only briefly crossed the creek to talk to Dick Sutterly. I kept looking for boot tracks, but if he’d walked this far, his tracks could have been covered up by those laid down by Sutterly and Daddy.

  Daddy’s zigzag treads were the only ones I could recognize and they overlay most of the marks. Occasionally, though, different drivers had veered from his straight path and I saw a crisp wide diamond tread, an equally crisp hexagonal pattern that reminded me of chicken wire, and one tire that must have been completely bald since the tread mark was smooth and patternless.

  The lane soon entered the first patch of trees, then crossed alongside Mr. Jap’s pumpkin patch. The vines were browning off after all the rain and a wonderful funky smell rose up from the earth itself—damp sand, dead weeds and grass, decaying leaves. Every gust of the wind winnowed down more leaves from the trees around me.

  For that matter, the wind was out of the north and had picked up enough to blow my hair, push away the gray clouds above, and open up large patches of blue that let the sun shine through. Despite the sun, though, the temperature was dropping perceptively minute by minute. For the first time since last March I thought seriously of sweaters and jackets and wool skirts. Maybe we were finally going to get some colder weather for Thanksgiving.

  As I stepped from bright sunlight into the last stretch of thick woods before the creek, I heard the scuffle of leaves, as if a larger animal were passing somewhere to my left. I quickly slipped behind a large oak tree and waited.

  Deer have been coming back into these woods, working their way west along the Neuse and then down along Possum Creek. Andrew’s son A.K. had taken a nice little six-point stag last year and most of his male cousins, especially Reese, were determined to best him before the season ended in January. I’ve seen lots of tracks these past few years, but only twice have I seen the deer themselves.

  The woods had gone suddenly silent. Uneasily, I noted that even the mindless chirp of sparrows and chickadees was missing and the busy scratching of towhees had stopped as well. My flesh crawled as I sensed that someone else was there in the woods, watching.

  Behind me?

  I whirled and saw nothing at first. Then there was movement and a young man in full camouflage materialized in the underbrush. He held a .22 rifle loosely in his hands.

  The barrel was pointed just as loosely in the direction of my heart.

  Behind me, from the other side of the lane, a cold hard voice said, “I do believe you’re trespassing, Judge Knott.”

  13

  « ^ » I have seen the inhabitants hunting foxes, bears, and deer, through the woods…“Scotus Americanus,” 1773

  I turned and made my voice as cool as his. “Mr. Talbert, I presume?”

  We had never formally met, but I’ve seen him on
Channel 5 and in the News and Observer enough times over the years. Discussing plans of a new merger, standing behind various governors as they announce the successful luring of yet another rustbelt industry to North Carolina, beaming widely on election night as Jesse Helms or others of his conservative cronies squeak into office, G. Hooks Talbert moves in much more rarefied circles than a district court judge does.

  Nevertheless, if he hadn’t pushed my name with the Republican governor who appointed me to replace a judge who died in office, I’d still be practicing law from the attorney’s side of the bench.

  Not that supporting me was his choice, of course. Normally, a man of his standing would never waste political pull on a minor local judgeship and certainly not for a Democrat, but he was caught in a Mexican standoff. Behind my back, Daddy had sent him word that if I didn’t get the appointment, Channel 5 would be getting a videotape of the vigorous crop of marijuana which Grayson Hooks Talbert Junior was growing in his greenhouses at the time. I’d been ambivalent when Daddy told me what he’d done, but I couldn’t blame him for savoring his revenge—not after he’d been so roundly snubbed when he offered to buy the Talbert property years ago. (Back then, word was sent to him that, quote, “Mr. Talbert doesn’t care to have any dealings with a known bootlegger,” end quote.)

  G. Hooks must have hated having to ask a moderate like Governor Hardison for a personal favor almost as much as I hated getting on the bench that way, so we may not have met, but as we warily faced each other there in the underbrush, yes, each knew who the other was.

  He held his squirrel rifle cradled in the crook of his arm with the barrel pointed skyward. Walking toward us around the bend in the lane was a third hunter whose own .22 was slung across one shoulder.

  Like G. Hooks Talbert, this man was expensively togged out in brown coveralls and fluorescent orange hunting cap. He had the same well-barbered steel gray hair and moved with the same I-own-the-world aura of self-entitlement as G. Hooks. Another Triangle mover and shaker, no doubt, but I couldn’t put a name to him.

  “Well, Hooks, she’s certainly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but is she in season?” he asked, with a warm, crinkly-eyed smile at me to show that he was just kidding.

  I gave him a cool nod and didn’t smile back.

  Nor did Talbert.

  “This is Judge Deborah Knott,” he said.

  “Judge?”

  His disbelief was probably conditioned reflex. After all, most of the judges in his Old Raleigh circle would be male. They would wear Brooks Brothers suits, play gentlemanly rounds of golf, and sport distinguished touches of gray at their neatly trimmed temples. Although my sky blue sweatshirt is from the Bull’s Head over in Chapel Hill, my jeans and sneakers are both off-brands. My hair, rougher than a haystack at that moment, is almost shoulder length and shows no immediate signs of going gray. (And never will if Ethelene down at the Cut ’n Curl has her way about it.)

  “District Eleven-C,” said Talbert. “Judge Knott is one of the few with a D after her name to ride in unopposed last election.”

  I had been appointed in the summer and my place on that ballot was mostly pro forma. Because local Republicans hadn’t sensed the potential for such widespread bloodletting, they didn’t bother to run anybody against me for the rest of Perry Byrd’s term. I can only hope the pendulum swings back a little before I have to run again.

  “I don’t believe I caught your name, Mr.—?”

  His eyes briefly met Talbert’s. “Just call me Tom.”

  The wind shook loose another cloud of yellow leaves from the branches above us and he gave an exaggerated shiver. “Hooks, I think I’ll head on back to the car. Reckon there’s any hot coffee left in the thermoses, Bob?”

  “Yes, sir,” the younger man answered smartly, which made me think he was either a very junior member of the man’s firm or maybe his chauffeur.

  “Coming, Hooks?”

  “I’ll be along in a minute.”

  “Nice meeting you, Judge,” he said, and then they were gone.

  “You didn’t happen to see a half-grown beagle pup, did you?” I asked, ready to keep walking myself.

  Talbert’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “That’s why you’re poking around out here? Looking for a lost dog?”

  I almost asked him if there was anything here he didn’t want me to see, like maybe plants that deviated from the USDA’s list of recommended nursery stock? Somehow, I managed to control my tongue. “I was afraid he might’ve tried to follow me.”

  “Over to Stancil’s place? Something going on over there? We heard sirens and horns before.”

  “Jasper Stancil’s been killed,” I said. “They’re treating it like a homicide.”

  Briefly I described events and it was almost like speaking to a computer. His face didn’t change expression. He didn’t frown or exclaim, but I could sense a realignment of facts and a new set of calculations going on behind his pale blue eyes.

  Okay, so the bloodlines were a little attenuated. G. Hooks and Mr. Jap were probably only third cousins twice removed and it wasn’t like the two of them had anything in common beyond some land boundaries. Even so, three generations back, those land divisions were the result of a very real family connection and for him to treat Mr. Jap’s death like a problem in binary logic suddenly made me forget all my self-administered lectures on discipline and discretion.

  I heard myself say, “I guess this complicates your plans?”

  “Plans?”

  “To buy a strip of road frontage from Jasper Stancil.”

  It was almost enough to ruffle his composure.

  Almost, but not quite. Of course, he’s been practicing control at least twenty years longer than me.

  He gave a polite nod, said, “Hope you find your dog,” and turned to follow the others.

  Just before he disappeared into the underbrush, he glanced back at me. “You’re up for election again when? Next year, is it?”

  14

  « ^ » …Their behavior at home is consistent with their appearance abroad.“Scotus Americanus,” 1773

  I’d asked for it, of course, but I didn’t like the implications of Talbert’s question. I hadn’t had to spend much money on campaigning before. If he decided to take a personal interest in my next election, he could channel enough money to an opponent to more than swamp me. Even down here at the bottom of the political food chain, money makes a difference.

  Even less did I like the corollary thought to the question I’d asked G. Hooks. Mr. Jap’s death might complicate his plans, but suddenly things were rosier for Daddy and the brothers who still live and farm along Possum Creek.

  If we could keep Adam from selling, there would be no access to the Talbert land. No access meant no immediate development, no change to our way of life here on the north side of Possum Creek. For a little while longer, we could fish and hunt or just revel in the sheer luxury of space.

  Adam’s right: we may not all live here—I’m a judge in Dobbs, Frank’s retired out in San Diego, Will’s an auctioneer in Cotton Grove, Herman’s an electrician in Dobbs— yet, except for Adam, our roots go down deep in these sandy fields and scruffy woods. Even the grandchildren, who are starting to scatter out across the state, look to this part of Colleton County as a fixed anchor. My brothers aren’t much for putting emotion into words, but Haywood once said it for them: “When you step out on your own back porch and everything is Knott land for as far as you can see, why boys, don’t y’all’s spirit just fill up in a plenteous amplitude?”

  I crossed the creek in a bittersweet mood that echoed the falling leaves and I wondered how much longer such plenteous amplitude could endure.

  Adam accused me of romanticizing our land. If by that he means I know the spiritual value of what we have and don’t want to see it disappear beneath a gridwork of named streets with manicured grass and biscuit-cutter houses, he’s right. Guilty as charged.

  As I came up the slope, Hambone rushed down to meet me, whimpering in his
relief at finally seeing someone he could attach himself to. Almost immediately, his confidence was restored enough that he dashed into the edge of the woods and began to bark at something. His little beagle tail wagged happily and he kept running back and forth as if wanting to share something wonderful with me.

  “Whatcha found, boy?” I asked.

  The leaves and grasses had been smoothed down into a narrow trail that led into the undergrowth, and sure enough, there by the trail sat one of Andrew’s homemade wooden rabbit gums. He and Daddy raise and train rabbit dogs, and rabbits are integral to that training.

  Out back of his house, Andrew has fenced in a quarter-acre circle with shoulder-high chicken wire. The yard itself is overgrown with weedy grass and shaggy bushes, and Andrew’s hauled in tree limbs, a few logs, and several lengths of hollow plastic pipes, six to ten inches in diameter. He traps rabbits and releases them into the training yard, then turns the pups in. The rabbits bounce around the yard and the puppies yip and tumble after them till the rabbits get tired and go hide in the hollow pipes.

  The object of the exercise isn’t to have the dogs catch the rabbits. It’s to get them familiar with the rabbit’s scent and to learn to break off the hunt when called.

  Like Daddy, most of my brothers hardly ever take a gun with them when they go out to the woods to run the dogs. Mainly they just like to be outdoors, listening to the song the dogs sing when they catch the scent.

  The trap door had fallen shut on the rabbit gum Hambone had found and when I hefted one end of the thing, I felt the telltale slither as the animal inside scrabbled to maintain its balance. Rabbit, possum or coon? From the lively scratching, it was probably a rabbit, but sometimes other young animals will go in after the fruit bait and trip the door.

  Hambone was beside himself with excitement as I set the box down and I couldn’t resist. I grabbed him by the collar and held it tightly with one hand while lifting the trap door with the other.

  Instantly, a rabbit tumbled onto the ground, blinked once in the afternoon sunlight, and lit out across the bean field. I gave him about a ten-foot head start, then let go of Hambone’s collar. He lunged after the rabbit, yipping and singing as if he’d been doing it all his life. I knew there was no chance in the world that he’d ever catch up, but he’d have a blissful twenty minutes thinking he might.