Carol O’Connell - Stone Angel

“Hello, Ira,” said Lilith. “How are you?”

The yelling woman was suddenly mollified by this small courtesy. Her angry face relaxed into a smile, and she was almost pretty when she turned to her son. “Say hello to the deputy, Ira.”

“Say hello to the deputy,” Ira said.

Charles Butler stared at the drugstore window display. Stacks of multicolored T-shirts were emblazoned with the name and likeness of the murdered evangelist. One bit of T-shirt art depicted the Virgin Mary holding an infant with Babe Laurie’s adult face. Beyond this novel heresy was a rack of paperback books and shelves crowded with sunglasses and dental floss. Toothbrushes kept company with cellophane-packaged voodoo dolls and all the other little things that tourists might have forgotten to bring with them.

Charles turned back to the alley between the sheriff’s office and the fire department. The mute sculptor had located Mallory’s cell. Henry Roth was staring up at the second-floor window and making conversation with his hands. Charles walked across the square to listen in with his eyes.

As he neared the municipal building, his gaze was pulled toward another man seated on a wooden bench in front of the sheriff’s office. Charles noted the resemblance to the face on the T-shirts. The general features were the same, but not so dramatic. And unlike the wild-eyed Babe Laurie, intelligence was more in evidence here. He was perhaps thirty-five years old. His long hair was the color of sand, and it brushed the collar of his denim shirt. His eyes were blue and serene as he nodded a greeting in the familiar way of an old friend.

Charles found himself drifting toward this man, for the invitation was clear and compelling. Come to me, said the tranquil expression. Sit and talk awhile, said his glance to the empty side of the bench.

Then Charles remembered that he had business elsewhere, very pressing business, and he turned away with the slightly disoriented feeling of awakening. In the next moment, the man on the bench was forgotten as he moved closer to the mouth of the alley and concentrated on reading the silent language of Henry Roth.

The sculptor’s eyes were fixed on the second-floor window. A pair of white hands appeared at the bars, signaling back to him. Charles read the words off her fingers. “Tell him to go away.”

Henry Roth glanced at him and shrugged, then turned his face up to her window, hands flying in conversation.

Charles was staring at his shoes. Go away? He had traveled more than a thousand miles for that?

He turned his back on them and walked off to the fountain at the center of the square. Water flowed from ornate spigots and splashed into a large basin. Atop the fountain pranced a saddled but riderless bronze stallion. Charles was facing the horse’s rear end.

How fitting.

He paced one turn around the wide pool of water, ruminating over all the sleep he had lost on her account, all the anxiety she had caused. Done with feeling sorry for himself, anger won out over deeply ingrained good manners. He decided to disregard her wishes, and he fairly flew up the stairs to the sheriff’s office and pushed through the front door.

When he entered the reception area, the first person he saw was Augusta’s young cousin. Her short-sleeved tan uniform was so crisply starched, he knew the fabric would crack before it wrinkled. Lilith Beaudare was wiping the screen of her desktop computer. The dust cloth moved in listless circles, for her attention was focussed on the scene in the private office at the far side of the room. And now Charles also looked through this open doorway.

A woman in a gray suit was standing before a man in rolled-up shirtsleeves and jeans. A six-pointed golden star was pinned to the lapel of a wrinkled linen blazer which lay carelessly draped on a chair back. Though he was more casually dressed than the woman, he exuded authority. His arms folded across his chest to tell her that whatever she wanted, she wasn’t getting it. The woman’s hands were placed on her hips to say she would not be moved until she had satisfaction from this man.

Standing near this couple was a young man with vacuous eyes and no apparent relationship to either of them. He was slender with an innocent, unlined face and bandages on both his hands.

As Charles drew nearer to the office door, Deputy Lilith Beaudare glanced up at him, but she said nothing. They eavesdropped in easy companionship.

“I have a statement from Malcolm,” said the sheriff, addressing the woman with the light brown hair. “Malcolm says Babe asked your boy, real polite, if he would please stop playing the same damn five notes over and over again. The boy went wild and attacked Babe. Malcolm says his brother just defended himself.”

The woman stared at the sheriff as if he had just flown down from the moon, an alien land of strange custom and law. “Babe defended himself? By breaking Ira’s fingers with a piano lid?”

Exasperated, she threw up her hands, perhaps wondering if these words had the same meaning in Lunarspeak. “When did you ever know my boy to do any violence? Ira hates any kind of physical contact, and you damn well know it! That should have been your first clue that Malcolm Laurie was lying.”

The young man with the bandaged hands stood just outside the fray in body and mind, utterly captivated by the slow-moving blades of the ceiling fan directly above him. Head tilted back, eyes trancegazing, his body moved in a circular sway. He seemed unconcerned with his mother’s complaint, or even aware that she was in the room.

“Well, seeing that Babe is dead,” the sheriff countered, “it doesn’t make much sense to file charges against him, now does it, Darlene?”

“That’s not what I come about.” Darlene was rummaging in a black purse hanging off her shoulder by a thin strap. “That young girl you arrested? I want to pay her bail. If she did kill that little bastard, it’s the least I can do to thank her.” Darlene produced a checkbook and a pen.

The sheriff waved her off. “There’s no bail for the prisoner.”

“Tom Jessop, you have no right to keep that child in jail. You don’t know she did it. For all you know, I could have killed him. You never thought of that, did you?”

Sheriff Jessop smiled. “Well now, Darlene, that just isn’t true. I thought so much of your prospects, I had you at the top of my suspect list – right in front of Babe Laurie’s widow and that youngster in the cell.

Hell, I ain’t got around to suspecting a single man yet. That’s how highly I prize a woman as killer material. The Dayborn Women’s Club is gonna make me damn Feminist of the Year.“

The sheriff sat down in the green leather armchair behind what was possibly the messiest desk Charles had ever seen. The man swiveled his chair to face the window, saying goodbye to Darlene with his back.

But she would not be dismissed. She walked around the desk to stand by the window and call his attention back to her. “Nobody asked where I was when Babe Laurie was murdered.”

“Didn’t need to.” His words were distracted, but now he smiled again and seemed to be gathering the energy he needed for one more round with her. “I know your car took off in the same direction as Malcolm and Babe. But they stopped at the gas station – you went flying toward the hospital. And I do mean flying.”

He swiveled around to face his desk and the sprawling loose piles of papers and folders. He reached into the mess, plucked out a sheet of handwritten text and held it up to her, waving it like a flag. “Manny, the gas jockey? This is his statement. He was just real impressed with your driving.”