Carol O’Connell - Stone Angel

“If you start spreading that story of yours, you’ll cause Mallory more grief than you know.”

Oh, very good shot, Augusta . She knew the pressure points.

“That’s Cass Shelley’s grave at the tip of Finger Bayou, isn’t it?”

She was grinning gloriously, unintimidated, unafraid. Might she be laughine at him? And now it crossed his troubled mind that Riker was right, he’d been altered somehow – blinded. Here he was, virtually threatening Augusta, who had done him no wrong. Quite the opposite, she only had helped him, and then she had trusted him with the secret of the alligator.

Her smile was more subdued now, and he could see that she was already forgiving him.

“Charles, I know you wouldn’t do anything to hurt Mallory. So I know you’ll keep all this wild speculation to yourself – and without ever knowing why. It’ll drive you crazy at first, but everybody needs a little mystery in their lives.” She tilted her head to one side as she studied his face. “I’d say you need it more than most.”

It was dark when Mallory left the house. The birds were louder than usual, when they should have been settling down for the night. And it was well past time for Augusta to put the horse in his stall. But there he was, racing back and forth in the paddock, rearing up on his hind legs.

The long black duster whipped around her boots as she walked down the oak lane. What was spooking the animals? Her eyes scanned everything in view, hunting for the thing out of place. She used the mini cell phone to call the sheriff’s office again. No answer. She was on the path leading into the cemetery when she heard the woman.

Mallory was through the skirt of trees, following the sound of crying. Her gun was drawn as she slowly cleared the ground, stopping at each small side street of tombs, watching for movement, then moving on.

She found Darlene Wooley kneeling near the south rim, leaning over Ira’s body and cradling his bloody head in her arms. Ira allowed it. He was past his fear of the human touch, but not yet dead.

“So you’re the witness,” said Ira, as Mallory bent over him, scanning the blood, and wondering how much real damage had been done to him.

Darlene looked up at her. “He was late for dinner. I came to get him for – ”

“So you’re the witness,” Ira said again.

Mallory pulled her palm computer and its electronic bundle from the deep pocket of her duster. She detached the mini cell phone from the battery pack and dialed the emergency number. When the dispatcher answered, she handed the phone to Darlene. “Just tell them you need an ambulance.”

Darlene nodded, and Mallory set to work on Ira’s wounds. He had all the signs of a deadly beating; most of the damage would be internal. She wiped away the blood from his mouth. No broken teeth, but there was a bad head wound, and one arm was broken. “Everything will be all right, Ira.” She walked to the oldest tree and gripped a dry branch, cracking it straight down and pulling it from the tree. Now she tore a cable from her battery pack and wound it around his arm, binding it to the branch to keep him from moving it and causing more damage.

Ira stared at her quietly, his eyes large and full of trust.

She smiled down at her old playmate, humming the music she remembered from their brief childhood. He began to sing as Mallory ripped off a section of his torn red shirt and his mother cried into the telephone.

After a few minutes, Darlene put her hand over the miniphone and spoke to Mallory. “They’re out on a call – all of them, ambulances, fire trucks. One of the chemical plants went up in a ball of fire and torched a cane field. The dispatcher is patching me into the sheriff’s car.”

“Don’t mention my name.” Mallory wound a bloody strip of Ira’s shirt around the bloody head wound. She couldn’t smell any smoke. The fire must be miles down the road.

Now Darlene broke the connection and closed her hand over the tiny phone. “The sheriff is pulling off the highway. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

Mallory checked Ira’s pupils. He was holding his own. Darlene was not doing so well by half.

In her own strange way of offering comfort, Mallory said, “I know who did this. I’ll kill him for you, okay?”

Darlene was shaking her head in confusion. “No, Kathy.” She was talking in the mother tone now. “Cass wouldn’t want that, and neither would I. It has to end, don’t you see?” Her hand wound around Mallory’s arm. “The damage can’t just go on and on. All these years, all this damage.”

Mallory gently pried loose Darlene’s restraining fingers and stood up. As she was moving through the cemetery with slow deliberation, Darlene called out after her, “Kathy, don’t kill anybody.”

Mallory recognized the same worried intonation her own mother had once used to caution her not to touch a dead bird she had found in the yard. As she walked, she checked the chambers of her revolver, and ceased to hear Darlene.

She was on her way to Owltown.

Augusta fixed one eye to her telescope. Studying the wildlife? Charles thought not. “You aren’t bird-watching, are you, Augusta?”

“Not at the moment, but I do find birds more interesting than people. Killer humans are definitely the more gentle species. Now you take the way Cass was killed – no passion. You should see the owls and hawks rip and tear the meat. But death is quick. If you blink, you miss it.”

“I’m sure you manage to keep abreast of all the killing around here.” What was she looking at?

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I spend some of my time watching the stars. But there’s a kind of violence out there too. This whole world is careening through space with a real wicked spin. I try to lay back and roll with it, and I recommend that to you.”

But her telescope was not trained on the stars tonight. “I think you’re a bit less passive than that. You don’t just watch, do you? You’re a player.”

“You’ve been listening to stories, Charles.” She smiled, but never took her eye from the telescope. “They’re all true. I’m a murderess. Killed my own father.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that.”

“Your friend Riker is in trouble. They’re closing in on him.”

Charles ripped the glass from her hand. Augusta patiently helped him refocus on the fairgrounds where the tent used to be. Now the most prominent thing on the field was a large truck with a long, flat bed strung with Christmas tree lights and the brighter spotlights perched on stalks of steel. At the center of the truck bed was a glass-domed coffin. It reminded him of a display case for a preserved insect.

Perhaps a hundred people milled and reeled around the truck waving bottles and paper cups. The women were laden with gaudy jewelry and they wore bright party dresses of shiny materials. Even some of the men wore sequins, and here and there was a costume more appropriate to a Mardi Gras parade than a funeral. A band of musicians stood off to one side and a stilt-walker moved among them with bright silver streamers in both hands.

In addition to the coffin, there was a chair on the truck bed. It was gold and elevated like a throne. Malcolm Laurie sat there, dressed in his suit of lights. He pointed toward the center of the crowd. The people stepped back to clear a wide circle, and there at its center, Riker stood alone, out of place in his drab gray suit.

Charles’s shoes had only hit on every third step in his descent, and now he ran the length of the hallway to Augusta’s back room. He was lifting the antique telephone receiver when he saw the note lying on the table: “I’m going to the sheriff’s office to check on Riker. Stay where you are!”