Carol O’Connell - Stone Angel

“Right. So when Darlene brought Ira into the emergency room with his broken hands, the abuse flag came up on the computer. The hospital was obliged to call the sheriff.”

The metronome never ticked again.

Riker had mastered the art of one-armed packing in ten minutes flat. He opened the top drawer of the dresser and wadded up his underwear the better to smash it into his suitcase. Normally, he never moved this quickly, but he was almost home free and not taking any chances. The metal clasps snapped shut. Done.

But too late.

Shit!

“Not so fast.” Charles Butler was leaning against the doorframe, all but wearing a No Exit sign around his neck.

Riker sank down on the bed beside his suitcase. He wished he had a drink. He had been looking forward to a comfortable chair in the airport bar and maybe swapping a few war stories with Tom Jessop.

“About Travis’s deathbed confession.” Charles closed the door behind him. “Why did you back up the sheriff in a lie?”

“I think you know.” But now it dawned on the detective that knowledge and belief were different things in Charles’s strange relationship with Mallory, this blind friendship which kept her cloaked in innocence despite every bit of evidence to the contrary. Riker had a more pragmatic form of loyalty. If Mallory had shot an elderly nun in a wheelchair, he would assume the nun had it coming to her.

“So you still believe Mallory did it.”

“The motive is pretty strong.” Riker was making an effort to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. Derision was undeserved. Charles’s blindness touched him as nothing else ever had. “She also had opportunity and no alibi.”

“Because Babe was in that mob? The logic is a bit flawed, isn’t it? Travis was there too, but she saved his life. You must realize she couldn’t have had any idea who was in that mob. She was inside the house, locked in a – ”

“She could hear everything from her bedroom, Charles. Listen to the birds.”

Charles turned to the closed window. The tree in the yard was indeed full of singing birds, and their voices easily penetrated the glass. And now that he paid attention, he could hear Betty on the front porch. She was greeting new guests. The voices of a man and a woman were not so clear as the birds, but he could pick out the odd word in their conversation.

“Augusta gave me a tour of the Shelley house,” said Riker. “I saw the kid’s room. Did you notice the window near the top of the closet? I never saw a thing like that before. Augusta said the closet window was pretty common in old houses built before electric lights. Now Mallory couldn’t have seen anything. It was too high up for a little kid. But you know she heard something – maybe not Travis’s voice, but something, maybe just a few words. She wouldn’t have understood what was happening, but she put it all together when she saw her mother after they were done with her. I told you the kid had more to work with than the sheriff did.”

“Travis only stoned a dog. Alma was there too, but she took her rock home with her. If Mallory heard – ”

“Charles, drop it.”

“That mob was Malcolm’s work, not Babe’s.”

“The whole mob is accountable – that’s the law. For Christ’s sake, that’s even Mallory’s law!” Riker held his silence for a moment, calling back his temper.

“You’re right, Charles. Malcolm had to implicate every witness at that meeting, everyone who might’ve led the sheriff back to the letter, the blue letter. But even if some of them didn’t throw rocks, they all watched that woman die. They never moved to help her, they never told. There are no innocent people here.”

Riker walked to the window and pulled up the sash. The sheriff was leaning against his car in the street below. “Hey, Tom. Two minutes, okay?”

“Take your time.”

Riker closed the window again, and now he turned around to finish off Charles Butler. But gently, he cautioned himself.

“Oh, yeah, I think she did it. That’s why I backed up the sheriff on that bullshit confession. At the time, I was just so happy that Mallory didn’t take out the whole town.”

Oh, wait. She did take out Owltown. It was level ground now, wasn’t it? Ah, but most of the human casualties were only punctured and burned.

Charles only stared at him with sad eyes.

“What do you want from me?” Riker picked up his suitcase and set it near the door as a hint that Charles might move away from the room’s only exit. No good. The big man showed no signs of moving.

“I’m not gonna recant that statement, Charles. There’s no point in it. The sheriff doesn’t care who killed Babe Laurie. Nobody does.” No one except for himself and Charles. But Mallory was well out of it now. She was going to get away with murder.

“It wasn’t Mallory,” said Charles. “I know that for a fact – I’m not going on blind faith this time. Does it matter a bit more now?”

Riker felt something close to that weightless moment in an elevator when the contents of his stomach rose and fell. Because he had never known Charles to run a bluff, the detective was experiencing every cop’s waking nightmare. The outlaw act, that one step across the line, was about to come back on him. He would have been more comfortable with the premonition that his plane was going to crash.

“No, it doesn’t matter.” Riker was lying, of course. He had always been the victim’s paladin – until now. Loving Mallory had cost him a great deal. “Babe Laurie raped two kids that we know about. How many more? That murder was a public service.”

No, murder was never that. It was the worst crime. All his feelings for Mallory had been altered by it. He was sorry and sick at -

“Well, you only have Jimmy Simms’s statement to back that up,” said Charles. “You wrote it down as he was telling it, didn’t you? It must have been difficult to be coherent while he was crying.”

“Are you telling me I missed something?” It was the last question he wanted answered. Charles seemed to intuit this and kept his silence.

“Charles, why are you doing this to me?”

“I just wanted to be sure that you weren’t playing the blind man this time around. So you don’t want to know who killed Babe? It doesn’t matter? Fine.”

Charles turned to go.

“Wait. Who was it?”

“You can’t have it both ways, Riker. Either you care or you don’t. I’m surprised that you would even ask. Suppose it was the sheriff? You know, I rather like him. Oh, did I mention that he had motive, opportunity and no alibi? But I’m sure you’d be happy to excuse him too. Isn’t that one of the perks of your job – all your friends get away with murder?”

“The sheriff? Are you saying – ”

“I’m not saying who did it. I know – but you don’t care.”

“Who killed him, Charles?”

“It doesn’t matter – your very words.” He walked to the door and opened it wide.

“Don’t make me nuts. Who -?”

“Have a good flight home, Riker.”

The door was pulled shut.

Riker ceased to hear the birds anymore. He stood by the window, looking down on the sheriff’s car. Cops could not kill their suspects, not ever – that was Riker’s law. But now he finally believed in Mallory. His suspicions of the man waiting below were a lesser sickness and easier to live with.

Thank you, Charles.

Ira was asleep in a soft nest of white bandages and linen sheets. His mother sat by the bed, reading a magazine. Darlene Wooley was not wearing a suit today. A simple dark skirt and blouse accentuated the pallor of her skin, and Charles wondered if she had seen the sun even once in the past four days.