Wallace Stroby - Gone 'Til November

She replaced the photo in the wallet. “With my parents. I couldn’t bring him down here. Not with what I have to do.” Her voice almost broke then, lost some of its edge. “They won’t give Derek back to me until they’re done with him,” she said. “With their ‘investigation.’ He’s all alone down here. You people murdered him, then cut him up, put him on a slab somewhere. Now I can’t take him home until they say I can.”

There was wetness in her eyes. Sara looked away, out at the parking lot, the heat haze rising off the blacktop.

“I have a little boy, too,” she said. “He’s six.”

“He have a daddy?”

“Yes.”

“Where at?”

“I don’t know. We’re on our own.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m not sure,” Sara said. “I guess I just wanted you to know.”

“Is he coming back? His daddy?”

“Maybe someday. I don’t know.”

“But he might. He might show up at your door tomorrow, to see you, see his son.”

“He might.”

“Derek won’t. He told me he’d be gone a week, maybe a little longer, but he’s not ever coming back.”

The cell phone hummed on the table.

“I’m sorry I bothered you.” Sara said and eased out of the booth. “And I’m sorry for what happened.”

The phone hummed again.

“You may not be now,” Simone James said, “but you will be.”

“What’s that mean?”

The woman looked at her, waiting, and Sara knew she was being dismissed. Her face felt hot.

“I’m sorry about what happened to your husband,” she said. “That’s all I came out here to tell you.”

Sara held her eyes for a moment, then turned away, headed for the door. She nodded at Shirley, not trusting herself to speak, then pushed open the door and went out into the heat.

When Sara ended her shift, Hammond’s office was already dark, the door closed. Still in uniform, she drove out to his house on the far west side of the county, the road winding through shimmering cane fields. The air was filled with the harsh, sweet smell of a distant burn-off.

When she pulled up the driveway, he was out on the porch steps, tying flies, a tackle box open beside him. His cruiser and pickup were parked in the side yard. She pulled the Blazer up behind them, cut the engine.

He watched as she came across the lawn. He was out of uniform already, wore jeans and a blue workshirt.

“Figured I’d find you out here,” she said. A wind chime on the porch sounded in the breeze.

“Knocked off early,” he said. “Don’t tell the taxpayers.”

He set the fly in the box, stood, took a handkerchief from his back pocket, wiped his hands.

“Something wrong?” he said.

She shook her head.

“Then come on up. Get out of that heat.”

He held the screen door for her. She went into the coolness of the hallway, a ceiling fan turning above.

“I made some sweet tea a little while ago,” he said.

She followed him into the kitchen. Through the doorway into the living room, she could see a TV table set up in front of a recliner. The television was on, the sound turned down.

“I leave it on sometimes,” he said. “Company, I guess.”

He opened the refrigerator, took out a pitcher. “Glasses up there,” he said.

There was a sideboard against the wall, a shelf holding white china with blue rims. On it were two framed photographs. One was a studio portrait of his daughter, Laura, a young woman with Asian features, long black hair. The other was of his wife, Lien-Thi, who’d died of cervical cancer the year before Sara joined the Sheriff’s Office. In the photo, she stood at the railing of a cruise ship in a Hawaiian dress, wearing a lei. She looked slightly embarrassed and impossibly happy.

Sara got glasses down from the cabinet.

“Have a seat,” he said.

He poured tea, set the pitcher on the table, sat across from her.

“You hear from Laura?” she said.

He shook his head. “She’s got her own life. She doesn’t like coming back here unless she has to. Too many bad memories.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Another year and she’ll take the bar. I thought she might get out here for Thanksgiving, but she says she’s got too much going on. She’s seeing a fellow, too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up getting married.”

“You must be proud of her.”

“I got pretty lucky, is the way I look at it. The Good Lord watches over drunks and fools, I guess, especially if they’re fathers. She didn’t have an easy time of it, growing up here. Between my issues and her mother getting sick…”

“Sounds like you did a pretty good job of it anyway.”

“I don’t know. Maybe she got where she is in spite of, rather than because of. That would be my bet. Only reason I kept this house after Lin died was I thought Laura might want it someday. Doesn’t seem too likely now, though.”

Sara drank her tea. It tasted of honey and mint.

“I was up at the Starlite today,” she said.

“Just for lunch, I hope.”

“I saw that woman.”

He sipped the tea.

“I went out there,” she said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have.”

“And?”

“She thinks her husband was murdered. That Billy shot him without provocation.”

He looked at his glass, swirled his tea. “She would, though, wouldn’t she?”

“I guess.”

“What else she say?”

“That I might not be sorry now about what happened, but I would be.”

He frowned. “She say how-or why?”

“No.”

“Did you take that as a threat?” he said.

“I wasn’t sure how to take it.”

“Well, she hasn’t gotten a lawyer yet, far as I know. All her inquiries have been on her own. That bothers me, though, her bracing you like that.”

“She didn’t come to me. I went to her.”

“Either way, it bothers me.”

“She showed me a picture of her little boy. He’s three.”

“I know. I saw it. What’s on your mind, Sara? I mean exactly?”

She looked past him, out the kitchen window. The sun hung dark and red over the tree line.

“I met Elwood the other night,” she said. “At Tiger’s. Unusual to see him there.”

“Sam likes a beer every once in a while.”

“That’s what he told me, but I got the impression he was keeping an eye on Billy.”

“That might be the case.”

“Then you don’t buy his story? Our story?”

He put the glass down. “I told you I had some concerns,” he said, “but not much more to go on than that.”

“More than you let on, though.”

He crossed his arms. “Nothing I’m about to say leaves this house. You know that, Sara, right?”

She nodded. Here it comes.

“Turns out Elwood had his own concerns, after the fact,” he said. “He and Boone did the interview, but Boone wrote it, wanted to. Sam let him.”

“And?”

“On paper, it all matches up. And everything that happened after you got there was strictly by the book, no worries there. Sam’s like a dog with a bone, though. Once he gets to chewing on something, he won’t let it be.”

“You told me it was a clean shoot, that’s what they decided.”

“There’s not a single piece of evidence that says otherwise.”

“Except Elwood’s gut? And yours?”

“Sam came to me, told me he was ruling it in policy. Boone and the state attorney’s office agreed. Then this Simone James set us both to thinking.”

“You’d believe her over one of your own deputies?”

“Not at all. That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Maybe she didn’t know what Willis was down here for.”

“That’s possible. Likely even. But let me make this clear, Sara. None of what Sam and I discussed is on paper, anywhere, and this department never has and never will be in the practice of airing its dirty laundry in public or to other agencies.”