Джон Коннолли - The Dirty South

Harmony didn’t bother getting her coat. They walked to the picnic tables on the lawn, and Griffin used his handkerchief to wipe the residue of rainwater from the wood before they sat. Harmony dug in her apron and pulled out a pack of menthol cigarettes and a lighter. From the moment they had entered the Dunk-N-Go until now, Griffin noticed, she had yet to make eye contact with either Kel or him.

‘Harmony?’ said Griffin.

‘Uh-huh.’ She was still taking in the surrounding buildings, the grass, the trees, and the sky above.

‘I’d appreciate it if you’d look at me when I’m talking to you.’

‘Why is that?’

‘It’s good manners. It also makes it harder for you to lie.’

Now she did look at him. He’d given her an opening, and she took it.

‘Are you calling me a liar?’

‘No,’ said Griffin.

‘Yes,’ said Knight.

Harmony was perplexed. Whatever response she’d been anticipating, this wasn’t it.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘which is it?’

‘Let’s say we’re undecided, pending further developments,’ said Griffin.

‘I still don’t know where Tilon is at, if that’s why you’re here.’

‘I didn’t ask you where he was.’

‘That’s what you want to know though, isn’t it?’

‘I can’t deny that’s part of it.’

‘So there you are. The situation hasn’t changed since last time you people came calling. Can I go back inside now?’

Griffin ignored the question. Harmony wasn’t going anywhere, or not until she’d finished her cigarette. He arranged his hands before him and stared at the cross formed by his thumbs, just as he’d been taught to fold them in church. Griffin was one of the few Catholics in Cargill. He and his wife had to drive five miles to worship on Sundays, but he preferred it that way. The distance, and the sprinkling of faces to which he could not put a name, helped him to concentrate on his prayers.

‘Harmony,’ he said, ‘what does Tilon do with his evenings?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Does he watch TV, play video games, read?’

‘All those things, I guess. He has his space, and I have mine. Sometimes we watch TV together, but he doesn’t like my shows and I don’t like his, so it’s hard.’

‘Does he have a girlfriend?’

Harmony sucked on her cigarette, and gave a good impression of a grande dame offended by any implication of carnality on her son’s part.

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘He’s never introduced you to anyone?’

‘No.’

‘How long has he been divorced? Two years?’

‘Going on three. I never cared for her.’

The feeling, as far as Griffin knew, had been entirely mutual. LeeAnne Estes had hated Harmony Ward the way up hates down. Last Griffin heard, LeeAnne was living up in Juneau, Alaska, which was as far as she could go to get away from the Wards without moving to Russia.

‘And all that time he’s been living like a monk?’

‘I told you: I wouldn’t know. It’s none of my business.’

‘None of your business.’ Griffin laughed, and even Knight cracked a smile. ‘Harmony, there’s not a car or truck goes by your window that you don’t notice, and not a word of conversation in the Dunk-N-Go that you don’t pick up on and file away. If I thought for one moment that you weren’t able to keep tabs on your own boy, I’d begin to doubt my own name.’

‘He’s introduced me to a girl or two,’ Harmony conceded, ‘but none of them was recent.’

‘And what about the ones he didn’t introduce you to?’

Harmony Ward watched as a breeze plucked the ash from her cigarette and caused the smoke to billow, as though a portal had briefly opened to reveal a world into which she did not wish to step. She had been a fine-looking woman in her youth, and held traces of it still, but the two men in her life had stolen all that was best from her, and now two more were trying to take what little she had left.

‘I got nothing to say.’

‘We have a witness claims she saw Tilon’s truck near the school on the evening Donna Lee Kernigan went missing,’ said Knight, which might not have been entirely true, but was close enough to a possible truth as to make no difference, not here. ‘Says she saw Donna Lee get in, and the truck drive away.’

‘That’s a lie.’

It was said without conviction.

‘It’s enough for us to ask for a warrant to search Tilon’s truck,’ said Griffin. He didn’t think it was – and anyway, asking wasn’t the same as getting – but that wasn’t for Harmony to know. ‘If we find one hair from that girl’s head in there, it won’t go well for Tilon. We think he was seeing Donna Lee, but I don’t believe he had anything to do with what happened to her. I don’t figure Tilon for that order of man.’

Harmony glanced sharply at him. He stared back, and saw her face soften, then crumple.

‘Don’t make me do this,’ she said, as she began to cry.

‘It’s for his own good, Harmony. You know it.’

‘You just want to put someone away for the Kernigan girl’s death, because then everyone will be happy, and the money will start flowing into this town.’

‘No,’ said Griffin, ‘I want to see the right person apprehended, because if we make a mistake, more girls are going to die. You know me, Harmony: I’m not about to allow that, not if it’s within my power. You don’t want it either, and neither does Tilon. If he cared about Donna Lee, he’s hurting right now. He’s also scared, and probably not thinking straight, but he may know something that could help us. He’ll be able to fill in a few of those missing hours, and bring us closer to finding the one that killed her.’

Harmony searched in her apron again, and this time came out with a tissue. She wiped her eyes and nose, and returned the tissue to its hiding place.

‘I’m telling you the truth,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where Tilon is. He left yesterday.’

‘And he didn’t say where he was going?’

‘No. I expected him back last night, but he didn’t show. And then—’

Griffin didn’t press her, but allowed her to take her time.

‘Then a man came by late, and told me to pack some items for Tilon: clothes, toiletries. Enough for a couple of days, he said.’

‘Did you know him?’

She shook her head. ‘But he’d called earlier. He and Tilon talked for a while, then he left, and a few hours later, Tilon left, too. I wasn’t happy when the man returned and started telling me what to do in my own home. I didn’t like him. I didn’t like his manner. I considered him to be morally suspect.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Small. Bald. Green eyes, but with no light to them, like a dead cat’s.’

‘How did he get to your place?’

‘He drove.’

‘Did you notice his car?’

‘It was a crappy Chevy, but it sounded good, like a race car.’

‘What color?’

‘Green, same as his eyes.’

‘Did you get the license number?’

Harmony searched her apron for the third and final time, produced her cigarette pack again, and opened it. Written on the inside, in pencil, was a license number.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘that Tilon has been keeping bad company.’

62

Leonard Cresil sat in the currently patron-free environment of the Gilded Cage and thought that there were few places more depressing than an empty strip club. On the other hand, Burdon County, like the rest of the state, was unlikely to run out of titty bars that were depressing even when occupied. On his run north, Cresil had passed a club advertising BYOB, Mondays to Thursdays. Cresil didn’t know too much about the economics of running a titty bar, but he couldn’t see the percentage in letting men arrive carrying their own cooler boxes. Next thing, they’d be consuming their own fried chicken, and getting their old ladies to dance on the stage for free, just so they could view them from a fresh angle.