Neely Tucker - The Ways of the Dead

The thing he should do was follow up on Jason’s tip and try to find someone to corroborate that Sarah’s throat had been cut after she was dead, to keep the heat off Jason if there was flak about it. It put the slaying in a different light and made it, in his estimation, far less likely that the three teenagers were the killers. They might have cut her throat in a moment of panic, or loathing, or brutality, but to tack it on after she was dead seemed calculated and impersonal.

And then he leaned forward and spat in the alley before turning the corner. Chris could get his own damn scoops. What he was going to do was push this story on the trio of killings, and Lorena Bradford and her spit could drop fucking dead. She was insulted her sister might have been the victim of a serial killer? Didn’t like reading about her dancing, her nude pictures? It amazed him, what people in this country thought was insulting or intimidating or humiliating or whatever.

So now he needed to know what Doyle Goodwin had seen the night Sarah was killed, or, actually, on any others. If the actual killer was still out there-and the killings were related-then the killer had been in or around his store, probably often. Psychopaths were creatures of habit, not impulse.

He pulled open the right side of the glass double doors, the little silver bells ringing at the top as he did so. The television blared and there was Doyle’s cousin Bettie, ringing up chips and soda for a teenager. He had almost forgotten what a pain in the ass she was, the beehive hairdo from the 1960s, the shrill voice, the soap operas blaring on the television behind the counter.

Making an excuse to kill time while the lone customer left, Sully walked up and down a couple of aisles, picked up a bag of M&Ms and a ginger ale, dawdling by the magazine rack, then came up front when the store was empty, nearly having to turn his shoulders to get down the narrow aisle.

“Hey, Bettie,” he said, smiling. “Sully Carter, from the paper? From last year, remember? Good seeing you again.”

Her plump face squinched together for a moment, and she peered at him through her glasses. “Well, hi, shug,” she said. “Did somebody drop you in a swimming pool?”

“No ma’am. It’s pouring. Got caught on it on the bike.”

“Well, bless your heart, you need to run right on home and get a hot shower and a good supper.”

“That’s right where I’m headed, but I was on the way home coming down Georgia there, and saw y’all were back open, and thought I’d stop in to talk to Doyle about it for a hot second.”

“Lord have mercy, did you know I was right here when all that happened? Maybe the last person on this earth to talk to that gal?”

“That’s what-”

“Why, it was just awful. Awful. And them three Negro boys running around in here the whole time. The police, now they saying they did it, and now everybody around here thinks I told on them. But I didn’t! I didn’t say anything like that! I don’t even know their names! They just run out the front door, that’s all I told the police because that’s all I know. But now nobody wants to come in ’cause they think we told on ’em!”

Sully put his items on the counter along with a ten-dollar bill, forcing a concerned look to his face, slumping his shoulders for emphasis. “That’s terrible!”

She made change, the talk never slowing, her eyes lighting up now. “Doyle’s back there, you want to try to talk to him, but he’s not going to say anything, not at all. He’s just been so upset. The police, just banging in here, keeping us down there at the station all night asking questions.”

“I guess they wanted the video of that afternoon,” Sully said, leaning against the counter and nodding toward the small surveillance camera suspended from the ceiling behind the register.

Bettie looked straight up, without turning her head.

“Oh, hon, those things haven’t worked since Jesus wore short pants. The repairman came and wanted all sort of money to fix it. It was the second time it had busted and Doyle figured-Doyle, c’mon out here, hon! That boy from the paper is out here again!-and Doyle, he figured they were just using us for a steady account, I guess to pay for their new golf cart at they country club.”

“So you just kept the cameras?”

“That’s right. That’s just exactly right. To make these little robbers and bad people think we’re watching everything on tape. It helps, I guess. We ain’t had a problem worse than shoplifting in years. People think it’s dangerous, a store like this in a neighborhood like this, but the people like us just fine, you ask me, they just-”

“Bettie.”

They both turned to the baritone coming from the back. Doyle Goodwin stood just inside the swinging metal doors to the back room. He was wearing khakis and a starched blue oxford-cloth button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled with precision to the elbows. He had a narrow, weather-beaten face, his salt-and-pepper hair cut short and brushed neatly to the side, looking like the navy man he had been. What had been his rank? Something like storekeeper? He had taken off his glasses and was cleaning them with a small bit of cloth.

“Hey there, Sully,” he said, softly. “I guess Bettie’s been catching you up on our little excitement.”

Sully nodded toward Bettie and walked over to Doyle, reaching out to shake his hand, to say hello. He had forgotten that the man was only about five foot seven. His chest and shoulders filled out the shirt, though, testament to some straight-up time in the gym, that military discipline.

“She has,” Sully said. “And I’m really sorry about everything. The minute I saw where it was, the store, I remembered coming up here and talking to you.”

“Appreciate that, Sully. I do. It’s been a terrible time. A terrible thing for that family, that little girl.”

“You mind if I just ask you a question or two about it?”

Doyle paused, then nodded his head to the back. “Come on.”

He pushed open the door and retreated into the storage room. Sully followed him, past the sign on the door that read EMPLOYEES ONLY. The overhead lights were off. Wooden shelves closed in from both sides, stacked floor to ceiling with boxes of canned goods and a pallet of soft drinks and paper towels and paper plates and toilet paper. There was a narrow toilet off to the right, the light on. Doyle’s office was at the back. It had a little sign that read OFFICE.

Doyle pushed the door in and took two steps and sat down behind an old steel desk, the thing looking like it weighed as much as an aircraft carrier. It had an old computer and a monitor on top of it. There were clutters of paper and what looked to be a scattering of receipts and a stack of thin black accounting ledgers. Boxes of merchandise, holding individual units of macaroni or cans of soup or packs of gum.

Sully sat down in a yellow-and-brown chair that was almost touching the front of the desk.

“You got wet,” Doyle said.

“Got caught in it when I went up to Everlasting Cemetery, out in Colesville or some damn place,” Sully said, peeling off his jacket. “Ran up there for the Noel Pittman funeral.”

Doyle settled himself in the chair and touched some papers on his desk. He gave a slight shake of the head. “God and sonny Jesus. I guess we’re in a little bit of shock. I mean, thirteen years here and nothing serious and then this. Had a drunk pull a gun one night in the store, but he was just drunk. Then we get-we get these two things in the space of a few days.”

“Bettie was saying things are really slow since you opened back up.”

“About fifty, sixty percent off, I’d say. God-awful.”

Sully paused. This was always the tricky part of interviews like this. He tried to make them conversations, but the fact was that he was extracting information, like pulling a tooth. The touch was to do it while keeping people from feeling like that was what you were doing. “So you didn’t see Sarah Reese that day, I take it?”