Shirley Murphy - The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape

“And when Blake goes down, I would be arrested as his accomplice.”

“Oh, no,” the devil said. “I will see that you conveniently vanish, into any kind of life you choose. Healthy again, with wealth, with bawdy women, the finest horses, gold, whatever is your pleasure.”

“If Morgan and I got out of here, if that was even possible—and if I didn’t double-cross him, if I continued to help him and kept him out of trouble, what would you do then?”

“I would destroy you both.”

“You haven’t destroyed me so far. What makes you think you can take down Blake, either? The truth is,” Lee said, “you’re more bluff than substance.”

Though, in fact, he knew better. He knew too well how Lucifer could twist human thought. If he and Morgan did escape, it might be more than they could do to fight off whatever influence Satan brought to bear. It might be more than they could handle, not to follow the dark’s lead.

“Once I’ve helped you escape, if you are capable of that feat, and if then you tried to double-cross me and save Blake, tried to make Falon reveal the evidence, it will be easy enough to twist your plan to my own design.”

“If you’re that powerful, you don’t need my help to destroy Blake.”

“I need you to encourage Blake. He is—not an easy subject,” said the dark spirit. “Too religious, for one thing, and what a waste that is. It is you who must show him the broader way, who must lay out the plan. But first, you must inflame his desire to break out. Blake would never have the courage on his own.”

Lee looked hard at him. “Why Blake? What the hell do you have against Blake?”

The devil didn’t answer. The tall inmate grew indistinct, blending into the building behind him, and he vanished on the rain-sodden wind. It was in that moment that Lee thought about Becky, about her secrecy in the visiting room and her shuttered looks, and he wondered what had made him think of that.

24

B ECKY WOKE TOrain pounding at the windows, and to a residue of fear. In the night she had experienced again Falon’s car careening at hers, had fought the wheel again to avoid going off the bridge. Now, waking fully, she lay listening to the comforting clatter from the kitchen, smelling the aromas of baking bread and pies and, this morning, the scent of bacon as Caroline made their breakfast. Rising, she showered and dressed quickly, then woke Sammie, watched as Sammie sleepily pulled her on clothes and ran a brush through her hair.

In the big kitchen Caroline and her assistant, redheaded Nettie Parks, were lifting pecan pies and fresh bread from the two big ovens. Nettie was a neighbor, a widow whose five children had left the nest. She liked getting up early, she liked the extra money, and most of all, she and Caroline enjoyed working together. Nettie was among the few who had stood by them during the trial. Nettie set their breakfast on a corner of the long, crowded table and hugged Becky. “I hope Brad Falon burns in hell.”

That made Becky smile. Sitting down, she cupped her hands around the warm coffee cup while listening to the rain, watched her mother turn out muffins from their tins and ease them into the familiar bakery boxes stamped CAROLINE’S . They ate quickly this morning and didn’t linger; it would take a while at the police station to file the complaints and go over the details of Falon’s attacks. Their overnight stay with Caroline was too short, but they’d had a cozy visit after Sergeant Trevis left.

She had called Quaker Lowe last night, too, on the after-hours number he’d given her. He said, “I tried to call you, at your aunt’s, Becky. Good news! There’s a warrant out for Falon, he’s wanted in California.”

She laughed. “I know. I’m in Rome, Sergeant Trevis told me.” She told Lowe about Falon’s attack on the bridge, and that she was on her way to the station.

“But you’re both all right?”

“We’re fine. Sammie’s a soldier.”

“I’m glad you changed your mind about naming Falon, glad the police have a record of his attacks. This will be a big help if . . . if there are complaints on file against Falon,” Lowe said quietly. His unspoken words If we lose the appeal resonated in silence between them. If we lose the appeal and have to start over . . .

Now, rising from the table, promising Caroline she’d call when they were safely home, she hugged her mother, hugged Nettie, and went to get her car from the garage—leaving Caroline to deal with her own poor, damaged vehicle.

Getting Sammie settled in the front seat with her books, they headed along the rain-sloughed streets for the station. Becky missed Caroline already. Sometimes she felt as needful of mothering as was Sammie. That amused and annoyed her.

At the station she filed a complaint for each offense: the highway assault, the break-in at Anne’s, Falon’s attack on her behind the drugstore, and the break-in at her house in Rome when Sergeant Leonard had refused to make a written report.

Detective Palmer, a thin, dark-haired officer of Cherokee background, asked that Caroline bring in her car. “Will you call her? I want to take paint samples. With luck, I can lift chips from it, left by Falon’s car. And if we pick up his car, we should find scrapes there from Caroline’s vehicle. One more piece of evidence,” Palmer said. “Every small thing counts.”

He stood looking down at her. “The FBI will want to talk with you, as part of the federal investigation on Falon’s land scam. The Atlanta bureau will call you at your aunt’s if you’ll give me the number.”

Becky wrote down both numbers, Anne’s and her private one. She saw no animosity in Palmer, she didn’t think he’d been among the many officers who’d turned against Morgan. She found it comforting that the FBI wanted to question her about Falon; that made her feel more in control. As she and Sammie headed for Atlanta she drove the narrow, rainy highway filled only with positive thoughts, with new hope. She wasn’t in the habit of saying prayers to ask for special favors; such begging was, in her mind, self-serving. Her prayers were more often of thanks, for the many blessings they did have. But last night and now, this morning, she prayed hard that Falon would be found and sent to L.A., that a California judge or jury would convict him for the land scam, that he would be locked up for the maximum time. And that maybe, in prison, someone would kill him. If her prayers were a sin, so be it, that was what he deserved.

It rained all the way to Atlanta, harsh rain slanting across the road in gusts so sharp they rocked the car. They were home at Anne’s just before noon. Mariol had made hot vegetable soup and a plate of cornbread.

“I’m just going to grab a bite,” Becky said, “and go on to work, it’s payroll time.”

Mariol nodded. “Go in the dining room first, take a look at what was in the attic.”

Becky found Anne at the dining table leafing carefully through the pages of a black leather album, a thin folder so ancient and ragged that the disintegrating covers had shed bits of rotting leather onto the white runner.

“Mariol found it,” Anne said. “I’d forgotten about those few boxes we’d stored away. We cleaned out most of the relics a couple of years ago, left a few family papers, this album, and a small trunk of antique clothes. I forgot, but Mariol remembered.”

The faded pictures were all in sepia tones, some of men in coveralls standing by their teams of horses, or women in long dresses over laced-up boots, women with serious, unsmiling faces beneath hand-tucked sunbonnets. Becky touched the old pictures gently, thinking how it would be to live in that time when life was so hard. Raising and canning or curing all your food or going without, doing the laundry over a corrugated washboard, traveling on foot or in a horse-dawn wagon or by horseback, maybe sometimes by train. No telephone to call for the sheriff, if there even was one, only your own firearms and your courage to protect your children.