I’m afraid that the vision that flashed across my mind was that of my father. One Saturday afternoon he was showing my brothers and me how to fix something on his car. He’d just toggled some switch or other and started the car when a puff of smoke and a tongue of flame rose from inside the engine. My father stood there for a minute. We boys backed away a few steps, wondering if the car or my father would explode. He just stood there with his hands at his side, staring into the engine. All he said was, “This is a revoltin’ development.”
My sentiments exactly.
I looked at the body. I held out my blood-covered hands. With nothing to wipe them on I tried using the floor of the car as the nearest dry surface. I got most of it off, but stray smears and small patches of stickiness remained. Touching the body had also gotten blood on the front of my shirt and pants.
I looked around to see if there was anyone in the vicinity to call to for help.
Nobody. I didn’t need to be involved in a murder investigation in the South. Who knew what lunacy might be perpetrated?
I hesitated to go for help. The only other person who
had been here was the murderer. The crime scene could hardly be more pure or better preserved. With the light at hand I did some examining. Woodall’s shirt was bloody, but the car itself had very little blood on it. With that kind of wound more than his shirt would have gotten soaked; the area around the body would be saturated. The pavement surrounding the car had no visible signs of blood, either. Obviously, he’d been killed somewhere else and brought to this spot. Why our car? To implicate me? Scott? Both of us? Or maybe every killer looks for a handy spot to plop a dead body, and our rent-a-car happened to be it.
I didn’t see signs of a struggle. His clothes seemed to be in order, not tugged or pulled out; his gun was in its holster, his hands lay by his side, and I couldn’t see any signs of abrasions or bruising. Whoever did it either was very clever—maybe drugged him—or was powerful enough to hold him still with one hand while slitting his throat with the other. A very powerful person—or several people. Of course, there could be all kinds of signs of restraint that I missed. I ran my hand along the floor, then under and on the seat as well as under the sheriff. I found nothing.
I looked back toward the hospital. As yet no one had emerged onto the parking lot. It was at the back of the hospital, away from the street, although I doubted if much traffic existed anywhere in Brinard in the early morning hours. Even now I heard no sound of activity. There were two other cars within a hundred feet of this one and another clump of cars closer to the street. I presumed these belonged to the hospital workers. Possibly we hadn’t been singled out. Maybe the killer or killers had simply picked this one because it was farthest from any light.
I wished I could just get in the car, take the body, and dump it off the nearest bridge. I presumed no one had seen the murderer but half the town would be on hand to see
me try to surreptitiously slip the body into the nearest swamp.
I sighed. There really wasn’t much else to do. I walked back into the emergency-room entrance.
The nurse saw the blood on my clothes and jumped to her feet.
“I’m fine,” I said. “The sheriff is in the backseat of a rented white Oldsmobile about two hundred feet from the front door. It probably won’t do any good, but you should send some medical personnel out there.”
“Why?”
“His throat has been slit.”
She swung into action. She pressed a button with one hand and reached for a phone with the other. I stopped in a john down the hall and washed the rest of the blood off my hands. By the time I got outside, the wisps of fog were gone, and it was full daylight.
A blue police car with white lettering saying “Brinard County” sat about ten feet from our car. The cop car had its Mars lights rotating. A blond guy, who fit his brown polyester uniform pants very nicely, stared into the backseat of my rental car. Three white-coated emergency-room workers stood in a clump about five feet from the body.
I joined the cop. He had a lovely blond mustache and short blond hair mostly covered by a brown cap. He might have been in his mid-twenties. He wore a tan shirt that emphasized great pecs. He barely took notice of me but kept staring at the backseat of the car.
I tapped him on the shoulder. He didn’t move.
“I found the body,” I said.
“Was he dead?” the cop asked.
“When I found him? Yes.” I thought it best not to add that “I found the body” implies that it was dead when I discovered it. I was extremely tired, but I wanted to stick
with a general policy of quiet cooperation and compliance.
He just kept staring at the body. Since the cop’s responses seemed to be limited, I strolled over to the medical people. One woman and two men.
“Shouldn’t we try to revive him?” one asked.
“You can tell he’s dead.”
“I know he’s dead.”
“We should do something. He’s the sheriff. He can’t just be dead.”
“Can’t be much deader.”
“Y’all see a point in attaching electrodes, starting transfusions, or inserting IVs? Blood would just flow right out again.”
That they could recognize dead when they saw it I thought was a plus.
Another cop car drove up. A very slender, dark-haired guy got out. He seemed to be about the same age and height as the blond.
“What’s up, Harvey?” he said to the blond.
Harvey pointed. “Sheriff’s dead.”
The new guy walked up to the car, opened the back door, lifted the sheriff’s head, and whistled. He rejoined Harvey. “He’s dead all right.”
I was pleased at this new confirmation of the obvious.
“This is gonna be big news,” the dark-haired one said. “Every official in the county is gonna want to be in on this one.”
I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to interrogate me. The dark-haired one’s hips were narrow and his shoulders broad, but the blond had lovely muscles. I doubted they’d let me choose.
Mostly I stood around as a crowd gathered and what must have been half the officials in the county examined either the body, the car, the ground, or all of the above, in general doing everything but preserving the integrity of
the crime scene. Several herds of demented elephants on their morning stampede couldn’t have obscured the evidence any more than these people did.
No one suggested we adjourn to a nice air-conditioned car or building to avoid the heat and humidity, already unpleasant at this hour.
Around ten a lean, grizzled man with dark circles under his eyes drove up. He wore a very light gray suit and tie. His full head of hair was cut short and was totally white.
Everyone stepped back and allowed him space. They waited for him to speak. He barely looked at the backseat of the rental car. The first thing he said was, “Cody, cordon off this area. Move all the people back, including the doctors and nurses.” The brown-haired guy moved to obey. So Cody was the name of the slender broad-shouldered one. The older man put his hands on his hips, gazed at the sky, the surrounding buildings, finally the pavement and the car. He saw me and walked over.
“You found the body?”
I hadn’t seen anybody tell him. Somehow word got around in this town as if everybody had their own Burr County CNN antenna attached inside their skull.
I nodded.
“I’m Wainwright Richardson, the county coroner.” He did not offer his hand to be shaken. “I take over when the sheriff is incapacitated. I’ll be handling the investigation. I want you to give your statement to Harvey.” He pointed to the blond.
At this moment Scott approached me from across the hospital parking lot.
“How’s your dad?” I asked.
“Still breathing on his own. Shannon and Hiram are with him. They told me Peter was dead. What happened?”
“I found the sheriff in the back of our rent-a-car. Rent-a-corpse? Whichever. He was very dead.”
Harvey strolled over. I liked the way he hooked his thumbs on either side of his oversized buffalo-head belt buckle. He pointed at me. “I want to talk to you.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said to Scott. “I’ll be fine. Get back to your dad.” Scott hesitated. “It’s okay,” I said. “Everything will be all right.”
He still hesitated, but Harvey placed his hand on my elbow, less than a yank but more than gently, and led me toward a cop car.
I was sweating in the morning heat. The parking lot had no shade, and I could already feel warmth from the concrete radiating through my shoes.
We sat in the front seat. He took a hand-sized note pad from the dashboard.
“Can you turn the air-conditioning on?” I asked.
“Listen, faggot, everybody knows what happened yesterday between you and the sheriff. If I can hang this on you, I will.”
The towering anger triggered by that kind of unfairness ran smack into my cooperation vow and my good sense. Calm was absolutely essential at this point. I said, “Officer, I’m willing to do anything I can to help. I found the body. I had no reason to kill him. I barely knew him. I’ve been at the hospital all night. It would help me if you didn’t address me as ‘faggot.’”
“I don’t give a shit what would help you. The sheriff was my coach in high school and my friend. He helped me get this job. He’s dead and I’ll call you anything I want. Just answer my questions.”
“Am I a suspect?”
“Don’t start that lawyer shit with me. Just talk. I want everything you did last night in order.” He held his hand poised with pen over pad.
So I told him. Just to be nasty, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to snatch glimpses of his polyester-covered
crotch. This is a great way to make a straight man feel uncomfortable. Once he caught my glance and quickly looked away.
By the time we were finished, I’d sweated through the back of my shirt and the seat of my pants. The window on my side faced the east and the sun shone in on me. The open window let in what little breeze there was.
Harvey flipped his notebook shut. “Stay there,” he growled. He got out and walked directly to the coroner.
During the interrogation someone had been taking crime-scene photos and another person dusted for fingerprints.
I gazed at the assembled mass of gawkers. More vehicles had arrived, including an ambulance and one more cop car. Twenty-five feet away a crowd of thirty or forty people stood behind yellow crime-scene tape. As each new spectator arrived, the car where the body still sat in the heat was pointed out and then fingers would swing in my direction.
I saw Clara Thorton in earnest conversation with Wainwright Richardson.
Minutes later I spotted Scott trying to enter through the police cordon, but Cody stopped him. No one seemed to be noticing me, so I got out of the car. I strolled over to Scott.
“News on your dad?” I asked.
“I was just upstairs. Nothing. You look miserable.”
“I’ve been sweating in that damn car.”
Several officers noticed us and pointed. Cody, Harvey, Clara, and Wainwright moved toward us. The crowd behind the police cordon surged in our direction. I saw teenagers and little kids on bikes, older women in sun hats, young men and women in jeans, and elderly couples in khakis. I guess there isn’t an approved gawker-at-tragedy uniform.
I observed the approaching mass of officialdom. “It’s the cavalry,” I said, “and I don’t think they’re riding to the rescue.”
Over their shoulders I could see Sheriff Woodall’s body being placed in a body bag and into an ambulance.
“What’s happened so far?” Scott asked.
“I was questioned. They should be done. I never got your stuff from the house.”
“No big deal.”
When the group of officials arrived, Richardson said, “Mr. Mason, we’ll want you to come down to the police station to sign a statement. We also will have a few more questions.”
This had gone on just about long enough. I said, “I’ll want a lawyer present, and I’ll need to make some calls.”
The three others looked at Richardson. He gripped his chin in his hand, nodded slowly, and said, “We’ll decide that when we get to the station.”
I didn’t like the sound of that and began a protest. So did Scott, but two cops positioned themselves on either side of me. They didn’t cuff me, but I wasn’t free to leave, either.
“I’ll get you out,” Scott called to me.
“Call Todd Bristol,” I shouted back. Todd was our lawyer in Chicago. I was beginning to dislike this big-time.
I was placed in the backseat of Cody’s police car. He did not turn on the air-conditioning, but the rush of the wind through the open windows as the car moved gave some relief.
I said, “So, Cody, how ’bout them Braves?”
“Shut up, asshole.”
Tension-relieving chatter was not Cody’s long suit.
The drive of a few blocks took only moments. Cody led me up the steps of the police station. It was two stories tall, with four windows on both sides of the front door. The woodwork around them was painted white. It could have
used another coat. Inside, the linoleum floors were faded yellow with black flecks. Pine, stained dark brown, covered the walls halfway to the ceiling; the upper portion was painted pale beige. The first floor was basically one large room with offices around the sides, separated by glass partitions that reached only three-quarters of the way to the ceiling. A reception desk was immediately to the left as I walked in, staffed by a gray-haired woman answering the phone. A low wooden railing separated the reception area from the rest of the fifty-by-fifty-foot space.
Two African-American men in cop uniforms stood off to my left on the far side of the room. Four white people in plainclothes worked at various desks on the other side of the railing. I noticed potted plants and pictures of families on desktops. One desk had a typewriter with a yellow rubber duck on top—it had the friendliest face of anybody or thing in the place.
I was fingerprinted and subjected to paperwork being filled out. All the people talked more slowly than I was used to in Chicago. For a few of them I wanted desperately to reach over and press their fast-forward button. It didn’t seem like they’d ever get done speaking. Everyone was reasonably polite, but nobody moved a speck above slow, as if time were theirs to play with. All this took until after twelve. Finally, they led me up stairs that were immediately behind the reception desk. I saw a hallway as dreary as the space below. They put me in the first room on the right.
It was not a suite at the Ritz. The best thing about it was that there were no rats or crawling critters visible. There was a chair, but one of the legs was slightly shorter than the other, which made sitting in it annoying. The table in the center of the room could have been shellacked and made into a shrine to the criminals who had carved their initials, names, what I hoped were nicknames, and obscene
graffiti into it. The window had wire mesh on the inside.
Nobody stayed in the room with me. For comfort I finally moved the table against a wall and sat on top of it. I waited and wondered. No doubt in my mind that I was a suspect. I tried the door. Locked. I decided if there was a fire I could batter the table or chair through the mesh on the window and jump two flights down. They hadn’t taken my wallet, watch, other valuables, or shoelaces.
There was no air-conditioning and I had no way to remove the wire mesh and open the window to get some fresh air. At first I sweated a fine mist of damp all over my body. Then I started to drip. An hour later, when rivers of moisture were running off me and with my worries mounting, Wainwright Richardson came in.
I neither gave nor got a cheery greeting. He refused my first and all subsequent requests for water. Richardson took the chair, turned it backwards, and straddled it. He had to lean forward so the short chair leg rested on the ground. I guess it doesn’t do to rock back and forth while grilling a suspect.
“You’re in a lot of trouble,” he said.
“I want my lawyer.”
“Don’t you start that with me. We aren’t up north. We take our slow time down here and we do things right.”
“If you’re doing things right, you’re tracking the sheriff’s movements from last night, finding out who saw him last, seeing if there were any witnesses for this morning, checking to see who had grudges against him. I want my lawyer.”
“You talk a lot for somebody in so much trouble.”
“I’m just enchanted with the luxury of the surroundings and the charm of my hosts.”
“Why’d you kill him?”
“I want my lawyer.”
“Now, we’re not getting anywhere this way. You need to talk to me.”
“I want my lawyer.”
As his questioning continued, my responses didn’t vary much from “I want my lawyer” and “I don’t know why you keep asking me things—I want my lawyer.” Kind of a dull conversation, but I was beginning to move from worried to scared.
After an hour of this I said, “You have nothing to hold me on. I’m leaving.”
I got up, walked to the door, and tried the handle. It was still locked.
“You’re staying here,” he said quietly.
“No, I’m not.” But I think he knew my bluster was for naught.
He said, “Your boyfriend may be rich, but down here we take murder seriously. Don’t have much crime in this county, and we don’t like strangers coming in and causing trouble.”
“Are you a throwback?” I asked. “Is this Mississippi Burning?”
“What’s that?”
“A movie. Look, I know I haven’t crossed any international boundaries. You people might not like me because I’m gay, but you must read the papers. The world is changing. You can’t just lock somebody up and throw away the key. Eventually there will be lawyers and publicity involved with this.”
“We’ll handle any problems.” He knocked three times on the door. Harvey, the young blond cop, opened it. Richardson slipped out. I didn’t bother to rush them. I could see the headline: “Faggot Shot While Trying to Escape.”
Sweating before was as nothing now as the heat of the day stretched into late afternoon. Outdoors had been stifling.
Inside was beastly. During the next hour, I took my shoes and socks off, let my shirt hang open, and contemplated stripping down to my shorts. For the hour after that, hunger and especially thirst became massively important as I tried to think of all the long cool drinks I’d ever had. The third hour had me in my underwear. I sat on the floor with my back against the wall. I shut my eyes and must have dozed, because I woke with a start as somebody rattled the doorknob. I did not leap to my feet. I wanted a drink of something and didn’t care who saw me nearly naked.
The door opened and I thought, this is the end. The man who stood in the door looked like the warden from the movie Cool Hand Luke, only this guy must have been in about his sixties. He was a mousy guy with a hat, a short-sleeve shirt, hands on his hips, and an arrogant air. I glanced over his shoulder for a man in mirrored sunglasses who would be toting a shotgun.
I expected him to speak in a reedy-whiny voice, the first words of which would be, “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”
He gazed around the room, caught sight of me on the floor, and said to someone behind him, “Get this man some water, and I want a fan in here now!”
He propped the door open with his briefcase, bent his pudgy frame down next to me, and offered me his hand. “You okay, son?” he asked.
“Think I’ll sit until the water gets here,” I said.
He nodded and went to the door. A pitcher of water, a glass, and a fan were brought in by a lanky teenager. “Thank you,” my savior said. The kid scuttled out.
He poured me water and handed me the glass. I gulped greedily.
“I’m Beauregard Lee,” he said. “Call me Beau. I’m a lawyer. I got a call from Todd Bristol. We went to law
school together. Don’t tell him I told you, but he was my first lover back when dinosaurs ruled the world.”
He plugged the fan in and aimed it so the breeze hit me directly. I drained the water from the glass, poured myself another.
“Took me a while, because I had to drive down from Atlanta, and I can’t stay long. I’ve got to get back for a huge case tomorrow, and I don’t do criminal law, but Todd said you were a sister, and I know how these backwoods towns can be. The death of the sheriff was on all the news stations.”
“I haven’t been charged with anything yet.”
“Not from lack of trying.”
“Huh?” I felt somewhat better. I reached for my pants, stood up, and pulled them on. Beau looked disappointed but didn’t comment.
He said, “The only thing these people have done all day is try and tie you to the murder. Every step you and Scott have taken since you got here has been investigated. What they don’t have is direct evidence linking you to the murder.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“I understand. They don’t. They know you’re gay and you’re a stranger. You corrupted their favorite son. Led him to Sodom.”
“He was more than willing.”
“Yes, but they don’t want to know that, or won’t accept it. The big cities and evil ways have stolen him from them. There is a lot of affection for Scott Carpenter in this town, as you can imagine. I remember as he was growing up reading about him in the Atlanta papers as all-state everything. He was gorgeous then.”
“How is he?”
“He’s been downstairs most of the afternoon. He’s been trying to get to see you.”
“How’s his dad?”
“I don’t know. I told him to go back to the hospital and that I’d call him as soon as something developed here.”
“What’s going to happen to me?”
“The only thing that’s stood in the way of you being arrested, so far as I can tell, is that the district attorney is a young fella just out of law school.”
“And he isn’t as prejudiced and narrow-minded as these others?”
“He’s a part-time preacher at the local Evangelical Christian Reformed Nazarene church.”
“That doesn’t sound promising.”
“He’s totally new on the job, which is somewhat good. He doesn’t want to be made a fool of in court. He knows he has to have a case. He wants to go exactly by the book, and going by the book at this point for you could be a very good thing.”
I stuck my feet in front of the fan and began to pull on my shoes and socks.
“Any chance I’ll be let out of here?”
“I should be able to get you out without you being charged. If they find enough evidence to arrest you, that’s a whole ’nother thing, as I’m sure you know, but this has been long enough.”
It was after five by now. He asked me what had happened from the moment we got to town. I told him. When I finished he said, “Come on with me.”
“They wouldn’t let me out the door earlier,” I said.
“Stick with me.”
Beau took me by the elbow and walked me past the young blond cop. Harvey shuffled uneasily but let us pass. He followed us down the stairs. Beau stopped at the bottom of the stairs and gazed across the room at Cody, the dark-haired cop. Beau said nothing, just nodded to himself, and turned to the reception desk.
Violet Burnside was standing near the reception desk. She wore tight short-shorts and a halter top that emphasized her enormous endowments. her hair looked artificially colored, and I thought I saw lines around her eyes that her excessive makeup almost completely concealed.
She was speaking to the receptionist and several men in sport coats. I presumed they were plainclothes cops. She giggled and simpered at them.
Once they noticed us, they all stopped talking.
Wainwright Richardson came out of an office near the back. He strode to the railing. His eyes kept one continuous glare on Beau.
“May we leave?” Beau asked.
“Your client may not leave town. Any attempt to remove him from this jurisdiction will result in his immediate arrest.”
“Thank you, Mr. Richardson, I understand. We want to be fully cooperative.”
More dagger glares as we left.
Outside, even the humidity felt good for at least the first couple minutes of freedom. We stood in the parking lot.
“What do I do now?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. You’re still in danger, and not just because of the murder. You’ve got more to worry about being prominently gay. Most people in the South are reasonable. However, as anywhere does, we have our share of lunatics. Try not to be in the countryside alone after dark. Carrying a gun is iffy. Do you have one?”
“No. Scott’s family might, out at the farm.”
“Too long of a wait for a permit for you to carry one. And if you did, it could be an invitation to a nut to open fire—or it could protect you. Course, if they caught you with one without a permit, they could lock you up for that. Try to be with a crowd at all times. You might think of hiring a private detective.”
“A local investigator? You’re seriously suggesting I trust somebody in this town? Other than you and Scott, there’s isn’t anybody in hundreds of miles that I would trust.”
Beau sighed. “I wish you could leave.”
“I wouldn’t want to go with Scott’s dad being ill.”
“Your lover is also in more danger now.”
“But we haven’t done anything.”
“You’re a living, breathing, openly gay man, and this is the rural South.”
Cody the cop walked out of the station with Violet, who certainly looked like she knew how to get a straight male’s testosterone flowing. She stood close to him, her thigh only a small shaft of daylight away from his crotch. She ran a fingernail down his chest and only stopped when it reached his belt buckle. He grinned and she giggled.
“Touching scene,” Beau said.
“You stared at him after we came downstairs.”
“Any gay man would, but it wasn’t just because of that. Either his exact twin or as ‘Stud Likely’ that man dances every first and third Saturday night at a very exclusive gay men’s club in Atlanta. Mr. Likely ends up wearing only a fishnet G-string when he’s done stripping.”
“He’d make a great Stud Likely.”
“I’d say so. I heard Mr. Likely had some mysterious background from a few of my friends who could afford his after-hours services.”
“I don’t think I’ll ask him.”
“You might. Somebody had to commit this murder. One handy way of getting yourself off the hook would be finding out who did it. People with secrets are a good place to start.”
“Nobody in this town is going to talk to me.”
He thought a minute. “I’m afraid you’re right.”
Violet leaned close to Cody and their lips met. She grinned at him as he swung into a squad car and drove off.
Violet casually gazed around the parking lot, at the windows of the police station, and then sashayed over to a white Cadillac parked three cars from where we stood.
“That’s either salvation or deep trouble,” Beau said. “Who is she?”
“Scott’s girlfriend from high school.”
He shook his head. “I’ll take you back to the hospital and I’ll talk to Scott, but I can’t stay. I’ll try and get you a reliable lawyer from in town. Doubt if I’ll find you a gay one. Until you discover the real killer, you’re in deep trouble. More publicity could simply bring out more maniacs from the deep woods, but then a town crawling with reporters makes it tougher to gun you down.”
“You think it would come to that?”
“I don’t want to think that. I just want you to be prepared and be careful.”
Beau walked into the hospital with me. Outside the CCU lounge Scott swept me into his arms in front of Hiram, Nathan, Shannon, and two nurses. Scott’s mom and his cousin Sally were in with his dad, who was resting comfortably. In the hallway, away from the family, I told Scott the whole story.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” he said when I finished. “And now you can’t leave.”
“I’m glad I came,” I said. “I want to be here. Whatever you and your family need is what’s important to me.”
Beau said, “I appreciate your sentiment, but you’ll need to do something proactive to find someone else to be the main suspect in this murder. I cannot emphasize how much trouble you are in.”
I nodded. I saw Scott staring wide-eyed over my shoulder. Following his gaze, I saw Violet Burnside, clutching a massive purse and swaying her hips seductively, strutting down the hall toward us.
“Violet?” Scott said.
She said nothing. When she reached us, she dropped her purse on the floor, threw her arms around Scott, whispered “Scottie,” and planted her lips on my lover’s. He put his arms on her shoulders and gently eased her away. He introduced Beau and then me, stating that I was his lover.
She looked me up and down more slowly than she had on the street. “You’re very beautiful, both of you.” She talked in a high-pitched, breathy voice.
Beau said, “I’m sorry, Miss Burnside, but we have important business to attend to. If you could just give me a few minutes with these two gentlemen …”
She sighed, turned so that she faced the three of us in a semicircle. Her sheen of magnolia blossoms and delicacy dropped completely. Her voice was still airy and light, but she pointed at me and said, “I know you’re in trouble, and I know your relationship with Scott. I loved Scott and have beautiful memories of his kindness to me. You’ll need someone from here to help you out of this situation.”
Scott began a protest, but Beau interrupted. “Dangerous and deadly matters are at hand, Miss Burnside. Are you sure you’d want to be involved?”
She smiled at him and I thought she was going to revert to type, but she said, “It’s all right. I know very well what I’m doing. Word around town is you’re from Atlanta. Will you be able to stay and help?”
“No,” Beau admitted.
“Then,” Violet said, “by default, I am the rescue team.”