CHAPTER SIX

Allen peeled rubber backing out of the Johansson’s drive, whipped around the corner onto the county road, the rear of his car heading speeding away from the Ellis’ place, braked hard enough to rattle me in my seat, then laid rubber again as he jammed the gas pedal and the car leaped forward.

I’m surprised he didn’t have the entire row of bubble-gum lights on the top of the car flashing and blinking.

Almost immediately, he had to brake again for the turn into the Ellis place. This time he threw me forward, against the protective webbing of my seat belt.

Gravel flew from his tires as he sped down the driveway and squealed to a halt next to the kitchen door.

Through it all, not a word, not a sound of surprise or complaint from Victoria.

But she did wait in her seat until Allen—who by that time was out of the car and halfway to the kitchen door, hand outstretched for the door knob—realized that she wasn’t following, that she hadn’t even exited the patrol car yet, and finally made his way around the front bumper to open the passenger door and bow her out.

“Why thank you, officer,” she said, as unruffled as if she had just arrived at the opening cotillion of the Season at some high-class ballroom in the big city.

He didn’t answer.

Nor did he say anything until we entered the Ellises’ living room.

Mrs. Ellis was seated on the couch, about where she had been earlier that morning. I assumed that Mrs. Johansson was resting in another room, since she was not present.

Carver was standing by the end of the sofa.

“Ellis!” Allen yelled. He was across the room in two long strides, had grabbed Carver by the shirt and slammed him against the closest wall before any of us could speak a word.

“What do you think you’re trying to pull?” Allen roared, although there was little chance that Carver could have answered him since the deputy now had one forearm tight against the boy’s throat. “What makes you think you can go wandering around the goddamn countryside in the middle of my investigation?”

He punctuated the question—clearly rhetorical—with another slam against the wall. Several pictures clattered in their frames but nothing fell.

“Deputy Allen,” Victoria began, but it was clear the man was paying no attention to her at all.

“Nobody leaves the scene of the crime until I give them permission! Do...you...under...stand...that!”

By this point, poor Carver’s face was crimson with suffused blood and his eyes were beginning to bulge.

Victoria tried again: “Deputy Allen! You must...!”

“I’ve heard enough from you,” Allen called over his shoulder. His eyes were still focused on Carver’s face. “No more meddling in my....”

“Deputy Allen.” This time the voice was quiet but firm, carrying throughout the room although no one had heard the speaker enter.

And it was masculine.

I looked over to see Deputy Richard Wroten, the officer in charge of the Fox Creek substation, standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room.

Allen froze for an instant, arm still half-choking Carver, then he dropped his arm and turned.

“Dick,” Allen said. His mouth kept on working, as if he wanted to say more but had no idea how to form the proper words or how to force them out.

“That’s enough, Ewart,” Wroten said. “You can let the young man go. I don’t think he will be a flight risk...today.”

Allen dropped his arm. Carver bent over, hacking and coughing. His mother looked as if she wanted to rush to his side and comfort him but was afraid to move.

For a moment, things were rather tense.

“Now,” Wroten said, “let’s all sit down and figure out what is going on. Deputy Allen, you start.”

Allen dropped into a wooden-back chair by a small desk—probably where Janet Ellis sat once a month to make out checks for recurring bills—and explained what he had found at the Johansson house: the three of us standing over an obviously battered body, the bedroom in disarray, the small packet of what was probably cocaine, and coming downstairs to discover Carver missing.

“I thought he might have run off, you know, like before.”

“And I told you precisely where he had gone and why,” Victoria added.

“Right,” Wroten said, shifting to face her. “Now, Miz Sears, what do you know about this?”

“Precious little, I’m afraid, Deputy Wroten.” I could hear in her voice that she placed a good deal more confidence in the older man than she did in his subordinate. “Eric Johansson is dead. We left him where we found him...just as we found him, on the bed in his room.”

Wroten nodded. “I’ve got a man over there now, watching the place.”

“Good. Well, we know that he was alive late last night, when Carver brought him home from Land’s End.”

“That right?” Wroten shot a glance at Carver, who seemed to have recovered somewhat from his near-strangulation.

Carver nodded.

“And we know that he had been beaten rather severely,” Victoria said. “Twice. Once yesterday afternoon, and again late last night.”

Wroten’s eyebrows shot up.

“Twice? By the same men?”

“No, I don’t think so. And I think the...uh, the circumstances of the...two events were quite different. From what Carver told us, Eric got into a small fracas over at Tom Neilson’s place late yesterday afternoon. Something to do with putting up grain.”

“That right?” Wroten seemed to be able to accomplish with a few words what Allen would probably never have managed.

Carver nodded. “He and Mr. Neilson started to mix it up. I stepped in to try to calm Rick and he took a swing at me.” He glanced from Wroten to Victoria and back, as if hoping for her support in what he was saying. “But I didn’t hit him, I didn’t. Mr. Neilson clobbered Rick with a right-cross and Rick went down. That’s all that happened.”

“Okay.”

“Then Rick took off. I guess to Land’s End. I didn’t hear any more from him until after midnight, when he called to say that Rafferty, that’s the barkeep, Miz Hanson”—he added for my benefit—“that Rafferty took his keys and wouldn’t let him drive and he needed a ride. I drove over and picked him up. Whatever went on over there had already happened because he was bleeding and weaving back and forth like he had drunk up half the liquor in the bar.”

“So you don’t know what went on at the bar?” Wroten asked.

Carver made as if to answer, but he never got the chance.

“I do. They killed him. They killed my baby’s baby.” The voice came from the hallway entrance.

Greta Johansson.

“Greta,” Victoria said, surging to her feet and crossing the room to offer the woman her arm. “I thought you were resting.”

“How can I rest when my grandson is at my house, in his bed, dead. And they killed him. I know they did.”

Wroten was also on his feet, supporting Mrs. Johansson from the other side. Together he and Victoria got her to the sofa and helped her to sit down.

She still looked frail and shocky, but she seemed more herself than she had earlier. And she sounded a little better as well.

“Now, Miz Johansson, who do you think killed Eric?”

“I don’t think, I know!” Her passion gave her voice a power it had lacked before. “That bunch that hangs out at that...that place.”

She stopped, apparently convinced that she had said everything necessary.

It wasn’t enough for Wroten.

“Do you mean the Land’s End Bar, ma’am?”

She nodded mutely.

“And what bunch? Do you know any names?”

Again she nodded. It took her a moment or two to be able to speak.

“I don’t know their real names. Eric never told me. He didn’t talk about them much, but I would overhear things on the phone sometimes, when he was arranging to meet them. I know there was a Billy, and a Scooter. But the one he was afraid of was the leader. Snake.”

Wroten glanced at Allen, who nodded slightly. Apparently they knew who this mysterious “Snake” was...and weren’t happy about the knowledge.

“Now, ma’am, you say they killed your grandson?”

She nodded and began weeping into her handkerchief.

“Do you mean that they were the ones who beat him up last night?”

She shrugged. It was a pitiable gesture, full of hopelessness and resignation and despair.

“I don’t know. They must have though.”

She fell silent. Wroten did not press for any more. He knew it would come when she was able to formulate her thoughts more clearly.

“When my Freddie died, and Rita—such a lovely woman and a perfect daughter-in-law—and poor Eric had nowhere else to turn, he came up here to live with me. I thought that it would be wonderful, him living here and all, someone to help out around the place. I’m not able to do all the things I used to, and he was young and strong and...oh, and such a good little boy. He used to visit when he was just a boy and we would sit for hours and talk and tell stories and play games. He loved it.

“I thought it would be the same now.

“But it wasn’t. When he arrived, his hair was all spiky and he had...things...in his ears and his eyebrows, and his clothes were all tattered and torn, even though I knew that Freddie and Rita made enough to give him new clothes any time he wanted them.

“And he was...different. He was moody and sullen and sometimes we would go days on end and he wouldn’t even talk to me. He would just sit in his room, hours on end. I’d ask him what he was doing and he would say, ‘Just thinkin’, Grams, just thinkin’.’

“Finally, I told him that he would have to start helping out more. If he didn’t want to do things here at the place, he could at least find work. And he did, now and again. Like yesterday, when he went to the Neilson place. He’d done that before.

“But he also started going out at night.

“He wouldn’t tell me where, but like I said, I heard things sometimes when he talked on the telephone. He would take my old car and not come home until way late, and I knew that he was going out to that place on the State highway, you know, just out of town.

“He would drink and smoke. I could smell that on him the next day. And he started talking back to me and being....”

She began weeping again. Victoria repeated her “There, there” gesture for a few minutes. Finally Mrs. Johansson looked up, directly into Wroten’s eyes.

“I don’t know what-all he got up to out at that place. But after he started going there, there wasn’t anything left of my little grandbaby any more. I had a stranger living in my house, eating my food.

“Whatever...whoever killed him, it was out at that God-forsaken place. They killed him. They killed my baby’s baby!”