SIXTEEN

Kris Ann was in the attic, old shirt half-unbuttoned, staring at her easel in shafts of sunlight that came through the window behind her. Resting one hand on her shoulder I glanced dully at the painting, a nightmare of blues and purples surrounding the orange stick-figure of a woman. Then I held the scrap in front of her. “I found this on my windshield,” I said.

As if by instinct she brushed her fingertips across the surface of her face. Her voice was flat. “Is that how Lydia’s picture was?”

“The eyes. It’s probably just meant to scare us.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” I put the scrap in my pocket and pulled her up to me. “Krissy, I want you to go to your cousin’s for a while. Just until this is over.”

Her lips parted. “We should call the police.”

“We will. I want you safe. But I’m still not sure you would be. Last night Henry asked if I’d stay on the case.”

I felt her stiffen. “And you told him you would,” she said tonelessly. “In spite of Daddy.”

I nodded. “That’s why you’ve got to leave.”

“But if we’ve gone to the police—”

“It’s not that simple. I’m caught in a vise. I know things that might make Henry look different than he is. Rayfield’s going to sense that. Protecting my wife won’t be his first priority. You’ll be safer out of state.”

She leaned back from me, searching my face. Then she shook her head in a long, slow arc. “I’m staying, Adam.”

I grasped her shoulders. “Please, listen. This won’t end well, not with you here. Even without this threat you’ll be trapped between Roland and me in a case where Henry’s overridden him. Those cards are going to be played out this time. You don’t want to be a part of that.”

Her stare was long and probing. “But I am now,” she said quietly. “Aren’t I?”

My palms were damp. “Think, Krissy. Last night you were so afraid of Jason Cantwell I found you sleeping with a gun. This morning I’m at least that scared. It’s not just Henry now. This thing has become part of our lives. Don’t make it any worse than it is.”

“And running away would help? How do I know you won’t be killed?”

I tried smiling. “I’m too young.”

“You’re thirty-two,” she said levelly. “So was your father. Isn’t that beginning to bother you?”

“Why should it?”

“Because of the way you’re pushing—”

“Look, I need to find out who’s doing this. I don’t want you to be hurt before I do. It’s that simple.”

She shook her head with finality. “No, Adam. You’ve made your decision. Now I’m making mine.”

“But it’s senseless—”

“To you.” She stepped back, eyes burning with a low, angry, smoky intensity. “Look at me, dammit. I’m twenty-nine and it feels like I’ve spent my whole life waiting for you and Daddy to decide how I’ll spend the rest of it. I can’t stand by anymore. I can’t go cover my eyes while the two of you fight this out.”

Her face had set in a remote determination hauntingly like Cade’s. The attic seemed filled with trapped heat and the smell of paint. We faced each other, waiting. “I’ll go see Rayfield,” I said in a low voice. “Call Rennie Kell. I’ll drop you there.”

She watched me another moment, then silently began cleaning up her paints. I went through the house checking doors and windows while she finished and called the Kells. When I dropped her there she turned, said slowly and seriously, “I don’t want you hurt, Adam,” and got out of the car without looking back. I watched until she was inside.

I found Rayfield arranging a deskful of ragged papers ripped from his notebooks, as if trying to make sense of a senseless world. Surprised in thought, he seemed for a moment both old and innocent. Then his face went tough.

“What do you want?”

I tossed the scrap in front of him. “That used to be a picture of my wife. Someone did the artwork and left it on my windshield.”

He looked at it carefully, turning it once to check the back for marks. “Know who, or why?”

“Not who. The obvious why is the Cantwell case. I want protection for Kris Ann.”

“And what will you do for us?”

“My job. I’m asking that you do yours.”

He looked at me shrewdly. “Then tell me who drives the green Cadillac Otis Lee saw at the Cantwells’.”

I paused, glancing at my fingernails, then back to Rayfield. “I don’t know.”

His eyes narrowed. Coldly he said, “Tell your wife to take a vacation.”

“She won’t go without me, and I can’t.”

“Yeah.” His face was hard. “You so busy and all. If you wanted to be your father, Shaw, you should have just been a cop.”

I flushed. “You’ve been wasting time.”

“We check backgrounds. After I found you’d been poking around Otis Lee and the Parsons woman I checked yours.” He sounded as though information were power. “I turned up the usual things. At St. Ignatius you were all-city quarterback but got an academic scholarship for Notre Dame and another to Vanderbilt Law. When you married Cade’s daughter you were flat broke.”

“Brilliant work, Lieutenant.”

“And then,” he went smoothly on, “I dug some more and discovered that of all things your father was a cop. I’m sorry about what happened, Shaw.”

I looked around at the dim hanging lights, gray tile, gray desks with gray faces behind them. “It’s like you said about Grangeville,” I answered. “That was a long time ago.”

“It’s strange, though, how your family has a history of violence. Like your grandfather leaving Ireland because he’d killed a British soldier.”

I shrugged. “He needed work, unemployment being what it was. Maybe when you quit toying with me we can get back to my wife.”

A telephone rang across the room. Rayfield watched it until someone answered. “Who else have you been talking to?”

I guessed that he was still looking for a driver to go with Lee’s description of the car. A sad, stray thought of Kris Ann went through me as I said, “No one.”

“Quit playing games,” he snapped. “You want protection for your wife and you won’t tell me shit. You’ll end up getting her killed.”

“Is that a threat?” I asked angrily.

“It’s an observation.” His face turned curious, analytic. “It seems you’re more interested in protecting Henry Cantwell than your own wife.”

“That’s an odd remark.”

He kept staring. “Is it?”

“Look, Lieutenant, Kris Ann needs protection. I’m not asking for me or Cade or Cantwell, but for her who’s got no part in any of this.”

Dislike for me warred on his face with whatever kept him a cop. Finally he scribbled some numbers on a pad of paper. His voice was flat. “The top one’s the police emergency number. The other two are where she can get me or Bast if we’re not here. Days I’ll have a patrolman look in and if she calls someone will be there. You’ll be home nights, I hope.”

“I should.”

He looked down at Kris Ann’s photo. “Tell me, Shaw, how do you know Cantwell didn’t do this?”

“That’s ridiculous. Henry’s known my wife since she was small.”

He paused. “Thing is, we’ve never let out what had been done to the eyes. You tell anyone?”

“Just Kris Ann.”

“Then the only other person who knows for sure is the one who killed Mrs. Cantwell. I’d think about that. You in particular should think about that.”

“I already have.”

“Think harder,” he said harshly. “Because I’m going to get him even if it’s Henry Cantwell. You don’t want to be in the way.”

We stared at each other. At length, I said, “Thanks for your help.”

He shrugged. “They told me your father was a good cop. Except maybe the last.” He looked down at the scraps of paper and began working again.

I shut the office door behind me and slumped in my chair, thinking. Then I picked up the telephone and dialed the main number at Auburn University. Five minutes and four transfers later a deep voice answered, “Ransom.”

“This is Adam Shaw, Professor, a lawyer, in Birmingham. I’ve just read your book on Grangeville.”

“Yes?”

“I’d like to ask about your research. It’s for a case I’m working.”

There was a pause. “Grangeville was forty years ago, sir. I don’t see what it could relate to.”

“I’m not sure, exactly, but it’s about Judge Hargrave’s daughter, Mrs. Cantwell. She’s been murdered.”

“Yes, I saw that.” Ransom’s voice—rheumy, ancient, and bourbonous—lent the odd sensation of speaking to history. “Whom do you represent?” he asked.

“The husband. Henry Cantwell.”

“The papers made it sound like he killed her.”

“Forty years ago, Professor, some of the papers made it sound like two black men raped a vestal virgin.”

“True enough. What do you want?”

“The blacksmith, Moses McCarroll, had a small boy. Do you know where he is?”

“Nooo,” he said thoughtfully, “never found him. It was ’fifty-seven when I started my research. You can guess how popular it was back then, especially after Little Rock when Eisenhower sent the troops in. People weren’t always helpful. Anyhow, Moses McCarroll’s wife had died in nineteen thirty-nine, and the boy just disappeared. Never found any relatives who would talk about it.”

“Know who I might try?”

“Most everyone’s dead, Mr. Shaw. Except Luther Channing.”

“The assistant prosecutor?”

“That’s right. Channing’s retired now, but still alive. One of my students tried to interview him not too long ago and got thrown off the porch. He’s a steely bastard. Wouldn’t talk to me, either.”

“I’ll try him anyhow. Thanks, Professor.”

“No thanks needed. Mrs. Cantwell was one I always felt sorry for. Tried talking to her once at her house. When I said what I wanted, she began shaking her head. Could hardly talk. Finally she said she was sorry and shut the door. Two weeks later I got a note apologizing. I remember it: small, ladylike writing—I’ve still got it somewhere. Said she understood my reasons, but she couldn’t speak of it and hoped I understood. I never published it, felt too badly for her. She was just a child back then, too.”

“Yes, sir. She was.”

There was a long silence. “Mr. Shaw,” he said slowly, “that boy, if he’s still alive, is over fifty now.”

“I know.”

“If I follow your reasoning, that would be a terrible circle, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, it would. But then people’s lives seem to be full of them.”

“Well, let me know if you find him.” He spoke heavily, as if feeling the weight of the past. “Though I almost hope you don’t.”

I said I could understand that, and hung up.

I called the Kells to give Kris Ann the telephone numbers and ask her to stay. Just a few more hours, I promised. Then I went to the car and drove north toward Grangeville.