All the Devil's Creatures (14 page)

He walked across to the DA’s office with hardly a glance at the demonstrators on the courthouse lawn. Ben Hargrave and Tasha Carter awaited him. He sat down to tell them the story.

“We were monitoring the white supremacist websites, but nothing doing. This was a local, isolated crime. I do believe that. And when I interviewed—informally, unofficially—the Tatum brothers during the Reverend’s rally, I got a powerful hunch. Their violent behavior around Bubba’s Roadhouse—McGee banned them from the place—seemed to confirm it.”

Hargrave’s wire-rimmed glasses slipped to the end of his nose as he listened. Saturday or no, he wore a tailored charcoal suit and a crisp white shirt with a school tie. But though she sat on the sofa taking notes in silence, Bobby’s gaze kept venturing to Tasha, to her muscular legs extending from the short skirt of a tailored suit, legs like carved mahogany. She caught his gaze and bit her lower lip and smiled—just a little, just enough.

Seeming oblivious to this exchange between his young assistant and the chief witness for the prosecution, Hargrave asked, “And did you interview any other patrons, to learn if they had heard anything about the murder, or about the Tatums?”

“I didn’t see a need. I thought it would be more efficient to question the twins directly—and I guess I was right.” He glanced over to see Tasha smile, but this time she did not look up from her pad.

The DA leaned forward on his desk. “So you brought them in on a seatbelt charge.”

Trying to keep the defensiveness out of his voice, Bobby said, “It’s my understanding, sir, that the courts have upheld arrests for minor traffic violations. And of course, it’s routine to impound a vehicle incident to any arrest.”

“Deputy, I’m only asking because it’s the approach the defendants’ lawyer will take. You’ve got to be prepared. Now, you’re right that the Supreme Court has held that an arrest for a misdemeanor traffic crime does not necessarily violate the Fourth Amendment—what’s that case Tasha?”

“Atwater v. City of Lago Vista.”

“Right. But does such an arrest justify analyzing the tire treads? Searching the bed for trace DNA evidence? I think we have strong arguments that it does. But it’s not a slam dunk.”

Bobby rubbed the back of his neck with his good arm. “Well, isn’t it a moot point anyway? The twins confessed last night, remember?”

As he clasped his hands before him, Hargrave’s voice betrayed no impatience, but Bobby thought he detected a cloud of irritation cross the DA’s eyes. “Why don’t you go over that confession with us, deputy?”

“Yessir. They confessed pretty much as soon as we brought them in. Or Wayne did—the short-haired one, just out of prison. Duane just sat there kind of growling. Like a goddamn dog. But Wayne kept moaning, ‘We did it, dammit, we did it, yes we did it.’ Sort of a plaintive wailing.”

Hargrave said, “And this took place in the interrogation room at the county jail?”

“Yessir.”

“And you recorded some of Wayne Tatum’s …
wailing
while they were in custody?”

“Yessir.”

“But there is no written confession.”

Bobby scoffed. “Good Lord, they weren’t in any condition to write anything last night. That’s why the sheriff and I went over there first thing this morning. To get them to sign something. But as soon as we got there, Duane demanded a lawyer. Sheriff called the next public defender on the county list, and boy did that joker come quick. This case will make a name for him, tell you what. And then we called y’all.”

“Right.” Hargrave pushed up his glasses and folded his arms on his desk. “I’ll be honest, deputy. The confession’s not worth much.”

Bobby shot a look to Tasha—but the young lawyer was all business now. “First of all, only Wayne allegedly confessed. He can’t bind his brother. And the tape is barely comprehensible—it’s hardly clear what he’s confessing to. Then, after they lawyered up, Wayne retracted the confession, such as it was.”

Bobby felt his gut sink. “Well. Bet you a million bucks the truck’s a match. And DNA—from their truck, from the victim …”

“Right,” Hargrave said. “Assuming the DNA evidence implicates the twins, it’s still a strong case. Assuming the arrest itself holds up. But I’m not that worried. And I congratulate you. Our number one concern is to see this case resolved—fast.”

T
he sun sat just above the tallest of the loblolly pines when Geoff pulled off the highway right past the Texas border and headed down toward the lake. The house Sally Kinkaid shared with her father and her boy sat down a private dirt road, isolated, across a little bayou inlet from a cluster of cabins and a catfish joint.

He drove up on the single-story, plain, white frame house set in a small plot of Saint Augustine grass surrounded by an extensive garden, recently tilled. Azalea bushes flared purple and pink. Beyond that, pine and cypress and various hardwoods. The back of the house faced the road. In front, a deep yard sloped right down to the bayou. Through the trees, Geoff could just make out the short pier and ramshackle boat house. A child messed with something in the garden.

“That’s Joey, Willie’s grandson.” Geoff watched the boy; he could not have said for how long.

Marisol broke his reverie. “How did you ever find this place?”

“First time I came here, I got lost as goose. Map’s no help. GPS is a joke. I just had to stumble around based on Sally’s directions till I found the right dadgum dirt road.”

“It’s on its own little pond?”

“That’s a bayou. An inlet of the lake, really. It’s all connected.”

The boy turned toward them and waved as they made their way to the house. Marisol said, “What’s up with his eyes? It’s like they’re … sparkly.”

Geoff hesitated, chewing his lower lip. “It’s just a trick of the light, the thick air.”
The infant with mirrored eyes, the face of—

Sally hollered them inside. “I’ve been cooking up a storm!”

They walked through the kitchen door and saw that she did not lie—sweet potatoes and pecans, turnip greens, the smell of fresh bread. And a deep iron skillet from which emanated the unmistakable smell of honest fried chicken.

She was a round, blonde, cheerful woman. “Oh, Geoff, it’s so good of you to come. My hands are a mess or I’d give you a hug. And who’s this?”

Geoff introduced the two women just as Joey banged in through the screen door. Turning the chicken, Sally started, and a glob of hot grease flew out of the pan and right onto the boy’s pale forehead. It seemed to bubble there for a bit like a frying egg. Geoff winced. But then Joey wiped it away as if it were water.

Must be seeing things.

He and Marisol headed out to the deep front porch where Willie sat reading a newspaper. A lovely view of the bayou. Spanish moss in the trees, hummingbird feeders and wind chimes carved from swamp gourds hanging from the porch eaves.

Willie stood and stuck out a hand. “Hidy, y’all. Who are you?”

“Marisol Solis. I’ve been working with Geoff.”

“Oh. Right. The detective. You look like Hollywood.”

Marisol looked shocked. Then she laughed. Geoff smiled.

Willie said, “Well, I guess it keeps the baddies off guard. Y’all sit.”

They sat and looked out at the water, glowing in the angled light.

“Beautiful evening.”

“Yep.”

“So Willie. They caught the killers.”

“Yep. Thank God. Speaking of which, the sheriff should be here any minute. Don’t know why Sally got it in her head to entertain a politician. Law enforcement at that.”

“It’ll be fine.” An insect buzzed by Geoff’s head and he swatted at it. It was metallic silver and turquoise and the size of his palm.

Marisol said: “
Gahh.
What is that thing?”

Willie chuckled. “Dragonfly.”

“It’s freaking huge.”

“They’re a freaking nuisance, is what they are.” Geoff watched it zip away off the porch.

“They don’t hurt nothing. I don’t like to turn on the bug zapper till the mosquitoes start up.”

“I think that thing could take out any electric bug zapper.”

Joey came out and said
hidy
and then set places at the large picnic table down in the yard. Willie said, “I guess she wants me to light them citronella torches.”

“Yessir.”

They heard a car pull up and Joey ran back up to the house, turning back his head to exclaim, “Sheriff’s here, Paw-paw. And deputy Henderson who’s been on TV.”

Willie wandered off, Geoff guessed to gather torches.

•

Sally’s chicken tasted like heaven—not over-battered; perfectly crisp like Geoff hadn’t tasted in years. Sally slow-cooked the turnip greens mixed with collards fresh from the garden, simmering them with salt pork and sherry and cider vinegar, and the tangy aroma mingled with the sweet potatoes like a holiday feast.

“Another helping for our hero.” Bobby smiled but did not meet Sally’s gaze as he took a thigh from the plate she offered.

“Hey, just doing my job. Sheriff Seastrunk taught me everything I know.”

Seastrunk smirked. “Well now, son, that’s not quite right. I didn’t teach you how to be a television star.”

Bobby pinkened, barely perceptible in the dusk. The young deputy seemed shy at the end of his first day of nation-wide fame.

“In any event, congratulations on the arrests,” Sally said. “Not to mention the confessions right away.”

The sheriff and his deputy exchanged a glance, and then Seastrunk said, “Well, confessions or no, I reckon we’ll be able to put this case behind us soon enough.”

Sally said, “Sheriff, how’s Margaret these days?”

Geoff thought he caught Seastrunk wince just a little bit. Then, between bites of greens, he said, “She and her family are quite well. Still in New York. Brooklyn. Running a gallery.” He paused, chewed. “She doesn’t get home as much since her mother passed.”

Marisol stopped with fork in mid-air. “Your wife, Sheriff? I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you. Cancer—ten years ago. I’ve moved on.” But even in the dancing glow of the torches, Geoff could see that Seastrunk’s eyes said otherwise.

Then Sally spoke to the sheriff in a whisper loud enough for everyone to hear. “Geoff’s a widower, too.”

Willie said, “Dang it, Sally. He might not want to talk about—”

“It’s okay. Car accident—almost two years ago.”

And in that orange light, Seastrunk—ancient, wizened beyond his years—held Geoff’s gaze for a long while. “Trials and troubles, son. Trials and troubles.”

•

Joey had a million questions for the deputy:
How’d you track them down? What kind of gun do you have? Have you ever used it? Did it hurt when you got stabbed? Can I see your stitches?

Bobby answered with reserved politeness, showed him his wound. Then he said, “It’s usually pretty quiet around here. When I was your age, I wanted to be a big city cop. Dallas or Houston—maybe L.A.” His eyes moved down to the table. “Family responsibilities kept me home.”

“You’re an asset to me here, Bobby.”

“I do what I can, Sheriff.” Bobby had reached for the cornbread, speaking into his arm but not quite masking the hint of sarcasm. Marisol raised an eyebrow to Geoff while the sheriff didn’t notice or pretended not to notice.

Willie said, “I don’t know if I could live in one of those places, anyway. There doesn’t seem to be a beginning or end to them.”

“I know that’s right,” Seastrunk said. “There just doesn’t seem to be any limit to how sprawled out those cities can get.” He paused and looked around the table and then his voice rose. “I don’t know what’s happening to our state. When I was Joey’s age—this would have been the ‘40s—had an old aunt we used to visit in Colin County, north of Dallas. Nothing but cotton as far as you could see. Every little town had a gin. Went up there here awhile back. Didn’t recognize a thing. Now, it’s all paved over for shopping malls and highways and ugly ol’ houses so big, I don’t see how a family doesn’t get lost in them.”

The image came to Geoff—the vast exurbia of North Texas with its repeating loop of Olive Gardens, Home Depots, Targets, and Outback Steakhouses blurring together the rival cities of Dallas and Fort Worth that had once stared each other down across the prairie: the cattleman and the sodbuster, sworn enemies of the open range. Real cities, once, with a spider web of rail lines connecting them to every little town across the cotton fields and horse country that surrounded them. Now, the trains were gone and the farms and ranches, too. In their place, a soulless land of glass and concrete where the roads had no names, only numbers.

Geoff didn’t know why, but the thought of the inorganic wasteland that had engulfed his hometown over the recent decades made him think of Marisol, the fear and anger she seemed to exude as she cursed corporate crimes against nature.

“And I’ll tell you one more thing,” Seastrunk said. “That was Sam Rayburn’s district for fifty years—the finest Speaker in U.S. history, New Deal Democrat, did more for working people than I don’t know what. And now you can’t elect a Democrat from that district to save your life. And those people that live up there now in those big ol’ houses—I don’t know where these people come from—most of them wouldn’t know Mr. Sam from a hole in the ground. So what are we left with now? Who do we send to Washington from this state? The likes of P. Robert Duchamp, that’s who.”

“It wasn’t better for everyone in the old days.”

Everybody looked at Marisol. The light turned orangish as the torches’ glow relieved the dying sunlight. Then Seastrunk said, “I know it, Ms. Solis. But in those days, at least, things seemed to be moving in the right direction—thanks to honest men like Sam Rayburn, Maury Maverick, ol’ Smilin’ Ralph Yarborough. I don’t know if that’s true anymore.”

•

Marisol confessed she’d never had homemade fried chicken. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to settle for take out again.”

“Where are you from, dear?” Sally asked.

“Harlingen. In the Rio Grande Valley.”

Willie perked up. He had hardly spoken a word since the sheriff and Bobby arrived. “Is that right? I used to know a lot of citrus growers from the Valley. They’d come up to the Dallas market with produce by the truck load and twenty Mexicans to hawk it. And those jokers that owned those farms be sitting up there like plantation masters.”