Doubting Thomas (Tarnished Saints Series) (2 page)

“Do you want me to wake him?” Sam covered Eli’s cold little body with a blanket. Always doting over his brothers, Sam had a heart bigger than any of them. Thomas didn’t know what he would have done without him. Even when Fawn was still alive, Sam acted more the mother to the little ones than his wife did. She’d never stayed home long enough to play mother to any of them. Thomas knew Sam had a lot to teach even him.

“No, let him sleep.”

“I’ll get dressed,” said Sam.

Thomas could see the pain in the boy’s eyes as his twisted limb buckled as he walked across the room. It always hurt him the most after waking from a night’s sleep. Being born lame, Sam never complained, but Thomas knew it bothered him not to be like the rest of his brothers.

“Stay here and get some sleep,” Thomas said. “All of you.”

The twins gratefully replaced themselves inside the worn sleeping bags on the floor that made up their beds. Zeke scurried out of the shadows and curled up on the couch in the adjoining room.

“How about you, Pa?” Sam looked at him with concern. “Are you going back to sleep too?”

Thomas rubbed a weary hand over his eyes and let out a deep breath. He was already dressed - never having bothered to change before bed. One more night he’d fallen asleep before his head hit the pillow, his exhaustion more mental than physical.

“No,” he said, thinking of everything that needed to be done. The money to run his place came from his income from the cars he refurbished. He hadn’t sold a one since Fawn’s death. His reputation preceded him every time he showed one to a prospective buyer. No one wanted to buy a car from a murderer. If he didn’t get some money soon, they were going to suffer badly this winter.

“I’ve got to finish up the Chevy I’m working on,” he said, blowing out the lantern on his way out the door. He may as well go to the barn to work on the cars. Hopefully work would get his mind off his troubles. Maybe God would hear him tinkering away and take pity on him and send an angel to his aid.

“I’m leaving the shotgun here, Sam. You may need it if anyone comes to the door.”

“I know how to use it,” Sam reassured him. “I’ll keep the family safe, Pa. I’ll be just as reliable as Daniel.”

Thomas nodded his head. “I know you will, son. Anyone gives you trouble, just fire a shot in the air and I’ll hear you.”

“I will, Pa. You can count on me.”

Thomas nodded but didn’t answer. He pulled the door closed behind him as he left the room. Leaning his back against the log cabin frame, he found himself looking up to the full moon, thinking again. If only he were as confident as his lame son. If only he could count on himself. Things were different now, but he’d get used to living this way eventually. And he’d see to it his sons did as well.

Thomas made his way to the barn, the night air closing in around him. One lone robin, first harbinger of the new day, started to chirp although the sun was yet to show a hue on the horizon. The darkness before the light, he told himself, though he had trouble believing it. There was no justice in this world.

If a man didn’t stand up for his beliefs, he’d be swallowed alive. He didn’t need the laws of mankind. He made his own laws. His sons abided by them, and that’s all that mattered. He’d never cried at the deaths of his wives, and he didn’t let his sons cry either. Instead, he stood tall and accepted the hand life dealt him. He chose to act instead of react. If more people lived this way, the human race wouldn’t be such victims.

Emotions were nothing more than reactions. He’d raised his sons to be strong - the same way his father had raised him and his eleven brothers. His late father had been a preacher, and his mother, though stricken with Alzheimer’s disease for the last ten years, had always been a saint. She had to be, to give the old man all the children he’d wanted.

A God fearing man, Webster Thomas Taylor decided the best way to carry on his ministries after he’d passed away, was to have apostles to do his work. That’s why he wanted twelve children. That’s why he’d named each of his twelve sons after one of the apostles. Too damned bad none of them followed in their father’s footsteps. The Taylor boys were far from saints. Matter of fact, they were nothing but trouble. To the day his father died, the man wondered what he’d done wrong. He was sure he’d done something to displease God with the way his sons turned out.

Thomas often wondered if God held something against him as well. He knew people doubted his ability to raise the kids on his own. Lately, he’d been doubting it himself. But his boys would be just fine without a mother. Clearly, they were much better off without Fawn. He never should have married her, trying to replace Brianne, that was his first mistake.

He’d listened when everyone told him he needed a wife to help him raise his kids after the death of his first wife, Brianne. He listened, and look what it brought him - nothing but trouble. If he’d had a lick of sense, he would have divorced Fawn years ago when he’d first found out she’d been cheating on him.

Tension creased his forehead as he entered the barn and lit the lantern hanging on a nail. He had electric, but opted not to use it often, trying to save money. He’d never been so broke in his life. He picked up the lantern and headed for the far end where he stored his cars.

Straw crunched beneath his worn boots as he made his way past a cubby-hole that was his make-shift office. Cracked paint peeled from the old desk that held his boxes of paperwork. He put the lantern down on the desk, running his fingers across the photo of Brianne and himself tacked up on the wall, half hidden behind the calendar.

She looked so young and pretty in her wedding gown. He looked so nervous and unsure of himself beside her. But he was happy then. So carefree and wild. And nothing could have prepared him for life without her nearly twenty years later.

Then his thoughts ran to Fawn, and her blood on his hands when he had picked her body up off the floor. She’d been shot through the heart, an awful scene. He’d tried to save her but she was already dead, and it was only out of sheer foolishness that he’d moved her. He’d gone crazy when he’d seen the way his children looked at him carrying her lifeless, bloody body. He’d seen the fear in their eyes. He’d seen that same fear every time he and Fawn had gotten into one of their arguments. Sometimes the house would even be turned upside-down with the way Fawn threw things at him in rage.

But those fights were over now. Fawn was dead. And the three-month-old fetus inside her womb that wasn’t his, hadn’t survived either.

He shook the thought from his head and eyed the top drawer. The bullet from the gun that had killed her was from a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson. The same kind of gun he had. When the cops asked to see his handgun, he’d found the thing missing. Someone was trying to frame him, he was sure. Only thing was, he didn’t understand why the murderer took the gun with him instead of leaving it for the cops to find.  He wondered what really happened that night. He wondered where the gun was now, and which of his enemies hated him so much that they’d kill his wife trying to ruin his life.

He once again looked at the desk drawer where he usually kept his gun. This was his desk. His private space. Everyone knew that and respected it. That’s why he’d never needed to lock the drawer. Until now.

He leaned forward in the old chair, listening to the creak of the wood protesting his weight. He glanced over his shoulder once before pulling the key from his pocket and opening the drawer. He clenched his jaw in discomfort as he peered inside. The drawer never looked so empty.

He ran a hand over the envelope resting inside, reassuring himself the paper was still there. This could be the end of all his problems. One small trip and his worries were over. Or were they? The voices haunting his mind grew louder, the night no longer a sanctuary for restless souls. Angry shouts calling him a murderer. Fingers pointing, accusing. Words he didn’t want his sons to hear.

He pounded his fist against the desktop, knocking over the pencil holder, sending the contents scattering to the ground. He slammed the drawer shut with force. Bid the devil, he wanted to be free of suspicion. Reactions go to hell, he was done fooling himself. He did care what people thought. A man was nothing without his honor. He blew out the lantern, burying his head in his arms atop the desk. Would life ever get any easier?

Chapter 2

Later that evening

It was nearly midnight when Angeline DeMitri pulled off CR 325 onto the backwoods road of Sweet Water, Michigan. Her eight-year-old daughter, Gabby, was sleeping in the back seat of her Ford Windstar mini-van, and Angeline was thankful she wasn’t awake. Gabby was often afraid of the dark, and out here in the country, it was darker than it’d ever been back home in Lansing.

She clicked the automatic door lock one more time out of habit, just as she’d done for the last ten minutes since she’d pulled off the highway and onto gravel roads. Her eyes kept glancing back and forth from the rear view mirror to the road ahead of her. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but the stories she’d heard of Thomas Taylor were enough to make anyone be on guard. Being a social worker made her more cautious than most people. Nearly ten years of being with Child Protective Services (CPS) and seeing mistreated children and abusive parents was enough to make anyone apprehensive.

This wasn’t an official call, she kept reminding herself. Her best friend, Tillie Mason had an aunt and uncle who owned a bed-and-breakfast on Thunder Lake. Tillie said her Aunt Agnes kept complaining about a man named Thomas Taylor who lived on the lake who she thought was mistreating his six sons. She was too afraid of him to file an official complaint, so she just gossiped about the man to her niece. Tillie, in return, passed the gossip on to Angeline, or Angel, as her friends called her.

Angel owed her friend a favor, so she said she’d check out the situation - unofficially of course. But only if Tillie didn’t tell her aunt and uncle of her plan or profession. She didn’t want Gabby to think she was working. Actually, she wanted nothing more than to relax and spend time with her daughter. Hopefully, that’s just what this vacation would be.

Tillie had taken care of Angel’s daughter, Gabby, after school every day for free ever since Angel’s husband, Brad, died three years ago and she was forced to be a single working mother. Now Angel had a month’s vacation time accrued, and she meant to use it. But the thought of anyone mistreating children had her fury up, and before she knew it, she found herself making reservations for their vacation at the Ainsely’s Bed and Breakfast on Thunder Lake.

She felt a stab of guilt, not having told Gabby this was anything more than a time for rest and relaxation. But her loyalty to her occupation couldn’t let this Taylor issue slide. It wasn’t an official case yet, but if she found any evidence of child abuse, she’d make certain it was.

The road was deserted, in the middle of nowhere, and every time the moon disappeared behind the clouds it became darker than the bottom of her grandmother’s cast iron skillet. Angel didn’t feel good about this. Not at all. The man she was investigating lived somewhere in these woods, and she heard he owned a gun. The Ainsleys told Tillie he had six kids who lived like vagrants. The littlest one didn’t even own a pair of shoes.

She drove past the orchard of apple trees on her left, a dilapidated barn and half-standing house visible on her right. Then the moon broke through the clouds, giving her a better view of her surroundings. So this is the country, she thought, seeing open fields, groups of trees, and livestock huddled together. Country life was something she’d never get used to. She was used to bright lights, tall buildings, and bustling crowds. Not deserted gravel roads, towering swaying trees, and eerie old structures that creaked in the breeze and should have been condemned long ago.

“The turnoff  has got to be here somewhere,” she said to herself, glancing down at her map. She’d seen Thunder Lake when she rounded the tip of it down on CR325. Though it was dark, she could see bunches of little lights from the cottages making a horseshoe pattern around the kidney-shaped water. The Ainsley’s Bed and Breakfast was supposed to be located just off 103
rd
Street - this lame excuse for a road. It was around the back of the lake, and the farthest point from the highway.

And also the closest house to Thomas Taylor’s, she’d been told.

Her headlights swept across a grouping of old mailboxes standing high upon their posts, ancient soldiers guarding a hidden civilization in the thicket. Most of them consisted of bent and rusted tin upon rotting wood. These soldiers were exhausted and needed reinforcements. Except for one. The one that read
Ainsley
painted in bright blue letters upon the pure white box - her beacon of hope pointing the way in the darkest hour of the night, like a lighthouse reaching out to a lost soul drifting on an open sea.

“Thank God,” she remarked and let out her breath. She was beginning to think she’d never find it. She saw two roads side by side, and opted to take the first one. She turned left down the gravel road, finally starting to relax, until she saw a boy standing right in her path. She slammed on the breaks just a few feet from the child and jammed the car into park, throwing open her car door to rush out.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked, thinking of how close she came to hitting the child, who did nothing to move out of the way. “What are you doing in the middle of the road? In the middle of the night?” she asked the latter as an afterthought.

She stopped when she realized how young the boy was. He couldn’t have been more than six or seven. She could see him clearly in the headlights. His thin body was visible through his torn shirt and holy jeans. He didn’t say a word,  just stared at her as if she were out of her mind.

Dirt covered him from head to toe, and his hair needed a good trim. His hands were at his sides, and his body stiff. All except for the one foot he used to scratch the top of the other - bare. No shoes, no socks. Just dirty little feet on a rocky gravel road. His eyes were slightly sunken on his face and he looked really tired. She watched him bite at his bottom lip and she felt as if he were more frightened at the moment than she was. Suddenly, she felt horrible for yelling at him. Maybe he was lost. Maybe he needed help. And all she’d done was storm out of the mini-van yelling at the child, when she should be lending a helping hand.

“What’s the matter, honey?” she asked, trying to make her voice smaller, taking a step closer to the boy. He backed away from her quickly and just continued to stare.

“Are you lost? Can I take you home? Where are your parents? Why are you out here alone?”

Still, he didn’t answer. He just stared at her with those big green eyes.

Angel felt a sudden chill in the summer breeze and wrapped her arms around herself. The boy didn’t seem to notice the temperature though he stood there barely dressed. His nose was running, and she had the urge to grab a tissue out of the car and wipe it for him. This boy needed care. He needed his mother.

“What’s your name, sweetie?” she asked, inching forward as the boy watched her curiously. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to help.”

A thud at her feet made her jump, and when she looked down she’d realized someone had thrown a palm-sized rock at her.

“Leave him alone!” came a small but brave voice.

She looked up to see a boy stepping into the glow of the headlights. This one was only a few years older than the first. He wore an old coonskin cap on his head that reminded her of Davey Crocket. He looked similar to the small one, but this one had the bravado of a matador in the ring. He wasn’t afraid of anything, and he was going to make sure she knew it.

“Why did you throw that at me?” she scolded. “You could have hurt someone.”

“C’mon,” whispered yet another voice from the bushes and Angel strained her eyes to see who was there. She couldn’t tell. The second boy grabbed the first and they took off at a run through the dense thicket.

“Wait!” she called after them. “Where do you live? You shouldn’t be out here all alone in the middle of the night. Let me help you.”

“Mommy?” came her daughter’s voice from behind her. She turned to see Gabby standing next to her, wiping the sleep out of her eyes. Her blond hair was mussed and her sundress rumpled. She took in the dark surroundings and moved closer. “I’m scared.”

“Gabby, there’s nothing to be afraid of. It was just some children playing, that’s all.”

Before Gabby could respond, a gunshot echoed through the woods. Angel grabbed her daughter and rushed back to the car. “Get in. Fast!” She pushed Gabby into the front seat and scooted in after her, slamming the door and clicking the door lock after her.

“What was that, Mommy?”

“I’m not sure,” she said throwing the gear into drive,” but it sounded an awful lot like a gunshot.”

Angel was no stranger to the sound of a gun. Her husband Brad had been a city cop and was killed in the line of duty. A drug bust one night led to a shooting. In one short second his life had been taken from her, and from Gabby.

She floored the gas pedal, the tires slipping on the loose gravel and started toward the Ainsley’s. In the beam of the headlights she could see a man emerging from the woods just up ahead. Her heart raced and she tried not to make eye contact with the stranger, so she didn’t get a good look at his face.

He stood with his feet firmly planted, a button-down shirt hanging open, exposing his bare chest. His jeans were dirtier than the child’s, and his knee stuck out from the huge hole ripped there. He wore a hat on his head - one like a mountain man would wear. It was a cross between a cowboy hat and something seen in a Zorro film. And in the crook of his arm she saw a shotgun resting easily as if it belonged there.

“God help us,” prayed Angel feeling the tattoo of her rapidly beating heart inside her chest. She suddenly knew without a doubt who the children in the road belonged to. Ragged clothes, a child with bare feet, unsupervised children running around in the middle of the night in the woods. Yes, this man could be no other than the man she was coming to investigate. This man was Thomas Taylor.

Thomas dodged the flying rocks and gravel as the mad woman tore away from him like a bat out of hell. What did she think she was doing driving so recklessly so late at night, especially with the little girl in the car? The woman had almost hit his youngest son, Elijah. She was probably another of those city tourists coming to spend the summer on the lake. He hated the idea of the Ainsley’s Bed and Breakfast and all the city folks it pulled in every summer. They were noisy, nosey and unwanted as far as he was concerned. Why did their idea of vacation always mean disturbing the residents that lived here year round?

Still, there was nothing he could do about it. Lord knows he tried. If he had his way, he’d keep all outsiders off his land. The vacationers were always mistaking this road for the Ainsley’s, and it infuriated him. He’d have to post another
Keep Out
sign down on 103rd
th
Street tomorrow. This time he’d make sure it was a big one. One big enough for even this woman to see.

“Did you do it?” came a voice from the shadows.

“I did, Sam,” Thomas answered his son. “But next time it’ll be up to you and your brothers.”

“Danny would have done it if he were here. We should have waited.”

“Well, Dan’s not here, and the rest of you boys need to learn.”

Five of his six sons came creeping out of the shadows, inching forward one by one. They looked down to the ground and he heard one of them whimper.

“It’s just a dead deer,” he explained.

He heard another whimper. “Pa, did you really have to kill it?”

“The thing was injured and could barely walk since those stray dogs got a hold of it,” he explained, but it didn’t make him feel any better. “It was in pain and misery. If I didn’t kill it, those dogs would have picked it to death by morning. I was helping it. Don’t you see?”

He didn’t like killing anything, but this he’d done for a reason. Still, he would never be able to shake the feeling that his sons might see him as a murderer now that he’d done this. It was not the image he wanted to portray at all.

“Now you boys help me get this carcass back to the house. We’ve got guttin’ to do before morning.”

Thomas grabbed a hold of the deer’s head, turning it to test its weight. Even in the dark he could see the squeamish looks on his nine-year-old twins’ faces. It pained him to realize it was the same look they’d given when they saw Fawn’s bloody body. Only this time, he had the smoking gun in his hands.

Josh crinkled his nose and stepped back, but not Jake. Just like Thomas knew he would, Jake took a brave step forward, staring at him and keeping his eyes off the deer.

“I had to do it,” Thomas muttered. “It wouldn’t have survived.” He’d learned to hunt when he was a child, as his father had always said if they wanted to eat, they’d have to find their own food. He’d hated it then, and still wasn’t fond of it now. He only hunted now in situations like this, to help put a suffering animal out of its misery. Or if he needed to feed his sons and he didn’t have enough money for food. “You’ll be glad we’ve got it when the snow starts flying this winter,” he told his boys. “It’ll sure beat eating roots and canned goods from the cellar.”

No one said a word.

His youngest, Eli, stared at him hauntingly, unnerving him to no end. He shouldn’t have brought him on this outing. After seeing Fawn’s dead body, the boy hadn’t been the same. Even with authorities badgering him, and child shrinks trying to delve into his brain, he hadn’t spoken in six months. Thomas hoped he hadn’t done the wrong thing. Eli didn’t need any more stress at this young age. Thomas didn’t need it at his age of thirty-eight either. He felt a familiar stab of pain in his chest that he always did when he looked at Eli.