Rock of Ages (24 page)

“You'd have had to kill him, wouldn't you? Christ. I mean, could you have done that? Really?”

He makes eye contact again. He sighs.

“I probably shouldn't do this. You know, when you asked me if I had ever shot anyone?”

And so he tells her the story he'd planned to take to his grave, the one he knew he really, really never should tell anyone.

His sister's name was Rose, same as her grandmother. She was four years younger than Kenny. He had always tried to protect her when they were growing up, the two youngest kids in a big family.

The night he wasn't there, he was 21 and she was 17. He was in Raleigh, a senior, four months from being the first in his family to graduate from college. She would have started in the fall. Rose was worrying her parents and older siblings, though. She had gotten wild, more so since Kenny left for college. Her grades didn't really suffer that much, but she stayed out late, skipped school sometimes, and hung out with what was generally considered to be a bad crowd.

He got the call at the off-campus apartment he shared with three other men. Rose was missing, and had been since the night before. They found her car at the Quality Inn near the interstate. Kenny was back home in less than two hours.

They never found her body, never found any evidence of anything resembling foul play. The police hinted strongly that she might have run away.

But he knew Rose would not have done that. None of her friends confessed to any inkling that Rose Locklear might have been contemplating such a thing.

She was dating Cam Jacobs. Rose was a risk-taker, and Cam was a risk, everyone agreed, a rough-talking mill foreman with orange-hued skin and a scar across his cheek. He was 10 years older than Rose. He was, the rumor had it, rough with the ladies.

How many times has Kenny blamed himself for not telling her just how big a mistake he thought she was making? But she was not of an age to have listened even to him, probably, might have just run that much faster into Cam Jacobs' arms. Everyone knew Rose was a little wild.

Cam had a good alibi that night. He and Rose had met at the Quality Inn, had spent a couple of hours there, but then he had to go and help two friends move. He had said goodbye to her in the parking lot by 9:30. He thought she was going out to one of the fast-food places on the boulevard to meet some friends, but he said she told him more than once that she was thinking about running away, maybe going out to California.

His two friends told the same story, over and over: Cam Jacobs and they worked putting furniture into a U-Haul until after midnight, and then they had a couple of beers before closing time. Lots of people saw Cam at the Rendez-vous.

Kenny could hardly look at his parents as they were told about the room at the Quality Inn. The clerk had recognized them both as they checked in, but didn't recall seeing them leave.

There was no physical evidence. They found samples of Rose's hair in Cam's car, but as he said, they had spent a lot of time in his car.

Cam Jacobs was never indicted. Kenny would see him around town occasionally, before Cam moved to Lumberton. They never spoke about Rose.

His parents didn't want to believe that their daughter wasn't coming back. His father put up posters until the day he died of a heart attack, five years later.

Kenny was more pragmatic. He did his grieving, and then he put his plan in place. He knew it wouldn't happen quickly, knew he'd have to be patient if there was to be any chance of it happening at all.

Kenny was 28, a teacher for six years, when the first leak finally sprang.

He was in a bar one night, and he struck up a conversation with a Jacobs who, it turned out, was Cam Jacobs' second cousin. Kenny mentioned what a tough guy he'd heard Cam was, and the cousin started telling stories.

After relating a couple of bar brawls that ended with hospitalization, the cousin leaned a little closer.

“They say he killed a girl,” the man said, his voice barely audible.

“I'd heard something about that, but didn't they clear him?”

“He's got some good friends,” the cousin said. “Good friends will cover your ass when it needs coverin'.

“One of 'em, though, old Pete Oxendine, he had too much to drink one night, just me and him, I don't even know if he knew me and Cam was related, and he told me.”

“Told you what?” Kenny's hand was shaking. He tried keep the shake out of his voice.

The cousin was quiet for 30 seconds, but Kenny knew he was just milking the drama.

“Told me Cam didn't come by 'til almost midnight. That they were real pissed with him, leaving them with most of the work. And he was all messed up. Him and that girl had got into some meth, and I don't know what all happened, but he burned his clothes in a trash can outside the house, got some new clothes, and he made 'em swear that he'd been there since 10.

“At least, that's what Pete Oxendine told me.”

He'd lied for them before, and they lied for him, and didn't ask any more questions about it. By the time they had kept quiet for half a year, Cam made it clear that, whatever he had or hadn't done, anybody that waited that long to tell the police about it after lying for six months was in for some jail time.

“But Pete, he drinks a bit, as the song goes, and I suppose he said something he shouldn't of.”

“Why did he kill the girl?”

The cousin said he never heard.

Kenny never found out all the details. He didn't care to know any more, didn't even want to find out where the body might have been dumped or buried or God knows what.

All he wanted to do was slip away from Cam Jacobs' cousin as seamlessly as he could, leaving such a mild impression that the cousin would barely remember him in the morning and might never recall telling him that story.

None of it would ever hold up in court, if it ever got to court. There was even that scintilla of a chance that Cam Jacobs had nothing to with Rose's disappearance. Kenny considered this, but he knew. He'd always known.

Maybe she wanted to leave him and he got crazy. Maybe it had something to do with drugs, taken or sold. Maybe she was pregnant and he didn't want to deal with that. It had occurred to Kenny, as he sifted through all the possibilities over the years, that she probably had been with Cam Jacobs since she was 15 and could send him to jail if she wanted to. Maybe she threatened to do that, or turn him in for dealing. There were a million possibilities. There always was the chance some fisherman would hook her remains in some remote stretch of the Campbell River some day.

Kenny Locklear thought it to death, trying to find some other answer to the mystery of Rose. All any sensible person could come up with, he concluded one last time, was Cam Jacobs.

It wasn't that hard to find Cam. He was still in Lumberton and lived in a trailer park. He'd led an exemplary enough life the last six years that he had never been arrested.

Kenny made the 70-mile round trip to Lumberton three times before he figured out how he would do it.

Cam worked the 3–11 shift at a textile mill. His habit seemed to be to come home to change, then go out again for a quick beer or two. He was living with a woman; they didn't seem to have any kids.

The rut road leading to the trailer park was so narrow that two cars meeting would naturally slow and move as close to the trees as possible to avoid colliding.

The fourth time Kenny Locklear went to Lumberton, he had a shotgun with him.

The night was overcast. Kenny drove down the rut road to the trailer park at 11:00, then turned around and headed back out. In his two previous trips, no one had come down the road except Cam Jacobs between 11:00 and 11:30. There were only a dozen trailers there, and half of those looked unoccupied.

It was not risk-free, he knew, but it would be worth it. Even if he got caught, it would be worth it.

He was on the stretch between the trailer park and the paved road with only his parking lights on, waiting. When he heard the car slow and then saw the headlights swing toward him, he started edging forward.

He managed to reach a particularly tight bend just as Cam Jacobs got there from the other direction. They were almost stopped when Kenny, with his window rolled down, motioned for Cam to roll his down as well.

“He might have recognized me. I think maybe he did. I'd kind of like to think he did.”

The blast more or less blew Cam Jacobs' head off. It was impossible to mask such a sound. Kenny didn't think anyone at the trailer park had seen him, though, and when he pulled out on the highway, no one was coming. He could only hope Cam Jacobs was as dead as he appeared in the second he'd had to observe him.

“I threw the gun in the river, down by the old bridge. I got back home 40 minutes later, and there was nobody to see me. You weren't renting your daddy's place yet, Teresa and I hadn't moved in together. I was living in a trailer myself, while this house was being built.”

It was, he said, about the last possible time he could have done such a thing. A year later, he was married and would have had to bring his wife into it.

Georgia is sitting up now.

“And did anybody ever suspect you?”

“Oh, one time a detective from Lumberton came by and asked me some questions. But Cam Jacobs had a lot of enemies, and was dealing drugs. If push had come to shove, they couldn't have proved I did it, and I couldn't have proved that I didn't.”

“Did anyone suspect?”

“It's funny. When my family gets together, we'll talk about Rose sometimes, but nobody ever mentions Cam Jacobs, how he might have done it, how he got what he deserved. And I have this spooky feeling they do that for my benefit, and maybe they have a little more to say when I'm not around.”

It's been 10 years since Kenny Locklear killed Cam Jacobs. When he tells Georgia he has never, ever told anyone about it until now, she believes him. She puts her head on top of his bare chest and can hear his heart pounding as she hugs him. She feels a shudder but doesn't look up to see if he's crying.

She doesn't go back home until after 4. She has showered and tries not to look quite so much as if she is in shock. She doesn't know if she has been affected more by the indecently wonderful sex or Kenny's revelation.

Justin and Leeza seem not to notice.

“I was worried about you,” he says. “You ought to let us know when you're gone like that, even if it is next door. I mean, with that nut Pooh out there somewhere.”

“So,” Georgia tells him, already starting to make dinner, her face averted, “you going to ground me?”

Sometime after 8, the phone rings. Georgia picks up. She can hear heavy breathing on the other end, but no one speaks. She stays like that for a good 10 seconds before hanging up.

Justin looks over at her.

“Again?”

She nods.

“I didn't want to mention it, but I'm pretty sure I saw that big red truck, the one that Pooh drove, parked on the side of the road when we were coming back from town this afternoon. I didn't see him, but where he parked wasn't a quarter mile from the back property line.”

Georgia doesn't respond. If he has put two and two together concerning the dead cat, he isn't admitting it, and she sees no reason to enlighten him, especially with Leeza in the room.

“Georgia,” Leeza says, “do you think we should go see the sheriff or something?”

She shakes her head.

“No, probably not. They'd just want some evidence of some kind of wrongdoing, and I can't seem to give them any.”

All I've got, she thinks, is ghosts and theories, a shoe, a missing ring, and a dream that's stuck in my head like a bad song.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

December 7

What a week, Georgia tells her journal.

In the last seven days, she has taken a secret lover, given a baby shower, celebrated a birthday, and fired a real-estate agent.

Peace has been declared. Blue, Kenny, and Justin have come to an agreement. With, she writes, no small assist from me. It was her idea, pitched to Kenny on Friday, when he was somewhat vulnerable after a second session of love making had proved at least as satisfying as the first.

“What about the right-of-way?” she asked him as she teased the almost non-existent hair on his right leg. “What if we give Annabelle and Blue the right-of-way? You know, the egress.”

The way the will worked out, she owns the easement containing the clay road that is their only access to a paved highway. The old rut path that used to provide a back way in, connecting with the Ammon Road, has been cut off by the new interstate.

Kenny's land touches the paved road that goes into East Geddie, as does Georgia's, so access is no problem, but Blue and Annabelle's part is essentially landlocked. The other two parties made it clear that the road always would be shared, but the Geddies have a genetic distrust of promises.

Georgia became aware that this was still a worry when Annabelle mentioned it at the baby shower.

She and Sharita did come, and Leeza seemed so thrilled that they were there. She took great pains to introduce them both to everyone else, especially her friends from Virginia. The older women from Geddie Presbyterian knew Annabelle, having lived side-by-side in sometimes separate, sometimes shared worlds for their entire lives.

Georgia found herself in the kitchen, talking to Annabelle, who seemed to finally have accepted the fact that she was not ever going to try to take back the McCain land. She loosened up as much as she ever had in Georgia's presence.

They talked about Justin's idea, and what a shame it was that the three parties couldn't seem to make it work.

“It's just bothered Blue,” Annabelle said, after Georgia had rebuffed her efforts to help her cut and serve cake. “I know he ought to of been just grateful for that land, but then that interstate cut off the best part of it, down by the branch, and he felt like he was cheated somehow.”