The Risen (14 page)

“I guess so,” I reply. “But him not supporting Mom and me, kicking us out of the house, I'm not sure he'd have done that. He liked controlling us too much.”

“We'll never know though, will we?” Bill says. “We'll never know about a lot of things. I mean, I can tell myself that I didn't go to the law because I was protecting you and Mom, but telling myself that is all I can do. I'll never really know. I had so much to lose, including med school, but most of all Leslie.”

“Leslie may have stuck by you,” I answer. “At the trial, I'd have said I was the one who stole the drugs.”

“I stole them the first time, and even if Leslie did stand by me, how could I let her?” Bill says. “She'd know
I'd been involved with Ligeia. She'd know I was there when she was murdered, and if Nebo nodded yes to
anything
Grandfather asked, wouldn't that include my being the one who'd killed her, or ordered Nebo to? It would be two testifying against one. And I did kill her. She wouldn't have died unless I'd caused her to be there that morning.”

“I caused her to be there too,” I say.

I look down at my hand and see a slight tremor. I haven't thought of a drink in hours but my body knows.

“Nebo's surely dead, and Grandfather's dead, and so are Ligeia's parents,” Bill says, “and her sister and her aunt and uncle.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because five years ago I checked.”

Bill's desk phone rings. He reads the number but doesn't pick up.

“That's Leslie, wondering where I am,” he says, and looks at me wearily. “I want to settle this once and for all and go home, Eugene.”

“So Ligeia is murdered and no one's ever punished. It's all simply forgotten, again.”

“Forgotten?” Bill says. “Every night when I'd cut off
the light to sleep, I would think about her being out there in those woods. Every night. Every day.”

Bill looks at me, seemingly about to tear up. I turn and nod at the Rembrandt print behind me.

“Grandfather willed you that because of what happened to her, didn't he?”

“Yes, and I'm glad he did. It needs to be there.”

The phone rings again but Bill ignores it.

“What if Loudermilk or the SBI or forensics link us to what happened?”

“They won't,” Bill says.

“She could have told another friend, or a relative?”

“She didn't,” Bill answers and places a hand on his desk phone. “I need to let Leslie know I'll be home in a few minutes.”

“You've lied to me twice about what happened,” I say. “How do I know you're not lying now?”

“You don't,” my brother responds, “but Carl Bassinger wasn't lying. This will all blow over in a few days. Except for you and me, it will be forgotten.”

“And we do what?”

“We go on with our lives,” Bill answers. “We live with it.”

“What if I can't?”

“You will,” my brother tells me. “Pour yourself a couple of drinks. If that doesn't help, consider the good that will come because you
do
live with it. Think what you want about me, think the very worst—that I want your silence solely because I don't want my life ruined. But think about what Bassinger said too.”

“You still should have told me when it happened,” I answer. “I'll never think otherwise.”

Bill stares at me. When he speaks, the old familiar certainty is present in his voice.

“If I could have known how your life would turn out, Eugene, there would have been some mercy in having told you—it would have given you an excuse for the drinking and for everything else you've done to others and to yourself. But you didn't even have an excuse. You fucked up your life all on your own.”

I
stop at the ABC store, getting inside just before the clerk hangs the
CLOSED
sign on the door. I pick out a fifth of Jack Daniel's, hand him the remaining cash Bill gave me, and pocket the change. I ache to fill the empty paper cup in the holder. To see the whiskey's amber glow is to be out in the cold looking through glass at a warm fire.

But I don't crack the seal until I'm home. As I sit down and take my first sip, my almost-memory of my father comes, the sensation of being lifted and rising above the faces of my mother and brother. To wave good night to the moon, Bill had told me. I don't remember my father saying that, or his face, or the moon, only
the sensation of being carried, the weightlessness while moving from light into dark, adrift and unafraid.
No excuse
, Bill claimed, and he's right, but if our father had lived . . .

I've just poured my second drink when there's a knock at the door.

“I've been calling your phone for the last two hours,” Loudermilk says as he steps past me.

“I went to—”

Then I stop myself.

“You went where?” Loudermilk asks.

“Nowhere,” I stammer. “Just out.”

“Just out? Not to anywhere, just out?”

“Yes.”

“You make a habit of acting skittish as hell every time I show up, Matney. I find that vexing.”

Loudermilk walks over to the couch and sits down. He takes off his glasses and tugs his shirttail out enough to wipe the lenses, as if to say,
Yes, I've got all evening.

“I checked out two of the guys Angie Wellbeck said Ligeia had drug dealings with, David Peeler and Tim Dickson. Did you know them in high school?”

“I knew who they were.”

“Peeler claims that the last time he saw Ligeia she
wanted to get away from here quick because she owed someone money. She didn't tell Peeler who, but she was real scared of what they might do to her. So what I want answered is whether Ligeia Mosely did or didn't get you the drugs you gave her money for?”

“I didn't give her any money.”

“So Angie Wellbeck is lying about that?”

“Yes.”

“No, she's not,” Loudermilk says. “Angie told me to talk to Dawn Pinson. She saw you give Ligeia the money too.”

“She's wrong as well, Sheriff.”

Loudermilk's face reddens but his voice doesn't rise.

“Look, Matney,” he says. “Can't you just admit you bought the drugs and tell me about the other people that girl knew? Like I said, I can't do a damn thing about you buying or selling drugs forty-six years ago. You did it and got away with it, just like you've gotten away with everything else in your worthless life. Do I need the Supreme Court to come and explain the statute of limitations to you? Are you that alcohol addled? All I care about is that the girl sold drugs and that's probably why she's dead. You damn well know something you're not telling me. She was involved with some serious deal
ers in Daytona Beach. One may have come up here, and if you know anything about him—description, name, nickname—give it to me.” Loudermilk pauses. “Is it that you're afraid of who did it, that after forty-six years they're going to come after you and cut your throat? Are you that much of a coward on top of everything else?”

Loudermilk raises a forefinger and presses his glasses closer to the bridge of his nose. The finger slides slowly up on his brow, stops there briefly, as if probing for a thought. He leans back deeper into the couch and sighs.

“I knew her aunt and uncle, and they were fine people. I even went out with Tanya for a while when we were in high school. Ligeia was no saint, but she didn't deserve what happened to her, and I know that girl's disappearance caused her uncle and aunt a lot of guilt and pain. I know that for a fact, because I talked to Tanya yesterday. She said it tore her parents up, especially her dad, because his younger brother trusted him to take care of her. It was a
responsibility
. So here's the thing, Matney. Can't you do one responsible thing in your whole miserable life? Look, whoever killed that girl has gotten away with it all this time. They may be dead now, probably are, but at least we can show that
Ligeia Mosely mattered enough to try and find out who cut her throat and left her out there to rot. Don't we owe her that?”

Loudermilk's shoulder mic crackles and a voice asks if everything is all right.

“Yes, everything's fine. I'll be out there in a bit,” Loudermilk says, leaning toward the mic, before turning back to me. “So tell me, Matney. Don't we owe her that?”

“I've told you what I know,” I answer. “I don't want to talk about this anymore.”

“Would you be willing to take a polygraph test? Peeler and Dickson said they would.”

“I don't think—”

But Loudermilk suddenly is not listening to me.

“Is this about protecting someone you know, someone still alive?” Loudermilk says, each word sounding less like a question and more like an accusation. “That's it, isn't it?”

“Before I admit anything,” I answer, “I want to finish my drink.”

“How many have you already had?”

“One. If I finish this one I'll still be sober.”

“Finish it,” he says.

I go to the table and lift the glass, slowly swallow,
and set the glass down. I cross the room and sit in the chair across from Loudermilk.

“Wait,” he says, and takes a card from his billfold. He reads me my rights and asks me if I understand.

“I understand.”

“Go ahead.”

“I killed Ligeia Mosely.”

When Loudermilk speaks, it's ever so soft and slow, as if he might startle me into silence.

“You killed her? Ligeia Mosely,
you
killed Ligeia Mosely?”

“Yes,” I answer. “If you want me to sign a confession I'm ready to do it. We can go now.”

I set my hands on the chair's arms but Loudermilk nods at the Jack Daniel's bottle.

“Two drinks, that's all?”

“Yes.”

“I will give you a Breathalyzer test as soon as we're at the station,” he says. “I'm making sure your brother and his hotshot lawyer can't get you out of this.”

“Go ahead, Sheriff. I'll pass this one.”

“Okay,” Loudermilk says, “and I'll dot every
i
this time. We're doing it at the station, and I'll have witnesses.”

But Loudermilk doesn't stand. He is studying me, perhaps searching for signs of drunkenness or insanity, or relief.

“Why did you do it?” he asks.

“Angie Wellbeck was right,” I answer. “The money I gave Ligeia was for drugs but she didn't me get the drugs.”

“You killed her because she owed you money?”

“Yes.”

“By yourself?” Loudermilk asks. “No one else was there?”

“I was by myself,” I answer. “No one was ever involved except her and me.”

“And you'll go with me to the courthouse and sign a statement saying that?”

“Yes.”

“What about an attorney? You don't want one?”

“No,” I answer, and stand. “I'm ready to go, right now.”

“All right,” Loudermilk says, and nods at the bottle. “So killing Ligeia Mosely, is that your excuse for being a drunk, knowing all these years what you'd done, knowing that she was still out in those woods?”

“No,” I answer. “I have no excuse for that.”

“No excuse,” Loudermilk says, then says it aloud again, as if to commit the words to memory.

As he stands he carefully tucks his shirt into his pants and centers his belt buckle, perhaps already preparing for the press conference.

“You got any kind of weapon on you?”

“No.”

“You'd better lock up the house,” Loudermilk says. “You may not be back for a while.”

I get my key and we walk out to the porch. Across the way I see a deputy smoking a cigarette as he leans against the squad car. Loudermilk gestures to him as I close the door. I turn the key and hear the click.

“Are you going to handcuff me?”

“Do I need to?” Loudermilk asks.

“No.”

We go down the steps and the deputy opens the back door and I get in.

I
did try to leave that one time,” my mother told me, her words punctuated by the beeps and hisses of the hospital machinery. “It was the summer when you were seven and Bill twelve. I knew it would be hard to support myself and two children but I felt we could get by. I sent out résumés to high schools and actually had an interview scheduled in Raleigh. But your grandfather found out. One afternoon when you and Bill were at the rec center, he came to the house with Sheriff Lunsford and Mr. Ashbrook from the bank. I thought at first something had happened to you or your brother. I was so frightened and kept asking over and over if you both were all right. Sheriff Lunsford had to
tell me twice before it sank in that you and Bill were fine.

“They came in and we all sat down. Your grandfather said
Show her the check,
and the sheriff did. Your grandfather had written it to me for a hundred dollars, but now the one was a nine. The change was crudely obvious. When I asked what this was about, the sheriff replied forgery, and that Mr. Ashbrook was ready to testify that he'd personally taken the altered check from me.

“Only if I decide to press charges, of course,
your grandfather said. He told me if I tried to leave Sylva that he would do just that. I knew that he had me, and everyone in the room knew it too. It's strange what you notice in moments like that, a small something that you later find significant. Your grandfather wore his suit despite the heat, and he noticed a piece of lint and picked it off his pants and flicked it onto the floor. It was as if my finally finding the courage to make a new life for us elsewhere was no more difficult for him to deal with than that piece of lint. There he was, two of the most powerful men in Sylva beside him, and they were doing exactly what he wanted. So I promised your grandfather that I would stay.
And never try to
leave again, correct?
he said, and I answered yes. I could tell Sheriff Lunsford and Mr. Ashbrook were ready to leave, but they didn't dare get up or even clear their throats. The sheriff handed the check to your grandfather. But instead of tearing it up he looked at me and said
But of course I may go ahead and put you in prison anyway, raise those two boys myself.
And for a minute no one said a word. The four of us sat there, Sheriff Lunsford, Mr. Ashbrook, and your grandfather just letting that threat linger, like his words were something he could taste and savor.

“Then Mr. Ashbrook spoke for the first time since they'd come.
If you try to do that, Dr. Matney
, he said,
I will not testify.
Some people might think his doing that was a small thing, but anybody who knew your grandfather would know otherwise, because Mr. Ashbrook had a family too, and I am sure sometime later he paid dearly for those words. Your grandfather didn't acknowledge what Mr. Ashbrook said, and I wondered if I'd really heard it, because Mr. Ashbrook had always seemed a milquetoast, more like a teller than a bank manager, the kind of man who'd faint dead away if a robber came in demanding cash. But then your grandfather had smiled, not at Mr. Ashbrook but at me,
and said,
What would I do with two boys causing a racket around my house.
Then your grandfather stood and the three of them left.”

That story is what I remember as I wait in the interrogation room, the Breathalyzer taken and passed, the sheriff and his witnesses, a clerk and a deputy, watching everything that is said and done. All that remains is my signature on the confession being typed and run off. A question enters my mind about the morning Bill tried to withdraw his money. If Mr. Ashbrook had known what it would lead to, would he have defied my grandfather a second time?

Maybe once is enough, I tell myself as I stand in front of the room's one window. At the end of the long gray hallway is the holding cell. I don't recall what it looked like inside. What lingers in my memory is the metal door clanging shut like an audible slap in the face. I sit back down and stare at my hands, wishing I'd bargained for one more drink. Or maybe it's better this way, let the punishment begin. No longer the Eugene Gant who sought escape, but instead Raskolnikov, who embraces his incarceration. But that romantic notion quickly dissipates with the thought of being gang-raped while stone-cold sober. For a moment I waver.

Sheriff Loudermilk comes in with the confession. He sits down but the deputy and clerk stand. The clerk's face is familiar, perhaps someone I went to high school with, because we look about the same age. Then I know her name and the knowledge is strangely comforting. Phrases come to mind: The theory of a unified field. The love that ended yesterday in Texas. Jungian archetype . . . All portend that this should be the right ending because it
coheres
.

“You're Renee Brock, aren't you?” I ask.

“Now it's Clark,” she answers tersely.

“I bought a necklace at your father's jewelry store once. A silver sea horse was on the chain.”

So what
? her face says. As she turns to look out the window, hollowness is all I feel.

“This is being recorded,” Loudermilk tells me, and nods at the camera in the upper corner. “One more time, Matney. You've been read your rights, and you've said you don't want a lawyer present, correct?”

I nod.

“Answer verbally.”

“That's correct,” I say.

“And by signing this confession you're admitting you killed Ligeia Mosely on September 15, 1969.”

“Yes.”

“Say it louder.”

“Yes,” I say.

He sets the paper and pen in front of me and I pick up the pen with my left hand.

Loudermilk reaches across the table and sets a splayed palm on the paper.

“Put the pen down.”

“Why?”

“Where on her body was there a second cut?” he asks.

“What?”

“The second wound, where was it, you son of a bitch?”

I try to read Loudermilk's face to see if he is trying to trick me, but it's as if his features—eyes, mouth, forehead—are tightening like an animal preparing for ambush.

“Where was it, Matney?” he says again, loud enough that his deputy starts walking toward us. “Where else was Ligeia Mosely cut?”

“I know what you're doing,” I answer. “There wasn't a second wound.”

Loudermilk turns to his deputy.

“Cut off that damn camera,” he barks, and turns to Renee. “Go on back to your desk.”

When the deputy returns and confirms the camera's off, Loudermilk leaves his chair. He comes around the table and stands beside me.

“Get up,” he says.

When I do, Loudermilk grabs my collar. He shoves me against the wall, his forearm pressed under my chin.

“What in the name of God is wrong with you?” he asks.

“There was only one cut,” I gasp, and he presses harder.

“The hell there was, you left-handed son of a bitch,” Loudermilk shouts. “They found a blade mark on her right pubic bone, the
inside
of the bone.”

The deputy settles his hand on Loudermilk's shoulder.

“Sheriff,” he says. “The window is open.”

Loudermilk lets me go, takes a step back.

I bend over, heaving for breath.

“I—”

He leans closer. I can smell his hair oil, the mouthwash on his breath.

“Don't speak until I tell you to, Matney, or I'll beat
you to a bloody pulp even if it costs me my job and whatever lawsuit your brother hits me with.”

Loudermilk waits a moment, then lets go and steps back.

“So he wasn't even there,” the deputy says, “much less killed her.”

“No,” Loudermilk says. “This sick son of a bitch doesn't know a damn thing, except how to drain a whiskey bottle.”

“He can't even give you a name or two?” the deputy asks.

Loudermilk pauses. It's like he's seen a twitch on a fishing line.

“I'm going to ask you one more question, Matney, and I want a one-word answer. One word. I'll know if you're lying, so don't even try. Don't
dare
try. Do you know who killed Ligeia Mosely? One word, yes or no.”

I meet his eyes.

“No,” I answer.

For a few moments Loudermilk makes no reaction. Then he nods at the deputy.

“Go get his stuff from the cage.”

“Yes, sir,” the deputy says and leaves.

“I hope that the next time I see you,” Loudermilk
tells me, “your car is wrapped around a telephone pole, a single-car accident. If you're broken up bad, I'll tell the ambulance driver to drive slow, and to Waynesville, not Asheville. I'll not give your brother another chance to save your worthless ass.”

He opens the door.

“Get out of here,” he says.

As the deputy drives me home, I think of what my mother said about noticing something seemingly trivial at the time and yet, later, it proves important, definitive. What I remember was not at Panther Creek but at school between classes. Ligeia was reaching into her locker and one of the books crooked in her arm slid free and, as she made a fumbling gesture to keep it from falling, her other books spilled onto the floor. She'd kneeled to gather them, her brown eyes looking up, the freckles darkening as her face reddened in embarrassment. It is an unremarkable memory of an unremarkable moment, something that happened to everyone during high school. Just something human.