Shaking his head in disgust and frustration, Sheriff Moore balled the page in his fists and flipped it into the trashcan where it lay amid the Styrofoam cups and ashtray leavings. He had not expected nor wished for more accurate coverage. They had cremated her. Everybody in the county played the game and there was no question in his mind that the Glories were set to buy up the local paper from the Kildare family, who had owned it for three generations. The Glories take over, one step at a time.
Soon they would own the whole county, just as they owned him. No sense wallowing in remorse. It was too late for that now. The Glories had tarnished them all, and those they could not control they bought. It chilled him to think of it. Town by town, county by county, they could take over the whole fucking country. He'd seen it happen here, the outraged citizenry fighting the Glories and their high-priced carpetbagging lawyers making them dot the i's and cross the t's. The best he could hope for was a stalemate. Hopefully, a checkmate. And if O'Hara and Roy let him down, he was finished.
As the day progressed, so did his second thoughts. He was a fool to stick his neck out. Too big a risk. And O'Hara had a rap sheet as long as his arm, mostly after he had started deprogramming for a living. If they connected O'Hara to him, it was all over.
He remembered O'Hara as a Glory, "Zachariah," the man with ferret eyes, shifty and clear. It was hard to tell if he was part of the scam or a believer. Who knew? Now he was bedded down with the bastard, risking a career, hating himself for his sudden surge of do-gooder baloney. He'd given them forty-eight hours. Not much time, he knew. O'Hara had pleaded for more time, but he feared that more time would be dangerous. The Glories weren't dumb. They might catch on to who was behind it. He looked at his watch. Nearly twelve hours gone.
"They're here, Sheriff," his deputy Perry said, bursting in on his bleak thoughts.
"All right."
He tidied up his desk, stepped on the trash can to crunch the paper further into the rubbish, then straightened his tie and assumed a position of authority, hands clasped on his desk, chin jutting out, the very model of assertive virtue. He had ducked the Glories all day, communicating briefly on the phone, assuring them that he was on the job and in pursuit.
Jeremiah and Holmes came in and took seats opposite the Sheriff. Holmes crossed his legs self-importantly, always the patrician, with his charcoal gray pants pressed razor sharp, his shoes shined, his long socks creaseless. Jeremiah in his khakis looked, as always, officious and superior. They waited until Perry had left; he brought them steaming mugs of coffee, which he had perched on cork coasters on the edge of the Sheriff's desk, and then ducked out.
Behind the Sheriff, more for show than actual use, was a county map with an overlay and marks in red and green, indicating potential hideaways. He had scrupulously left out where he knew Amos and Mary were being held. By the way Jeremiah and Holmes looked at him, he had no doubt that his veracity was in question.
"It was a clumsy attempt," Jeremiah said. "I could smell O'Hara through the ski mask. Playing his games. As if we didn't know." He raised his eyes and looked at the Sheriff.
"Smell's not evidence," the Sheriff said.
"I was there; you weren't," Jeremiah snapped.
"You should have been there," Holmes echoed.
They were like a comedy team, each playing to the other's timing, as they had done on many other occasions and confrontations. "You were there to protect us, and you didn't," Holmes pressed, embellishing the point.
The Sheriff had expected the accusation, thankful that it had come up so soon. He needed to get it out of the way, clear the air. "You were in front," Holmes said. "Suddenly speeding away at almost the exact moment when the tires of our car were shot out."
"There was no need to keep that close to you," the Sheriff said. "We were going in the same direction. You knew the way. You were coming in for paperwork. I wasn't taking you in." He gathered his resources, pulling together his energy for the blast of indignation that he had planned.
"And then to suggest it might not be them even though it's so obvious," Jeremiah accused. "Just whose side are you on?"
Now, he thought. Now is the right moment.
"The law." He spat out the words, feeling the flickering flame of righteous anger charge out of his mouth as if he were a dragon. When the point was made, he deliberately calmed.
"I'm not saying it wasn't them." He lowered his voice. "They may be the logical suspects, but you can't prove anything, and I can't go on conjecture."
Futile smoke-blowing, he knew. He was deliberately dropping red herrings. How they hated to not be able to control people and situations. Taking comfort in that, he pressed on.
"Anyway, all the roads out of the county are covered. No sign of the van."
"And Forman, Harrigan?"
"Checked out of the motel I put them in."
"Yes. We know," Holmes said. Had the Sheriff expected them to roll over dead? It was expected, but it still troubled him to know that they were taking countermeasures, doing their own detective work.
"Maybe they've gone back east," the Sheriff said. "He made arrangements to ship his wife's body back to New York."
"Yes. We know that, too."
The Sheriff was no longer able to disguise his irritation.
"Busy little beavers," he said with an edge.
"He's around here and you know it," Jeremiah sneered. It was a carefully calculated surprise accusation, complete with pointed finger. Jeremiah's frustration was fully revealed now.
Play it easy, the Sheriff told himself, feeling a sour backwash begin in his throat. To buy time, he picked up his coffee mug and sipped the liquid. He had not laced it with booze. He needed every ounce of alertness.
"I could also put out an all points to other jurisdictions," he said, infusing his speech with a slow West Virginia drawl. It was time for slow talk now. Out here, it had always been a worthy and effective shield. For vote gathering he had carefully masked his roots, avoiding any hillbilly caricature that might damage his chances.
Holmes uncrossed his legs and Jeremiah's head pivoted as his eyes searched the nooks and crannies of his office.
"You know that won't do," Holmes said.
Resisting the use of a pointed finger, Jeremiah said with lowered voice: "No big-city publicity."
So they are scared, too, the Sheriff decided, swallowing away the sourness. He knew they hadn't yet checked with higher authority. The thought triggered an inner chuckle. An image emerged of Father Glory himself golfing with toadying disciples on the private course on his North Carolina estate. He wondered how deeply the machinery of this religious scam could be shaken by the kidnapping. Deprogram and get those two deadheads to confess. A long shot, he admitted, but worth the effort. For the first time in years, he felt the power of his office, the sweet authority of the badge.
"I'll find them. Don't worry," he said, with what he hoped would be indisputable conviction. Not once, he noted, had they mentioned the real issue.
"You'd better," Jeremiah said.
"Why so concerned?" he asked innocently.
Holmes and Jeremiah exchanged glances, suggesting the Sheriff's dubious credibility. He knew that they could only do more if they identified the perpetrators.
"We have nothing to hide," Jeremiah said, dismissing the unvoiced issue. Holmes made a steeple with his fingers, a ruse of contemplation, nodding as a signal for Jeremiah to continue.
The Sheriff smiled. So they were already drawing up a defense.
Yet, even if the deprogramming opened up a different explanation for Charlotte's drowning, it didn't mean prosecution. The Sheriff might cook up a perjury case. Or it could be murder. What he wanted, more than anything, was truth. Truth! The idea of it fired him up. The man had his dignity to protect.
Even a successful deprogramming did not assure a permanent breakthrough. Without sympathetic backup, like parents, spouses, siblings or friends who cared, Amos and Mary could drift back, unable to cope with the reality of mental rebirth. He hadn't quite thought that one through. What, if anything, would be done with Amos and Mary once they had reemerged and told the truth? The excitement of his original idea, complete with the reprise of heroic music in his mind, did have its flaws.
"Just find them as fast as possible," Jeremiah continued. "Before…." He paused, letting the threat hang in the air. His fanged words and the foreboding possibility bit deeper this time, sitting in the back of the Sheriff's mind. Something said or left out. An ominous silence. He searched for it in the chaos of his thoughts.
"We want no trouble out of this," Holmes said from behind his steeple.
"I told you, I'll find them." The Sheriff hesitated, wetting dry lips with his tongue. He'd have to go get them in thirty-six hours. Any longer than that and there was no holding back the Glories and their various snoops. They would find them sooner or later. A burst of fear squeezed his heart, forcing it to pound like a bass drum.
"You realize that they want to make something out of the accident," Holmes said, referring, at last, to the elephant in the room without actually using the word "drowning."
The articulation of the obvious took the Sheriff by surprise. Perhaps they wished to deliberately show him their legal hand, as if they were prepared to shoot down any suspicions of a deviation from the drowning being an accident. He ignored their straightforwardness. No sense getting ahead of events.
"Sometimes," he said, to deflect the path the conversation was taking, "you should let some of these people go, if they're more trouble than they're worth." Instantly, he knew it was a mistake. A flush rose along the sides of Jeremiah's neck.
"How many times do I have to say it?" He looked at Holmes who folded his steeple and shook his head.
"They are not under any duress," the lawyer said. "They joined out of their own free will."
"No lectures," the Sheriff shot back vehemently. "Not now." It was not only the irritation of their pressure that moved his anger, it was their perpetual denial of their brainwashing scam.
"With that attitude, how can he be objective?" Jeremiah asked, throwing the line to Holmes.
"I don't know," Holmes said.
"Maybe we should read him the Constitution. In particular, the First Amendment."
"He doesn't want lectures."
The Sheriff waited for the little byplay to simmer down. They were toying with him now, playing intimidation games. He did not react, wanting them to think they were roasting him.
"We won't settle for anything short of returning our people to us," Jeremiah said sharply. He stood up. "Intact."
"I'm no miracle maker," the Sheriff protested.
"Then become one," Jeremiah said, his dammed-up anger showing signs of spilling over. Holding himself back made him rigid, and he had the look of cold marble.
I have them scared, the Sheriff thought. He supposed there was little victory in that. And he had successfully resisted their intimidation… for the moment.
Again the idea floated in his mind. What had they avoided saying?
"I can't guarantee anything."
"Neither can we," Jeremiah said, with an ominous emphasis on the "we."
Like a dark cloud pregnant with storm, he watched them recede from his office. He dipped his hand into a bottom drawer and drew out a half-full bottle of Jack Daniels, pouring a stiff drink into his now cool coffee, swallowing it in large gulps. He swiveled back to face the window, observing the lawyer and Jeremiah striding purposefully to their car in the dusky fading light. Partners in evil. The killer and his mouthpiece. The image disturbed him and he turned away.
Maybe he'd better call the whole thing off. Still, what nagged at him could not be netted by his conscious mind.
聚合中文网 阅读好时光 www.juhezwn.com
小提示:漏章、缺章、错字过多试试导航栏右上角的源