“Stop it!” June shouted. They obeyed at once. “What is the matter with you? Ricky, boys, get them in the clinic so I can patch them up. And mind, you make one aggressive move in my clinic, I’ll sedate you! You won’t wake up for a month!” She turned on her heel and angrily strode back inside.
“Jessie,” she said, “set up the treatment room with a suture kit and get yourself some gloves.” Jessica smiled briefly and brightly before going to do as she was bidden. “Ricky! Bring them all back here. Line ’em up on these stools.” When her order had been carried out, June added, “Okay, you can leave them. But wait up front, will you? If there’s any trouble back here I’ll need some help holding them down while I fill them full of Thorazine…or some other equally powerful tranquilizer. I think I might have some veterinary tranks on hand.”
“You sure, June?” George asked worriedly. “’Cause if you want me to stay right here—”
“I’ll take it from here. I want to talk to these idiots alone, if you don’t mind. But don’t leave the clinic just yet, huh? Hang around till I’m done?”
Three men echoed, “Sure thing, June.”
She washed her hands, put on some gloves and smacked a chemical ice pack against the counter to get it started. The ice went on Stan’s head, she pressed a gauze pad against the cut on Sam’s chin and moved his hand to hold it in place, and then told the pastor to open his mouth.
“You know, Jonathan, you would test the patience of the very saints.” His eyes jerked up to hers in surprise. “Ah, so you recognize your tag line? You’ve created serious trouble for yourself in this town. Your credibility is shot—at least with the women, that’s for sure.”
He began to mumble something and June pulled her gloved finger out of his mouth. “There’s no evidence that I—”
“Oh shut up,” the room said in unison. Even Jessica.
“There, you see?” June asked. “Just in case you think people don’t know, you can rest assured everyone is onto you. And it’s your own damn fault. But that’s not even the worst of what’s going on here. Have the three of you ignorant jackasses forgotten that Justine is in the hospital, recovering from cancer surgery?” June wadded up a gauze strip and stuck it between the pastor’s teeth. “Looks like you just lost a bridge, Jonathan. It could have been so much worse. Bite down on this. It’ll help you keep your mouth shut.
“Jessie? You want to help with the stitches?” she asked, discarding soiled gloves and washing her hands before donning new ones. She had never seen her clerk’s eyes shine more brightly. Jessica nodded and held up her own gloved hands. “Okay, first the anesthetic.” Jessica pointed to the lidocaine syringe that lay ready. “Well, you appear to be up to speed. Sam, you don’t mind a little on-the-job training, do you? It’s the least you deserve.” He nodded bravely.
June watched closely as Jessica, in an experienced manner, popped the top off the syringe with a thumb and began to inject tiny bubbles of anesthetic along the cut on Sam’s chin. When she finished and stood back, June regarded her with raised eyebrows. “Let me start, and if you’re very good, I’ll save you a couple.”
Jessica glowed.
While June stitched, she lectured. “I have a patient lying in a hospital bed, facing treatment for a disease that could kill her. She’s alone, afraid and has been betrayed, and the three of you are acting out your own anger and hurt pride.”
“You’d have your nose a little out of shape if—” Stan began.
“Shut up, Stan, you’re a little late,” she snapped. “If you wanted a say in that girl’s life you might have started sooner. Maybe added a little something to her self-esteem with praise and affection instead of sticking her with all the chores and the family business. That girl lost her mother! And all you’re worried about is your pride!”
“Amen,” the pastor muttered.
“If I were you, Jonathan, I’d start at the beginning of that prayer, not the end, and include a little humble pie. I’m sure the number of people you should beg for forgiveness exceeds even my imagination, but you might start with Standard Roberts, the father of the girl you betrayed. Then you can move on to your wife and any other woman in Grace Valley you’ve offended.”
Sam couldn’t help but let out a satisfied whoop of laughter. “You tell ’em, Junie!”
“You’d better hold still or I might accidentally sew your mouth shut, which, now that I think about it, isn’t such a bad idea.” She stood back from her handiwork. “You want to try a couple, Jessie?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” the girl said, reaching anxiously for the hemostat and needle. June stood at Jessica’s shoulder and watched her make four absolutely perfect sutures. Again she lifted her eyebrows.
“Put a butterfly and gauze on that, Jessie.” She snapped off her gloves and took a seat in front of the three men. “Sam, I know you think you’re the one with the sterling motives, but look at you. I’m not saying you’re not a good catch, but the girl is twenty-six. And she has cancer. And she is, for the moment at least, refusing further reproductive surgery because she wants a baby. If she succeeds, and something happens to her, who’s going to raise that baby? You? Being there for her, giving her love and affection and loyalty when she’s needy, is a wonderful gesture, as long as you’re sure you don’t compromise her at the same time. Her basic human need right now is health—health first—so she can live long enough to enjoy the rest.
“The three of you ought to think, just for a moment, about someone besides yourselves. It seems that you have either exploited her affection or withheld affection from her or misguided her—or all of the above. What Justine needs right now is support and respect. Stan, call her sisters home to see her. Sam, be absolutely sure you don’t mislead her. And Jonathan… Oh Jonathan, I don’t know about you. Maybe you’d better keep your distance from Justine and ask Clarice if she’ll ever forgive you.
“Now get out of here. And don’t you dare fight again.”
When they were gone, Jessica went about the business of cleaning up the treatment room. She put the instruments in the sink for sterilizing, disposed of the bloody rags and gloves, got out the mop and pail, all the while keeping her head bent down.
“Jessie, what’s all this about?” June asked.
The girl slowly raised her eyes, and in them there was a light. “June, I think I want to be a doctor,” she said.
“Is that so? Well, you might have to graduate from high school first.”
For Tom, everything came together once he saw his daughter’s bruised cheek. Suddenly, he knew what was missing—besides Gus. He had sent Lee around to all the old haunts where a man like Gus might take a drink, but the man hadn’t been seen. He had called the sheriff’s departments in three counties, but the truck had not been spotted anywhere. They had searched the farm and woods nearby as well, to see if the old sot was staying close, biding his time and waiting to pounce again, but he was not found. And Leah, who had been surprised in the middle of the night by her wildly abusive husband, was leaving the younger children at home alone when she went to work. They were devastated, but unafraid. Tom had thought they seemed resigned.
Then Tanya rode up on her bike, her face marred by yet more Craven rage, and something clicked.
The bike. How far could you ride a bike in a couple of hours, along country roads?
Tom went out to the Craven farm, drove up the drive and saw Leah in the rocking chair on the porch, the rifle on her knees. He stopped and asked if everything was all right, then he drove down the drive and went west, taking side roads when they came up. But he stopped and turned back when he reached fifteen miles. He then traveled east from the Craven farm, again going off on deserted side roads or abandoned logging roads, but always stopping and turning back before going farther than fifteen miles.
It was after eight o’clock and the sun was low when he drove slowly along a third road, which wound through a stand of redwoods. He was about twelve miles from the Craven farm. He parked, got out his flashli
ght and walked among the trees, directing the beam. Though there was still light along the road, the huge trees blocked the sun. It was dark and eerie in the woods at that hour.
The flashlight bounced off a fender. It looked as though the truck had careened through the trees, over a berm and down a shallow ravine. The front of the truck was plunged headlong into a narrow, dry creekbed, and Gus was slumped over the wheel.
As Tom got closer the smell of whisky got stronger. There was little doubt alcohol would be found in his blood, but in the days he’d been missing the smell would have waned. Unless his clothing had been soaked in liquor.
He called the county coroner and the sheriff’s department crime lab. It took them two hours to set up, after which he left them. He drove out to Leah’s and knocked on the door. She came, holding her old chenille robe closed.
“We found him, Leah. And the truck.”
Her chin quivered. Tom thought she must be relieved it was over.
“Was it you? Or was it Frank?” he asked.
She lifted her chin somewhat defiantly. “What are you talking about?”
“My guess is it was you, while he was pummeling Frank. He was such a pompous little ass, he didn’t realize that in two short months you’d grown strong enough that he shouldn’t turn his back on you. And I’ll bet it was the shovel that you whacked him in the back of the head with. But I’d bet you really didn’t mean to kill him, even then. Why didn’t you just call me, Leah?”
“Because it was true, what I told you—that he pulled the phone out of the wall. And I guess we just got so scared. It seemed like where Gus was concerned, everything always came back and got us. Gus was the one always seemed to skate out of things, while the boys and me, we just walked around all bruised and tattered.”
“So you put the bike in the back of the truck, drove out a back road and pushed the truck into the ravine. Then rode the bike home. If you had been on foot you would have had to hide the truck too close to the farm, or if you drove it far, it would have taken you too long to walk home. And you both had to work in the morning.”
“Yes, I thought—”
“No, it wasn’t her. That was me.”
Tom turned and saw Frank coming from the kitchen. At any other time he would have had a piece of the youngster’s hide for hitting Tanya. But as he’d already told her, that matter was finished. It was time to move on.
“Frank, don’t say another word!”
“It’s all right, Mama. The whole family knows, Chief. Sooner or later you’d get Jeremy or Joe or maybe little Stan to tell you. Daddy couldn’t break up the house without the little ones getting it just as bad as Mama and me.” He took a step closer. “See, there just wasn’t anything anyone could do to stop him.”
“What’s going to happen now, Tom?” Leah asked.
“Well, I’m going to call Corsica and have her send someone from social services out here to pick up the children, and then I’m going to take you and Frank to the sheriff’s office to make a statement.”
Twenty-Three
Sam put a Scarlet Eagle fly on his line.
“You’d do better with a Nasty Cat in this stream. Fish are on the bottom here. It’s a little on the muddy side,” Stan said, casting out.
“I’ll take my chances,” Sam said, a competitive edge to his voice. Across the river a large trout jumped. “Not too close to the bottom, I reckon.”
“You just know everything, don’t you?”
“Not everything. Most things.” Then he laughed.
They fished in silence for a half hour. The morning sun was just making its mark on the valley, taking its time coming fully across the mountain range. It was Standard who spoke first. “Been so long, I hardly remember Peggy.”
“Forty-two years ago. She was twenty-eight.”
“I guess I forgot we had that in common. Both lost wives to cancer. Georgia was in her fifties, gave me five daughters before she died.”
“Georgia was a fine woman, don’t you think? She put up with the likes of you for a long time. Never complained.”
“Oh, she complained plenty,” Stan said. “But since she’s been gone she gets more perfect by the day. They were different cancers though, weren’t they?”
“Whose?” Sam asked.
“Our wives’. And Justine’s.”
“Oh, yes. Peggy had blood cancer. Fought it since college. Once or twice we thought we had it licked. That’s the reason there weren’t kids for us.”
“You never married again after her,” Stan pointed out, as though Sam hadn’t noticed.
“Nope. Never came up.”
“Around here, there aren’t that many different people to marry.”
“Peggy herself came from San Diego. I was in the navy when we met.”
Sam hooked a large fish and played it for a while, so they fell silent. When he finally pulled it in, Standard netted it for him. “I might’ve been wrong about the Nasty Cat lure. Seems you know your business around a stream, after all.”
Sam smiled. “It takes a big man, Standard…”
“You think we were wrong to beat the tar out of Pastor Wickham?”
“Not in the least way!”
“Me neither.”
“But I think June’s right about Justine, that we should leave off vengeance and hurt pride and think about what Justine needs.”
Stan switched lures, going for one of his favorite reds. If it worked for Sam it might work for him.
“I don’t expect Justine will be inclined to take much goodwill from me,” Stan said. “After her mother died, I was just too closed up in myself to be any kind of father. The other girls, they married off and hardly even call.”
“You just be patient, Standard. She might come around, if she senses you’re sincere.”
“I’m never good with words, you see. Never have been. Her mother complained of that, too.”
Sam cast again. “Well, take her a nice big fish then. See if that doesn’t cheer her.”
“I just may!”
Sam whistled low. “Standard, you poor old bastard, you’re right. You’re just not so good.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t take a twenty-six-year-old woman a fish!”
“Well, you said—”
“I was just pulling your chain!”
“Well, pull your own goddamn chain!”
Sam was about to give more back to him when a rustling caused them to turn and see Elmer Hudson standing behind them. “Good,” Sam said. “It’s not a bear.”
“If I hadn’t seen this with my own eyes, I’d never believe it,” Elmer said.
“You think it’s strange to see two men fish?” Stan said, casting again.
“These two I do, but never mind that. I was looking for you. You won’t believe it—or maybe you will. They found Gus. Slumped over the steering wheel of that old truck, in a ravine, in a redwood reserve, dead as a doornail. Looks like Leah whacked him in the head.”
“Not soon enough,” Stan said. “I saw her in the café the other day and heard tell Gus had come back and knocked her and the boys around some.”
“She should’a whacked him about ten years ago. Would have saved her some bruises and the chief some gas for that Rover.”
“Well, on that we can all agree. But they’ve gone and arrested her just the same.”
“What for?” Stan and Sam asked in unison, and the looks on their faces suggested the question wholly sincere.
“For killing Gus!” Elmer nearly shouted.
Sam and Stan looked at each other and shook their heads. “Don’t some things just defy understanding?” Sam asked.
Birdie knew Judge was not ready to go back to work, but she couldn’t help that. It was seven in the morning and he sat in his favorite chair three feet in front of the television, sound blasting, wearing his neck brace, his toast and coffee on an old metal TV tray. Before the accident he’d have been gone to work by six, put in a twelve hour day, brought w
ork home, taken a long walk after dinner, then read till eleven. Except on poker night, when he’d get home late and read till twelve.
Now he sat in his chair most of the day and dozed. He hardly read at all.
“Judge?” she said.
“Hmm?” He didn’t take his eyes off the television.
“Tom called. He found Gus Craven last night.” Judge turned his head and looked up at her. “Dead. In his truck, nose down in a creekbed in the forest. Whacked on the head with something hard, like a shovel.” Judge turned in his chair as she spoke, and by the time she was finished, he was standing. “They arrested Leah.”
“Holy Jesus,” he said, pulling off his collar.
“She confessed,” Birdie said. “What are you doing?”
“Getting a shower. Lay out my suit, old woman. I have to get to work.”
“I don’t know that you’re going to be much help now,” she said, shaking her head.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m not letting anyone else have that bench while one of my own is coming through. That’s how old Gus got out, if I recall.”
“But Judge, you haven’t been yourself. Your head still pains you. You nod off at the worst times.”
“I’ll get some drugs from the old doctor. He’s not as persnickety as his daughter.”
Charlie McNeil drove, Jerry Powell sat in the front seat and Clinton Mull sat in the back, his crutches leaning beside him. “Are you sure there’s no other way?” he asked the men in front.
“Absolutely sure. Are you ready?” Jerry asked.
“I’ll never be ready, but I’ll do my best.”
Charlie parked outside the Mull house in the woods, and Jerry helped Clinton to get out and upright on the crutches. By the time the car doors closed the whole family was standing outside, waiting. Jurea twisted her hands in front of her, anxious to be released from some inner bonds so that she could run to her son and embrace him. Wanda yelled to him right away. “Clinton!” she called, dashing forward. He stopped when they faced each other and she bent at the waist to study his bandaged stump. “Does it hurt?” she asked.