Carved in Bone - Jefferson Bass [121]
I swung the truck across the gravel parking area, stopped near the worn path to the front steps, and got out, followed by Art. We stopped at the foot of the stairs. The stormfront was moving in; big oaks thrashed like saplings, their leaves whirling across the yard.
I raised my voice over the roar of the wind. “Reverend Kitchings?” The man neither spoke nor moved. “Reverend Kitchings, I’m Dr. Bill Brockton. This is my friend Art Bohanan. We’re from Knoxville. Your son Tom asked me to help him on a case up here.”
He raised his upper lip and spat a wad of tobacco juice down into the yard. The wind caught and shredded it into vapor. “You done it?” he called.
“Excuse me?”
“I said have you done it? Have you helped?”
“Well, it’s a tough case, but I’m trying my best.”
He spat again, upwind of me this time, and I felt a fine mist strike my face. “Mister, I had me two boys ’fore you started helping. Now I got one. How ’bout you quit helping and git out of here ’fore somethin’ happens to my other un.”
I glanced at Art. He raised both eyebrows at me, which seemed less helpful at the moment than I’d have liked. This interrogation business wasn’t as easy as I’d imagined. “Mr. Kitchings, I am sorry about Orbin, I truly am. I’ve lost a wife, so I can imagine some of the pain you must be feeling. But I can assure you, I didn’t have anything to do with his death.”
“The hell you didn’t,” he shouted. “You come up here and started sticking your nose where it don’t belong, started stirrin’ up things you got no bidness stirrin’ up, and you can assure me? Get off my property, or I can assure you I’ll whup your ass, doctor or not.”
Art finally spoke up. “Reverend? About those things the doctor’s been stirring up. You afraid of what might float to the top? You maybe got something to hide, Reverend? Maybe some dirty little secret from about thirty years back? A little bit of dirty linen involving your niece, maybe?”
Kitchings stood up. He held out a bony arm and pointed a crooked finger toward the horizon, toward Knoxville. The hand trembled—with rage? Or just with age?
“What was that girl’s name?” Art persisted, “Gina? No, Leena, that was it, wasn’t it? She was a mighty good-looking girl, wasn’t she, Reverend? Tall. Blonde. Spirited girl, folks say, with a real spring in her step.” Art started up the steps. “I’ve got a picture of her right here.” Art reached into his shirt pocket and fished out the photo, studying it closely. “Yes sir, she was a beauty. She favored her mama a lot, didn’t she, Reverend? Sophie? The sister you really wanted to marry.”
The old man raised his other hand, held both hands out before him now, no longer pointing, but shielding himself, palms facing outward, as if to fend off some looming collision or dreadful specter. “Don’t you come any closer. You keep that away from me.”
Art kept climbing, step upon step, slowly turning the picture and holding it out toward Kitchings. The old man shrank back, like a vampire confronted by a crucifix. “Must have been real hard for you when the girl moved into your house,” said Art. “So young, so pretty. So much like the woman you were still in love with, even after you married the homely sister.” Kitchings was shaking his head slowly from side to side, but his eyes were locked on the picture. “I bet you dreamed about her at night, didn’t you, Reverend? Prayed about her in the daytime, dreamed about her at night.” Art was almost to the top step. “Then she took up with that O’Conner boy. Is that what pushed you over the edge, Reverend? Knowing you were about to lose her, too? Knowing another man—a man from a family you hated—was about to pluck that young woman you’d been watching ripen on the vine all that time?”
Art stepped onto the porch, brandishing the picture at arm’s length like a weapon.