Carved in Bone - Jefferson Bass [66]
“Including you?”
“Especially me.” He dropped his chin toward his chest, pulled out his shirt front, and spoke loudly, as if to make sure his words were picked up by a cheap microphone strapped to his sternum. “That’s right, Dr. Bill Brockton, especially me.”
CHAPTER 22
IT HAD TAKEN HOURS of thrashing, but I’d finally gotten to sleep, and deeply, too. I could tell because it felt like I was swimming up from the bottom of an ocean of molasses toward a distant sound that turned out to be my bedside telephone.
“Huh-llo,” I mumbled.
“Doc?” The voice on the other end of the line was thick and slurred. “ ’S me.”
“Me,” as best I could tell, was a drunken Tom Kitchings. “Sheriff? What time is it?”
“Dunno. Pretty late. Probly real late. Sorry ’bout that.”
“You got some emergency, Sheriff?” I rubbed my eyes and looked at the clock. The blue-green numbers read 3:17.
“Not ezactly.”
“Have you been drinking, Sheriff?”
“Have been. Still am. Went looking for some peace of mind. Found me some Southern Comfort instead. Get it, Doc?”
I did. I wasn’t a drinker myself—intoxication was too much like vertigo to appeal to me—but I’d spent enough time around students to know that Southern Comfort was a sweet, cheap liqueur, notorious for brutal hangovers. “What’s keeping you up and driving you to drink, Sheriff?”
“I just can’t hardly figger out this case, Doc. ’S a damn mystery, you know?”
“Well, that’s how most cases start out,” I said. “That’s why we need sheriffs and detectives and forensic scientists.”
“Aw, hell, that ain’t what I mean. I’m talkin’ ’bout the misery of hisery. I mean, mystery of history. Family history. I b’lieved for thirty years that Leena run off. Been told that for thirty years. Somewheres; nobody knew where. We didn’t talk about it—it was one of them things you just knew you wasn’t s’posed to talk about.” He paused, and I heard a swish and a swallow. “You got family, Doc?”
I said that I had a son—a die-hard UT fan, and a big admirer of Kitchings’s college career—and that my wife had died two years ago.
“Goddamn, Doc, I’m sorry to hear that. Real sorry.”
“Thanks. I still miss her. A lot. Not much to do but carry on.” A pause. “You ever been married, Sheriff?”
“Naw. Engaged once, back when I was a big football star. She was a cheerleader and a sorority girl. Memphis debutante, too. Heady stuff for a redneck from Cooke County. She busted up with me right after I busted up my knee. Thing is, she kinda spoilt me for these Cooke County girls, you know what I mean?” That was a shame, I said; life gets mighty lonely without a wife. He seemed to mull that over for a while. When he spoke again, I wasn’t sure whether he was still thinking about love or was broaching a new subject. “People in Cooke County don’t have a lot, Doc,” he said. “A few of us got halfway decent jobs, but most folks up here live hand to mouth most of the time. Hell, the Kitchings clan been living hand to mouth near as long as I can remember. Maybe that’s why family’s so important to us. Even when your back’s to the wall—’specially when your back’s to the wall—your family’ll stick by you. Thick or thin.”
“Right or wrong?”
“Right or wrong. That’s the code. They’s your blood.”
I thought about that. Would my son, Jeff, stick by me, right or wrong? What if I disgraced him—what if I were fired for misconduct with an underage female student? Would Jeff, my blood, follow the code? What about Art, my closest friend? He’d certainly stuck his neck out for me today. Would I do the same for him, if push came to shove?
“Must be nice to know you can count on that.”
“Mostly.” He paused. “Not always.”
“I can see how it might complicate things for a sheriff sometimes.”
I heard another swallow,