Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [49]
This was a man who could hold his mud, anyone could tell, and had been doing same all of his days, but I saw before me a shaky mountain about to slide.
“I don’t know how you know what you know,” he said, “but I am a Christian, and I know we don’t come back, we go to heaven or hell. Jeannie is an angel now. She was an angel here on earth, and now she’s an angel in heaven.”
“I’m a Christian too,” I said, “a hard-kneed Catholic, but even the Pope leaves a door or two open, and now that I think about it, we salute a good miracle. You may be a God-fearing Christian, but your people not so long ago used to send their souls to trees and winds and eagles flying across the sky. Who’s to say they were wrong? The angel has come home again, buddy, in the form of this big Swede. You see his big right hand? Well, Jeannie’s gonna lift that hand and point the finger at someone. You were twelve years old. Whatever they could have done to you then, they can’t ever do to you now. Get it off you, Chief, before you have to live all over again, and who’re you gonna be then?”
Whatever unraveling he was in the middle of came back together again in an instant, in his anger. I don’t know what lit him up worse, my accusing him of murder, or my shaking his comfortable concept of heaven and hell.
“Me? You think I killed James and Jeannie. I worshipped her. I thought she was the finest thing nature ever made. I was twelve years old! All I wanted to do was be around her.”
“You were jealous of James. He had her and you wanted her. Yes, you were twelve, crazy, no controls on yourself. You picked up the family shotgun, you knew where they would be that night, your folks thought you were snug in your little bed, but you were hiking up to that lovers lane carrying your shotgun! James was not going to have her, was he!”
“I’m gonna knock you on your ass, I don’t care if you are a woman!”
We were both on our feet, but forget about me backing down. “Who’s holdin’ you back, Tonto? Take your best shot.”
Odd said in a soft voice, “He’s not the one.” I guess I heard him or I wouldn’t be able to tell it now, but it was lost in the heat of facing down the chief. I wanted a killer, and quick, so I could get off this damn island and take my prisoner with me.
“You had a connection to Jeannie,” I yelled at him, “a powerful one, why didn’t you tell us?”
“Why should I tell you anything?”
“James rolled down the window to you!” I yelled in his face. “Why wouldn’t he? Bony Pony?”
“I cried for three days! You ever see an Indian cry? No one saw me either, you fuck!”
I was startled, I admit. Somehow I knew this man had said fuck maybe three times in his adult life and never in front of a woman, but he was right in front of me, six inches from my nose, calling me a fuck.
“He’s not the one,” Odd said, and before either of us could say anything else, we heard a frightened yell from Robert, “Chief! Chief, oh, shit! Oh, shit, shit, shit! Chief!”
We rushed to the adjoining door, threw it open. Houser was richocetting off the walls and bars of his cell, splattering blood everywhere. His face was dripping with it. The son of a bitch was chomping on his last good wrist.
16.
It was one in the morning by the time we got back to the Honeymoon Cottage, and I needed to sleep.
We rolled over the gravel, and in the quiet night, I thought we must be waking up half of Canada. We helped Houser out of the car. I hissed, “Asshole.”
“You shouldn’t have put me in that cell,” he whined.
Both the chief and Odd had struggled to hold him down, while Robert was running amok trying to find their first aid kit. I remembered the half full pint of Kessler’s in the evidence box and grabbed that instead. I squeezed between the two men, cleared a field for Houser’s bleeding wrist and poured most of the cheap whiskey over his wound. The rest I poured into his mouth. Choking it down had a calming effect on the toothy creep.
“No, Robert shouldn’t’ve took off your cuffs,