Snow Blind - Lori G. Armstrong [97]
poured. “Cream an’ sugar over here if you need it.”
“Black is fine.” I took the proffered cup.
BD gestured to one of the chairs. “Pull that up to the desk if ya want.”
“Thanks.”
“Now what can I do for ya?”
“I know you’re a busy man, so I’ll jump right in with my questions if you don’t mind.”
“Not a problem.”
“What can you tell me about Melvin Canter? I understand you attended the same church. He moved back here recently and was looking for work. Did he approach you for a job?”
“Yep. Turned him down flat. Made some folks in the church unhappy. But I gotta look out for the interests of my employees rather than just blindly follow the idea of Christian charity.”
Not the response I’d expected. “So you knew Melvin had done time?”
“Yeah.”
“Did everyone in the church know about the years he’d spent in jail?”
BD shook his head.
“Why didn’t you hire him?”
“He din’t have no mechanic experience. Plus, my best mechanic is a woman. Knowing what he’d done . . . well, I ain’t about to let him be around her at all, say nuthin’ of 344
bein’ around her unsupervised.”
I breathed deeply and evenly. If BD knew Melvin was a sexual predator, why hadn’t he shared that information with my father? “How did you know Melvin was a convicted and registered sex offender?”
His soft brown eyes met mine and something
defiant flickered. “I din’t. But I’ve lived in this county my whole life. I knew Melvin growin’ up, and I was here when my dad and a buncha other guys run Melvin out of town the first time he got caught years ago.”
“What?”
He shifted in his chair. “I ain’t real comfortable talkin’ about this.”
Too fucking bad. “The sheriff isn’t gonna care about something that happened twenty years ago. He’s looking for answers about this case.”
“I suspect the past cain’t be separated from the now. So that ain’t exactly true.”
“Maybe you should tell me what happened.”
BD stood and returned to the coffeepot. As he spoke, his loud voice reverberated off the wall, but he kept his back to me. “Twenty-odd years ago Melvin Canter supposedly raped a twelve-year-old girl. No one did nuthin’ because she was the daughter of a single mother who bartended at Dusty’s. People thought she had it comin’ or some dumb thing. A month later, another rumor floated around about Melvin and a young kid. Again, unconfirmed. No one paid attention until Melvin raped the preacher’s eleven-year-old 345
daughter.”
My heart started to pound.
“My ma was the head of the Sunday school program, and she found her. The girl told her what happened. Just after my ma called the police, the gal’s daddy showed up.”
My heart switched from a steady bass beat to the rapid fire of a snare drum solo.
“The preacher din’t want his daughter to hafta go to court, so she retracted the story as a lie. He said God would be the man’s final judge. No charges were ever filed and the preacher and his family moved out of town.
“But my dad and a bunch of the elders from
the church knew the truth. They rode out to the Canters’ place and told Melvin to get outta town and not to come back. Even his brother left the immediate area ’cause he din’t wanna be associated with a child rapist.”
“Do you think the brother knows about Melvin using his address in Meade County to register his sex offender status?”
“No. Marvin’s a stand-up guy. Melvin stayed away for years ’til his mother started ailin’. When he came back a ‘changed man and born-again Christian’
. . . well, it’s been a trial for me, ’cause I know the SOB ain’t changed. I din’t know howta tell folks what kinda sick monster he was. The one person I trusted and took inta my confidence told me I oughta practice 346
Christian forgiveness.”
“None of the church members remembered him or what he’d done?”
“We couldn’t get no minister to take the call to our church after what happened. The church closed down. Coupla years later some teens were drinkin’ in there, set it on fire, and it burned to the ground. A lotta the members back then were old and they’ve since died. Lost track of the rest.”
So maybe my dad hadn’t known. At the time