Final Justice (29 page)

He had been dragging her to the bedroom as he spoke and finally gave her a push that sent her sprawling backwards across the mattress.

She watched with panic creeping as he stripped off his clothes to tower over her naked.

"Now strip, damn you," he roared.

There was no point in resisting, and she began to quietly sob as she worked the buttons on the front of her dress with shaking fingers. Her only solace was knowing it would not take long. When he was drinking, he came quick, if he was able to at all. It would end, and he would slump against her and fall into a deep sleep.

She could then roll out from beneath him and slide from the bed to run into the living room and cry and cry and wonder what she was living for. She had dared to hope lately it was for Luke Ballard. Now hope was a dead thing, as dead as her body that refused to offer the slightest sign of life for the man pummeling into her so brutally.

He had pulled the light cord when they had come into the room, and the bare bulb spotlighted her stricken face.

"Don't like it, huh?," he grunted, staring down at her. "But you don't mind flirting with other men, trying to turn them on, do you?"

He raised his hand to hit her, and she threw up her arms to fend him off. "Please, don't..."

"Please, don't,"
he mimicked. "I'll do anything I damn well please, and I please to do this..."

* * *

January passed beneath a shroud of gray clouds spitting icy rains and blowing chilling winds, and February dawned with not much promise of anything better.

Emma Jean went to the bathroom constantly in hopes of finding blood stains on her panties, but with each passing day her fears increased. She was about to miss her second period, and, if she was pregnant, there was no way of knowing whether the baby was Rudy's or Luke's. And what if it
was
Luke's? Would anybody be able to tell after it was born? Rudy would kill her
and
the baby if he thought it was somebody else's.

She had tried everything she had ever heard of that was supposed to make a woman's period start: blackberry brandy, soaking in scalding hot water, running, jumping. She had even swallowed castor oil till it made her so sick she could hardly stand. She took heart, however, to recall that when she was pregnant before she'd had morning sickness only a few days after she missed her first period, and there'd been none of that. Maybe it was nerves. She sure as heck had enough to make her a basket case, what with having to constantly be on her toes to try and keep Rudy from getting riled.

She decided to try whiskey. One of the girls she had worked with in Florida had told her any time she was late she'd get drunk and it would make her come around. She said something about the whiskey heating up the blood, and Emma Jean was desperate enough to try anything. Rudy was working third shift, so it was a good time.

By her fourth drink, she was dizzy and had convinced herself in her stupor that the baby could only be Luke's. That was nicer than Rudy's, regardless of the consequences. She loved Luke. She was sure of it. She had loved him even before that night she would remember forever. But he was never going to love her back. Not her or any other woman. He had a wife, a daughter. He just wanted to
cockaround.

No, she thought blearily, that wasn't what Wanda Potts had said.
Cockhound.
That was what he was. She was a
cock,
and he was a
hound,
and he'd
hounded
her, and she'd
cocked
him.

Cockhound.

She giggled.

Staggering and stumbling, she returned to the kitchen and tried to find the bottle of bourbon but couldn't because the whole world was spinning. She reached out to steady herself but fell, knocking the bottle over at the same time. It shattered when it hit the floor, and her arm landed on the jagged glass.

"Oh, Lord, oh, Lord, oh, Lord." She struggled to her feet by hanging onto the back of a chair. Staring at the blood, she hiccupped, then giggled, "I'm bleeding, but not from the right place."

She fumbled around and found a dish towel and wrapped it around her arm, then watched in horror as the towel turned crimson. So much blood. The towel began to drip with it.

Dizzy, she knew she had to get help but froze after picking up the phone. Who could she call? Not Miss Bertha. She lived too far away. And not an ambulance. She'd be embarrassed to death to go riding up to the hospital in an ambulance, and she didn't dare risk driving herself because the room was spinning faster, and she felt like she was going to throw up.

Hating to do it but unable to think of anybody else, she dialed the party line code to make Myrtle Letchworth's phone ring. Myrtle sleepily answered on the third ring, and by then Emma Jean was so scared she started babbling that she was bleeding to death and needed to go to the emergency room right away.

Once it dawned on Myrtle it was Emma Jean, her first thought was that Rudy had beaten her again, and she didn't want to get involved. "I'll call the law for you," she yelled into the phone.

"No, don't do that..." Emma Jean protested, just before the floor came up to meet her face.

* * *

It had been a long night, and Luke was exhausted and anxious to get home and go to bed. He was almost out the door when the phone rang but hesitated as Ned took the call.

Ned listened, then said, "I'll get somebody over there right away, Miz Letchworth." He rolled his eyes at Luke. "Yeah, yeah, I know. I don't blame you. Nobody likes these kind of things. You just go on back to bed. We'll see it's taken care of."

He hung up, checked the roster to see which member of the rescue squad was on duty, then started dialing as he told Luke, "That was Myrtle Letchworth. She said Rudy Veazey beat up his old lady again, and she thinks she needs to go to the hospital. Matt and Kirby have already signed off, so I guess you'd better run out there. I'm calling Jimmy Ledbetter. He's got the ambulance tonight."

Luke felt like slamming his fist into the wall. Damn it, he would not, could not, get involved, not unless Emma Jean agreed to take out a warrant so he could arrest Rudy. Otherwise, if she wouldn't leave Rudy, then she'd have to stand the consequences, no matter how damn much he cared.

"Hell, no," he said finally, angrily. "I'm not going to waste my time. That's what she gets for staying with the son of a bitch."

"Well, don't you think somebody needs to check it out?"

"Why? It's the same old shit. She won't press charges. He'll say he's sorry and won't do it again, not till he gets drunk. So why worry about it? It's her problem."

His chest was heaving, and he wanted to kick himself for blowing up because Ned was looking at him like he had lost his mind. Maybe he had. Hell, he didn't know anything anymore except that he wished he were anywhere but Hampton, Alabama. He walked out with Ned staring after him and went to the cafe.

Hardy Moon was sitting at the counter, but at the sight of Luke called to Clyde, "Hey, cancel that burger. I don't think I should eat this late after all. It'll give me heartburn. See you." He slid off the stool and rushed out the door.

Luke no longer felt like going home. He knew he would never get to sleep, anyway, not when he was sick to the core thinking about Rudy beating Emma Jean so bad she needed to go to the hospital. It was all he could do to keep from finding the little piece of shit and beating him into the ground.

He managed to make small talk with Clyde, all the while wondering just how bad she'd been hurt. When Jimmy Ledbetter came in an hour or so later, he struggled to hide his anxiety as he asked how she was.

Jimmy snickered. "Well, it wasn't her old man that put her in the hospital this time. It was whiskey." He took the lid off the donut plate and helped himself. Around mouthfuls, he described the scene when he got to the house. "She was laying on the kitchen floor, drunk as a skunk and blood all over the place. Looks like she dropped the whiskey bottle and then fell on top of it. Cut her arm real bad. I took her to the emergency room. The doc said he'd sew her up and let her sleep it off."

But Luke wasn't buying that story. Maybe Rudy had cut her and then run. If so, he didn't need a warrant to arrest him. "I think maybe I'd better have a talk with Rudy."

Jimmy helped himself to another donut before calling after Luke as he walked towards the door, "Oh, he ain't home, sheriff. He's at work. She managed to tell the doc that, and the doc said he'd wait till morning to call him since he was gonna keep her a while."

Luke was relieved, but it needled him to think she'd been drinking so heavily. He hadn't got the impression she was the type, but then what did he really know about her?

"Funny thing, though," Jimmy added as he licked chocolate off his fingers. "She kept moaning she was bleeding from the wrong place. Hell, is there ever a
right
place?"

He glanced at Luke to share a laugh; only Luke wasn't laughing.

"Don't make sense, does it, sheriff?" Jimmy remarked.

No, it didn't,
Luke thought with a jolt,
unless she wanted to be bleeding from somewhere else so she'd know she wasn't pregnant. And if that were the case, then maybe she had actually tried to kill herself.

* * *

Luke swallowed a groan seeing Maude Dupree on duty in the emergency room. She had a big mouth, and the story about Emma Jean would be all over town.

Maude gave him a hard time. "She's asleep. You'll have to wait till morning to ask her anything, but I don't see the need, anyhow. All she did was get drunk and fall down and cut herself." She gave a scornful sniff. "Besides, Matt was here a while ago. I told him the same thing, but he insisted on sitting with her for a spell."

So Ned had decided to send a deputy to check things out, anyway. Good. He shouldn't have acted like such a hard case when he first heard about it and gone himself. Without a word, Luke brushed by Maude and located Emma Jean in the last cubicle. Drawing the curtain closed after him, he was a tornado of emotions.

Her face was white as the pillowcase. A sheet was pulled up to her chin, and her injured arm, thick with bandages, rested on a rolled-up towel at her side. He saw that her brow was furrowed, like she was hurting, and he wondered if it was because of her injury or the reason behind it. He did not know, but he cared a lot. He didn't want to, but he did, and no matter how much he argued within himself, he could not help it.

He touched her cheek and whispered her name. He waited a few seconds, then gave her shoulder a gentle shake.

"I don't want to ever wake up," she mumbled.

"Sorry, but I have to ask a few questions."

Her eyes flashed open. "What are you doing here?"

"I want to know how you got hurt."

She turned her face to the wall. "I fell. That's all."

"You were dog-assed drunk. Why?"

"It's not important."

"It is to me."

"Why?"

The words slipped out before he realized it. "Because I care."

She turned to glare at him. "Well, you could've fooled me. I haven't heard a word from you since that night six weeks ago."

"I thought it was best for both of us."

"For you, maybe. Not for me." She turned away again before adding, "I feel like such a fool to think you could have cared anything about me, anyway, since you're nothing but a cockhound."

"A
what
?"

"Cockhound. That's what Wilma Potts said."

"Wilma Potts doesn't know beans about me, and neither do you or you'd have realized I stayed away because I do care about you, Emma Jean. I don't want to. God knows I've tried not to. But I do."
Oh, Lord, what was he getting himself into? All resolve had scattered like a dandelion in a summer breeze.

He reached for her hand and squeezed, all the time telling himself he was messing up big time and should get the hell out of there fast. His feet might as well have been planted in concrete.

Slowly, she faced him, a glint of hope in her eyes. "Do you really mean that, Luke?"

He drew a breath of resignation. "Yes, I do. But you've got to understand it's a dead-end street. I'm married. You're married. It can't go anywhere. We can't go anywhere."

She did not speak for a moment, mind spinning, then said, "But we can be
together,
you know, whenever we can, when we have a chance. I wasn't expecting more than that. I know how it is." She paused to swallow. "I was just looking for a little bit of happiness. That's all. I thought that's what you wanted, too."

"I did, and I do. But we both have to understand it can't ever be more than it is."

Suddenly her world seemed brighter, and she was able to quip, "Which is a quickie, right?"

He grinned. "I seem to recall we had a
longie."
Glancing around to make sure the curtain was still closed, he brushed his lips against hers. "We're going to have to be real careful."

Her head bobbed up and down.
"Real
careful."

"We can't take any chances."

"Absolutely not."

"And we won't be able to see each other as much as we might like to."

"I know."

She withdrew her good arm from beneath the sheet. She had to touch him, had to be sure she wasn't still drunk and only imagining he was there because she so desperately wanted him to be. She touched his cheek. "You
are
real."