Husband and Wives (13 page)

‘Tell that doctor that those girls are retarded and I can’t have them—’

‘No, sir!’ Sarie said, squaring her shoulders. ‘I will not say my daughters are retarded! Because they’re not! The doctor said so! And I won’t be having you calling them retarded either! Because they’re not! Do you hear me, Thomas Whitman?’

Whitman scowled at his wife. ‘Go in the house now, girl!’

‘I will not! I don’t know what Jane Marie has been telling you about my girls, but there’s nothing wrong with them! They are not possessed by the Devil! Margaret talked funny when she was a baby but . . .’ She turned to look at me, a pleading look on her face.

‘A lot of children have early speech problems, but they often just work themselves out, like Margaret’s did.’

‘And a lot of children are possessed by demons!’ Thomas Whitman said, still looking only at his wife.

Sarie put her hands on her hips. ‘You listen here, Thomas! I never once defied you in all these seven years I’ve been married to you. But on this I’m taking a stand! Those girls are going to school. If they don’t then I’m gonna have to leave you because the doctor here said the State of Oklahoma will come and take away my children because you won’t let them go to school! So I’ll leave you and find someplace else to live so that my girls
can
go to school! Do you hear me, Thomas? Do you want me to leave? Because I’ll do it! And all you’ll have is Jane Marie for company, Thomas! Is that what you want? And while we’re on the subject –’ Sarie’s voice was getting louder – ‘it’s beyond time for Jane Marie to move on. She’s thirty-five years old, Thomas, and I know and you know that there’s no man out there gonna marry her, so it’s time she moved in with those women over in Tejas County that live in that dorm thingy by the church. Now you agree to all this right here and now or me and the girls will just ride back into town with Dr McDonnell and find us a room to live in.’

I was totally dumbfounded. But I just stood there and waited. As did Sarie. Thomas Whitman worked his jaw some, took off his hat twice and put it back on twice, then looked at his wife. ‘OK,’ he said.

SIX

Milt Kovak – Thursday

I
t was still daytime and I figured Michael McKinsey was at work. So I grabbed Jasmine Bodine Hopkins, one of my deputies, and headed the couple of miles to the McKinsey house. I knew Rachael wouldn’t talk to
me
without her husband, but maybe she’d talk to Jasmine. Just a hunch.

The other wife, Emily if I remembered correctly, opened the door. She looked directly at me and said, ‘What can I do for you, Sheriff?’

I nudged Jasmine and she said, ‘We’d like to see Mrs McKinsey.’ I nudged her again. ‘The other Mrs McKinsey.’ I nudged her again, hoping she wouldn’t bruise. ‘Rachael McKinsey.’

Emily gave Jasmine a smirk. ‘I’m afraid Sister Rachael is not receiving visitors today.’

Excuse my French, but I thought
fuck it
, and said, ‘Let me in now or I come back with a warrant.’

The little bitch said, ‘Come back with a warrant,’ and slammed the door in my face.

I gave Jasmine the keys to my Jeep. ‘Go see Judge Lee and get me a goddamned warrant now! Use the siren coming and going!’

Jasmine took off at a trot to the Jeep and burned rubber getting out of the driveway.

I stood in the driveway, placing bets with myself on who would show up first – Jasmine with the warrant or Michael McKinsey and his Dodge Ram pick-up. It was almost a tie: Jasmine came screeching in with the warrant only a minute before Michael McKinsey came Rambo-ing in from the other side of the circular drive. It looked amusing, but actually that was the last thing it was.

I grabbed the warrant from Jasmine and hit the front door the same time as Michael. I handed him the warrant as I banged on the door.

‘What are you looking for?’ Michael demanded.

‘Everything,’ I said as I pushed past Emily and headed into the bowels of the house.

I found Rachael in a small room off the kitchen. Inside was a large crib with a top on it that was locked with a padlock. The little girl I’d seen the last time I’d been in the house – the little girl with the shorn head and the black dress – was inside the crib. The stench in the room was unbearable. There was a bare mattress on the floor and Rachael was on that. She was naked and her head had been shaved. As there were no blankets or anything else in the room, Jasmine said, ‘Give me your jacket,’ then took it and covered Rachael with it. The woman was alive, but not by much. It was hard to see any pink skin on her naked form – most of her body was covered in bruises, in all shades, from the deepest black to purple and yellow, some parts oozing blood.

I used my walkie to call for an ambulance and back-up. Everybody in this house was going in. I went back in the living room. Michael was yelling at Emily, who was yelling back. I went up to the man of the house, stared him in the face and started reciting his Miranda rights. He, of course, started yelling at me. I kneed him in the groin, and while he was bent over, shoved him frontwards onto the couch, my knee in his back as I continued reading him his rights and cuffing him. Emily, meanwhile, was pounding on my back and yelling at me. Before I had a chance to cuff her, Dalton Pettigrew and Nita Skitteridge showed up, as well as an ambulance. I yelled for Jasmine, who was still back with Rachael and the little girl, and she came out to get the paramedics while Nita grabbed Emily McKinsey and cuffed her.

I sent Michael and Emily out with my deputies, grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen and went back to the little room by the kitchen.

The paramedics, Jason Pool and Liz Johnson, took Rachael’s vitals and were dead set on getting her to the hospital. I told ’em to go on but to come back in case there were more problems. They left, and while I worked on the lock to get the little girl out of the crib, I sent Jasmine to check the other rooms.

I used the butcher knife as a lever and was able to break the wood around the padlock and thereby open the lid. When I reached in for the little girl, she cringed at my touch. ‘Hurts,’ she said in a subdued voice.

I was having daydreams about my interrogation of Michael McKinsey. I told the little girl, ‘Lie flat, honey. I’m gonna pick up the mattress so I don’t hurt you, OK?’

She nodded her head. It was a piss-poor mattress, not more than a couple of inches thick, so I was able to cradle it around her as I lifted her out. She winced but didn’t cry out. I was thinking this was one hell of a brave little girl.

Jason and Liz got back as I was bringing the child out of the house. Following close behind me was Jasmine with four other children. Jason had the child I’d brought out on the mattress in the back of the ambulance while me and Jasmine and Liz checked out the other four kids. The oldest was a youngish teenaged boy. His clothes were tattered. On further inspection, we noted his ribs were showing and his abdomen distended. The other kids were also malnourished and looked more like third-world children than residents of the US of A. I was real close to puking at this, and I don’t puke as a general rule.

I left Jasmine to help with the kids, telling her I’d send back the SUV to pick ’em all up, and I headed to the station. I was ready to charge Michael McKinsey and his little wifey with battery and the attempted murder of Rachael McKinsey, child abuse, and the murder of Mary Hudson. I was also going to charge him with the vandalism at the Smithfield Grocery Store that happened a couple of weeks ago, and the rustling of three head of cattle I still had on the books from 1984.

Before I went into the cell with Brother Michael, I called Bill Williams in Tejas County and asked him if he’d be so kind as to bring Brother Earl Mayhew to me. I figured as the leader of this flock of assholes, he had to have
something
to answer for.

We have one interrogation room with a two-way mirror between it and the break room. It was two-paned and had some kind of tinted air in the middle that could be turned on and off so you couldn’t see through without flipping a switch, and waiting longer and longer the older the damned thing got. Dalton had put Michael McKinsey in the interrogation room, and Nita Skitteridge was watching over wife number two in the break room. I went into the interrogation room and slammed the door hard behind me.

Michael McKinsey’s hands were cuffed in front of him, a courtesy I wouldn’t have given him had I been the one who’d placed him here. I woulda let him just sweat it with his hands cuffed behind his back. He was leaning forward, his hands on the table in front of him, and smiled when I entered the room.

I just stood there for a minute, looking at him. Coaxing myself not to start beating on an unarmed and cuffed prisoner. Just wasn’t right, I kept telling myself, but in my head I kept seeing the shaved head and naked and bruised body of Rachael McKinsey and the emaciated bodies of the five children. Somehow beating the shit out of this guy seemed a lot more humane than what he’d done to his family.

‘You know,’ I told him, ‘I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure you never see the outside for the rest of your life.’

‘For what?’ he demanded, a scowl replacing the smile.

‘What you’ve done to your family,’ I said, not raising my voice. If I raised it, I might not be able to stop the violence that was bubbling up inside me.

‘My family is
my
business, Sheriff! You got no call messing in where you don’t belong! My wives and my kids are
my
business, not any of yours! I want my lawyer and I want him now!’

‘If your wife dies—’ I started.

And he laughed. He shouldn’t have done that. I lunged

across the table and grabbed him by the shirt front, pulling him onto the table, where my hands went around his neck . . .

It took but a minute for Dalton Pettigrew and Holly Humphries to be in the room. Dalton pulled me offa him and Holly set the prisoner back in his chair. He had a bloody lip and his hair was mussed. I guess I’m getting old. The man wasn’t near dead, and I was sorry for that.

‘I’m gonna sue you personally, Sheriff! And the county! And maybe the State of Oklahoma!’

‘Now how are you going to spend all that money in jail?’ Holly asked him sweetly.

‘I said I want my lawyer and I want him now!’ McKinsey screamed.

Holly put her arm in mine and let me escort her out of the room. Dalton followed, slamming the door harder than I did.

When we got into the big room – where the front door opens in and there’s a waiting room, and a counter that closes off a bullpen of sorts – Holly patted my hand and said, ‘Sheriff Williams from Tejas and Pastor Mayhew are in your office, Sheriff. I’ll find out Mr McKinsey’s lawyer and give him a call. When I finish my nails,’ she said.

I headed down the hall to my office, stopping halfway there to do a little deep breathing. I had questions for Brother Earl, but I didn’t want to take my wrath out on him. Not until I knew what he knew about the McKinsey household.

The two were sitting in my visitors’ chairs when I walked in. I said, ‘Hey’ then rounded the desk to my chair and sat down.

‘Why have I been drug here, Sheriff Kovak?’ Brother Earl Mayhew said immediately, leaning forward over my desk.

‘I’m arresting a member of your flock and I thought you would want to be here,’ I said. By the look on Bill Williams’ face, I knew my speech pattern wasn’t normal yet. Maybe my voice was a little heavier than usual, or something.

Earl Mayhew leaned back in his chair. ‘For goodness’ sake,’ he said. ‘You found out who murdered Sister Mary?’ he asked.

‘Possibly,’ I answered. ‘But the immediate arrest is for spousal abuse and child abuse.’

And I got my answer. Brother Earl turned red in the face and looked at the floor. And didn’t say a word.

‘I suppose you know who I’m talking about,’ I said.

He got his face under control and looked up. ‘No, Sheriff, I do not. I can’t imagine a member of our church behaving in such a way. Now you might just be confusing parental discipline with abuse. It’s happened before. Some people don’t believe in “spare the rod, spoil the child,” but we live by that credo in our church, Sheriff.’

‘How about starve the child, anything about that? Or beat the wife and shave her head? Got any homilies about that, Brother Earl?’ My voice was getting a little louder so I stopped talking and looked at my desk. I had to calm myself down. So I started counting, something Jean had taught me. When I looked up, Brother Earl was shaking his head and looking at his feet.

‘So what family you think I’m talking about, Brother Earl?’ I asked, and I couldn’t help myself, the ‘Brother Earl’ was still coming out sounding sarcastic.

He looked up at me. ‘I’ll venture a guess, Sheriff. The McKinsey family?’

‘Now why would you think that?’

He sighed. ‘I’m sorry; I’ve done all I can for that family! Brother Michael’s first wife, Nalene, ran off four years ago, right after he took Emily on as his second wife. Nalene never did have children, which was her reason for leaving – she felt so guilty, and then Emily was there for two years and never conceived either. And I got a call from a group in east Texas that had a widow with five children who needed a husband. So I talked to Michael about it and the two of us, we figured the woman already had five children, so obviously she could conceive, so Michael went down to east Texas and they got married there and he brought the whole family back. That had to be two years ago. And the whole family came to church regular for over a year, and then just Rachael and some of the children, and then less and less. Till around last Christmas, Rachael started coming by herself every once in a while with just Michael and Emily. And every time I asked about the children, Michael would just say that with that many kids, there was always something going around. Flu, a cold, something like that.’

‘And did Rachael conceive in the two years she was with Michael?’ I asked.

Brother Earl shook his head. ‘Not that I know of.’

‘Did anybody ever think,’ Bill Williams said, standing up from his chair, his voice hoarse with probably the same emotion I’d been fighting for hours, ‘that this Michael, the husband, that
he
was the one who was shooting blanks? Huh? Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle!’