Just Down the Road (11 page)

Alex moved toward the door.

“Jamie?” she whispered. “Jamie, are you in here?”

“I’m here, but don’t come in. My momma said anyone knocking on the door would be coming to take me away and I ain’t going, damn it.”

“Jamie, I’m Alex, and I swear I’m not here to take you away. I just want to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” the boy whispered. “I don’t want to talk to no one.”

Alex had reached the end of the hallway and saw a ragged little boy sitting in the corner of the kitchen. The gun rested at his side.

“Jamie, were you playing with the gun?” she asked, keeping her voice as calm as she could.

“No. I had to use it. My momma told me not to, but I had to.”

Alex took another step, calculating that she would have time to step back to safety if the boy reached for the gun. “Why?” she asked as the kid raised his eyes to her.

He seemed so tiny. “I had to ’cause he was eating the last of my food.”

Alex glanced at the counter and saw a spilled box of cereal and a seven-inch dead rat lying beside it.

“You did what you had to do, Jamie,” she whispered. “But your mother was right when she told you not to touch the gun. It’s very dangerous.”

One tear bubbled from brown eyes. “You going to arrest me for killing the rat?”

“No, Jamie. I thought I’d invite you to go out to eat with me, just till your mom comes back. I haven’t had supper yet and was hoping someone would join me.”

The boy wiped his eyes. He might be starving, but he didn’t trust her. “I don’t want to go to jail. My momma’s here—she’s sleeping and told me not to wake her or there’d be hell to pay.”

“Where is she? She must have heard the shot.” Dread settled in the pit of Alex’s stomach.

“She’s in the bedroom. The door is locked. I tried it when I ran out of milk yesterday.”

Alex moved closer. “Do you have any relatives in town?”

The kid nodded. “We came here looking for my aunt. She lives here on a farm somewhere. My momma says I can ride horses when we find her. She says I’m going to stay there once we find the place, but Momma hadn’t been feeling up to looking for it yet. She gets real sick if she don’t get her medicine.”

Alex knelt down a few feet away. “What’s your aunt’s name? I’ll help you find her place. I know almost everyone around these parts.”

“Aunt Lori Anne. I remember ’cause she has the same middle name as Momma and that’s funny. My momma says she ain’t seen her in years but she remembered her writing from Harmony and telling her to come visit anytime she wanted to. They got different mothers, but the same daddy, but Momma says he’s dead.”

Alex put her arm around the boy as she slid the gun away. “We’ll find your aunt.” She lifted the bony body and carried Jamie to a couch. “How about I wrap you up now that it’s getting colder outside.” She lifted the blanket he must have been using for covers at night.

Jamie’s fear slipped away with the tears. “All right.”

Alex hit her radio. “Phil, tell the neighbors to go home. The show’s over. Grab a couple of candy bars from my car and come on in.”

“Will do.”

Alex sat beside Jamie. While the little boy cried, she looked around the room. The trailer didn’t look lived in. It seemed more like an old used trailer rented by the week than a home. No pictures. No books or magazines. Several of the cabinets were open and empty. In the corner of the bar she saw a soda bottle with several branches of a honeysuckle vine growing out of it. Strange, the tiny flowers looked so out of place in the colorless room.

“How long has your mom been asleep?”

“I don’t know. She told me I could watch TV and she’d be awake before the cereal and milk ran out, but I drank the milk too fast and it’s been a long time since I’ve had any. Some men came to visit her last night, but they didn’t see me. I disappeared into the boards beneath the table, just like she told me to if I heard them. But it’s dark now and I don’t like it in there.”

“Have you seen her moving around today, or did she come out to go to the bathroom?”

Jamie shook his head, sending earth-brown hair flying.

Alex put her arm around Jamie and was silent for a few minutes. She didn’t want to ask questions too rapidly and frighten the child.

Phil brought in a few candy bars, a bag of chips, and an orange drink. “I had these in my cruiser. I thought they might help.”

“Thanks.”

He offered the kid the drink, but Jamie didn’t reach for it.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Officer Gentry is a good guy. He’s got kids, so he knows what they like. I’ll tell your mom that I said it was all right, and I’ll ask her if you can have supper with me.”

Gentry knelt in front of the kid. “I thought I’d get hungry tonight, but turns out I didn’t have time. You’re welcome to them if you’ll tell me your full name.”

“Jamie,” the boy whispered as he reached for the drink. “Jamie Noble.”

Phil opened the chips and passed them to him. “Noble. That’s a fine name. I used to know a Lori Anne Noble. She married a farmer out on Timber Line Road about ten years ago. They were nothing more than two kids at the time.”

“That must be his aunt,” Alex smiled. “You see, Jamie, I told you she wouldn’t be hard to find.”

Phil shook his head. “I’m real sorry to tell you, boy, but if Lori Anne Noble was your aunt, she passed away three years ago.” The deputy looked at Alex. “I guess her husband would be this boy’s uncle. He’s still out on the place.”

Alex nodded at Phil. “You remember who he was?”

“Sure. It was probably while you were away at college, but Lori Anne Noble married Tinch Turner. They were the talk of the town for a few months. No one thought they were old enough to marry, but neither had any folks around to stop them.”

“Jamie, we’re going to go check on your mom. If she’s still sick, we may have to take her to the hospital, but I’ll talk to her and see if you could stay with your uncle until your mom is better. Would that be all right?”

“Does he have horses?”

Gentry smiled. “He sure does. I saw him riding a beauty the last time I passed his place. Prettiest paint I’ve ever seen, with a long mane flying in the wind.”

Alex motioned for Gentry to stay with the boy as she backed down the hallway to the only closed door. After knocking lightly, she tried the knob.

It was locked.

Alex leaned her shoulder against the wall and shoved hard, popping the lock on the aluminum door. The smell that greeted her almost knocked her down.

A woman, her body across the bed, a needle still in her arm, lay dead. In the warm room the body had already started to decay.

Alex took it in all at once. The marks on her thin arms.
The dried blood on her mouth. The blank eyes staring up at nothing. A tiny bag of pills in the palm of her gray hand.

Looking away from the bed, Alex saw the contents of a purse spilled out across a cluttered dresser. She picked up the ID. Sadie Ann Noble, age twenty-four; address, Kansas City, Kansas. There was fifty dollars in the billfold and another ten scattered out in ones on the floor. A tattered white legal envelope was crumpled near the trash as if she’d been about to toss it aside along with flyers addressed to occupant. It had what looked like a hurried note scribbled in the corner.
Turner Farm. Timber Line Road.

Alex tugged the seal free and pulled out what looked like an official document. The last will and testament of Sadie Ann Noble, sole parent of Jamie Noble.

She read down until she saw that Sadie must have come here to give custody of her son to her half sister. Maybe she knew she was dying, or maybe she couldn’t stay off the drugs.

“Sheriff?” Phil called from the other end of the hallway. “Everything all right?”

Alex straightened as she moved so that she could see Phil. She kept her voice low as she pulled her phone from her belt. “I’m taking the boy for a meal. Can you wait here for the coroner and Tyler Wright? I’m calling them now.”

Phil looked at her, knowing what she’d found in the bedroom. “I will. Once they’re here, I’ll find you.”

“Fair enough.” She walked out of the bedroom and closed the door. When she reached the living area, she smiled at the boy. “Jamie, I think it will be fine if you come with me to eat something. There’s a diner downtown that serves real good hamburgers.”

“Are you sure my momma won’t mind?”

“I’m sure.”

Alex took his hand. As they moved to the porch, she looked back at Gentry. “Call Turner and tell him we’ll be delivering his nephew.”

Alex lifted the boy, blanket and all, into her arms as she walked toward her car. He didn’t say a word, but she had a
feeling he knew something was wrong. His thin body was shaking beneath the covers, and she wondered if he offered no protest because wherever he was going couldn’t be as bad as where he’d been.

An hour later the sheriff listened as her deputy gave her a full report. The coroner said Sadie’s death looked like an accident, though it might have been a suicide. The body would have to be taken to Amarillo for an autopsy, so it would be a few days before the ruling was final. Dispatch had contacted the Kansas City police and found that Sadie Noble was a known drug addict with several arrests for everything from petty theft to prostitution. Her last address listed had been her mother’s house four months ago. The car in front of the trailer was registered to her mother, who’d been dead for more than a year.

“What’s the bad news?” Alex asked sarcastically.

“Tinch Turner doesn’t have a phone,” Phil answered. “If the boy is his late wife’s nephew, we’ll have to drive up and wake him up to find out.”

Alex watched the bony little boy eating his second order of chili fries as she paced a few feet away from the table. “Can you meet me out there, Phil? I’d like you to wait with the boy until I talk to him. We don’t want to make this any harder on Jamie than we have to.”

“Will do. Meet you at the entrance of the Turner farm in fifteen.”

T
URNER
R
ANCH

T
INCH SAT ON HIS PORCH SWING, HIS LONG LEGS CROSSED
and propped on the railing as he watched the two police cars meet at the entrance to his farm. He’d been sitting there since before dark and hadn’t gotten up to turn on a light, so he knew they couldn’t see him.

When they turned onto his property, he wondered what he’d done wrong, but he couldn’t think of anything lately. In fact, he had barely been off the property since he drove home from Buffalo’s after dancing with the doc more than a week ago. Still, the urge to run from trouble tempted him, even though he’d learned a long time ago that was impossible.

Slowly, silently, he stood and watched them moving toward him. Until he noticed them, he’d been enjoying the night. He liked this time of year, the stillness of late summer just before it turns to fall. It had taken him a long time,
but he’d finally taught himself not to think or worry about anything, but just be.

The sheriff stopped twenty feet from the house, and the deputy behind her climbed out of his car and into the front seat of hers. No one else seemed to be in either car, but still the deputy waited behind.

Alex Matheson moved toward him in the low glow of parking lights. She was a few years older than he was, but Tinch remembered her from school. Everyone always liked Alexandra McAllen, now Matheson. They said she had her mother’s beauty and her father’s bravery. Tinch had managed to stay out of her way most of the time, and the few times their paths had crossed it had been nothing but business between them.

He grinned, remembering something else he’d heard about the sheriff. Folks said she was Hank Matheson’s girl years before either of them figured it out. Tinch had seen Hank drag her out of Buffalo’s one night with her fighting and screaming, and not one person in the bar seemed to think anything was wrong with the picture.

If Tinch had decided to pick sides, he would have probably stood with Hank, since Hank was his second cousin on his mother’s side, and family. He guessed that since she’d married Hank, the sheriff was family now too, but they’d never been more than nodding friends when they saw one another.

“Evening, Sheriff,” he said as she neared the porch.

Alex looked up. “Got any lights, Mr. Turner?”

Tinch reached around the screen door and flipped on the light in his wide living room that ran the front of the house. A soft yellow glow flooded the porch. “Just drive out to check on the electricity, Sheriff?”

Alex almost smiled at him. “No. I’m afraid I’m here on business. Very sad business.”

Tinch shrugged. Every person he cared much about was dead, so how bad could bad news be? He owned his land outright and the taxes were paid. The night was clear of clouds. Nothing was blowing in, and the last time he
checked he had enough money in the bank to make it through the winter even if he didn’t earn another dime. So whatever the business was, he doubted it would affect him one way or the other.

“Mind if I sit down?” She moved onto the porch and took one of the chairs.