Not a Sparrow Falls (35 page)

“I thought you was gone,” Bobby Lee Wilcox said, returning the nod and flicking an ash off his cigarette with his thumb. “I heard you and Heslop was doing some time.”

“My time’s done,” Jonah answered, without going into the details.

Bobby Lee nodded and took another draw of his Colt 45.

Jonah passed him by and went inside. He blinked a time or two until his eyes adjusted to the dark. There was no one he knew in here. He went to the bar, bought a pack of cigarettes, and ordered himself a beer. Another. Drank quickly, listening to the music thumping and the clatter of the balls and pins. When he’d finished, he went into the tiny bathroom, latched the door, and counted what was left of his release money. Eighteen dollars and some change. Not enough to buy anything. He needed to get some clothes. He needed to find Mary Bridget and get his money back. But first he needed to take the edge off. He went back to the bar and ordered a third beer. By the time it was on its way down, he was feeling a little better. He took it back outside. Bobby Lee was still holding up the wall.

“I need some ice,” he said. Bobby Wilcox wasn’t his first choice, but there didn’t seem to be many others.

Bobby rubbed a hand over his pocked face and shook his head. “Ain’t got none.”

Jonah waited. There was more coming.

“It’s hard to come by nowadays. They been cracking down.”

“Yeah. I heard.”

Bobby Lee didn’t get the joke. “Once upon a time I’d of sent people to you,” he said. “Why don’t you just cook you up some?”

Jonah didn’t bother to answer. He had no equipment, no makings, and no money to buy what he needed. Thanks to her.

“Try Tim McPhee,” Bobby suggested. “He had some a while back.”

Jonah tossed his bottle onto the pavement. It broke with a satisfying pop. He’d decided what he’d do. There were still another few hours before the shift was over at the furniture factory. Time enough to pop a stereo or two. That would get
him enough to buy his equipment, and then he’d be back in business. He cut through the woods and headed toward the factory parking lot.

Thirty-One

Sondra rubbed her temples and resisted the urge to lay her head on the table and weep.

“How come it is Jonah gets out and I don’t?” her client repeated, his eyebrows puckered, his lip poked out in a massive pout.

God had a sense of humor. Just as soon as she’d dispatched the case of Jonah Porter, one of the other attorneys on the rotation for assigned counsel had had a heart attack, and his caseload had been divided up among the rest of them. She’d been assigned that of Porter’s partner in crime, one Dwayne Junius Heslop. Compared to Mr. Heslop, Porter had been Stephen Hawking. She took a deep breath and began again.

“Mr. Porter was awarded a new trial because he was arrested as a result of an illegal search. The prosecutor didn’t think he had enough evidence to convict in a second trial and released him with credit for time served. You, however, were not arrested during the raid that ensued from the anonymous tip. You were picked up in downtown Charlottesville with methamphetamine on your person, which you were attempting to sell to an undercover police officer. Just because the two events happened on the same day doesn’t mean your situation is the same as his.”

Sondra watched Dwayne Heslop strain to put two with two and arrive at four and wondered if it was too late to go to nursing school.

“It ain’t fair, him getting out and I don’t.” Dwayne Heslop’s massive face collapsed into a sullen pile. “We was all in it together. Now he gets out, and I’m still in, and them others ain’t got in no trouble at all. It just ain’t fair.”

“Well, sometimes life isn’t fair, Mr. Heslop.” Sondra gathered up her things. She felt a stab of guilt. She was supposed to represent her clients aggressively, and not just the ones
whose IQ was larger than their shoe size. She had a thought, a dim possibility, but she felt obligated to mention it. “Who are these others?”

Heslop raised his huge shaggy head. “They was a couple of fellas who sold the stuff for us, and Jonah’s gal bought the makings for the candy. It just ain’t fair all of them and Jonah getting clean away and me still sitting here for another six months.”

Sondra sighed and turned back to her client. “If you’d give names and details, I could go to the commonwealth attorney and see if he’d be willing to cut you a deal.”

Heslop’s dull eyes glinted with a sly light as he considered. “I ain’t no squealer,” he said, as if she’d accused him. “But it just ain’t fair they get off and me still sitting here.”

She waited, hoping he would talk, and feeling a slight twinge of guilt at her motive. She’d been looking for an excuse to call Tom Dinwiddie to see if he’d decided whether or not to hire an assistant.

“Yeah, all right,” he said. “I’ll tell you.”

She sat back down and took out her pad, uncapped her pen.

“The two fellas was Eldon Hightower and Smartie Henderson. Now, Smartie’s already doing time in North Carolina for a job over in Wautauga County. But Eldon’s around somewhere. I could probably find him.”

Lord, give me patience, Sondra prayed silently. “And the woman?”

“Her name’s Mary.”

Sondra lifted her eyes and pen, waiting for him to finish. “Her last name?” she prompted.

“Hold on. I’m thinking.” His face crumpled in concentration, the massive head shook. “Started with a W. Winston? Worthington?” He slumped. Sondra put the cap back on the pen.

“Washburn!” He almost shouted in triumph. “Gal’s name is Mary Bridget Washburn.”

Sondra nodded and made a few notes as he filled in the
details. This Mary Bridget Washburn had apparently made a break for it the day Mr. Porter had been arrested. According to Mr. Heslop, she’d run off with the money. That made sense. And she’d been the anonymous informant, no doubt.

Sondra frowned, remembering that she’d shown Mr. Porter a copy of the 9–1-1 transcript. Suddenly the set of his jaw and the glint of his eye when he’d read it took on an ominous meaning.

“I’ll get back to you,” she said. She stood, took her leave of Mr. Heslop, and headed straight back to her office and placed a call to Tom Dinwiddie. She didn’t even ask about the job, just told him about Mary Bridget Washburn and her concerns. She finally calmed down when he promised her he’d take care of it.

The sooner they issued a warrant for the arrest of Ms. Washburn, the better she’d feel. Not because Sondra had any burning desire to bring her to justice. It was just that she would rest easier when this young woman was safely locked in jail. She recalled Jonah Porter’s dead eyes, and suddenly the discovery of Mary Bridget Washburn lying in a ditch somewhere with her throat cut didn’t seem like much of a stretch for the imagination.

****

Jonah went back to the apartment and knocked, taking care not to burn his knuckles on the numbers, for they were white hot, just like the mat on the concrete step in front of him.

Somebody was home this time. He could hear the television. Nobody’d been home when he’d come before, so he’d gone and gotten himself fixed up again. But now he was back, and pretty soon he’d know what he’d come to find out. He rubbed a hand across his jaw and thought again about what she’d done. She’d run off and left him. Stolen things from him. She didn’t care a thing about him, and as it all came back, it was like something sharp plunging into his soft parts.

He hated her.

He let the hate take hold inside him and fill up the hurt place. It was a hard, cold, gunmetal gray hate, and it felt good to him. It helped him. It felt like armor, like one of those concrete and steel bunkers inside his chest. Yes, that’s exactly what it was like. It was just exactly like one of those inside him.

He knocked on the door again. A woman opened it. She was scrawny, skinny, with earrings and tattoos. She was carrying a baby. She stared at him, and Jonah tried to remember the name of the fellow he’d come to see.

“You want Eric?”

He nodded. That was it.

“Just a minute.” She shut the door on him.

Jonah lit a cigarette while he waited. A kid came out of the apartment next door. He bounced one of those big red rubber balls. Probably stole it from school. He cast a glance toward Jonah, then stopped bouncing and went back inside. Who was he? Who was he going to call? Jonah thought about going after him, but before he could decide, the door opened again. It was the redheaded fellow. Jonah had forgotten his name again, but he remembered what he wanted.

“You made an ID for somebody, and I need to find her.”

The redheaded fellow shook his head. The door started to close.

Jonah’s cousin had been redheaded. They’d hounded her.
Better be dead than red on the head. Better be dead than red on the head.
Jonah stuck his boot in the door and reached for the gun he’d stuck in the waistband of his jeans.
Better be dead than red on the head.

“Whoa,” the fellow said. “You don’t need that.”

That’s right. He didn’t. He’d forgotten the plan for a minute or two. He put the gun back and reached into his pocket. Pulled out the money he’d gotten from a week’s worth of selling. “I could pay you something,” he said.

The fellow rubbed his forehead, but Jonah was cold and tired of waiting. Besides, there was that boy next door who
might come back any minute. He stepped forward, shoving the door open with his knee, and the fellow sort of stumbled back. They stood there inside the apartment. There was a kid, a girl, watching television. Why, it was Mary B, right there, gone back to being a child. “There you are,” Jonah said, feeling the rage bubble up. “Why’d you take it? What’d you do with it?”

Mary B was scared, he could tell. Well, she ought to be. She got up and went to the tattooed lady, left her cartoons playing.

“Look,” the redheaded fellow said. “Let’s find what you want and get you on your way.”

“Come on, Brittany,” the tattooed lady said to the girl. “Come with me.”

The girl turned her eyes toward Jonah on her way out of the room. Big brown eyes. Not blue. So. She’d just been pretending to be Mary B. He narrowed his own eyes and turned them on the fellow.

“You better quit messing with me and tell me where she went.”

“Tell me who we’re looking for,” the fellow said, and he was over at his computer, punching buttons and clicking the mouse.

“Mary Bridget Washburn.”

The fellow clicked again for a minute or two, then shook his head. “Nobody by that name.”

Jonah shook his own head. “Look again. I know she’d come here. Wouldn’t know to go anywhere else.”

“What’s she look like?”

“Blond hair. Blue eyes. Pretty.”

The man shook his head again.

Jonah started to feel the anger rise, but then he remembered something. He laughed. The redheaded man’s eyes got big.

“She was probably toting around a big green duffel bag. Full of my money.”

The fellow stared at Jonah for a minute as if he was trying
to decide what to do. The baby squalled from the back of the apartment, and that seemed to help him make up his mind. He went back to messing with his computer, clicked some more, then after a minute the printer made some noise, and he handed Jonah two sheets of paper. “Here’s a copy of her new driver’s license and social.”

Jonah took the sheets and looked hard at them, trying to understand what this meant. After a minute it was clear to him. She’d gone and turned into her mama. That’s all right. Didn’t make any difference to him. “I need to know where to find her,” he said.

The fellow shook his head, and Jonah felt something hot work its way up from his belly. His chest got full of it, and he felt like he just had to scream. Like he was going to come apart or tear somebody else apart. “You better quit messing with me,” he shouted at the redheaded man.

“All right, all right!” Redhead looked scared again. “If she’s working, I might be able to find out where, but it’ll take a while. Come back in an hour.”

The heat started going back down. “I’ll wait,” Jonah said. He didn’t sit down, though. The furniture had bugs on it, he could tell.

He watched the cartoons the little girl had left on, and he didn’t know how long it was, but after a while the fellow was tapping him on the shoulder.

“Here.” He handed Jonah another paper. Jonah tried to read it, but it wasn’t any use. The words were changing places too quick for him to follow.

“What’s it say?”

“Bag and Save grocery,” the man said. “In Alexandria.”

“Alexandria,” Jonah repeated.

The man nodded.

“Why, that’s not in California.”

The man stared at him. “No. It’s in Virginia. Take highway 64 to 81, then cut over to 66. You can be there in three or four hours.”

Jonah nodded. That was good. He didn’t know how he would have gotten to California. He pulled the money from his pocket and sorted out two fifties. The fellow didn’t even ask for more, just hustled him out the door. He was barely outside when it shut behind him and the deadbolt clicked.

Thirty-Two

Bridie worked on the breakfast dishes and wished she could reach him. He was the other Alasdair today. The one who was absorbed in his own world, and she’d figured out what made him transform. It was all this church business. When he got taken up with it, he turned into another person. One who was driven, who didn’t talk about the things of the Spirit and forgiveness and nothing being able to separate you from the love of God. No, this Alasdair looked as if he’d never heard the word
grace.

Not that he was receiving much himself. He had been killing himself trying to do a good job for these people, working on his sermons until all hours, calling on his parishioners and listening to their complaints, turning down speaking engagements that would take him out of town. But in spite of all his hard work, they wanted him out. Just last night they had come to the house again, led by that frail old Edgar Willis fellow. Alasdair hadn’t said much afterward, but Lorna had filled her in. They were going to call a congregational meeting to vote Alasdair out unless he came with them to Richmond for a powwow with the big chief this Saturday.