Strawman's Hammock (12 page)

“The professor!” Jerry clutched his heart. “Damnation, Mr. Theo, not the professor!”

Another peal of derision in the bus. But Isabel's brown eyes were wet. She fumbled, alone now, to fix the bow in her hair.

*   *   *

It was the first day she had pulled school bus duty in a long time and Laura Anne couldn't get enough of it. She loved standing in the schoolyard, smelling the GMC's exhaust. Their bright yellow, Bluebird chassis, their blinking white and yellow lights brought back all of the tangled memories that attend a teacher's life interrupted.

Even so, as a substitute teacher, Laura Anne could not feel quite bona fide. She was only subbing, after all, the Neverland occupation that comes with a “regular” teacher's absence. And of the six classes Laura Anne would teach in her seven-period day, only two were devoted to music. The rest, math, health, and three classes of English, were unfamiliar assignments whose folders Laura Anne scanned, even as the students filed through the quadrangle and beneath the covered breezeways that led them to their newly constructed rooms.

Laura Anne had forgotten how much she missed this, the first moments of a school day. It frightened her to think that the labor she had poured into the restaurant was an investment that forever barred her from teaching. And it bothered her that the resentment she thought she had buried for Alton Folsom still smoldered. Alton was essentially a coward. The principal was looking to hide from communal censure when on Laura Anne's return from Tallahassee he used a budgetary fiction to deny Laura Anne her old job on Deacon Beach's Consolidated Faculty. Alton's decision forced Laura Anne to scramble for income. It was what had driven her to restore the restaurant. It was the only reason she was not still teaching music.

Two years had brought some improvements to the school. Federal money added a new elementary wing to join the junior and senior high school complex. It was still a very small school. Grades K through twelve numbered fewer than five hundred students, smaller in its total population than many high schools.

A Yellowbird Bus pulled up. Mr. Theo's bus; Laura recognized her neighbor. He didn't look happy. But Laura Anne could not help but smile as, one by one, boys and girls from childhood to puberty slouched or leapt or climbed down the steps to the sidewalk.

The smells were the same. Straw on the ground. Heat on the concrete. A confusion of perfumes and colognes. Little kids with candy. Big kids with big-label shoes and Hilfiger jackets. The classrooms smelled of sweat and chalk. The odors wafted by passing children triggered memories that would seem totally unrelated: of the cafeteria. The bandroom. The promise of fresh-cut grass on a Friday-night football field.

“Miz Raines, you on duty this mornin'?”

This from Mr. Theo.

“Theopolis. Good to see you.” Laura smiled to the deacon of her born-again church.

“You too, ma'am. Got a chore for you. Sorry.”

“That's perfectly all right.” Laura Anne's professional demeanor pulled over her face like a mask.

“Got a young man here needs to see the professor.”

Laura Anne recognized the teen with a knapsack over his back who slouched off the bus.

“Can you tell me what this is about, Mr. Theo?”

“Taking pictures of this little girl.”

Laura Anne inclined her head to see the beautiful Latin child framed by the yellow doors of the bus.

“Buenos días.”
Laura Anne's greeting to the child triggered an instant torrent of Spanish.

“(Slow down, little one. We will talk inside. But slowly. With good manners.)”

“Si, señora.”
Isabel nodded and Laura Anne could see the recent trail of tears.

“So,” Laura Anne said as she escorted the teenager and child to the office. “What's this about, Jerry?”

The boy scowled. He didn't like the fact that she knew his name.

“Taking pictures is all.”

Laura Anne glanced at the technology in her hand.

“It's rude to take someone's picture without her permission, Jerry. I'm sure you know that.”

“It's my camera,” he said sullenly.

“And it's her prerogative to refuse the cameraman, isn't it?”

He did not reply. Laura Anne took both children into Alton Folsom's office. A wide, gray desk was swamped with the requirements of a state bureacracy dedicated to everything except results. A flock of Post-its fluttered as if to hide the principal's computer screen.

“What have you got now?” The sallow-faced administrator frowned as if it were Laura Anne who had been referred for discipline.

She summarized the situation quickly.

Folsom extended his hand for the Sony and turned to the brown-skinned child.

“Did you give this boy permission to take your picture?”

“Yes,” Jerry answered to her silence.

“Mr. Folsom,” Laura Anne intervened. “I don't believe she understood you.”

Laura Anne turned to the little girl.

“(Will you tell the truth?)”

“Sí.”
The girl nodded.

“She said yes.” Jerry's posture suddenly improved. “You heard her, she said yes!”

“She said she would tell the truth.” Laura Anne forced eye contact with the boy before returning to Isabel.

“(What is your name, little one?)”

“Isabel.”

“(Isabel. Did you tell this boy he could take your picture with this camera? Or with any camera?)”

Her hair shook in its tangle of bows.
“No.”

“She gave no permission,” Laura Anne informed the school's principal.

“Thank you for your translation, Miz Raines.”

Was there a hint of sarcasm there?

“I'll take it from here.”

Laura Anne turned to leave the office and almost missed the next, tiny torrent.

“(He takes in the girl's room, too. When I pee.)”

Laura Anne stopped short. Turned around.

“What was that, Isabel?”

“Miz Raines, I have enough…”

“Excuse me, Mr. Folsom. Isabel, what was that you just said? Slowly.”

“(I go in to pee. From the playground. He was there.)” She pointed to Jerry Slade. “(He took pictures.)”

“Mr. Folsom.” Laura Anne tried to keep the tremor from her voice. “I think you'd better call the sheriff.”

“The sheriff? What in the world?”

Laura Anne repeated the girl's accusation. Jerry Slade's mouth went tight.

“It didn't happen,” he said.

“I frankly don't see
how
it could happen,” the principal blustered. “What would the boy even be doing on the elementary side of the school?”

“I believe we have been told,” Laura Anne answered coldly.

“There's my camera, Mr. Folsom. All you got to do is download it. You could do it right here. In your office. Every picture I ever made's in there.”

And when he said that, Laura Anne knew that this teenager was lying.

“It would be a good idea to keep the camera,” she allowed. “But Mr. Folsom—I'd be willing to bet that Mr. Slade knows full well that any picture he takes can be downloaded into
any
compatible computer and the file then erased. Do you have a computer, Jerry? At home?”

“None of your business,” the boy sneered.

“All right, that's enough.” The principal rose briskly. “I'm going to give you back your camera, Jerry—”

“Sir?” Laura Anne could not keep the outrage from her voice.

“—but you better not let me hear anything about you taking pictures without people's permission, you hear?”

“Yes, Mr. Folsom,” Jerry replied meekly and turned to meet Laura Anne eye to eye.

There was hatred there. Instant and adamantine.

“I'll get one of our assistants to take this little girl to her class.” Folsom returned to his seat. “You better hurry along, Miz Raines. You'll miss your homeroom.”

*   *   *

Linton Loyd once said that he'd be happy living in a Quonset hut, but that the missus wouldn't have it. That statement apologized for the mansion he soon built on a bluff overlooking the Suwannee River. About a half mile down from the Hal W. Adams Bridge on the Lafayette County side was a home unlike any other in the county, a seamless contour of concrete and glass self-consciously re-creating the art deco architecture of the '20s and '30s.

You could imagine Hercule Poirot enjoying croissants and coffee on the marble-tiled lanai that looked from a high bluff over the river made famous by Stephen Foster. A coffee-brown swell of water carved sharply into the banks on the fast side, revealing sandbanks on the other with the river's reduced flow—a deep, wild river bounded by water oak and pine and palmetto. It was cooler on the river; a breeze seemed to follow the Suwannee's slow march to the Gulf.

A patio above the lanai was built to catch whatever breeze was stirred from the river below. Its wide balcony was shaded with magnificent arms of oak trees that stretched almost across the patio's broad expanse. Spanish moss fanned to and fro above that balcony in beards heavy with humid air. From its vantage you could see what Linton's wife described ostentatiously as a carriage house where their son had his own quarters, a two-bedroom apartment built atop an open carport and removed from any view of the river.

The balcony tiles were identical to those of the sun-room below, and it was on this open-air landing, with the river's magnificent panorama before them, that Lou Sessions, Barrett Raines, and Cricket Bonet waited uncomfortably for the owner of the house.

Linton emerged from French doors onto the balcony, his son trailing like a cur behind. A stray breeze caught the strands that never covered Gary's balding head and wisped them about his skull.

Like straw, Barrett thought.

“Gentlemen. Lou. What can I do you for?” The elder Linton started off with an insult.

“Need to ask Gary some questions,” the sheriff answered stiffly. “Concerning his whereabouts sometime in the last three to seven days.”

“That'd cover some territory.” Gary spoke too loud. Bear wondered if it was the late heat that made him appear so pale.

“Wouldn't care to narrow it down some, would you, Lou?” Linton inquired, settling his compact frame into a deerhide chair out of place with the decor, pointedly allowing Lou and the other lawmen to remain standing.

“We found a homicide…” Lou began.

“Strawman's Hammock.” Linton pulled a wad of chewing tobacco from its leather pouch. “I know.”

Lou flushed red.

“Come on, Lou.” Linton chawed, taking pleasure in the sheriff's consternation. “Anybody can monitor the police band. I must've had four hunters call me in the time it took your deputies to tell everybody they knew what was goin' on.”

“Then you heard about the tracks. Tire tracks.”

“Tires? Tracks? I don't believe so.”

Gary laughed. More of a bark, really.

“Why don't you come on down to the station, Gary?” Lou turned to the son. “We can do the interview this afternoon.”

“You can kiss my ass,” Gary snapped back, and Barrett instinctively moved to flank Sheriff Sessions.

“Let's keep this civil, all right?” Cricket Bonet's was the calm, professional voice.

“You don't have any authority here,” Gary shot back. “And you, Bear—the hell are you doing here?”

Which put Barrett in a bad situation.

“You might have heard something or seen something important to the case, that's all, Gary. If you did, I need to hear it.”

“Well, you heard all you're gonna hear.” Suddenly Linton was out of his chair, his jaw working the tobacco like a second baseman. “I've
had
you in my home at
my
discretion. You come again, it better be with a warrant.”

“I don't need a warrant to interview suspects,” Lou shot back, and Barrett knew there was trouble coming.

“Suspect?” Linton shoved his lined, handsome countenance into the sheriff's pockmarked face. “You tellin' me my boy is a
suspect?
For murder? Off a pair of
tire tracks?”

“So you do know about the tire tracks!” Lou crowed in triumph.

It was Linton's turn to flush beet red.

“All right, gentlemen…” Barrett began, but it was too late.

“Track this!” Linton snarled and spit a blind of well-chawed tobacco juice directly into the sheriff's face.

What happened then was hard to untangle. Lou flinched aside to blunt the effect of Linton's filthy missile, leaving Barrett to take the nicotined charge square on his chest. Instinctively, Bear reached for the smaller man's wrist in a come-along. By that time Sheriff Sessions had Linton by the neck.

Things escalated when Gary leaped to his father's aid.

“Son of a bitch!”

The younger Loyd charged Lou from the blindside, just beyond Cricket's desperate reach, to tackle the sheriff high in the ribs.

What had started out as a peaceful interview was now an assault on an officer.

It was time, then, for training to take over from instinct. Barrett moved with Cricket as a single man.

Cricket jerked the son free. A kick to the instep brought the youngster howling to the hard marble flooring. Barrett caught the father's fist in midflight and slapped it into a steel bracelet.

“The hell—?” Linton turned furiously to face his new assailant, and when he did Sheriff Lou Sessions crossed with a solid right hook straight up the side of the older mans's head.

“Daddy!” Gary screamed curses from the floor.

“Jesus, Lou!”

Barrett caught Linton Loyd as he fell. Cricket kept Gary Loyd pinned to the floor, and was on the radio.

“This is Agent Bonet for PD One.” He spoke rapid fire into the receiver. We are at the Loyd river house. We need backup. That is backup and an EMS at a residence—Linton Loyd. On the river.”