Torn Apart (13 page)

He swallowed the last bite of his ham biscuit, then licked his thumb before chasing the biscuit with a careful sip of the hot coffee.

It pained him to think about the devastation Bordelaise had suffered, but it was heartening to know that all of Bordelaise’s electrical power had been restored before he’d gone home last night. Today, the last of the telephone landlines had been repaired and his cell phone was working.

And when he suddenly heard day dispatcher Vera Samuels’s voice come over the radio, he realized the communication system at the police department must be back up and running, too.

“Testing…testing…testing…” Vera said.

Hershel keyed up his mic. “This is Porter, reading you loud and clear.”

“Ten-four,” Vera said. “Chief, are you inbound?”

“Affirmative.”

“Good. You have visitors.”

“Be there in five. Porter out.”

Seven

H
ershel entered the station with a spring in his step. He’d long since given up being surprised by what hair-style Vera Samuels was wearing in any given week, although he had to admit that the red curly style she had going today was far better than the one that had preceded it, which had looked, to him, like a pissed-off porcupine with pink-tipped quills.

“Morning, Vera.”

“Good morning, Chief,” she answered. “Katie Earle woke up this morning and went home with Penny Bates.”

“That’s good news, right?”

Vera’s expression never wavered, although part of that had to do with the high arch she put in her eyebrows and the pout of color on her lips.

“Katie isn’t exactly on the good-news list, Chief. We haven’t found her son’s body, and we still haven’t been able to contact J.R.”

Hershel’s good mood shifted, then disappeared.

“Yeah, I didn’t mean—”

Vera pointed toward his office. “Visitors waiting.”

Hershel frowned. “Can’t it wait until I top off my coffee?”

“I don’t think so. They were acting very upset.”

“Fine,” he muttered, and headed down the hall toward his office, his steps dragging now.

He’d become accustomed to the constant sound of hammering and machinery as the back of the jail and roof were being rebuilt, but he didn’t like the smell of dust and diesel that kept drifting into this part of the building.

However, when he turned the corner in the hall, he was pleasantly surprised to see Frances Maxwell and her little girl, Holly, waiting in the corridor.

“Good morning, Frances…Holly. Come in. Come in,” he said, and stepped aside so they could enter his office. As soon as they were all seated, he smiled. “What can I do for you two this fine morning?”

Frances glanced at her daughter, who was suddenly focused on the toes of her own shoes, then handed Hershel a stack of childish drawings.

Hershel gave them a quick look, but he was puzzled. “Well, these are real fine, but what am I to do with them?”

Frances’s voice began to shake. “I’m not sure, but considering the gravity of the situation, I felt it important to let you know what Holly told me this morning.”

“And what would that be?” Hershel asked.

“It all started with a misunderstanding,” Frances said. “You see, Holly and Bobby Earle are…were…are really good friends, and when the storm hit and we all thought Bobby died in the storm, Holly was very sad.”

Hershel’s interest in their visit had changed immediately when he caught her switch from present to past and back to present tense. “What do you mean, ‘thought’ Bobby died in the storm?”

Frances pointed to the pictures. “See the man in the blue truck? If you’ll notice, he’s in all the pictures…in the same blue truck.”

Hershel nodded. “Yeah, but what does that have to do with—”

“Please…just bear with me, Chief,” Frances asked, then started over. “We were still at the Methodist Church Sunday when the tornado hit. We’d had a dinner for the congregation after services, and Penny Bates had taken her Sunday school class outside on the playground. That’s where all the smaller children were, Bobby and Holly included, when the siren started to blow. They came inside, but as you know, we all believed Bobby didn’t make it in and that the storm caught him. Anyway, afterward, when Holly was so sad, we tried to explain what had happened by telling her God had taken Bobby to heaven and that he was okay…you know?”

Hershel glanced at the little girl with the sad face and nodded. There had been a lot of sadness and readjustments after the storm.

He nodded, indicating Frances should continue.

“So today we were in the kitchen, and Holly was drawing. I asked her what she was drawing, and she told me she was drawing pictures of God. But when I looked, there was just this man in a blue truck, and he was in all the pictures. When I asked her who the man in the blue truck was, she told me he was God.”

Hershel looked down at the pictures, then back at Holly.

“So you think God looks like this and drives a blue truck?” he asked Holly.

She was a little intimidated by the sudden importance of her drawings, but when her mama patted her hand, Holly answered.

“Yep,” she said simply.

Hershel stifled a smile. “Why would you think that?” he asked.

“Because I saw him.”

Hershel’s smile slipped.

“What do you mean…you saw him?”

“I saw God stop on the street in his blue truck and carry Bobby away.”

Sweet Jesus. Hershel’s heart thudded once very heavily as he suddenly grasped the significance of what she’d said.

He glanced at Frances, then back at Holly. “Let me get this straight. You saw a man you thought was God…get Bobby Earle from the playground and take him away in a blue truck?”

“Yep.”

The hair on the back of Hershel’s neck was standing up, and he could feel the ham biscuits he’d just eaten turning into a knot inside his belly.

“When did you see this, honey?”

“At church, right after the siren started making all that noise.”

“Tell him, Holly. Tell him what you told me at home,” Frances urged.

“Bobby and I were in the red tunnel on the playground. The siren was really loud, and I got scared. I climbed out and ran toward the church with Miss Penny and the others, and I didn’t wait for Bobby.” Her lip quivered, and her eyes welled with tears. “I didn’t mean to run off from him. I just got scared by the noise.”

“That’s okay, sweetie,” Hershel said. “Then what?”

“We were almost at the church when I remembered. I stopped and started to go back when I saw Bobby coming out of the red tunnel. Only he fell, but he didn’t get up. Then I saw God get out of a blue truck, put Bobby over his shoulders and drive away.”

Hershel’s heart was pounding. He knew his voice was shaking, but he was too stunned to subdue his emotions.

“You saw a man in a blue truck pick Bobby Earle up from the playground and drive away with him…before the tornado? Before you went inside? You’re sure?”

She nodded.

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” he asked.

Holly frowned. “About what?”

“About the man taking Bobby?”

“It wasn’t a man. It was God.”

Suddenly, Hershel began to realize the endless circle of confusion that had led to this mess.

“And you thought it was God because…?”

Holly rolled her eyes, a little weary of having to explain herself over and over to adults who were supposed to know these things.

“Because everybody at the church said Bobby died, and Mama and Daddy said God took him. And Pastor William says that someday everybody will go home with God, that’s why. And then my hand was hurt, and Mama and Daddy took me to the hospital, and they put a thing on my hand. See?”

“Yes, I see,” Hershel said, looking at the little hand she held up to him, all the while thinking of the wasted days they could have been looking for the boy. Sweet Mother of God… The boy had been snatched, and they’d thought they were looking for a body. Jesus. After this many days, they might still wind up looking for a body, only for a different reason.

He glanced at the pictures. “Honey, can I keep these for a while?”

Holly nodded.

Hershel reached for a pen and notebook. “Can you tell me what the man…what God was wearing when you saw him take Bobby?”

Holly’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, then she counted off the garments on her fingers. “Jeans like Daddy…and a blue shirt with stripes… Oh, and a black cap, just like I drew in the pictures.”

Hershel was taking notes as fast as Holly spoke.

“What about his hair? Did you see what color his hair was?”

“I think it was brown, but he was wearing that cap, so I don’t know for sure.”

“Right,” Hershel muttered, then took another angle. “How tall was he? Did you see his face?”

Holly shrugged. “He was bigger than Daddy, with a big chest.”

“Tommy is just under six feet,” Frances offered.

“What color was his skin?” Hershel asked.

Holly pointed. “Like yours.”

“Did he have a beard or whiskers?” Hershel asked.

“I don’t know,” Holly said, then turned to her mother. “Mama, can we go now?”

He realized he’d pushed about as far as he could go. A child’s memory was often vague, and already four and a half days had passed, diluting it even more.

“I’m sorry,” Frances said. “We had no idea.”

“No, no, it’s all right,” Hershel said. “And thank you for bringing these in. We’ll get on this right away.”

Frances stood, then stopped. “Um, Chief…”

“Yes?”

“Has anybody been able to contact J. R. Earle since the storm?”

“Not to my knowledge. Why?”

“Well, when I called Tommy to tell him about what Holly told me, he reminded me that J.R. drives a blue truck. I just thought you’d want to know.”

Hershel frowned. “Holly, do you know what Bobby Earle’s daddy looks like?”

She shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

Frances explained. “J.R.’s job has kept him away from home a lot. The kids all know Katie, but not everyone is familiar with J.R.”

“Right,” Hershel said, while his mind shifted to the possibility of a parental abduction. “We’ll look into this, and thank you again.” Then he added, “If Holly remembers anything else, don’t hesitate to call.”

“We will,” Frances said. “Come on, Holly. Let’s go home.”

Holly took her mother’s hand, but her focus was still on the pictures on Hershel’s desk.

“I’ll take good care of these,” he said.

Satisfied with that promise, Holly nodded and smiled bashfully. Moments later they were gone.

Hershel grabbed the phone and hit Intercom. “Vera! Call the main office at Macklan Brothers Oil Company in New Orleans again, and as soon as you’re connected, put them through.”

“Will do,” Vera said.

Hershel leaned back in his chair and picked up the pictures. There were variables in every one of them, except for the truck and driver. Then he thought of Katie Earle. He had to talk to her, but not before he checked in with the oil company. The fact that J. R. Earle was ignoring all their calls regarding the health and welfare of his wife and child had suddenly taken on new meaning.

Hurricane Bonnie had missed New Orleans, but the days after had been a hectic mess. On the Monday morning they’d been inundated by one terrific thunderstorm after another. Angela, the regular receptionist at Macklan Brothers Oil, had just gotten to her desk when she went into premature labor. Brent Macklan and a UPS delivery man walked in moments behind her and called 9-1-1, but they were told that all ambulances had already been dispatched to other emergencies. So, with the UPS man taking instructions over the phone and Brent following orders, they had delivered Angela’s baby—a little girl she named Bonnie.

As soon as weather permitted, they had been transported to a hospital and arrangements were made for a temp to fill in, starting the next morning.

On Tuesday, a temp named Charlotte Perkins arrived to find an office filled with chaos. The mail had piled up. There were so many messages on the machine that she started to cry. The roof of her house had been leaking for days. She’d left bowls and buckets scattered around the rooms in an effort to save her furniture and flooring, but it was dicey. And coming in to a mess of these proportions had sent her over the edge.

Rattled by the demands of the job and the complicated phone system, she’d accidentally hung up on so many people that when the boss, Brent Macklan, stopped by the front desk to introduce himself, she thought she was in trouble and burst into tears all over again.

Still, she did her best, and when she’d taken two messages for an absent employee named J. R. Earle, one from a hospital and one from a small-town police department, she’d tried to relay them to a forwarding number, but the calls wouldn’t go through. Overwhelmed by everything else on her plate and with no idea what to do next, she’d put the message slips on his desk next to a growing stack of mail and forgot all about them.

Then, on Thursday, as she was in the middle of putting through an overseas call for Brent Macklan, another phone call came through for J. R. Earle.

“Macklan Brothers Oil, how may I direct your call?”

“Hold for Police Chief Porter, please.”

“Oh…wait,” Charlotte said, and then frowned in confusion.

Brent Macklan was still on hold, waiting for his call to go through. But before Charlotte had time to panic about messing up the calls, there was a rough, urgent voice in her ear.

“This is Chief Porter. I need to speak to J. R. Earle.”

“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said. “Mr. Earle is out of the office. May I take a message?”

“I already left a message that he didn’t return. When do you expect him in?”

“I don’t know, sir. I’m a temp, and I’ve only been here a few days.”

Hershel frowned. “So Earle hasn’t been in all week?”

“Not since I’ve been here, sir.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No, sir.”

“I need to speak to Earle’s boss.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but Mr. Macklan is on an overseas call. I can have him contact you later.”

“Tell him it’s an emergency,” Hershel said, then gave her the number and disconnected.