Description
“I thought it was a very nice occasion.”
His wife’s comment caused Ezzy Hardge to snort with disdain. “That was the toughest piece of meat I’ve ever tried to eat, and the air conditioner was working at half capacity. Thought I was going to melt inside that black suit.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have been happy with the dinner no matter what. You were bound and determined to be a grouch about it.”
Ezzy had been married to Cora two years longer than he had served as sheriff of Blewer County—fifty-two years. He’d first spotted her at a tent revival, which he and a group of friends had attended just for laughs. Almost in defiance of the hellfire being preached from the pulpit, Cora had been wearing a sassy red bow in her hair and lipstick to match. During the hymn singing, her eyes had drifted away from the songbook and across the aisle to land on Ezzy, who was staring at her with unabashed interest and speculation. The light in her eyes was not religious fervor but devilish mischief. She had winked at him.
In all these years, none of her sass had worn off, and he still liked it.
“The people of this county went to a lot of trouble and expense to host that dinner for you. The least you could do is show a little gratitude.” Peeling off her housecoat, she joined him in bed. “If I’d had a dinner held in my honor, I think I could find it within myself to be gracious about it.”
“I didn’t ask for a testimonial dinner. I felt like a goddamn fool.”
“You’re not mad about the dinner. You’re mad because you’re having to retire.”
Cora rarely minced words. Tonight was no exception. Sullenly, Ezzy pulled the sheet up over them.
“Don’t think for a minute that I look forward to your retirement, either,” she said, unnecessarily pounding her pillow into shape. “You think I want you home all day, underfoot, sulking around and getting in my way as I go about my business? No, sir.”
“Would you rather I’d’ve got shot one night by some rabble-rouser with one too many Lone Stars under his belt, spared you all the headaches of having me around?”
Cora simmered for several seconds. “You’ve been trying to provoke me all evening, and you’ve finally succeeded. It’s that kind of talk that makes me furious, Ezra Hardge.”
She yanked on the small chain on the nightstand lamp and plunged the bedroom into darkness, then rolled to her side, giving him her back. Ordinarily they went to sleep lying face to face.
She knew him well. He had deliberately said something that was guaranteed to get her dander up. The irony of it was that every day of his tenure as sheriff he had prayed that he wouldn’t get killed on the job and leave Cora a bloody corpse to deal with.
But from a practical standpoint, he should have died in the line of duty. It would have been cleaner, neater, simpler for all concerned. The community leaders would have been spared the embarrassment of suggesting that he not seek office again. They would have saved the expense of tonight’s shindig at the Community Center, or at least put the funds to better use. If he had died sooner, he wouldn’t be facing a future where he was going to feel about as useful as snowshoes in the Sahara.
Seventy-two years old, going on seventy-three. Arthritis in every joint. Felt like it anyway. And his mind probably wasn’t as sharp as it used to be. No, he hadn’t noticed any slippage, but others probably had and laughed at his encroaching senility behind his back.
What hurt most was knowing everybody was right. He was old and decrepit and had no business heading up a law enforcement office. Okay, he could see that. Even if he didn’t like it or wish it, he could accept retirement because the people of his county would be better served by having a younger man in office.
He just wished to hell that he hadn’t had to quit before his job was finished. And it would never be finished until he knew what had happened to Patsy McCorkle.
For twenty-two years that girl had been sleeping between him and Cora. In a manner of speaking, of course. Feeling guilty about that intrusion now, especially in light of their quarrel, he rolled to his side and placed his hand on Cora’s hip. He patted it lovingly. “Cora?”
“Forget it,” she grumbled. “I’m too mad.”
* * *
When Ezzy walked into the sheriff’s office a few hours later, the dispatcher on duty lifted his head sleepily, then bounded from his chair. “Hey, Ezzy, what the hell you doin’ here?”
“Sorry I interrupted your nap, Frank. Don’t mind me. I’ve got some files that need clearing out.”
The deputy glanced at the large wall clock. “This time o’ morning?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Now that I’m officially out, I figured I’d just as well get all my things. Sheriff Foster will be wanting to move in tomorrow.”
“I reckon. What do you think about him?”
“He’s a good man. He’ll make a good sheriff,” Ezzy replied sincerely.
“Maybe so, but he’s no Ezzy Hardge.”
“Thanks for that.”
“Sorry I didn’t get to go to the banquet last evenin’. How was it?”
“You didn’t miss a thing. Most boring time I’ve ever had.” Ezzy entered his private office and switched on the light, probably for the last time. “Never heard so many speeches in all my life. What is it about turning a microphone over to somebody, they automatically become long-winded?”
“Folks got a lot to say about a living legend.”
Ezzy harrumphed. “I’m no longer your boss, Frank, but I’ll get physical with you if you keep talking like that. Got a spare cup of coffee? I’d sure appreciate it.”
“Comin’ right up.”
Unable to sleep after such an emotionally strenuous evening, not to mention Cora’s rebuff of his affection, he’d gotten up, dressed, and crept from the house. Cora had a radar system as good as a vampire bat’s, picking up any sound and motion he made. He hadn’t wanted a confrontation with her about the stupidity of going out in the wee hours to do a job that the county had granted him a week to get done.
But since they’d retired him, he reasoned they didn’t want him lurking around, no matter how many times they assured him that he would always be welcome in the sheriff’s office of Blewer County. Last thing he wanted to do was make a pest of himself, or become a pathetic old man who clung to the glory days and couldn’t accept that he was no longer needed or wanted.
He didn’t want to start having regular self-pity parties, either, but that’s what this was, wasn’t it?
He thanked the deputy when he set a steaming mug of coffee on his desk. “Close the door behind you, please, Frank. I don’t want to disturb you.”
“Won’t bother me any. It’s been a quiet night.”
All the same, Frank pulled the door closed. Ezzy wasn’t worried about disturbing the dispatcher. Fact was, he didn’t want any chitchat while he went about this chore. The official files were, of course, a matter of public record, shared with the city police, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Rangers, and any other law enforcement agency with which his office cooperated and coordinated investigations.
But the file cabinets in his office contained Ezzy’s personal notes—lists of questions to pose to a suspect, times and dates and names of individuals connected to a case, information imparted by reliable informants or witnesses who wished to remain anonymous. For the most part, these notes had been handwritten by him in a shorthand he had developed and that only he could decipher, usually jotted down with a number-two pencil on any scrap of paper available to him at the time. Ezzy considered them as private as a diary. More than those damn flowery speeches he’d had to endure at the Community Center last night, these personal files documented his career.
He took a sip of coffee, rolled his chair over to the metal filing cabinet, and pulled open the bottom drawer. The files were more or less categorized by year. He removed a few of the earliest ones, leafed through them, found them not worth saving, and tossed them into the ugly, dented, brown metal wastebasket that had been there as long as he had.
He went about the clean-out methodically and efficiently, but he was inexorably working his way toward 1976. By the time he got to that year’s files, the coffee had gone sour in his stomach and he was belching it.
One file was different from the rest chiefly because it was larger and had seen the most use. It was comprised of several manila folders held together by a wide rubber band. The edges of each folder were soiled, frayed, and curled, testifying to the many times they’d been reopened, fingered as Ezzy reviewed the contents, spilled on, wedged into the cabinet between less significant folders, only to be removed again and put through the same cycle.
He rolled the rubber band off the folders and onto his thick wrist. He wore a copper bracelet because Cora said copper was good for arthritis, but you couldn’t tell it by him.
Stacking the folders on his desk, he sipped the fresh coffee that the deputy had refilled without any acknowledgement from Ezzy, then opened the top one. First item in it was a page from the Blewer Bucks yearbook. Ezzy remembered the day he’d torn out this page of the high school annual to use for reference. Senior section, third row down, second picture from the left. Patricia Joyce McCorkle.
She was looking directly into the camera’s lens, wearing an expression that said she knew a secret the photographer would love to know. Activities listed at the end of the row beneath her name were Chorus, Spanish Club, and Future Homemakers. Her advice to lowerclassmen: “Party, party, party, and party hearty.”
Cap-and-gown photos were rarely flattering, but Patsy’s was downright unattractive, mainly because she wasn’t pretty to begin with. Her eyes were small, her nose wide and flat, her lips thin, and she had hardly any chin at all.
Her lack of beauty hadn’t kept Patsy from being popular, however. It hadn’t taken long for Ezzy to learn that Patsy McCorkle had had more dates than just about any other senior girl that year, including the homecoming princess and the class beauty.
Because, as one of her classmates—who now owned and operated the Texaco station on Crockett Street—had told him, stammering with embarrassment, “Patsy put out for everybody, Sheriff Hardge. Know what I mean?”
Ezzy knew. Even when he was in high school there had been girls who put out for everybody, and every boy knew who they were.
Nevertheless, Patsy’s soiled reputation hadn’t made it any easier for him to go to her home that hot August morning and deliver the news that no parent ever wants to hear.
McCorkle managed the public-service office downtown. Ezzy knew him to speak to, but they weren’t close acquaintances. McCorkle intercepted him even before he reached the front porch. He pushed open the screened door and the first words out of his mouth were, “What’s she done, Sheriff?”
Ezzy had asked if he could come in. As they made their way through the tidy, livable rooms of the house to the kitchen, where McCorkle already had coffee percolating, he told the sheriff that lately his girl had been wild as a March hare.
“We can’t do anything with her. She’s half-wrecked her car by driving it too fast and reckless. She stays out till all hours every night, drinking till she gets drunk, then puking it up every morning. She’s smoking cigarettes and I’m afraid to know what else. She breaks all our rules and makes no secret of it. She won’t ever tell me or her mother who she’s with when she’s out, but I hear she’s been messing around with those Herbold brothers. When I confronted her about running with delinquents like that, she told me to mind my own goddamn business. Her words. She said she could date anybody she damn well pleased, and that included married men if she took a mind to. The way she’s behaving, Sheriff Hardge, it wouldn’t surprise me if she has.”
He handed the sheriff a cup of fresh coffee. “It was only a matter of time before she broke the law, I guess. Since she didn’t come home last night, I’ve been more or less expecting you. What’s she done?” he repeated.
“Is Mrs. McCorkle here?”
“Upstairs. Still asleep.”
Ezzy nodded, looked down at the toes of his black uniform boots, up at the white ruffled curtain in the kitchen window, over at the red cat stretching itself against the leg of the table, onto which he set his coffee. “Your girl was found dead this morning, Mr. McCorkle.”
He hated this part of his job. Thank God this particular duty didn’t come around too often or he might have opted for some other line of work. It was damned hard to meet a person eye-to-eye when you had just informed him that a family member wasn’t coming home. But it was doubly hard when moments before he’d been talking trash about the deceased.
All the muscles in the man’s face seemed to drop as though they’d been snipped off at the bone. After that day, McCorkle had never looked the same. Townsfolk commented on the change. Ezzy could pinpoint the instant that transformation in his face had taken place.
“Car wreck?” he wheezed.
Ezzy wished that were the case. He shook his head sadly. “No, sir. She, uh, she was found just after dawn, out in the woods, down by the river.”
“Sheriff Hardge?”
He turned, and there in the kitchen doorway stood Mrs. McCorkle wearing a summer-weight housecoat spattered with daisies. Her hair was in curlers and her eyes were puffy from just waking up.
“Sheriff Hardge? Pardon me, Ezzy?”
Ezzy looked toward the office door and blinked the deputy into focus. He’d forgotten where he was. His recollection had carried him back twenty-two years. He was in the McCorkles’ kitchen, hearing not Frank, but Mrs. McCorkle speaking his name with a question mark—and a suggestion of dread—behind it. Ezzy rubbed his gritty eyes. “Uh, yeah, Frank. What is it?”
“Hate to interrupt, but Cora’s on the phone, wanting to know if you’re here.” He winked. “Are you?”
“Yeah. Thanks, Frank.”
The moment he said hello, Cora lit into him. “I don’t appreciate you sneaking out while I’m asleep and not telling me where you’re going.”
“I left you a note.”
“You said you were going to work. And since you officially retired last night, I couldn’t guess where you are presently employed.”
He smiled, thinking about how she looked right now. He could see her, all sixty-one inches of her drawn up ramrod straight, hands on hips, eyes flashing. It was a cliché, but it fit: Cora was prettier when she was angry. “I was thinking ’bout taking you out to breakfast at the IHOP, but since you’re in such a pissy mood, I might ask me some other girl.”
“As if any other girl would put up with you.” After a huffy pause, she added, “I’ll be ready in ten minutes. Don’t keep me waiting.”
He tidied up before leaving the office and gathered what he’d salvaged into some boxes the county had thoughtfully provided. Frank helped him carry the boxes to his car. After they were loaded into the trunk, they shook hands. “See you ’round, Ezzy.”
“Take care, Frank.”
Only after the dispatcher had returned inside did Ezzy lay the McCorkle file on top of the others. He wouldn’t unload the trunk while Cora was around. If she saw that file, she would know that was what had got him up in the middle of the night and had kept him occupied these last few hours. Then she really would be pissed.