Serial

37

Hogart, 1992

The day had started off unseasonably warm. Now brief snow flurries formed droplets on the windshield, so that occasionally the wipers were needed. Sheriff Wayne Westerley steered his Ford Crown Vic cruiser up the bumpy driveway from the county road to Beth Brannigan’s ramshackle frame house. The driveway, more of a road, really, was once graveled, but over the years mud and ruts had claimed most of the rock.

If Roy Brannigan hadn’t lit out on Beth when he learned she was pregnant, Westerley would have been on him to regravel the drive, just to save the suspension on the cruiser. But Westerley wasn’t about to utter a word that might cause more hardship for Beth.

He parked in front of the plank porch and sat for a moment behind the wheel while a stiff breeze blew flecks of snow almost horizontally across the windshield. When the bare tree limbs stopped swaying, he opened the door and climbed out.

Beth had heard his arrival and came out onto the porch. She was wearing a sacklike blue dress that hung from shoulders hunched against the cold. He saw that her feet were clad in fuzzy blue house slippers. Her hair was streaked red where the cold sunlight struck it. She wore no makeup that he could discern, and her eyes were the blue of her skirt. Normally a graceful woman, she stood somewhat awkwardly with her feet planted wide. It was late now in her pregnancy.

As Westerley approached from around the other side of the car, he absently started to put on his eight-point cap.

Beth smiled. “You don’t put on a hat when you’re about to enter a house, Sheriff.”

Westerley smiled back. This woman, with all she’d been through, and how she’d looked on the night of the rape and later in court, caused his throat to tighten up so words didn’t come easily. “Since you called and left a message with the dispatcher,” he said, “I figured it was an official visit.”

“Well, I guess it is. But it can be a hatless one.”

She held the front door open for him and he edged inside past her, smelling the fresh scent of perfumed soap or shampoo. It struck him that despite what had happened to her, a woman like Beth would get lonely with her husband gone. Then he cautioned himself not to think that way, even though Roy was a grade-A prick to have deserted his wife after what happened, just when she needed him most. Westerley reminded himself that this was an official visit, cap or no cap.

“You want some hot tea with lemon in it?” she asked. “I already got the water on.”

“Love some.”

Westerley lowered himself into a creaking green vinyl sofa and watched her walk into the kitchen, heard her clatter around in there. In a few minutes she returned carrying a tray with two steaming cups on it. There was a napkin on the tray with a stack of five Oreo cookies.

He thanked her for the cup as she handed it to him. She placed the tray on a table within his reach and then picked up the other cup. Westerley sipped and made a big deal out of sighing and licking his lips in appreciation.

She grinned. He saw that she wasn’t drinking her tea, but had put the cup back on the tray. Maybe something about being pregnant. Maybe in her state it tasted bad. She unconsciously touched her extended stomach, as if picking up his thought waves.

“You mentioned trouble on the phone,” Westerley said. “What kind you got?”

“Letters.”

She reached into a pocket in the voluminous dress and withdrew a stack of white envelopes with a rubber band around it.

“They’re from the penitentiary,” she said, handing the letters to him.

He leaned forward and placed his cup on the tray. “From Vincent Salas?”

“ ’Fraid so.”

There was a total of nine letters. He peeled off the rubber band and saw that the top five envelopes had been neatly slit open. The others were still intact.

“He’s been writing regular. The first letters were kind of pleading with me to change my story, claiming he was innocent. I swear, he does seem to believe it.”

“Don’t let him fool you,” Westerley said.

He removed the folded letter from the top envelope and read. It was written in a neat hand with a blue felt-tip pen. The first part was a litany of how hard life was for Salas in prison. The rest of the letter was a desperate plea for Beth to change her story so he might be able to win an appeal. Salas’s signature appeared tight and neat at the bottom.

“In a letter I got last week,” Beth said, “he seemed like he’d given up all hope of getting out, and he blamed me for what he called his predicament. Then he got nasty, Sheriff. Threatening. I didn’t open any letters after that. After a while, when he kept writing, I called your office.”

“You did right,” Westerley said. “He’s got no business harassing you like this. I’m gonna take care of it. As for any more letters that might already be in the mail, you just ignore them. Don’t open the envelopes. I’ll talk to the warden in Jeff City and see that Salas stops writing you.”

He didn’t tell her he intended to talk to Salas personally. Scare the holy bejesus out of him. As if Salas could make good on any threat.

“I wasn’t gonna call you,” Beth said. Again she touched her stomach lightly, as if it might be about to burst. “But I figured I didn’t need any more stress in the form of letters. Not at a time like this.”

“No reason for you to feel stressed. Salas can’t harm you in any way from where he is.” Westerley rebanded the letters and tapped them hard with his forefinger. “This kinda thing isn’t unusual. Losers like Salas find themselves where they need to be and don’t like it. They got nothing to do and nothing to lose, so they write letters. Might be he’s trying to gain your cooperation, through lies or fear, and get you to write back and say something his lawyer might be able to use to impress an appeals court or parole board. It’s an act played by many a guilty prisoner. You were right to call me.” He picked up the banded envelopes and waved them. “You forget about these. They’ll stop coming. They’re not your problem anymore. Far as you’re concerned, Vincent Salas is as gone as yesterday.”

She was looking at him as if he’d just preached a sermon and pronounced her saved.

He smiled, a little embarrassed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make a speech.”

“It was a speech I needed to hear,” Beth said.

Westerley finished his tea, then picked up his cap and stood up out of the creaking sofa.

“I do thank you, Sheriff.”

He held his cap in both hands, grinned, and motioned with his head toward her bulging belly. “I don’t doubt we’ll see each other soon. And if I’m not on duty, my deputy Billy Noth will drive out and transport you to the clinic.”

“That’s awful kind of you. You and Billy both.”

“You’re a taxpayer,” Westerley said. Instantly he realized it had been a stupid thing to say. Beth had no doubt been on welfare since Roy cut out after learning of her pregnancy. Westerley doubted if Roy had picked up any of the medical bills. It was more like him to preach about charity than to practice it.

Westerley moved toward the door, putting on his cap and tugging it low so the visor almost concealed his eyes. Beth hadn’t moved. With his hand on the doorknob, Westerley looked back at her. He nodded again toward her advanced pregnancy. “Everything… in there all right?”

She smiled the way she used to. Before what had happened to her. The tiny dark fleck in her left eye caught the light. “Couldn’t be better,” she said. “And I thank you for asking.”

“Speaking of asking, do you know…”

“The baby will be a boy,” she said.

Westerley didn’t know quite what to say to that. He gave her a lingering last look before leaving, as if fixing her in his mind so she’d stay as long as possible in his imagination, like an image burned into a TV screen. Then he went out the door.

It was snowing again. Much harder. The kind of snow that coated everything and made it pure and cold, but not forever.