Stone Angel

CHAPTER 4

At eight o’clock in the morning, Lilith Beaudare was officially sworn in as a deputy of St. Jude Parish, but her new job title was “girl.” This was what Sheriff Tom Jessop called her, sometimes using the variation “Hey, girl.”

At half past the hour, a gray-haired, beefy woman named Jane, of Jane’s Cafe, had expanded on this theme, saying, “Hey, little girl, I guess I can find the cell by myself. I don’t need no escort.” Jane had then brushed by Lilith to trundle the prisoner’s breakfast tray up the stairs to the holding cells, leaving the brand-new deputy with no way to stop the woman – short of a bullet in the back.

Oh, hadn’t that been a temptation.

And there were other disappointments. Lilith glared at an antique telephone, which predated push buttons by fifty years. This toy-size police department was a damn museum. Not one stick of furniture belonged to the current century, and there were only a few pieces of semimodern equipment.

Like everything else on her desk, the early-model computer was covered with a film of dust. The fax had scrolled out a dozen pages, and by their dates, she knew the machine had gone ignored since Deputy Travis’s heart attack. Apparently, the computer and the fax had been Travis’s domain, and now it was hers.

She had yet to see the famous prisoner. Sheriff Jessop was still upstairs in the small cell block, while Lilith was tied to a telephone that never rang.

Her desk faced the open door to the sheriff’s private office. The St. Jude Parish Historical Society had not spared this room either. The ornate mahogany desk was handcrafted. Antique guns of the early 1800s hung in glass display cases. The yellowed map on the back wall was made long before the levee was built; the winding Mississippi flowed on a different course, and the land was free of the chemical plants in the column of pollution that marched up the River Road to Baton Rouge. And every building framed in the office window was antebellum, offering a view on the past, when cotton was king and the unforgiven Civil War had yet to be waged and lost.

Lilith decided that Dayborn was definitely a town in denial – bad losers on a grand scale.

Beyond the sheriff’s cluttered desk was a credenza piled high with papers, books, and a black leather duffel bag which threatened to slide to the floor at any moment. She recognized the bright orange identification tag which marked the bag as evidence. This must be the prisoner’s property, surrendered by the hotelkeeper, Betty Hale, on the day of Babe Laurie’s murder.

Lilith glanced at the staircase to her right. The ancient steps could be depended upon to creak when the sheriff came down again. She softly padded into his office and opened the duffel. Inside was a.357 Smith & Wesson revolver. It had been placed in a clear plastic bag, though her law enforcement handbook clearly stated paper was the best way to protect fingerprints on a slick surface.

She shook her head in a sad commentary on the state of the older generation.

Now she examined the clothes. The running shoes were top of the line, and the blue jeans bore a designer label on the pocket. The blazer had all the fine detail of a hand-tailored garment, but there was only a rectangle of tiny holes in the lining where the maker’s label should be. Except for the silk underwear, there were no personal items, nothing to tie the prisoner to a name or a place.

In the side compartment, she found a bundle of wires and a small metal box the size of a pack of cigarettes. There was a silver pick clipped to one side to work a miniature keyboard, but it couldn’t be a palm computer. Without a light display, what good was it? Yet it had computer ports at the base. Perhaps it was a component for the laptop resting in the next pocket. She pulled out the more conventional computer and powered up, but when she tried to enter a file, the main directory dissolved, not even offering her one try at the lockout password.

Clever.

So the prisoner was computer oriented, fancied guns with maximum killing power, shopped in better stores than a deputy could afford, and she had taken some care to avoid being traced.

Lilith restored all the items to the duffel bag and returned to her desk. At precisely nine o’clock, as the sheriff had requested, she contacted the FBI to ask if they had made any progress on tracing the gun’s serial number. An FBI agent said no. After a few seconds of silence, she asked if they had gotten anywhere with the comparisons on the test bullet. Again, the agent said no, and there were other words to the effect of ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ On the pretext of delivering this latest bulletin of no value whatever, she climbed the staircase to the three holding cells, only one of which was occupied.

Lilith hesitated by the door at the top of the stairs. She opened it carefully, not wanting to squeak the hinge. She had already annoyed the sheriff once this morning with the squeal of the unoiled joints in her swivel chair. He had thrown a can of oil at her and shouted instructions for its use, as if she might be only half bright.

She had no memories of the sheriff from her childhood in Dayborn. His friendship with her father had been conducted over bottles in the Dayborn Bar and Grill. But this was surely not the same Tom Jessop her father liked to remember as a better man and a bigger one. Guy Beaudare had described him as a personality larger than life. All those years ago, even the sheriff’s blue eyes had been different – brighter – like onrushing headlights. Or so said her father, the storyteller, the myth-maker.

Somehow, Sheriff Jessop had regressed into a smaller man, or maybe he had become just another man like any other. Over the years since her family had moved away, there had been more profound departures from her father’s memories.

When she opened the door, the sheriff was standing in the narrow corridor before the middle cell. His gut paunched over his belt, and his once thick black hair had gone to the iron-gray widow’s peak of a receding hairline. Where his Stetson had protected his high forehead, it was ivory white in sharp contrast to his sunburnt nose and jowls.

The sheriff moved away from the cell to lean his back against the wall of the small corridor, and she had her first look at the prisoner called Mallory, who wore a gingham dress with ‘St. Jude Parish Jail’ stamped on the pocket.

Lilith sucked in her breath.

This was the cemetery angel come to life. The young woman’s hair crazed her shoulders in curls of burnished gold. Lilith could swear the blond aureole was leaching light from every quarter of the small cell, and growing brighter still. The eyes were an unnatural shade of green with the concentration of a stalking animal. The prisoner’s gaze fixed on Lilith – as though the new deputy might be lunch. But then Mallory’s eyes passed her over, apparently not that hungry – not yet anyway.

Though the prisoner was caged, Lilith’s hand reflexively touched her holstered gun, for she had erred. This woman was far removed from the stone angel. This one belonged to an entirely different god.

The sheriff was speaking to Mallory in the voice that adults reserved for innocent children.

Fool. Didn’t he have eyes to see?

And now she realized that the sheriff was not seeing Mallory at all, but looking inward at a memory of little Kathy Shelley, who was not quite seven years old.

“So, Kathy,” said the sheriff, taking a cigarette out of his pocket and fitting it into the side of his mouth. “Tell me something.” With no hurried motions, he opened a box of matches, lit the cigarette and watched the smoke rise and curl into the bars of the cell. “What’s it like coming home again after all these years?”

It’s not so bad,“ said Mallory. ”If you don’t mind waiting around all day for people to finish their sentences.“ And now she said to the wall, ”Don’t call me Kathy.“

Sheriff Jessop’s head snapped right. He was suddenly aware of Lilith standing at the end of the corridor. “What is it? Speak up!”

“I called the FBI, sir.” Lilith’s voice had come out small and weak.

Shit.

She squared off her shoulders, and, louder, she said, “They don’t know where the gun came from, but they’re still working on it, sir.”

“Well, missy, thank you very much for dragging yourself all the way up here to give me that worthless piece of news. Now get back down there where you belong. Watch those phones.”

She bit down on her lip, lest some smartass remark escape. It wouldn’t do to get fired off the job on the first day. As Cousin Augusta had surmised, Lilith was a woman with ambitions.

The sheriff’s face was reddening, an early warning sign of foul temper. “What the hell are you waiting on, girl?”

And now the prisoner had her attention again. Mallory was smiling. It was not a happy smile, but disquieting and full of contempt. She was staring at Lilith when she leaned into the bars and said, “You shouldn’t let him call you girl, unless you get to call him fat boy.”

The sheriff pointed his finger at the deputy and said, “Move, girl! Now!”

And Lilith moved, slamming the door behind her and taking the steps two at a time in her descent.

When she hit the bottom of the stairs, she found herself staring into the angry eyes of a middle-aged woman with a gray suit and an attitude problem. The woman yelled at her and jabbed the air with one finger, as if it were the barrel of a loaded gun leveled at the new deputy’s face.

Beyond the yelling woman was a slight young man near Lilith’s own age. He had the yelling woman’s same hazel eyes, rimmed with thick lashes, and the light brown hair was her coloring too. But, unlike her, his expression was utterly peaceful – too peaceful. Both his hands were bandaged.

Could he be on medication?

Then he began to move his hands in slow circles, one rolling over the other. This simple activity seemed to capture his whole attention.

I know you, don’t I?

Yes. He was still dressing in his trademark red socks and a red shirt neatly tucked into his blue jeans. Much of the familiar child still hung about him in the aspect of innocence and in this old habit of the rolling hands. The other children had called him the idiot, and at the age of six, she had believed this was his name. Her father had roughly corrected her, applying his large hand to the seat of her pants until she learned to call the boy by his true name.

“Hello, Ira,” said Lilith. “How are you?”

The yelling woman was suddenly mollified by this small courtesy. Her angry face relaxed into a smile, and she was almost pretty when she turned to her son. “Say hello to the deputy, Ira.”

“Say hello to the deputy,” Ira said.