The Guilty

Chapter 8

The town jail was in its old location, though it had been spruced up some and fortified with more bars and steel doors. Robie parked his car, got out, and stared up at the brick front with the heavy metal door and barred windows. He had on jeans, a short-sleeved shirt with the tail out, and a pair of scuffed loafers. He slipped his sunglasses into his front shirt pocket.

The sign next to the door required visitors to hit the white button. He did. A few seconds later, the voice came out of the squawk box that was bolted to the doorjamb. The words were spoken slowly and each seemed to be drawn out to the absolute limit of their pronounceable length. Growing up here Robie sometimes felt he had never heard a consonant, certainly never an r. And while n’s and g’s at the ends of words were clearly seen on paper they were — like children and lunatic relations — never, ever heard.

“Deputy Taggert here. Can I help y’all?”

Deputy Taggert was a woman, Robie noted. He also noted the surveillance camera above his head. Deputy Taggert could see him, too.

Robie took a breath. As soon as he said the next words it would be all over town with no possibility of ever taking it back. It was like social media, without need for an Internet.

“I’m Will Robie. I’m here to see my father, Dan Robie.”

The voice said nothing for four long beats.

Then—

“Can I see me some ID?”

Robie took out his driver’s license and held it up to the camera.

“Dee-Cee?” said Taggert, referring to Robie’s District of Columbia license.

“Yes.”

“You carryin’ any weapons?”

“No.”

“Well, we see ’bout that. We got us here a metal detector. You care to answer that question different now, Mr. Robie?”

“No. I’m not armed.”

The door buzzed open. Robie gripped the handle and pulled.

He walked into a darkened space and had to blink rapidly to adjust his eyes to the low light level. A metal detector stood in front of the doorway across the space that led into the interior of the building. A uniformed man stood there, hand on the stippled butt of his nine-millimeter sidearm. He was taller than Robie, with a protruding belly but also broad shoulders and a thick neck that made his head look shrunken.

The uniform eyed him up and down. “Y’all want’a step over here.”

It wasn’t a question.

Robie was searched and then passed through the metal detector that never made a sound.

The room Robie next entered looked like a waiting room because it was. He wasn’t the only one in there. A young black woman, skinny and frail, was bouncing a pudgy diapered baby on her lap. In the far corner an old white man sat dozing, the back of his head propped against a wall painted the color of concrete. The place smelled of sweat and burned coffee and the passage of time, which held its own moldy stink. The confluence of smells hit Robie like a gut punch. Not because they were unfamiliar, but because they weren’t.

A female deputy emerged from behind a scarred wooden desk with an ancient, fat computer resting on it. She was five-five, sturdily built, with copper-colored hair cut sharply around her narrow face, which was topped by a pair of penetrating dark brown eyes.

“Will Robie?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Uh-huh. Let me see that ID again.”

He handed it across. She studied it closely and then looked at him for comparison.

“Do I know you?” asked Robie, squinting at her.

“I was Sheila Duvall before I got myself married to Jimbo Taggert.”

In the dim recesses of his memory emerged a skinny tomboy with a chip on her shoulder that weighed a ton and who seemingly lived to fight any boy within reach of her bony fists. Robie had given her a black eye when they were eight, and in return she had bloodied and nearly broken his nose. He also recalled a tall boy with hair the color of straw who went by Jimbo and never spoke.

“I see your eye healed up, although sometimes I still breathe funny through my nose.” He tacked on a smile to this statement, which she did not return.

She gave him back his license.

“You want’a see your daddy, you say?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“I like to had a heart attack when I heard your name and now you standin’ right here.” She cocked her head and looked up at him.

“Can I see him?” asked Robie.

She looked doubtful. “He’s fixin’ to eat his lunch right now.”

Robie looked at an empty chair in the room. “I can wait then.”

“He expectin’ you?”

“Don’t think so, no.”

“How you know he been arrested then?” she said suspiciously.

Robie now recalled that as a child and later a teenager Sheila Duvall had been sharp and seemingly missed nothing.

“Friend of a friend.”

“Uh-huh.” In a more strident tone she added, “Do I look like a dumbass to you, Will Robie?”

He could hear the squeak of the metal detector guard’s gun belt as the big man eased into the room behind him, prompted probably by the rising of Taggert’s voice.

“No, you don’t, Deputy Taggert. You look as sharp and professional as they come, actually.”

The eyes flickered. “You go take yourself a seat, right now.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Robie sat across from the black woman with the big baby. She stared over at him for a moment before dropping her gaze to the floor. But she continued to bounce her child with her stick-thin arms that were all mottled and bruised.

The old man had woken and was staring at Robie, too. His face was deeply tanned, and his hair, what was left of it, was starkly white and pitched helter-skelter over his scalp like sea spray in a storm. His jowls hung low and his lined, spotted face told of many decades under an unrelenting southern sun. He had on seersucker pants, a white shirt with sweat stains at the armpits, and scuffed white loafers on his sockless feet. Clip-on red suspenders held up his trousers, and a battered straw hat rested on his knee.

Robie didn’t know the man and wondered if he had recognized Robie’s name. Everybody here must know Dan Robie, he figured. And Dan Robie’s being in jail for killing a fellow Cantrell citizen must be the biggest news of the year for the tiny hamlet.

“How long do you think it’ll be?” Robie asked.

Taggert looked up from her desk. “I done told you before. He’s havin’ his meal. Can’t say how long the man’ll be. I don’t count chews.”

Robie sat back in the chair. The other uniform leaned against the wall, folded his arms over his chest, and settled his gaze on Robie.

Robie gave him a quick glance and then looked away.

Thirty minutes passed, and he had counted six flies buzzing overhead in the warm, humid space, the air disturbed only slightly by an ancient ceiling fan that seemed to be on its last few whirls of mechanical life.

A minute later Robie glanced over as Taggert picked up a phone, spoke into it in a low voice, and then put the receiver back. She rose and walked over to him.

Robie stood. “Lunch over?”

“He don’t want’a see you,” she said matter-of-factly.

“So somebody told him I was here? You?”

“Suppose you can head on then,” she said, ignoring his question.

“I’ve come a long way to see him.”

“Yep. All the way from Dee-Cee. Don’t know what to tell y’all ’cept good-bye.”

This drew a snort from the other deputy.

“Well, can I at least talk to him on the phone somehow?”

“Naw. We don’t do that here.”

“So that’s it then?”

She said nothing.

“Has he been arraigned?”

“That be in the mornin’ over the courthouse.”

“Can you tell me what happened at least? With Sherman Clancy?”

“I’m busy, Robie. I ain’t got no time to have a conversation with the likes’a you.”

“The likes of me? I’m from Cantrell.”

“You was from Cantrell.”

“Who’s his lawyer?”

“Not my business.”

“Can you suggest a place for me to stay then?”

“Why you stayin’?” she asked.

“Because my father has been arrested for murder. If you were me, would you stay?”

“I ain’t you. Got ’nuff trouble bein’ me.”

This drew another snort from her partner.

But she walked back over to her desk, took her time writing something down on a piece of paper, folded it over, and handed it to him. “Fair rates and clean sheets. Can’t ask for mor’n that.”

“Thanks.”

“Uh-huh.” She turned away.

Robie walked out, conscious that all eyes were on him as he did so.

He sat in his car and opened the slip of paper.

Off duty at five. Momma Lulu’s on Little Choctaw.