One Good Deed(12)

She looked startled again by his words. “How do you mean?”

“My way of looking at the world is that some folks do what they want, and they don’t care what happens to others, so long as it’s good for them.”

“I try to be more optimistic.”

He twirled his hat between his fingers. “See you in a week, Miss Crabtree.”

She returned to her typing and started clacking away. He walked to the door and looked back in time to see her watching him.

“Hope you’re saying good things about me.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Archer.”

She immediately went back to her typing.

As Archer was coming down the front steps of the Courts and Municipality Building, he saw on the street someone he recognized. Archer would have kept walking, but the man saw him, too.

“Archer, by God, tell me it ain’t you and I still won’t believe it. What a damn sight for sore eyes. So, you’re out then?”

The speaker was short and reedy with a neck too long for his body, and an Adam’s apple the size of a ripe peach. He was in his late forties, and his hair was graying rapidly and thinning even faster. His sideburns were long and curled inward at the bottom. Physically unimposing, he still seemed to take up more space on earth than his stature warranted.

“Dickie Dill,” said Archer, reluctantly coming over to him. “Never expected to see your mug again.”

Dill put out a thin hand with fingers like little scythe blades. Archer had seen those same hands wrap around the neck of a fellow inmate who was three times Dill’s size and come close to strangling the life out of him. It took four guards to pull the little man off the far larger one. After that, prisoners and guards at Carderock Prison let Dickie Dill be.

Archer had thankfully never had a beef with the man, but there was something about Dill that just struck him as peculiar enough to be avoided if possible.

The men shook hands.

“Hellfire, boy, I think we all come through Poca. Been here three months now. Ain’t too bad.”

“Yeah, wondered what happened to you.”

“Got me out and I’ll be staying out this time. Third time’s the charm, they say. I’ll kill a man to keep from going back if I have to.” He cracked his knuckles and gave Archer a look that made him conclude that Dickie Dill ever not being behind bars was not a good thing for the rest of humanity.

He wore faded dungarees and what looked to be a homespun shirt tucked in with dusty brogans on his feet. His belt was a length of braided rope, and his old porkpie hat was creased, worn, and stained. The few teeth he had were displayed in a perpetual snarl.

“You checking in with Miss Crabtree, were you?” asked Dill, eyeing the building behind them. “I was in there not mor’n half hour ago. She’s a looker all right, but a cold fish. Gal needs a man to warm her up.”

Archer briefly wondered if Dill was the subject of the comments on the page in the typewriter. He could see all of them fairly applying. He put his hand in his pocket and felt the balled-up note. And was Dill also the author of that? Archer could see that being the case, too, particularly given the violence and misspellings.

“Just finished up. A woman as a parole officer? What’s her story anyway?”

“Ain’t you never heard of Carson Crabtree?”

“Doesn’t ring any bells. Guess he’s related?”

“Her daddy.”

“Okay, everybody’s got a daddy.”

“Yeah, but Carson Crabtree done killed three people down in Texas, oh, been more than a dozen years gone by now.”

Archer processed this. “Three people. What for?”

“Man was just mean. They ’lectrocuted his ass.”

“Being mean doesn’t sound like enough reason to murder three people.”

Dill thumped his thumb against his temple. “Touched in the head, more like. You know, crazy, I ’spose. To kill a man you got to be, or else he done you a wrong and you’re just settlin’ matters. Not a damn thing wrong with that and I got experience that way.”

“Not sure the law would agree with that, Dickie.”

“That’s your goddamn problem, Archer, you think rules is all there is.”

“More or less what the Army taught me.”

“Hellfire, boy, you ain’t in uniform no more. Live life and kick you some ass now and then.”

Archer looked thoughtful as he glanced back at the steps he’d just come down. “Maybe Miss Crabtree is overcompensating then.” He said this more to himself than Dill.

“Come again?” said Dill, eyes twitching and his sideburns doing the same. “What’s that mean?”

“Her father was a criminal, so now she’s working to help other criminals turn away from their bad ways.”

“Oh, right, I see. Hey, I’m thinking ’bout maybe having a go at her. Like I said, gal needs a man to tell her what’s what.”

Archer emphatically shook his head. “You do not want to do that, Dickie, trust me.”

“Why not? I think she might cotton to me after a while.”

“You do anything, touch one hair on her head, say one word out of line, and they’ll send your butt right back to Carderock, and you won’t be getting out ever.”

Dill eyed him funny, but there was alarm in the man’s eyes, too.