When Ghosts Come Home(16)

Bellamy walked to the sofa and sat down. He closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. Winston had not been invited to sit, so he continued to stand by the door.

“Ed,” Winston said, “I just want you to know how sorry I am. I can’t imagine—” But he stopped speaking when Janelle opened one of the bedroom doors in the hall and walked into the living room. Winston saw that the woman he’d heard crying just moments before was now gone. This woman’s face was shining, her bright eyes showing no trace of tears aside from the redness they’d left behind. Her face portrayed no sign of sadness, but also no shock that the Brunswick County sheriff was standing in her living room. She held a fussing baby that didn’t look to be more than a few months old. She bounced the baby as she walked. She raised her eyebrows at Winston and nearly smiled, the gesture being the only false thing about her.

“He didn’t sleep much last night,” she said. Her voice was pitched and sharp, and Winston could feel her restraint and also the panic that fueled it. She patted the baby’s back, rubbed her open hand up and down across it. “None of us slept.” And that was the moment when her face changed, when she turned back into the woman Winston had heard. “He just went out for diapers,” she said, her face collapsing, her mouth nearly swallowing her lips as she choked back a great, heaving sob. The baby in her arms began to cry louder. Bellamy stood from the sofa and stepped around the coffee table toward her, reached out his arms to take the child. Janelle turned away from him, began whispering over and over. “Shhh, it’s okay, honey. Daddy’s just gone for diapers. Daddy’s just gone for diapers.”

It was all too much for Winston, but the only thing he could do now was look away.



Later, Winston’s name came over the walkie-talkie as he turned onto Howe Street. He pulled to the side of the road, wiped his eyes, took a breath, and picked up the walkie-talkie from where it sat on the passenger’s seat. On the other end was Randy Taylor, a retired officer who often ran dispatch during the morning hours once Rudy had gone home. Everyone in the office called dispatch “The Randy and Rudy Show,” and even though no one had ever said that to Randy or Rudy, Winston figured they probably knew just the same and probably even got a kick out of it.

“Sheriff?” Randy’s voice repeated.

“I’m here,” Winston said. He took another breath, rubbed his eyes and then his face with his free hand.

“Leonard Dorsey wants to talk to you,” Randy said.

“You know what it’s about?” Winston asked.

“He didn’t say, but I reckon it’s something about that airplane.”

“Is he still out at the airport?”

“He is,” Randy said.

“Well, do me a favor and call Hugh’s office. Tell them I’m on the way.”

“Ten-four,” Randy said.

Winston tossed the walkie-talkie back onto the passenger’s seat, where it landed on the campaign posters Marie’d had printed. He sat there on the roadside and watched as cars entered and left Southport. He rolled the window down, felt the warmth of the morning. He took another deep breath.

Although he tried to shake the image and the sound, Winston could still see and hear Janelle crying, the baby boy wailing in her arms. He had wanted to do something, but there was nothing he could do but watch Ed Bellamy wrap his arms around the young woman while turning his face away from Winston. Winston knew that he had muttered condolences and promises to do all he could, but he knew that Janelle and Bellamy either hadn’t been listening or perhaps hadn’t been able to hear him over the sound of the baby’s cries and their own deafening sadness. Winston didn’t blame them. He wouldn’t have listened to himself either.

At one point, a bedroom door had opened in the hallway just past the bathroom, and the face of a teenaged boy peered out and made eye contact with Winston. His hair was cropped close, and his skin was darker than Janelle’s, but their faces were similar. Winston wondered if they were siblings, although the boy seemed much younger. The boy had stared for a moment, his eyes moving from Winston to the spot where Bellamy stood, attempting to console both his daughter-in-law and his grandson. The boy in the doorway hadn’t spoken. Once he’d finished looking, he’d simply withdrawn into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.

When Winston left, Ed Bellamy had followed him outside to Marie’s car.

“What can you tell me, Winston?” Bellamy had asked.

“Not much,” Winston had said. “Not because I can’t or don’t want to, but just because there’s not anything to tell right now, Ed.”

“Where’d you find him?”

“Out at the airport.”

“Where out at the airport?”

“By the runway,” Winston had said. “A plane landed out there in the middle of the night. Whoever brought it in abandoned it and disappeared.”

“And that’s who—” Bellamy had said, but he’d stopped, unable to force out the words he hadn’t yet prepared himself to say.

“Maybe,” Winston had said. “We just don’t know, Ed. But I promise you I’ll do my best to find out.”

“People are going to think it’s drugs,” Bellamy said.

“It might’ve been, Ed,” Winston said. “We don’t have any idea.”