Unbury Carol(106)

He left the apartment.

The outlaw waited, holding the other two at the end of his gun.

It’s him, one of them wanted to say, but couldn’t. Couldn’t bring himself to speak. Holy hell’s heaven, that’s James Moxie…



* * *



—

…Opal had many things on his mind as he climbed the stairs of the Evers home but only one was a question.

You know your wife’s still living, Dwight?

He had his gun out and he walked cautiously. As far as Opal understood, there was no reason to knock this time, no protocol at all. After Carol Evers had been buried, and long after the cemetery was cleared of its grievers, Robert Manders had come running into the station, insisting someone had “dug Carol up.” Opal rushed to the cemetery. Hank and Lucas told a wild story. Said they found a dug-up grave with a busted Bellafonte only the Bellafonte was some kind of trick kind, with strange gears and levers. Opal asked where Carol’s body was now and the gravediggers pointed to the dirt, to the barefoot prints beside two other sets, one made of bigger boots. Dwight’s name came forth from the confusion and Opal wasn’t surprised when Lucas said, You don’t think Mister Evers tried to bury her alive, do you?

“Mister Evers…Sheriff Opal here…about to open your bedroom door…”

The mess at the graveyard had tipped Opal right over. Manders’s original suspicion had set him up but that pig-shit mess at the graveyard just tipped him right over.

Why did Lucas ask if Mister Evers had attempted to bury his wife alive? Why did everybody in Harrows have a bad feeling about Dwight?

But Opal knew this answer.

Where there’s smoke…

“My hand is on the knob now…about to enter, Evers…”

Opal didn’t have his hand on the knob. He stood four paces to the right of the door and aimed his gun about chest-high.

“That’s it, Evers…I’m coming in.”

Maybe he’s sleeping, Opal thought. Maybe he’s hiding. Maybe he’s a quarter of the way to Griggsville.

More than once in his career Opal had been asked to act with acumen in a world washed of reason. Now he reached through all the morning’s irrationality and turned the master bedroom doorknob.

Then he kicked the door open and almost fired because the body on the bed was bent in a way to suggest it may have been pointing toward the door.

“Hog-lords…”

Opal held his pose a full minute, scanning the room, the windows, the corners, returning to the misshapen form of Dwight Evers and the ten bullet holes that disfigured his face and body.

Finally Opal stepped farther into the room and lowered his gun.

“Lord of all hogs and pink piglets…”

The first string caught him by surprise, touched his shoulder, and Opal instinctively lifted his gun before understanding what it was. He brought his fingers to it and followed it to a pistol wedged between the dresser and the wall. The gun was held in place by more string. Then he followed the first string back toward the dead man and saw more string yet, so much and so apparent that it was astonishing to him that he’d missed it all the first time. Opal swallowed hard. The closer the string got to Dwight, the more red it became. From where Opal stood, he saw ten red lines extending forth from Dwight’s chest and stomach…as if the shots had come from within him…his passing petrified…a three-dimensional rendering of his death.

Opal had some difficulty looking Dwight in the face.

He ducked under the strings and crawled to the other side of the bed. There, on his knees, he brought his fingers again to the string.

He studied.

“Well, holy pig-shit,” Opal said. “Abberstown.”

The oddball Rinaldo had claimed to be helping James Moxie. And Cole had seen Moxie himself earlier in the day. Said he’d looked the part of a vengeful cacodemon from heaven’s hell.

Opal rose when he heard the front door below and a woman’s voice call from downstairs.

“Sheriff Opal!”

“Don’t anybody come up here!” he called back.

“It’s Farrah Darrow, Sheriff Opal!”

“That’s fine,” he called, stepping under the string and heading for the bedroom door. “Don’t anybody come up here!”…



* * *



—

…Opal sat with Carol at a table in a tavern at the end of Main Street.

“I don’t mean to be bothering you,” he said, placing his hat on the table. “And I don’t mean to ask anything that might be sour for you to be remembering, but…is that true you could hear what was going on about you?”

“Yes, Sheriff. That’s right.”

“Well, shudders, Carol. That sounds about as ugly a thing as I can imagine.”

Carol smiled and Opal thought it amazing the woman was able to do so.

A waitress stopped by and asked if the pair were all right and Opal looked to Carol and Carol said yes she was all right. Opal said the same.

“You’ve got an admirer it seems.” Opal pointed to a glass case containing a blue owlfly on the table. The light through the window seemed to cut the beautiful thing in half…one wing in the shadows…the other as kaleidoscopic as Carol’s garden. Carol looked at it, then to the sheriff.