The Law of Moses(44)

Tag had told his father about me. And for whatever reason—desperation, despondency, or maybe just a desire to placate his adamant son—David Taggert Sr. hired a man and his dogs to cover the area Tag had described. They’d caught her scent quickly, and they found her remains. Just like that. The police were called in and before too long, the police came to the loony bin, looking for me. I’d been questioned about Molly Taggert before, but now they had a body. A body that was found eerily close to my dramatic display.

Sheriff Dawson came with another man, a round, pasty-faced, red-haired deputy that couldn’t have been much older than me. The younger man sneered at me, clearly playing the part of the nasty sidekick on his favorite cop show. With his powdery complexion and his flaming hair, he reminded me of a scowling jelly donut.

Sheriff Dawson asked me all the same questions and a few new ones. He knew David Taggert was a patient at the institution where I was housed. He also knew what Tag had told his father and what his father had then relayed to the search team. And he knew it had all come from me. But when it was all said and done, Molly Taggert had been missing since July of 2005. In July of 2005, I’d been living in California with my uncle and his unhappy wife and their very spoiled children. In July of 2005, I served the entire month in a juvenile detention facility for gang related activities. And that was indisputable. As far as alibis go, mine was pretty airtight. Sheriff already knew that, from our conversation back in October, when I’d painted Molly’s face on the overpass and got hauled in for questioning. But I had known it wouldn’t stop him, or anyone else in law enforcement, from believing I was guilty of something. I’d told Tag as much.

“You had any further contact with Georgia Shepherd?” Sheriff Dawson asked as he closed his file and prepared to leave. The question felt a little strange at the tail end of all the questions about Molly Taggert.

“No,” I said. The sheriff didn’t meet my gaze but continued rifling through the thick pages in front of him. With his head tilted down and his hat removed, I could see his pink scalp through his pale hair.

“You and she were friends, if I remember right.” He kept his head down and turned another page.

“Not really.”

He glanced up. “No?”

“No.”

Sheriff Dawson shot a look at the pudgy deputy. The deputy smirked. Heat rose in my chest, and I wanted to pop his fat face in. I didn’t understand the look, but there was something ugly behind it.

“Hmm. But you were there the night she was attacked at the Stampede, right? You took her home, made sure she was all right.”

I waited, the heat in my chest spreading to my ears. He already knew all this.

“We never really figured out what happened that night.”

He paused again and suddenly slapped the file shut. “So you haven’t had any visions about what might have happened there, have you? Maybe painted a mug shot or a finger print on the side of some barn? You know, something we can use to hunt the bastard down? We don’t especially like people hurtin’ our girls. So it sure would be nice to bring justice to whoever hurt Georgia.”

I said nothing. I had hurt Georgia. I was sure that was what he was getting at. After all, she was the one who called the cops the morning Gi died. She was the one who stood outside and waited for the ambulance. She was the one who found out where I’d been committed and made a wasted effort to see me. But I didn’t think that was what the sheriff was referring to. He obviously thought I’d tied her up too, psycho that I am.

But I hadn’t tied her up. And I hadn’t had any “visions” about who had. So I stayed silent and seated as he rose, along with Deputy Jelly Donut, and headed for the door.

“Moses?” The younger man exited, but Sheriff Dawson paused, his hand on the knob as he placed his cowboy hat back over his thinning hair. “I hear you’re gonna be released in the next few days.”

I nodded slightly, acknowledging that I was. He nodded too and pursed his lips, considering me.

“Well, good. That’s good. Everybody deserves a fresh start. But I don’t think you should come back to Levan, Moses,” he said, stepping into the hall. “We’re all out of fresh starts and second chances.” He let the door fall closed between us as he walked away.





Moses




THEY TOOK US BOTH OFF ISOLATION, and much to my surprise, Tag and I fell into a sort of friendship. Maybe it was our youth. Maybe it was Molly, maybe it was the fact that we were both in a psychiatric facility and neither of us especially wanted to leave—or as Tag put it, “rock bottom with no desire to climb higher”—or maybe it was just that Tag reminded me a little of Georgia with his twang and his humor and his cowboy persona. He was nothing like me, and they would have hit it off, I was sure of it. The thought made me strangely jealous, and I was struck again that she’d ever wanted me at all.

Tag was usually quick to smile, quick to anger, quick to forgive, quick to pull the trigger. He didn’t do anything in half measures and I wondered sometimes if the facility wasn’t the best place for him, just to keep him contained. But he had a maudlin side too. And one night after lights out, he came and found me, creeping down the hall undetected, the way he always did, seeking answers that none of the staff could give him, answers he thought I had.

Tag said I was aptly named. “Wasn’t Moses a prophet or something?”