Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(19)
“So these couples . . .” I asked slowly. “They aren’t properly married?”
“They filed their certificates like everyone else, but with Stephenson signing them . . . who knows? Maybe he’s legal by now. Before he shot down the priest, he left the local Methodist flock in a huff and joined some other church outside of town. Not a church I’d want any part of, if it was me.” He scowled straight ahead, then yanked his cigarette from his mouth and tossed it onto the ground half smoked, in a waste of perfectly good tobacco. “It’s just another arm of the Klan, is all. No business mixing God and politics, much less God, politics, and hearts full of nothing but hate and fear. I don’t want to know what kind of god thinks those fools are worshipping him, when that’s all they’ve got to offer. Hate and fear,” he said again, then drew up to a halt outside an ironwork gate with a sign announcing we’d reached Saint Paul’s.
The church wasn’t the largest I’d ever seen, but it was clean and well kept, and so were the grounds within the fence—which might have once stood for decoration, and now served to give the little patch of land the look of a fortress. Which, after a fashion, I suppose it was.
“This is it, and those are the steps right there. That’s where Edwin Stephenson shot Father Coyle, in cold blood, in front of God and everybody. It wasn’t right, and it doesn’t matter. The Klan has bought his trial just as surely as they bought the election that’s sending me home today. Me and George.” He shook his head. “We weren’t the only thing standing between this town and the . . . the darkness I feel coming . . . but people looked to us, and people thought we had some power to protect them. We did the best we could, damn it all to hell. And now there’s . . . now there’s hardly anybody decent—and anyone who is left will be out the door, just as soon as Shirley and Barrett can figure out who they are. This is the start of a terrible time, I can feel it in my soul.”
He gave this soliloquy to the church steps, never once looking at me while he spoke. I felt awful for the man, so stalwart and aged. Dignified and furious, and helpless . . . his legs swept out from under him by an election that sounded about as upright as a patch of crabgrass.
A flash of pink cotton flickered at the corner of my eye, and when I turned to get a better look, I saw a young woman. She was brown of hair, blue of eyes. Had a bit of a corn-fed look about her, I think that’s how you’re supposed to put it when you’re trying to say “plain, but not ugly.” She was thin and nervous, her hands squeezing repeatedly at a small handbag, and her feet shuffling with hesitation as she approached.
“Chief Eagan?” she began, one hand reaching out for the man. She changed her mind, and used that hand to clutch her shawl closed instead.
“No longer, girl.”
“So it’s true?” If she looked unhappy before, she was positively crestfallen now. “They sacked you, just like that?”
“They might as well have. And look at you, speaking of the devil.”
“Ruth?” I hazarded a guess. “Ruth Stephenson?”
She lowered her eyes and said something about yes, sir, and it was nice to meet me. I introduced myself as Inspector Wolf, and she then looked at me quite keenly. “An inspector? But not one of ours, not from around here.”
“No, ma’am. I’m visiting from Boston.”
Before I could tell her more, Eagan asked, “Ruthie, dear—what are you doing, coming around the church? You won’t help the case, if anyone sees you here.”
“I was looking for you,” she told him. “At the station . . . they said they thought you’d come this way. I was hoping you could tell me something, anything, about the trial. Daddy’s lawyer won’t talk to me, and there’s no prosecutor lined up yet.”
“Barrett’ll shoehorn some rat bastard into the spot soon enough. He just took office today, and he’s still getting his ducks in a row.”
It wasn’t quite terror in her eyes, but you could see it from there. “Barrett? He’s the one who decides?”
“It’ll all depend. The case is going up in front of Judge Holt, I do know that much—so it’s brave of you, girl.” His voice softened. “But you mustn’t get your hopes up, and you mustn’t feed his defense by coming around looking like a convert. We all know how this is going to go.”
Stubbornly, she said, “I don’t care. I’m testifying anyway.”
“Against your father?” I asked.
“Damn right. He’s a pile of shit from toes to temple—and if he gets away with murder, then all right, that’s what happens. But it won’t be because I sat down and didn’t say a thing, when I could’ve said my piece against him.”
“Brave indeed,” I echoed Eagan’s sentiment.
“Why are you visiting from Boston, anyway? Has this got something to do with Father Coyle?”
I nodded, hoping to reassure her. “He was my friend.”
“And you’re some kind of policeman?”
I hesitated.
She was the first person to ask me so far. Not even the chief had bothered, and as often as not, I can proceed with an entire case without ever having to lie about my office of origin. But sometimes I can’t, so I told her, “It would be more accurate to say that I work for the federal government. I came here to help, if I could.” The former a lie, the latter the truth.