Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

We drove through the field behind my house to the grove of cottonwoods that overlooked the river. The sky was gray with rain clouds, and leaves were blowing out of the grove onto the river’s surface. The grass was tall and green in the shade, and I spread a tablecloth on the ground and lay out the containers of cold chicken and pinto beans and fruit salad.

“I saw you go past the house early this morning,” she said.

“Wesley Rhodes implicated Jeff Deitrich in a drug deal on tape. The jailer put him in an isolation cell with his belt and a dog collar.”

She rubbed at the back of her neck while I spoke, her hair blowing in the wind.

“You think they might try to hang him from a pipe?” she said.

“Could be.”

“I’m supposed to check on him?”

“Nope. I’m going back up there this afternoon. I’ll have him out on bond in the morning.”

She nodded, her eyes moving curiously over my face. Then she squatted by the tablecloth and filled a paper plate with food and ate it standing up, looking out over the river.

I cupped her elbow in one palm.

“Sit down with me, Temple,” I said.

“All right,” she said.

I sat next to her and we ate in silence. Her hair kept getting in her eyes and I lifted one strand off her eyebrow and smoothed it back on her head. Her eyes settled on mine, then her face colored and she set her plate down and walked to the car and leaned against it, her expression hidden.

When I placed my fingers on her arm she moved away from me as though she had been touched with ice. “I have to go back now. Thank you for the lunch. No, don’t say anything else, Billy Bob. You think I’m tough. You’re wrong. I can’t cut this shit,” she said.

It stormed that night. I developed a fever and a lightheadedness that seemed to have no origin, and I fixed hot tea and lemon and drank it at my desk in the library while the rain swirled in the glow of the upstairs windows.

The rain slackened and my eyes burned with fatigue and I felt myself slipping off to sleep. I woke at midnight to mariachi music that made no sense, the voice of my son, Lucas, singing, L.Q. Navarro speaking in words that I could see move like moths on his lips but could not hear, the sound of water dipping into a vortex that was about to close on a little boy’s head.

Lightning flared in the clouds beyond the barn and I saw a figure run from the fields, through the horse lot, into the barn, and I was sure L.Q. Navarro had taken up residence in my dreams for the night.

Then I saw the electric light go on by Beau’s stall.

I took a flashlight out of a kitchen drawer and walked through the pools of rainwater in the backyard and pulled open the barn door. Suddenly I was staring into the face of Skyler Doolittle, his bald head crisscrossed with rivulets of sweat. He was dressed in a cheap, pale blue suit that was far too small for him, a candy-striped shirt with popped buttons, a twisted necktie, white athletic socks, and jail-issue shoes. His body exuded a raw odor like night damp and moist clay and ozone.

“I got blood on my hands, Mr. Holland,” he said.

“You killed Kyle Rose?” I said.

“That deputy with the stinger? Somebody kilt him?”

“With Rose’s bow and arrow.”

Skyler’s face went out of shape, like white rubber, his eyes hot with thought.

“You didn’t do it?” I said.

“No, sir.”

“Then it was Jessie Stump,” I said.

“I been working with him. The boy can be saved. He’s had a terrible life.”

“Why’d you come here, Mr. Doolittle?”

“I’ve got to have hep. I just don’t know what kind. Now I got blood on my hands.”