“Who’d you hurt and how bad? Did you kill the moonshiner?”
“No! Tup and me waited till late and snuck up, same as before. Nobody was around. The cookers weren’t thumping, and the cookfire had burned down to coals. We crept over to where the hole’s at. Tup reached into the brush covering it and—” He stopped and swallowed several times. “I ain’t ever heard a scream like that, not from nobody, not even from a woman.”
“What happened to him?”
“Bear trap. Damn near chomped his arm in two. Then the shootin’ started.”
“How many shooters?”
“I didn’t stick around to count. I ran like hell.” His voice cracked again. “I got to our truck and took off, but after a few miles, I left it and struck off on foot.”
“Afraid you’d be followed by the man at the still?” Thatcher asked.
He shook his head. “He already had Tup. He might’ve shown me mercy if I’d of given his whiskey back. But I knew that Uncle Hiram, all them, was gonna be wonderin’ why me and Tup hadn’t come back. I ran out on him, and that’s somethin’ a Johnson won’t forgive, running out on kin. If they find me, they’ll kill me. Slow and in misery.”
Bill feared the boy was right. He and Thatcher exchanged a glance, and Bill could tell that he was of the same mind.
Elray’s head was down. He was staring at the loose cuticle that he’d picked at until it had bled. “I’ve been hidin’ all day, working my way into town, waiting for it to get dark. I counted on hopping a freight, but missed the last one out till tomorrow morning.” He raised his head and looked at Thatcher. “I was gonna steal a horse so I could get the hell away from here.”
Bill asked, “Do you think your cousin is dead?”
“Don’t know. The shootin’ stopped, but his screaming didn’t. I could hear him all the way back to the truck. He might’ve died or been killed after I left.”
He thought on it for a moment, then added, “Like I said, he’s got a cruel temper, especially when he’s drunk, which is usually, but I’m a damn coward for leavin’ him. That’s what Hiram will say, and what that ol’ bastard says is law.”
“Not in this office, it isn’t.” Bill stood up. “You sit tight while I call in some deputies, then we’ll be on our way.”
Elray sniffed back dripping snot and looked at him dumbly. “On our way where?”
“You have to guide us to those stills, Elray.”
His eyes went wide and wild. “Please don’t make me. Anyhow, I’d lose my way. I don’t remember where they’re at.”
Ignoring that, Bill tipped his head toward the door into the main room and started moving in that direction. “Thatcher.”
Thatcher pushed himself upright. “Hold on a sec.” As he walked toward Elray, the boy shrunk back against the wall behind the cot. Frantic, he looked over at Bill. “Don’t leave me by myself with him.”
Thatcher stood over him. “Relax, Elray. If I’d’ve wanted to hurt you, I would have strung you up.”
“Then what’chu want?”
“I want to know what you’re lying about.”
“I ain’t. I owned up to stealing that whiskey, leavin’ Tup, and—”
“Not all that.”
“Then whut?”
“What’s come to light about who killed Wally?”
Forty-One
Laurel turned off the highway and started up the familiar rutted drive to the shack, where she was dropping off supplies for Corrine before driving the remainder of the way to the stills to pick up product.
It didn’t surprise her that the dwelling was barely detectable in the darkness. Corrine spent most of the nighttime hours working with Ernie at the still, rarely returning until daylight. But on the nights she was in the shack, it still looked unoccupied from the road.
Not wishing anyone to know that it was inhabited, Laurel had purchased a bolt of thick, black cloth from the general store in another town. Corrine and she had draped the shack’s few windows with it, and tacked it over the interior walls to keep light from leaking through the cracks. Corrine used the cookstove as infrequently as possible to keep smoke at a minimum. When the season changed, and the potbellied stove was needed for heat, they would have to make adjustments, but Laurel had a few months to figure it out.