I sat on the sidewalk, my back to the car, my Cubs cap about to fall in my lap. A couple in their fifties came down the sidewalk. They tried not to look at me.
“Down,” I said. “Get down.”
I motioned with my hand. They ignored me, probably considering me an early-morning drunk. They walked on. No more shots.
After a few minutes I hadn’t been killed, so I stood up carefully and looked around. There were places to hide, doorways to consider, rooftops, corners to duck around. I looked at the front of my gym bag. A pellet was lodged in the fabric. I pulled it out, pocketed it, and went to get my bicycle from where it was chained around a lamppost. There was a Dillard’s bag dangling from the handlebars. I looked inside and found a folded handwritten note.
Should you survive, think no ill of me.
Folly is as folly always does.
Folly is and never was completely free.
Stop or hear again the bullet’s buzz and it will be as if Fonesca never was.
“High school kid,” said Ames, looking down at the poem that lay flat on my desk. “Maybe a girl.”
“Real men don’t write poetry?” I asked.
“They might write it, but they don’t show it to anybody.”
“Why write a poem?” I said. “Why not just a note saying, ‘Stop trying to help Ronnie Gerall or I’ll shoot at you again and next time I won’t miss.’ ”
“Guns are easy to get,” Ames said. “Why shoot at you with a pellet gun, especially after having been less than gentle, beating two men to death?”
“Maybe,” said Victor who stood looking out the window at nothing.
Ames and I both looked at him.
“Maybe,” Victor continued, “the person shooting at you is not the killer of Horvecki and Berrigan.”
With my Bank of America pen, we made a list of everyone we could think of who would know I was trying to find a suspect other than the former Ronnie Gerall. The list was long.
“Where do we start?” Ames asked.
I told him and he said, “Dangerous out there for you.” “Whoever is shooting at me,” I said, “is a rotten shot. Plus, he won’t shoot at me again till he knows I haven’t dropped the case.”
“She,” said Ames.
“Right,” I said. “He or she.”
“Let’s do it,” said Ames and we went out the door and down to my car.
Victor sat in the back, Ames next to me. I turned the key and the Saturn powered on with something approaching a purr.
“Worked on it early this morning, before church,” Ames said.
“Sounds great,” I said.
“It’ll do,” he said.
I didn’t ask Ames what church he belonged to, though I knew he would tell me. I didn’t ask Ames if he had a weapon under his well-worn tan suede jacket, though I knew there was one there.
We got to the church in Cortez just before noon. Services were over, but the Reverend Jack Pepper was delivering a pensive message on station WTLW.
“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,” came Pepper’s voice over the radio as we sat listening to the man in the small studio in the building just beyond the tall metal mesh gate. “But we are the vessels of the Lord, the instruments of the Lord. What if the Lord calls upon us to seek his vengeance?”
He paused for a few seconds to let his listeners consider what he had just said. I imagined a 1930s farm couple, Dad in his overalls, Mom wiping her hands on her apron, son on the floor looking up at an old Atwater Kent radio as if it might suddenly turn into a television set. I wondered how many people actually listened to Jack Pepper.
“Ponder this further,” Pepper said. “How will we know when it is the Lord commanding us? We have free will for the Lord has given it to us along with many of the blessings of life including the bounty of the seas right in our own waters-fish, shrimp, crab, scallops, lobster. When are we really hearing the Lord? I’ll answer this after these messages from the good Christian business in our own neighborhood.”
I got out of the car after telling Victor to get behind the wheel and Ames to stand by the gate and be ready. I wanted to talk to Jack Pepper alone.
As Ames and I walked to the gate, I could hear Victor behind us, listening to Jack Pepper urging his good listeners to buy their bait and tackle at Smitty’s Bait and Tackle.
I pushed the button next to the gate. Pepper, complete in suit and tie, came out, told the dog to go sit “over there,” and let me in.
“You find something that will help Gerall?” he asked opening the gate to let me in.
“Maybe,” I said. “I’ve got a few questions.”
“I’ve got to get back on the air,” he said, motioning for me to follow him. I did.
There was no one but Pepper and me in the reception room, and through the glass window I saw no one in the studio. Pepper opened the studio door, hurried in and sat just as the commercial ended. The speaker connected to the studio crackled with age, but it worked. Pepper put on his earphones, hit a switch and said, “You are waiting for an answer to the question I posed before the break, and I’ll give it to you. You’ll know that it is the voice of the Lord because your heart is cleansed and you follow the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus. The wayward will hear the voice of the Devil; the good will hear the voice of the Lord.”
He said he would take calls if anyone wished to ask questions or give testimony. He gave the number and repeated it.
The phone rang.
“A call,” Pepper said hopefully. He picked up the phone in the studio and said, “Jesus and I are listening to you.”
At 1 p.m. Jack Pepper signed off, saying, “WTLW will return to the air tomorrow morning at ten. Join us if you can and trust in the Lord.”
Back in the reception area, Jack Pepper said, “We’ve got Dr Pepper, Mr. Pibb, canned iced tea, and all kinds of Coke in the refrigerator.”
I declined. He moved behind the receptionist and manager’s desk and came up with a can of Coke, which he opened, drank from, and said, “Parched.”
“Which of you was at Horvecki’s house the night he was murdered?”
He swished some Coke around in his mouth wondering if he should lie.
“Rachel Horvecki and Ronnie Gerrall both say they saw a pickup truck in front of Horvecki’s house that night,” I went on. “There was a man in it. You or Williams?”
“And if I say neither?”
“Then you’d be lying and Ronnie would be one step closer to death row.”
“I think the Lord sent you,” he said softly. “It was me. We’d been watching Horvecki’s house whenever we could, waiting for him to commit a new abomination. A man cannot help being the creature the Lord created, but he can do battle with his nature.”
“You saw and did what?”
He took another drink, let out an “aah,” and said, “A few minutes after midnight I hear voices inside the house, voices filled with hate. And then a thudding sound. Ronnie comes down the street just about then and goes in the house. Man in a watch cap climbs out the window at the side of the house and goes running down the street. Ronnie comes outside like a flash, looks around, and goes back inside.”
“How loud were the noises and voices inside the house before Ronnie showed up?” I asked.
“Loud enough,” he said. “Police came just about then, went in, and you know the rest.”
“How long between the time Ronnie came out to look around and the time the police arrived?”
“Less than a minute,” he said. “No noise. Police there almost instantly, which could mean-”
“Whoever called 911 did it before Ronnie got there,” I said.
“The murderer called 911?” asked Pepper.
“Where was Williams that night?” I asked.
“I’m not my brother’s keeper,” he said.