“In what way?”
“Well, let’s just say that if it took a liberal application of the razor strop to keep his boys on the straight and narrow path to salvation, the reverend was just doing his Christian duty.” He said this with a grim look that told me he had probably witnessed a Kitchings flogging or two firsthand.
“But why did Tom and Orbin turn out so different,” I asked, “if they both came from that same harsh environment? Not to let Tom off the hook — after all, I’m pretty sure he’s derailing this murder investigation — but he doesn’t seem to be a bad guy at heart. Unlike Orbin, who seems truly bad to the bone.”
“Damn right,” growled Waylon. “Meanest sumbitch on the face of the earth.”
O’Conner smiled slightly. “I’d say you’re a pretty shrewd judge of manflesh, Doc. He is bad to the bone. Not sure why. I mean, why do some abused children grow up to be serial killers, while others grow up to be compassionate doctors and teachers and social workers?”
Ah: the Problem of Evil. I’d spent a lot of fruitless hours pondering that conundrum. “I guess it would’ve been hard to be Tom’s little brother,” I ventured.
“Real hard,” O’Conner said. “Still is. The halo’s slipped some by now, but Tom Kitchings was Cooke County’s golden boy. Didn’t get a huge amount of nurture and affirmation at home, but to the rest of the county, Tom was practically a god. Led the high school football team to two state championships, then led UT to a couple, too. Good-looking, pretty smart, and really personable. Orbin, less so.” Judging by my two brief encounters, O’Conner was giving Orbin a huge benefit of the doubt there. “Be easy to turn hateful if you found yourself being measured and found wanting your whole life. Hell, even now, Orbin’s still playing second fiddle to Tom. Sort of the age-old story of Cain and Abel, isn’t it? Orbin can either bash his brother’s brains out, like Cain did, or he can use weaker folks like Vern as his whipping boys. Been doing it just about all his life.”
O’Conner’s armchair analysis made a lot of sense. “So would you guess Orbin’s flying solo when he puts the squeeze on pot farmers and cockfighters, or is it possible Tom’s in cahoots with him?”
He frowned. “Don’t know. When he was younger, Tom would never have stooped to that. But when he was younger, he had a lot more choices. He’s had some big disappointments to reckon with, and you never can tell whether somebody’s going to walk out of the valley of the shadow as a bigger person or a smaller one.”
As he said it, I found myself wondering whether I was seeing a bigger or a smaller Jim O’Conner than the one who’d courted Leena Bonds. Then I found myself wondering whether he was seeing a bigger or a smaller Bill Brockton than the one who’d lost Kathleen. I remembered my last phone call with Jeff, and I knew the answer. I vowed to call him and apologize.
“Hell, that’s enough of my cracker-barrel psychology for one day,” said O’Conner, draining the last of his whiskey. “Let me get Waylon to take you back to your truck.”
“You sure Waylon ought to be driving?”
“Hell, Doc, I could drive that stretch of road with my eyes closed,” said Waylon.
“He’s not kidding — I’ve seen him do it,” O’Conner laughed. “It’d take another three drinks before Waylon started to feel that whiskey, and even then, he’d be a better driver than you or I stone-cold sober.”
With some misgivings, I climbed into the truck with Waylon. I rolled down the window and called to O’Conner, “Will you please make him promise not to drag me into any more adventures along the way?”
He laughed. “You hear that, Waylon? Straight to the Pilot station; no stops. All right?”
Waylon nodded. “No stops,” he said.
It never occurred to me to extract a promise to drive with the headlights on. Halfway along the river road, Waylon flicked off his lights, leaving us careening along in utter blackness.
“Waylon, stop!” I yelped.
“Cain’t,” he said. “I promised — no stops.”
“Then turn your lights back on!”
“You b’lieve now?”
“Believe what?” Had something in our discussion of religion struck a nerve in Waylon?
“B’lieve I can drive this with my eyes closed.”
“Yes, for God’s sake. Now turn on your headlights.”
He did. As the beams shot through the blackness, I saw that the big truck was tracking dead-center in the right-hand lane, halfway through an “S” curve, as if it were on rails.
“Waylon, you’re going to turn me into either a believer or a dead man.”
He laughed. “Well, either way, you won’t feel scared no more.”
CHAPTER 29
The guard at the John J. Duncan Federal Building was the same stony-faced sentinel who’d been keeping watch over the lobby the last time I was here. This time, I was determined to get a smile out of him. I checked his name tag. “Morning, Officer Shipley,” I said cheerily. “I’m Bill Brockton, from UT. I’m going up to the FBI’s offices again.” He nodded ever so slightly. “You doing all right today?” He looked startled.
“Just fine, sir.” He said it stiffly, but it was a start, at least.
“Glad to hear it. By the way, did you read the paper this morning?” He nodded warily. “Did you see that story about the recently declassified CIA case?”
“Uh, no, sir, I don’t believe I saw that one.”
“You’ll appreciate this, being familiar with federal agencies,” I said. “You remember back when President Jimmy Carter got attacked by that wild rabbit?” He looked puzzled, so I decided to refresh his memory. “Carter was fishing in a pond down in Georgia, and this big bunny came swimming out toward his boat in a threatening manner, hissing and gnashing his teeth. Remember that?” He nodded, and I could tell he wondered where this was going. “Well, according to this new report, the CIA sent double agents — undercover squirrels and chipmunks — scampering throughout the forest to gather every scrap of intelligence they could about this foiled rabbit assassination plot. After spending months on analysis and millions in payoffs, they still couldn’t catch this killer rabbit. The reason, it now turns out, is the CIA itself had been infiltrated…by a mole.” He looked at me without expression. “Get it — a mole?” I grinned and nodded encouragingly.
I saw pity in his eyes. “Yes, sir, I’m afraid I do get it.” He shook his head sadly. “That,” he said, “has got to be the worst joke I’ve ever heard.” He continued to take the measure of the joke’s lameness, and when he’d finished, he finally cracked a smile.
“There,” I said triumphantly. “You’re a tough audience, but I knew I could make you smile.”
“Don’t quit your day job,” he said, waving me toward the elevator.
Up on the sixth floor, I tried the CIA joke on Angela Price and the rest of the federal and state agents. They liked it about as much as Shipley had, so I decided to hold the FBI joke I’d prepared as an encore. “Okay, a lot has happened since I saw you last,” I said. First I told them about what I’d seen in the pot patch just twenty-four hours earlier; then I recounted what happened in the cave; finally I circled back to the sheriff’s drunken phone call. “I don’t get it,” I said. “Maybe it was just the liquor talking, but he sounded like a man who’s trying to do the right thing.”
Price looked dubious. “Well, I’d be happy to be convinced of that. But it’ll take a lot more than a sloppy drunk crying into the phone to persuade me. I’d give more weight to the theft of the bones and the explosions in the cave.”
“Yeah, the phone call rang a bit hollow to me after that, too,” I admitted, “although we don’t know for sure the sheriff was involved in those. Or in his brother’s shakedown operation, either.”