The new girl that lived with my father was glassy-eyed and talked real slow, like her mouth had a limp. I call her a girl, but she must have been twenty, standing in the doorway looking thin as a promise and wearing only an old white T-shirt. She saw my badge and set her mouth and you could almost see her trying to remember her line.
“Lionel?” she said. “Lionel’s not here.”
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “He trained me to say the same thing five years before you were ever born.” Then I edged past her into the house.
I figured if Lionel was back in town and wanting to lay low, he’d head to this hunting cabin north of town that he’d bought a decade before. My guess was right.
Lionel was sitting at the kitchen table working over a pen and paper, next to a pile of safety-deposit keys. When I came in he looked up for only a moment, then he went back to work as if I’d arrived a few minutes early for an appointment instead of this being the first time we’d seen each other since the morning the judge handed him a two-year stretch.
The funny thing about that day was, everybody in the courtroom expected him to get at least five years. But then, for reasons nobody knew but I could guess at, the judge dismissed the most serious charges and gave him the minimum. The prosecutor looked like he’d just learned that his wife had run away with the local preacher and took the dog too, but I could have told him it wasn’t personal, he was just another in a long line of men to get rolled by my father.
Now I set my hat on the kitchen table, sat down, and wiped my face. “Boy, it’s hot out,” I said. “If we don’t get any rain soon, the trees will start bribing the dogs.”
Lionel kept working. “You come to talk about the weather?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
Lionel looked the same as ever. Broad shoulders sticking out from underneath a cut-off black Harley T-shirt, long white hair in a ragged ponytail, and pale blue eyes that always seemed to look right through you. He had a few more tattoos than before, but that was all. He was still bigger than me, and showed no sign of slowing down.
A small fan pointing at Lionel was the only sound in the room. He continued to ignore me. I realized I was chewing my nails and I wiped my hand across my leg, disgusted with myself. How long could you live with a man that you knew killed your mother? A day? A week? I did twelve years. And leaving home doesn’t fix anything.
I nodded toward the front room. “What’s this one’s name?”
“Who, Keely?”
“Yeah, Keely. You tell her she’s only the latest in a series?”
“I don’t know that that would surprise her.”
“She be surprised to know how the other ones fared?”
Lionel kept working. “That’s a better question for her than me,” he said. “If you’re really wanting to know, then you ought to hustle on in there and ask, because if I meet my guess there’ll be no talking to her in another twenty minutes.”
“Guess that’s what it takes to keep them when you’re more than twice their age.”
“No, but it does save a lot of time and hassle.” Lionel got up, stuck the keys in his pockets, and shoved the papers in a drawer. “Speaking of hassle, looks like you’re still as much of one as ever. I see you haven’t lost your taste for judging people.”
“I come by my self-righteousness honestly, through prayer and hard work.”
Lionel leaned back against the kitchen counter and looked at me, his eyes running over me cold and flat, completely at ease, like a rattlesnake sunning itself on a rock.
“That’s why you never accomplished anything,” he said. “Too busy making jokes. What you never learned about women is, they’re as disposable as socks — when they get too old or worn out, or hell, you just get sick of them, there’s no use keeping them around. Now, tell me what you’re here for or get the hell out.”
I wanted to slug him then, but that would have ruined everything. I get a smart mouth sometimes, but Lionel always held the trump card. I took a breath, tapped my hat against the table, and tried to appear relaxed. I had to be careful. Lionel was slick, too slick for me to see every move. I had to keep things simple, not try to prove the whole case right here.
“How long you been in town for?”
Lionel shrugged, like the question bored him. “Maybe a week.”
That didn’t square with what C.T. told me, but I expected the lie. I didn’t know when Selby Cluxton was murdered, but by the looks of him, it had been within the last few days. Before I went too far, before I got more people involved, I had to know for sure that Lionel didn’t have a card hidden up his sleeve, some airtight lie that put him out of town.
“What have you been doing since you been back?” I said.
“Fixing this cabin up, what do you think? C.T. was supposed to take care of things, but turns out he’s not as reliable as I’d expected.”
“That’s all you been doing, just playing handyman?”
“C.T. and Keely and me, we been here all day every day working.”
So C.T. and Keely would be Lionel’s alibi. Everybody knew they’d repeat whatever lie he taught them.
“Nobody’s seen you for six months,” I said. “People thought you were gone for good.”
Lionel grinned. “Damn, son, almost sounds like you wished I stayed away.”
“Wouldn’t have cried any. Especially since I know what you’re planning.”
“That right?” Lionel shrugged. “Plenty of people thought they had me all figured out. But I’m still around and they’re not.”
That was true. And it worried me.
“I know what you’re planning,” I said. “It’s not hard to figure. But I’m giving you a chance. Clear out, tonight, leave town and don’t come back. This county is closed to you.”
“Closed to me. This county I’ve run longer than you’ve been alive.” Lionel shook his head. “What is it about you that’s always made you so eager to spit into the wind?”
“There’s going to be a raid on all your stash spots tomorrow. Starting with the loft in C.T.’s barn. You’re done here. I’m giving you a chance to run instead of going back to prison for a longer stretch than two years. Don’t screw it up.”
“And why would you be telling me this for?”
“Because you’re my father.”
Lionel laughed. “You develop a lot of love for your daddy while he was gone?”
“No. But I aim to be sheriff of this county. And I can’t do that with a jailbird father in prison for dope.”
“You think they’d elect you anyway? All them voters know your blood.”
“I’d like to take my chances. And they’re a damn sight better if you’re a million miles from here.”
Lionel thought that over for a moment, then sat back down. His hands looked like something you’d see in a zoo, and he cracked his knuckles one by one. Those hands could hit you hard enough to shake your life loose. I knew it, because I’d seen it.
Suddenly his hand shot out and I jerked back. But Lionel was only reaching for my hat.
His lips smiled but his eyes stayed lethal. I hated myself for flinching like that. He set my hat on his head, then took it off and tossed it back on the table.
“When, exactly?”
“They plan to hit you in the morning, at dawn,” I said, trying to act more relaxed than I felt. “When they figure you’ll be asleep. That means you got to leave tonight.”
Lionel sighed and waved his hand, dismissing me. “All right, then,” he told me. “You’ve said your piece. For all the good it will do.”
I didn’t know if I’d accomplished anything, but I’d given it a shot. I stood to go as Keely walked in. She tried to slip past the table to the sink, but Lionel grabbed her by the hip and made her sit on his lap. In the soft kitchen light, I could see a dim yellow bruise shining under her left eye like an ignored caution signal.