Becky had already taught her the names and uses of most of his automotive tools and where they belonged in the pocketed black cloth wrapper where he kept them, and Sammie soon loved working on cars. And why not? A little training in mechanics wouldn’t hurt; when she grew older, she could do anything she wanted with her life. Becky kept her dressed in jeans and hoped, just as Morgan did, that the child would develop some other loves besides pretty clothes. Becky said frills would come soon enough without encouragement. Sammie made her motherlaugh aloud when Morgan brought her home at night dirty faced, grease-stained clothes, dog tired, and so deeply happy with having helped her daddy.
Now, this morning, Sammie would be asking for him, she would want to know why he had left so early, even before he’d had breakfast. Maybe Becky would tell her he’d gotten home late and left early to work on a special car for one of his longtime customers. But Sammie was only a little girl. When she did at last learn the truth, how would she cope with this? How could she ever sleep again, knowing that any nightmare, any terrible dream, would be sure to come true?
He had turned away from the bars, was smearing tears away with the back of his hand, when the barred door clanged open behind him. Morgan turned, ashamed of crying, looking up at Jimson. The officer motioned Morgan out, walking behind him.“Becky’s in the visiting room.”
“She’s alone?” Morgan asked.
“She’s alone,” Jimson said. Sergeant Trevis met them halfway down the hall and the tall, lean officer gestured Morgan toward the little visiting room, standing behind him as he entered.
Becky stood on the far side of the table that occupied the center of the room, her knuckles white where she gripped its edge, her face drawn and pale. The room was hot and stuffy, the one small, barred window behind her was open but admitted only hot, humid air laced with gas fumes from the street, the traffic noise loud and distracting. Morgan approached the table, stopping at Trevis’s direction. He and Becky stood looking across at each other, separated as if they were strangers.
“Did they tellyou what happened?” Morgan said. “Do you know what the charges are about?”
Behind him, Trevis stepped on in and closed the door. When Morgan turned to look at him, Trevis looked politely away. Morgan wished they could be alone. He knew Trevis would record in memory their every stilted word. James Trevis, thin and rangy, had played basketball in high school two years ahead of Morgan, then had served a hitch in the marines, had returned home to continue with the law enforcement he had learned as a military policeman. Morgan glanced at him again, and moved on around the table. Trevis looked away, and didn’t stop him. Morgan put his arms around Becky, they stood for a long time in silence, desperately holding each other.
When Becky spoke at last, her voice was muffled against him.“They told me nothing. Sergeant Trevis only told me the charges.” She took a step back, her hands on his shoulders, looking up at him. He reached to gently touch the smudges under her eyes. The look in her dark eyes told him she knew more about what had happened than she wanted to say, that shedidn’t want to talk in front of Trevis. If a manhad been killed last night, no matter what the circumstances, by now it would be all over town.
She said,“I called Mama’s attorney. I know he’s an estate attorney, that he doesn’t do this kind of work, but he gave me a couple of names. I’ve made appointments with both.
“And they did tell me,” she said, “that you were drunk. When Sergeant Trevis told me that,” she said, glancing up, “I asked Dr. Bates if he would come and talk with you.I know you weren’t drinking, I thought maybe some kind of drug. Has he been here yet?”
Morgan shook his head. As for an attorney, Morgan had never had need of one, and there were only a few lawyers in their small town, two with reputations that he and Becky didn’t like. He couldn’t think who would handle charges like this, someone they could trust. Becky’s dark eyes hadn’t left him, she looked at him a long time then pressed against him again, holding him tight. “Someone has to tell you what happened,” she said. “It isn’t fair for you not to know.”
Trevis moved to the table beside them.“As soon as you’re questioned, Morgan, we’ll lay it out for you.”
Morgan nodded. That made sense, so he couldn’t make up some story to fit whatever had occurred. Trevis moved again, as if to separate them, but then he let them be.
“It’s some kind of mix-up,” Becky said. “We’ll find out the truth.” She looked up at Trevis. “The police will find out, they’re our friends, Morgan, they’ll find out, they’ll make it all right again.”
Morgan wished he could believe that.“You went looking for me last night, you borrowed a car, you and Sammie …”
“When you didn’t come home, I went to the shop, before I took Sammie to Mama’s, she wasn’t feeling well. The shop was locked up tight, the new mechanic was gone. I didn’t know where he lived, and the operator had no phone number for an Albert Weiss.”
She held Morgan away, letting her anger center on the mechanic.“Yesterday when you left, when you weren’t back by closing time, did he just go on working? Didn’t he wonder where you were, didn’t he worry when you weren’t back to close out the cash register and lock up? Why didn’t he call the house? At five o’clock he just locked up and went home?How ironic. You hired Albert because he was calm and didn’t get ruffled, because he didn’t fuss about things. He was calm, all right,” she said bitterly. “He didn’t wonder—because he didn’t care.”
Morgan could say nothing. She was right. That was Albert’s way, he was a silent man, not the least interested in others’ business, focused solely on the cars he repaired.
“Where did he think you’d gone! And then this morning he just—he just opened the shop and got to work?” she said incredulously. “He might be a good mechanic, but his brain stops there. He could have come over to the house last night to see if you were all right, see if you’d come home.” Her voice broke, she took a minute to get control. “You could have died out there last night, died in the car, all alone.”
“You just kept driving,” he said, “driving around looking for me?”
“I drove all over Rome and then out around the farms, over on the Berry campus. At last I called the station, talked with Officer Regan. He told me the patrols would keep an eye out, he said he was sure you’d turn up, that it was too soon to file a missing report. I drove down every back road, some of them twice, but I didn’t see the car. Later, when Jimson found you, he said it was parked way back among the trees, that it was easy to miss.” The muscles in her jaw were clenched. “Parked out near lovers’ hollow,” she said, and it didn’t occur to him until that moment that she might have thought, last night, that he was with another woman.
But Becky knew there wasn’t anyone else, there was no woman in the world he’d look at except her. Holding her close to him, needing her steadiness, he tried to tell her what he could remember, tried to bring the fractured scenes from yesterday clearer, tried to make sense of them. Trevis stood intently listening. Morgan knew he would write it all down the moment Becky left, that Morgan’s words would be compared with the formal questioning that he would soon face. The police had to know, early last night, about the robbery and murder, but of course it would be policy not to mention it to Becky. Morgan had no idea whether they thought, at that point, the two events might be connected. Both cases were police business, and the officers kept conjecture to themselves.