John Waldo began to slowly shake his head. “No, my son went far astray, and I helped lead him there.” He turned and looked up at Harry. “Do you think Bobby Joe killed that woman?”
Harry took a moment to decide how much he wanted to say. “No, I don’t. But I think he knew the killer, and I think that person scared the hell out of him, scared him so much he was afraid the tell anyone what he did know. And I think that person killed him to make sure he never would.”
“How would he even know such a person? I know he had gone astray, but not that far, never that far.”
Harry wanted to tell the man what he believed-that the killer was someone connected to his church, that the killer was a sick son of a bitch, a walking religious time bomb who had only needed the right situation and the right person to set him off, and that Darlene Beckett with her flagrant immorality, and the Reverend John Waldo with his righteous, God-fearing indignation had provided him with everything he needed all wrapped up in one tight little package. Instead, he looked the minister in the eye and said: “I don’t know.”
The minister stared at the floor for several long moments before he began to speak again. “I talked to the sheriff about you. This was before my son died, when I thought you were persecuting him. He told me what a good detective you are, and what happened to you as a child. He also told me there are some people in the department who think the dead speak to you because they recognize you as one of them. Is that true? Do the dead speak to you?”
“It’s more an intuition about what they felt just before they died,” Harry said.
“I believe that’s a form of speaking.” Reverend Waldo paused, almost as if he were afraid to ask more. Finally he seemed to gather his courage. “Did my son speak to you after his death?”
Harry slowly nodded his head. “In the sense you and I are talking about, yes, he did.”
The minister’s lips began to tremble. “What did he say to you? Please tell me.”
“He told me about his murderer.” Harry stared at the man, wondering if he’d understand. “When the dead speak to me, reverend-if that’s what they in fact do-that’s all they ever tell me… things about the person who took their life from them.”
“Do they tell you who that person was?”
Harry smiled faintly. “I wish they would, reverend. They only tell me what their killers made them feel in those last moments.”
The minister’s lips kept trembling as he prepared to ask the question Harry did not want to answer. “What did Bobby Joe feel?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
Harry nodded in resignation. “He felt terror… terror that what he had feared for so long was finally happening.” Waldo sat shocked for several moments. “So that’s why you think he knew his killer.”
“Yes, reverend. That’s the primary reason why.”
Waldo looked up with beseeching eyes. “Please catch him,” he whispered. “Catch the person who killed my son.”
“I will,” Harry said.
Vicky sat on the small lanai where Harry had first interviewed Joe Hall. She stared at the burly construction supervisor contrasting his size to the soft, gentle demeanor he presented. Then his eyes lingered on her legs longer than necessary and she decided to give him a quick dose of reality.
“How badly did you want to hurt Darlene Beckett for what she did to your son?” she began, jolting him.
He hesitated, deciding how he should answer. “Real bad,” he said at length. “You know, there were these people at work who used to joke about it. They had seen her on TV, seen how beautiful she was, and all they could talk about was how lucky the kid was who had gotten into her pants. Then, when they found out it was my kid she was having it off with, well, then it got real personal. The suck-ups would say he was a chip off the old block, and the others… the others asked if he ever told me whether she was good in bed, as if some fourteen-year-old kid would know the difference. But none of those clowns ever had to come home with me and see a kid who used to be full of fun sitting in his room not wanting to come out, a kid who was afraid to turn on the TV or the radio because he might hear something about it. They never heard him crying through his door when the goddamn school system said he had to go to a different school, had to leave all his friends behind, had to go someplace where he didn’t know anybody, just because some parents thought he’d be a bad influence on their kids, or that the school could hide what had happened by getting him out of sight. So, yeah, I wanted to hurt her for all that, for what she did to my son, for what she did to my wife and me.” He drew a deep breath. “It just wouldn’t end, not once the newspapers and the TV people got ahold of it. And she seemed to love it. She seemed to glow every time a camera was pointed at her.”
Vicky marveled at the fact that the man’s voice never rose in anger, that his breathing never increased, his face never flushed. Throughout it all he seemed calm and controlled.
“You told my partner, Detective Doyle, that you wanted to hurt her that one time in court when she smiled at your family. Do you remember saying that?”
Hall folded his arms across his chest, creating a barrier between them. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “It was after she’d been given that slap-on-the-wrist sentence and she just walks by us and looks down at us sitting there, and she just smiles like she’s looking at a collection of fools. And yes, right then and there I wanted to put my hands around her throat and choke her until her eyes popped out of her head. But I didn’t. I didn’t do anything then, and I didn’t do anything later. She hurt my son and she got away with it, and I didn’t do anything to make her pay for what she’d done.”
Vicky stared across at him. “Somebody made her pay big time, Mr. Hall.”
He nodded slowly, almost absently. “Yeah, but not me. I gave her a pass. Somebody hurts your kid you’re supposed to make them pay. But I didn’t do that. And my wife didn’t either. She didn’t even want the courts to go after that damn woman. The only people who wanted that woman to pay for her crimes were that fat minister whose church we went to, and some of the people who worked for him, and a whole bunch of people in the congregation. They all wanted her hung out to dry. And they put a lot of pressure on us. But my wife and son didn’t want that. They just wanted it over with. So we stopped going to the damn church.” He offered up a bitter smile, almost in resignation. “Now how’s that? What that damn woman did even took my family’s church away from us.”
Vicky let a few moments pass, again taking time to study the man. The church had clearly been more important to Joe Hall than he was willing to admit.
“How active were you in the church?”
“Not very. A few years back I coached the Little League team the church sponsored. My son played on it, so when they asked me to help I said I would. I ended up being the coach.” He shrugged. “You know how those things go.”
“We were told you were a youth minister.”
“Who told you that?”
Vicky hesitated, not sure how forthcoming she wanted to be. “It was someone who works for the church.”
“Everybody who helps with the kids on a steady basis gets referred to as that. They’re very big on handing out religious titles. It sort of keeps the kids in line. But, believe me, they’re more honorary than anything else. All I did was coach baseball.”
“Do you own a hunting knife, Mr. Hall?” Vicky dropped the question out of the blue and then waited for the tell.
Hall’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t kill that woman, detective.”
“Do you own a hunting knife?” Vicky repeated.
“Yeah, I own a hunting knife. It used to be my father’s. I don’t hunt, but I kept it for sentimental reasons and to use when I go fishing.”
“Would you allow me to take it in for analysis?”
She could see anger coming to Hall’s eyes for the first time. On a man his size it was an awesome sight.
“What’s going on?”
Vicky turned to the sound of Betty Hall’s voice. She had come into the lanai unnoticed and had picked up on her husband’s anger.