On page two of the first section, a long profile of Brother Woodrow Tyberious Hogg occupied all the space above the fold. I felt like I’d seen his picture a thousand times: the earnest eyes with droopy eyelids above a thickening set of cheeks and jowls, the head atop a thickening neck in white shirt and polyester tie. It was the same face that had been on the hundreds of religious stations that the cable companies were now required to carry-the tacky, sleazy appeals for money in God’s name pouring forth from mouths that blended together and all started to look alike after you’d surfed around the channels long enough on a sleepless night.
And in a box on the front page, near the bottom, with a jump to the last page, were the details of Rebecca Gibson’s murder. Police reported that neighbors heard the sound of a fight around four A.M., glass breaking, screams, the thud of bodies slamming, or being slammed, against walls. Someone had phoned 911, and when police got there, Rebecca was already dead. She’d been beaten brutally, the kind of brutal that only a closed casket can hide.
Witnesses reported seeing a white, mid-Seventies Chevrolet four-door speeding away from the house.
I leaned back on the concrete-and-wood bench and let the sun beat down on my face. The noon whistle from the tobacco factory behind the State Capitol blared. Behind me, on Church Street, a bearded driver in a yellow taxi slammed on his brakes and laid on the horn to keep from hitting a street person who’d stepped off the sidewalk in a daze.
A white, four-door, fifteen-years-old-or-so Chevy, I thought. A white Chevy. I’d seen one before. Then it hit me.
Slim Gibson had a white Chevy.
I’d seen Slim Gibson’s white Chevy parked, double-parked, and triple-parked on Seventh Avenue in front of our offices so many times it was like a landmark. Once, I’d even given Slim a ride over to the Metro tow-in lot across the river to retrieve it after it’d been hooked. I never knew why Slim didn’t buy himself a slot in a parking lot somewhere.
One thing was for sure: the Chevy wasn’t parked out front today.
I entered the building this time without even bothering to check for Morris. I scooted up the stairs, turned left at the top of the landing, and fumbled for my key as I approached my office. The jangling of the keys must have been like an alarm. As soon as I closed the door behind me, I heard footsteps.
Just as I was bending over to check the answering machine, the pounding on the door started.
“Hold on,” I said loudly. “Just a sec.”
Truth was, I didn’t have to yell. My office is only one room, L-shaped, with just enough square footage in the small part of the L for the door to open without hitting my visitor’s chair.
I opened the door to find Ray standing there, without Slim, lines creased on his face deeper than I’d ever seen before. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked like he hadn’t slept for a week.
“Ray, c’mon in, man.”
Ray stepped in behind me as I shut the door. “I guess you heard,” he said.
“Yeah, it was on TV this morning. And in the paper.”
I passed around him and slid into my seat, motioning for him to grab the other chair. Ray flopped into it, his butt barely on the edge of the chair, his elbows close into his sides, his hands pointing out toward me.
“Shit, I ain’t never seen nothing like this.”
“What’s going on? Where’s Slim? The newspaper said witnesses saw a car like his pulling away from Rebecca’s place last night.”
Ray brought his hands up and rubbed his forehead. “Harry, there’s a lot you don’t know about Slim. He looks real quiet and laid-back most of the time-”
“Yeah?”
“But sometimes, you push the wrong buttons, ol’ Slim’ll get kind of wild.”
I leaned back in the chair and thought for a second. Marsha trapped inside a morgue, surrounded by armed Winnebagos, me with a stack of bills to pay, and God knows how long the insurance company’s going to take to pay that invoice. Now this. So life’s never dull.
Please God, I thought, give me a little dull.
“Where is he, Ray?”
“That’s kind of hard to say.”
I crossed my feet and put them up on my desk, wrapped my hands around my head, and leaned back in my creaky office chair. Trying my best to look like a country lawyer, I guess. Maybe Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird.
“He didn’t decide to jackrabbit now, did he?”
Ray looked me in the eye and I saw his lips start to move.
“ ’Cause if he did, Ray, he’s mega-screwed. Can’t nobody help him now.”
Ray fidgeted a moment longer, then: “Well, he ain’t exactly run off. He’s just staying low to try to figure out the lay of the land. I got a friend over at the courthouse who called me about a half hour ago, said the police were looking for him as a material witness.”
“You know how to get in touch with him?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“I’m no lawyer, buddy, but I do know nothing good ever comes from running. If he’s rabbitted out of here, they’ll find him. If I was you, I’d get ahold of him, tell him to get a lawyer, and come on in. If he’s innocent, then sooner or later they’ll figure that out.”
I knew I was lying. Not about the police catching him, of course. If Slim’s run off, they’ll find him. I was lying about the if-he’s-innocent-he’ll-get-off stuff. Anybody who’s hung around courtrooms and jailhouses as much as I did in my years as a reporter knows that once you enter the judicial system and the system thinks you’re guilty, then nothing else matters. You can pretty well kiss your ass goodbye. But there’s no good in trying to acquaint people with the truth when they don’t have the basis upon which to accept it.
“You think so?” Ray asked.
“Absolutely,” I said. “Tell him to c’mon in and clear himself.” Then I hesitated just a moment. “He didn’t do it, did he?”
Ray’s mouth curled up. “Hell, no, Harry. He didn’t do it. That ain’t Slim’s style. You ought to know that.”
I didn’t know why I ought to have known that, but I let the comment slide for the sake of propriety.
“I didn’t mean anything,” I said apologetically. “I just had to ask.”
“Well, he didn’t do it,” Ray insisted. “But appearances are going to hurt him. You got to understand, Slim and Rebecca fought like hell the whole time they were married. Most of the time, it wasn’t any kind of big deal. Some people are just like that. It’s the way they express affection. But if you don’t know that to begin with, then … well, it could look pretty bad sometimes.”
I shifted in my seat and plopped my feet to the floor. Ray fidgeted uncomfortably. “Harry, if this gets nasty, you’ll help him, won’t you?”
I felt a cramp in my chest. Oh, hell, I thought, here it comes. This was not something I had any interest in getting involved in; besides, even as cheap as I am, Slim couldn’t afford me.
“I got an awful lot on my plate right now,” I said, with more than a hint of reluctance in my voice.
“Aw, c’mon, Harry, he’s a buddy. You can’t let a buddy down now, can you?”
I put my hands out in front of me. “Now wait a minute. There’s no indication whatsoever that Slim’s going to need any help. You just get in touch with him and tell him what I told you.”
Ray stood up. “I don’t know, man. I got a bad feeling about this.”
I rose and stood next to him. “Somebody you know got murdered, Ray. You’re supposed to feel bad.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”
The phone rang as I was easing him out the door. My head was starting to hurt and I was about to let the machine take the call. On the third ring, though, I decided to pick it up.