Bound by Blood and Brimstone (27 page)

He turned to me and reached across the table to pat my hand. “Thank you, Ember Mae. I

bet Reese and your Momma are awfully proud to have such a mature young lady for a daughter.”

Bristling at his reference to me as Reese’s daughter, I bit back a hot retort, but managed to

demure sweetly.

“Well then,” he said, picking up his empty mug, “if your Momma wouldn’t mind me

having another cup of that coffee, I’ll tell you what I know, the pieces I have. Maybe you have

some pieces for the puzzle, too.” Turning to Reese, he added, “And I might just take you up on

that offer to pray, Preacher.”

While I sat holding a sleeping Sam in my lap and Momma stacked dirty dishes in the

sink, Sheriff Bates began his tale. Through a fresh pot of coffee and the heat of summer’s end,

we listened, spellbound as he carried us through a tangle of events too strange to be fiction.

I was determined to play my role as cheerful helper to the hilt. In doing so, I convinced

myself that Lorrie Beth would be spared some dingy interrogation room complete with bright

lights and rubber hoses. That’s what a too vivid imagination can do to a kid, if combined with a

healthy dose of gangster movies.

He told us he’d learned Sue Lee was missing well after dark the evening before, but she’d

last been seen at home late that morning.

“But how did you find out she was gone?” Momma queried, gathering the remaining cold

biscuits in a basket. Did her mother report it or something?”

“That’s how it usually happens,” he answered gravely. “But not in this case.”

It had actually been Caleb who had showed up in Lester’s office with the news that his

sister was gone.

“It was 9:30 p.m. I know because I had just glanced at my watch. Normally I wouldn’t

have even been in the office that late, but I was finishing up some reports. Then there’s this

pounding on the door. Sounded like somebody ready to break it right off the hinges.”

Reese chewed his lip thoughtfully, furrowing his brow for a second. “Anybody with you

in the office at the time?”

“Yeah. Homer was in the back catching up on some filing, but he was too far away to get

the door.” Homer Coots was Warren County’s lone deputy sheriff, a wiry little man with hard

eyes and coarse speech. Lester’s complete opposite; he had a reputation for going by the book

and brokering no excuses from lawbreakers. Trouble was, most folks suspected he was a bit too

enthusiastic about his job.

“So I opened the door,” he continued, “and he just staggers in, blubbering and bawling

that Sue Lee is gone. I barely caught him in time or he would’ve hit the floor face-first.” I was

attempting to picture Caleb in such a pitiful state as the sheriff paused, running his forefinger

along the scar near his nose.

“Must’ve upset the boy something awful to find out his sister was missing,” Momma

interjected. Lester shook his head.

“Well, that’s the least of it, folks. That boy looked like he’d had a run-in with a pack of

wild cats carrying baseball bats. Clothes all bloodied. Scratched up. Both eyes blacked, one of

‘em about swollen shut. Big old gash in his face and a lump on the back of his head the size of a

man’s fist. I never saw anything like it. I wouldn’t have recognized him if he hadn’t been crying

about Sue Lee being gone.”

So that’s why Caleb wasn’t with Sue Lee yesterday. He was busy getting the crap beat

out of him.

“Sounds to me like he’d been drinking.” Always the first to suspect sin, Reese had

pounced on this right out of the gate.

“Nope, no sign of liquor,” Lester declared. “And get this. Sue Lee was the one done all

that damage.” At that, Reese and Momma’s jaws dropped. Of course, it came as no shock to

Lorrie Beth and me. We knew only too well the savagery Sue Lee was capable of, so our test

was to force ourselves to look surprised.

Momma was the first to recover, but she had to work up some spit before speaking. “How

could that skinny slip of a girl beat up a grown man that bad?”

“It was worse than bad,” he stated flatly. “He’d been knocked out cold. Stayed out, too.

Most of the day, it seems. Caleb believes she meant to kill him.”

“So, what’re you thinking, Les?” Reese cut in. “They had a fight and the sister got the

best of him and took off?” That was precisely the minute my mouth decided to divorce my brain.

“Or maybe Sue Lee is in worse shape than he is. Maybe he killed her and is trying to

cover it up.” Momma gaped at me, and Reese grumbled something about me watching too much

television. When I felt Lorrie Beth stiffen in the chair beside me, I responded with a warning

pinch.

The sheriff was peering at me intently. “Not bad, Ember Mae. I might’ve thought that,

too, except for one thing. There’s an eyewitness who says Sue Lee was the one left standing.”

Throughout this entire conversation, we’d all sweltered in our seats in sweat-plastered

clothes. But at the word “eyewitness” I went cold to the marrow of my bones.
Now there’s

something that could put a fly in the ointment for sure. What
if there was a witness out at The

Gorge?

Under the table, Lorrie Beth groped for my free hand with her clammy one. Sheriff Bates

crossed his legs and studied the bottom of his coffee mug as if a clue could be found there.

“Caleb’s story is a strange one,” he mused, “but so far it checks out.”

He raised his head, narrowing those bizarre eyes of his. “According to Caleb, he and his

sister got into an argument yesterday morning. They were in their front yard. Next thing he

remembers is getting clobbered in the face. He said Sue Lee just snapped. Whaling at him,

kicking, clawing, screaming like a banshee. She grabbed a limb off the firewood pile. He said he

couldn’t even get one lick in. Then, out of the blue, she pulled a knife on him.

Oh my God, the knife! That must’ve been that long thing I saw in her hand. But where

was it? How could I have missed it? I searched every inch of that ground, and I’m sure I

would’ve spotted it. What if it’s found?

Lorrie Beth was having a meltdown of her own. She squeezed my hand so hard I nearly

yelped. I believe I actually went deaf for a few seconds because I could see his lips moving, but

heard nothing except my own heartbeat thudding in my ears.

“But she did manage to stab him in the shoulder. From what Caleb told me, she must’ve

brought him to his knees when she stuck him. Then she laid him out from behind. Used the back

of a shovel.” He stopped to let that sink in, raking at his hair several times. When he resumed

talking, it seemed that most of the strength was gone from his voice.

“It gets worse. When Caleb came to, it was evening. He stumbled around, finally made it

inside the house to look for Sue Lee. What he found instead was his mother. Beaten and

stabbed.”

“Merciful Jesus,” Momma whispered. Dirty dishes and a baby’s bath were forgotten for

the time being while she attempted to get her mind around this. Sam whimpered in his sleep,

then shifted on my lap so he could plop his thumb in his mouth. The only sound in the room was

the sucking noises he made. Lorrie Beth finally broke the silence with a soft, hesitant question.

“Was she, is she dead?”

“I’ve never seen anyone take what Lizzie Jacobs took and live.”

He spoke haltingly of what he’d discovered after Caleb had dragged himself all the way

into town, half-dead, to seek Lester’s help. With no clue of what he might face at that house, the

sheriff had called Doctor Randall and Deputy Coots to accompany him to the Jacobs’ crude

shack. There, they’d found Lizzie Jacobs, battered and slashed so completely, only Caleb had

been able to identify her. Remarkably, Doc Randall had determined that she was still alive, but

just barely.

“The doc thinks she’d been unconscious since the attack,” he said.

I listened to his story, the words washing over me, but not into me. A shell of granite

encased me, blocking the vivid images being painted. Even so, I sensed he was holding back.

Maybe it was the way his eyes kept darting away from us. Or the way he kept rubbing his scar.

Something was missing from the picture.

Reese’s question was the same one we all had, of course. “Any clues as to who?” The

revelation on Lester’s face slammed the four of us at once, and truth’s glare burned.

“You can’t mean Sue Lee, why, she’s just a child--but that’s her own mother!” Momma

sputtered. “I don’t know if I can even believe this, any of it!” She looked like she was about to

come across that table and punch Lester Bates’ lights out.

Momma’s utter denial of this turn of events was understandable. It wasn’t that violence

was unheard of in the mountains. There were revenge killings, usually involving an unfaithful

spouse, thievery, or a property dispute.

There were the usual poker-game-gone-wrong shootings, which almost always included

generous amounts of whiskey. And we all knew of incidents where parents took the “spare the

rod and spoil the child” philosophy to the extreme. But for a child to brutalize a parent? It was

beyond imagining.

“Believe it, Mona. It’s true. Every bit.”

“Sheriff, you said something about a witness,” I reminded him, forcing a normal tone.

My mind groped about feverishly. There was still something I wasn’t seeing.

“Caleb and Sue Lee’s little brother, Walter. He saw everything. He said his sister turned

into the ‘bogeyman.’ I’m guessing she would’ve gone after him, too, if he hadn’t hid under the

bed. She was so far gone, she forgot all about him. Caleb had forgotten him, too, but he was

doing well to know his own name, the way I figure. We found the little fella curled up in a ball

against the wall. Had his hands over his face.” He waited, letting this sink in.

Reese wanted to know about the knife. “Did you find it? Did she use it on her mother?”

“No, we didn’t find it, but there’s no doubt she used it on both of them. Walter saw it in

her hand. He said she took it with her when she left. After she went outside and washed up in the

creek.”

So, she tried to kill Caleb and her mother. Then she must’ve headed right out after us. But

she had to have watched the house to know where we were headed. She followed us to The

Gorge with that knife and waited while we slept. Just inches away, Lorrie Beth had caught a ride

on my thought train. Her hand around mine convulsed with such force, I was certain she’d

broken it, and I bit my tongue nearly clean through to keep from screaming.

The finale to Sheriff Bates’ tale was even stranger than the beginning. The remaining

Jacobses had been rushed to Christ Hospital in Hardin. Doctor Randall had patched up Caleb and

placed him in a private room with his little brother, who’d so gorged himself on hospital food,

they feared he would explode. Lizzie Jacobs was in the Intensive Care Unit and remained

unconscious until 6:00 in the morning.

“I was right by her bed when she realized where she was,” Lester told us. “You’ll never

guess what her first words were. She said, ‘Where’s my little girl? Where’s my Sue Lee? My

little girl is gone.’ Then she cried like a baby ‘till they had to sedate her.”

I didn’t dare sneak a glance at Lorrie Beth, but Momma’s face was wet with tears, and

Reese had his eyes closed. Sheriff Bates had his eyes trained on me. I refused to look away.

“Do you think Sue Lee is dangerous, Sheriff? Should we be afraid?” Startling and bold, I

hoped the question would distract him enough to get his focus off of me. That was the last place

it needed to be, in my opinion.

He stroked his chin before answering. “Sue Lee is a sick child, not a criminal. She hasn’t

killed anyone, and she can’t be charged with a crime. Not as an adult, anyway. I think you should

be aware, not afraid.”

“I’m having a hard time seeing it that way, Les,” Reese interrupted. This girl cuts up two

members of her own family, then runs off Lord knows where with a knife, and you say she isn’t

dangerous?”

Sheriff Bates was leaning forward now, his elbows on the table. He put his palms

together, prayer-like, and shook them for emphasis. “Look, this child is missing. Somewhere out

in the woods maybe. She can’t last long out there. Did you know she was barely thirteen? They’d

been lying about her age for years. Sue Lee Jacobs has had--let’s just say she’s not had an easy

life, and there’s a lot of people in this county could’ve made things a little easier if they’d

reached out to her. What I’m saying is--we should be our brother’s keeper.”

“Is that what you meant about needing to feel clean?” Lorrie Beth cut in. You feel guilty

because you think somebody should’ve helped her? Or stopped her?”

His eyes widened, settling on her face, and he suddenly looked as though he might cry.

“Something like that.”

Reese still wasn’t getting it. Not a surprise. “Do you have any leads?” I couldn’t believe