Under a Dark Summer Sky by Vanessa Lafaye

Author:Vanessa Lafaye
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc
Published: 2015-03-25T16:12:16+00:00

Chapter 15

Dwayne sat in the cab of his truck, head in his hands, and waited for his heart to stop pounding. He kept seeing a grotesquely deformed creature made from Henry’s face stuck onto Roy’s little body. The inspection at the camp had been an embarrassing waste of time. He could not claim to be any closer to identifying Hilda’s attacker. Ronald and the others would not wait much longer. He heard there was a meeting planned at the clubhouse for the next evening. At a total loss for what to do next, he cast around the cab for a cigarette. His scrabbling dislodged the piece of paper with the boot print. It fluttered onto his lap.

He crumpled it into a ball to throw out the window, but some memory stopped his hand. He smoothed the paper out again. Earlier that morning, while inspecting the boots at the camp, something had bothered him. It was not simply that the drawing found no match among the men’s boots; it was that, as the inspection had continued, he had begun to doubt whether the pattern belonged to any boot at all. Although the men wore different makes and sizes, there should have been some basic similarity, just variations on a template. Yet the drawing he held in his hand, he now realized, was of a completely different character.

There was still the option of checking the footwear of all the men in town, but he was coming to realize that this would just compound the time wasted so far. In the excitement of finding Roberts’s bloody shirt, he had let emotions cloud his judgment.

I have been looking in completely the wrong place.

He started the engine and headed for Doc’s office.

• • •

Henry leaned back against the rough concrete of the cell. Water dripped slowly from the ceiling, making a muted plink in the bucket on the floor. Ike snored extravagantly in the next cell. The man had only woken twice, to piss on the floor and demand a lawyer. He still stank of the vomit encrusting his shirt.

Henry caught Jimmy’s eye. The boy had been observing him from behind the pages of yesterday’s paper for some time.

A cold draft of suspicion made him shiver in the sweltering jail. The deputy had stared at him like he wanted to see through to Henry’s very bones. The rage in him went beyond Hilda’s attack. There was something personal in that stare, more than just a professional lawman’s desire to obtain a confession. Henry had seen plenty of them in his travels, been threatened many times, even beaten by a fair few. And yet some part of him still wanted to believe that Dwayne Campbell was different, that justice was still possible, even here, even now. Despite all the evidence of his senses, he wanted to believe. He a decent man. Doc said so. He tried to focus on that thought, but the image of Dwayne’s staring eyes would not leave his mind.

He got up and began to pace the dimensions of his cell.

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