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Suddenly Faye was the last thing on my mind. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t misunderstanding. “In other words, according to the DNA profile…”
“…which Gonzales said was a rock-solid match…”
“…the baby’s father…?
“…was Tom Kitchings Senior. The Reverend — or not-so-Reverend — Thomas Kitchings.”
I floored the gas pedal, and the truck careened around the on-ramp and up onto I-40 East.
Even with the windows rolled up, I had trouble hearing Art’s question over the buffeting of the wind. The truck was doing ninety-five, and a gusty autumn wind was whipping out of the north, ripping red and gold leaves from branches, driving purplish clouds before it, their tops curling like ocean breakers. “You’re sure this is a good idea?” he shouted.
“Sure I’m sure,” I yelled, with more confidence than I felt.
“So tell me one more time why we’re charging back toward Cooke County like Batman and Robin? Talk slow — last time you explained it, you lost me on one of those hairpin turns of logic.”
Sheriff Kitchings was up on the seventh floor of UT hospital, I repeated. His chief deputy was slewing around in a sooty box in the back of my truck. The one other Cooke County officer involved in the case was doubtless chatting with a roomful of TBI and FBI agents, explaining the disastrous turn their investigation had just taken.
“So what you’re saying is, the utter collapse of law and order makes it a good idea for us to go riding back into the jaws of death? That’s your compelling argument?”
That pretty much summed it up. “But this new DNA evidence sheds a whole ’nother light on the case,” I argued, “and nobody knows it. And nobody knows we know it but us.”
“Your powers of reasoning are unique in all the world,” he said, shaking his head. “Not to mention your way with grammar.”
“Grammar, schmammer. Don’t you see? Old man Kitchings gets her pregnant, then he kills her to cover up the pregnancy. Maybe she never even tells him she’s pregnant — probably scared to. But then she starts to show, and he knows the scandal will get out and ruin him. Hard for a preacher to hang onto his flock if they know he’s committed adultery, incest, maybe even rape.”
Art raised a hand like a student with a question. “He would appear to have vaulted to the top of the suspect list, I’ll grant you that. It’s your next step — that we’re the perfect pair to confront the killer — that I’m not sure follows, exactly.”
People had a way of disappearing and dying suddenly in Cooke County, I pointed out. That, he retorted, was precisely why he didn’t think we should be headed there, given that we’d very nearly disappeared and died once already. “But what if Kitchings Senior — or somebody else up there — gets wind of the DNA results some other way? What if he vanishes, runs away, or turns up dead? We’d never know the truth.”
“And you think he’s going to ’fess up to us, after all these years, just because we’re such swell guys?”
“If we show up and confront him with this, catch him off guard, I think he’s a hell of a lot more likely to ’fess up, or at least reveal something, than he is if we don’t.”
“Don’t show up, or don’t catch him off guard?”
“Either. Both. With the sheriff and Williams out of the way for the moment, the coast is clear. And maybe, if we drop the DNA bombshell, we can shock the reverend into admitting something.” Art turned his head and looked out the window. I knew my argument was weak. I knew it wasn’t logic that was compelling me back to Cooke County today. I reached into my shirt pocket and removed the photo of Leena that Jim O’Conner had given me. I handed it to Art. “There’s something in her face that reminds me of Kathleen thirty years ago. Kathleen when she was young. Not just young, either — Kathleen when she pregnant. She’d put on some weight, and her face had rounded out a little…” I trailed off; it sounded foolish.
“So somehow this is about Kathleen now?”
“No. Well, maybe. Not her, exactly. More about me, but me trying to set things right with her, somehow.”
“Come on, Bill, when are you going to let yourself off that hook? It’s not your fault Kathleen died.”
“You can tell me that till you’re blue in the face — I can tell myself that till I’m blue in the face — but that doesn’t seem to change how I feel about it. Maybe this will.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“I don’t know, Art. I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it.”
He sighed. “Well, don’t forget to set fire to it as you’re climbing over the rail.” He slipped the picture of Leena into his own shirt pocket. “Okay, then. Let’s just pray we can persuade the good reverend that confession really is good for the soul.”
I’d pretty much quit praying two years before, but I decided this might be a good time to give it another try.
CHAPTER 39
The stone walls of Cave Springs Primitive Baptist Church and its blasted tunnel sent a chill of remembrance through me, and I found myself rethinking the wisdom of our errand. I was just about to say as much when Art tapped my shoulder and pointed toward the house next door. Sitting motionless in his weathered, flattened-out rocker was a seventy-year-old version of Tom Kitchings. His hair was white, his face was craggy and leatherlike, but his underlying bone structure and the distinctive cast of his eyes confirmed him as the sheriff’s father, as surely as any DNA test ever could.
I swung the truck across the gravel parking area, stopped near the worn path to the front steps, and got out, followed by Art. We stopped at the foot of the stairs. The stormfront was moving in; big oaks thrashed like saplings, their leaves whirling across the yard.
I raised my voice over the roar of the wind. “Reverend Kitchings?” The man neither spoke nor moved. “Reverend Kitchings, I’m Dr. Bill Brockton. This is my friend Art Bohanan. We’re from Knoxville. Your son Tom asked me to help him on a case up here.”
He raised his upper lip and spat a wad of tobacco juice down into the yard. The wind caught and shredded it into vapor. “You done it?” he called.
“Excuse me?”
“I said have you done it? Have you helped?”
“Well, it’s a tough case, but I’m trying my best.”
He spat again, upwind of me this time, and I felt a fine mist strike my face. “Mister, I had me two boys ’fore you started helping. Now I got one. How ’bout you quit helping and git out of here ’fore somethin’ happens to my other un.”
I glanced at Art. He raised both eyebrows at me, which seemed less helpful at the moment than I’d have liked. This interrogation business wasn’t as easy as I’d imagined. “Mr. Kitchings, I am sorry about Orbin, I truly am. I’ve lost a wife, so I can imagine some of the pain you must be feeling. But I can assure you, I didn’t have anything to do with his death.”
“The hell you didn’t,” he shouted. “You come up here and started sticking your nose where it don’t belong, started stirrin’ up things you got no bidness stirrin’ up, and you can assure me? Get off my property, or I can assure you I’ll whup your ass, doctor or not.”
Art finally spoke up. “Reverend? About those things the doctor’s been stirring up. You afraid of what might float to the top? You maybe got something to hide, Reverend? Maybe some dirty little secret from about thirty years back? A little bit of dirty linen involving your niece, maybe?”
Kitchings stood up. He held out a bony arm and pointed a crooked finger toward the horizon, toward Knoxville. The hand trembled — with rage? Or just with age?
“What was that girl’s name?” Art persisted, “Gina? No, Leena, that was it, wasn’t it? She was a mighty good-looking girl, wasn’t she, Reverend? Tall. Blonde. Spirited girl, folks say, with a real spring in her step.” Art started up the steps. “I’ve got a picture of her right here.” Art reached into his shirt pocket and fished out the photo, studying it closely. “Yes sir, she was a beauty. She favored her mama a lot, didn’t she, Reverend? Sophie? The sister you really wante
d to marry.”
The old man raised his other hand, held both hands out before him now, no longer pointing, but shielding himself, palms facing outward, as if to fend off some looming collision or dreadful specter. “Don’t you come any closer. You keep that away from me.”
