“No it ain’t. You got a good heart, Tommy, and you’re all I got left in this world. You got to keep on making me proud.”
“I can’t, Mama. I’m shot. I’m shot, and it’s bad.” Only when he said the words did I notice the bloom of crimson spreading across the back of his khaki shirt. He sagged against her, then slid to the porch, and just like that, he was gone. Two more men thundered up the porch steps, weapons drawn: Steve Morgan and “Rooster” Rankin. “TBI,” shouted Morgan, “don’t move!” But he and Rankin were the ones who froze as they surveyed the carnage at their feet: two men dead, a third facedown with a rifle barrel to his head, an old and broken woman weeping beside the bloody corpses of her husband and son. Art never shifted his gaze or his aim from Williams. “Police officer,” he called out. “Arthur Bohanan, KPD. This is Dr. Bill Brockton, state forensic anthropologist. This deputy here has committed at least three murders.”
“It’s okay, Art,” said Rankin. “It’s Agent Rankin and Agent Morgan. We know all about this asshole’s handiwork now. Let me just get in there and cuff him, if you don’t mind.” Rankin knelt and yanked Williams’s hands behind his back, then jerked him to his feet, dragging him down the stairs and shoving him toward the chopper.
Morgan must have seen me struggling to piece together what had brought him here in the company of Tom Kitchings, the man I’d accused of obstructing justice. “Sheriff Kitchings called TBI headquarters last night from his hospital bed, so Rankin dropped by to talk to him right after he finished getting the runaround from Williams.”
“The sheriff called you?”
Morgan nodded. “He got suspicious when Williams got to the crash scene so fast, and he knew Williams had a thirty-thirty he was pretty fond of. So he gave us the brass from the bullets that killed Orbin. I stopped by the Cooke County firing range last night on my way back to Knoxville to collect some of the deputy’s spent cartridges out there. Ballistics worked through the night comparing tool marks on the shells. Perfect match. Soon as we saw that, we figured we’d better hotfoot it up here before somebody else got shot.”
“But how’d the sheriff come to be with you in the helicopter?”
“He checked in with us as he was leaving the hospital, so we did a quick touchdown at the LifeStar base and picked him up. Lucky for you we did. He figured you’d be poking around again, figured you’d start with his father, and figured Williams might try to get you out of the way.”
“He figured right,” I said. “Looks like I should’ve given Sheriff Kitchings a lot more credit than I did, for brains and for integrity.”
“It wasn’t easy for him. He also figured his dad was the one that killed the pregnant woman.”
“He missed that one, but not by much. Did he say how he found her body in the first place?”
“Anonymous letter,” said Steve. “Had to’ve been from Williams. Guess the deputy found out about the old man’s spelunking, followed him into the cave one day, and figured he could use Leena to bring down the sheriff and his family.”
I shook my head and took a deep breath, exhaling hard. “It worked well,” I said.
“Terribly well.”
I looked down at Tom Kitchings, sprawled on the porch in his uniform and his congealing blood. He’d once had so much potential; he’d been on a path that led somewhere important, or at least somewhere glamorous, until his fate took a turn and spun him back to the hills of Cooke County. Where he ended up certainly wasn’t glamorous, but maybe, in some tragic, Southern Gothic way, it was important. In the end, he had lived up to his potential after all—he died living up to it. His death was a waste and a shame, but at the same time, there was something noble, even redemptive in it. He had given his life for Leena and her baby, I realized, and given it for me, too. The stone church caught my eye.
“Greater love hath no man than this…” I said.
“…that he lay down his life for his friends,” finished Art. “And he wasn’t even convinced we were his friends.” He turned to the TBI agent. “Could we give you our statements later?” Morgan nodded. “Can y’all take a statement from Mrs. Kitchings? I believe she’s got some things to get off her chest.” Morgan nodded again. “Bill, what say we go home?”
We eased down the ridge from the church to the river road, slowly threading the curves to I-40. We even crept along the interstate, flashers blinking. A funereal pace seemed fitting, given the bloody events we’d just witnessed. Besides, thanks to Mrs. Kitchings and the shot she’d fired across my bow, my truck had no windshield.