Only the Truth Read online

  Only the Truth

  ALSO BY PAT BROWN

  The Profiler

  Killing for Sport

  How to Save Your Daughter's Life (Sept 2012)

  The Murder of Cleopatra (2013)

  Only the Truth

  PAT BROWN

  Cover art by Shirley E. Sonnemann

  COPYRIGHT © 2012 by Pat Brown

  For

  all those

  brave souls

  who seek

  the truth

  Only

  the

  Truth

  I

  She was just standing there by the side of the railroad tracks, not seeming to know where she was. There hadn't been any trains in hours, nor would there be for the rest of the day. She was standing there like a statue, with the little red suitcase beside her.

  She wasn't real pretty, but she was hardly ugly. She was a tiny thing with light brown hair that hung limply onto her shoulders. She made me think of my dog, which maybe isn't too nice a thing to say about a girl, but her hair reminded me of my dog's fur, soft and long, but also worn and tired.

  "Hey, girl!" I yelled at her as I came up the bank onto the gravel. "Whatcha doing there?" I wasn't worried too much about scaring her. I never seemed to cause much fright to anyone. I was too short and too skinny. I didn't look like I'd harm nobody.

  She gave me a slight smile, but she didn't answer. She just looked my way. I came right up in front of her, waiting for her to speak, but she didn't. She had clear, sky blue eyes that looked kind of empty, but I found myself staring in them, searching them for something, anything.

  Then, I reached out and touched her shoulder.

  She didn't flinch. She didn't move a muscle. She didn't even seem to feel my hand there. She just kept looking at me. It was a strange feeling, staring into someone's eyes, eyes that never blinked and just kept staring back at you. I wondered if she was reading my mind and whether she would be able to know more about what I was thinking than I did. Hell, I didn't even know what I was thinking.

  She finally spoke. "Who are you?"

  "Billy Ray."

  She seemed to think about my name a bit. Then she said, "Can I go with you, Billy Ray?"

  She said it so plain and sweet, I didn't know what she meant.

  "Go with me?" She looked lost but I didn't understand what she wanted.

  She kept her eyes locked on mine, still not blinking. "Just with you?"

  I didn't have no one at home. No momma. No daddy. No family. Just the one dog. She didn't seem like she would be a problem to me, so I picked up her bag and took her hand and we walked out of town and the three miles up Makin Road to my place.

  ********************

  There is no real understanding Charlene. But then I never learned much of anything about women, so I didn't think I had to make work of it. Besides, Charlene don't ever get mad at me. She cooks like the Mama I never had and maybe if she had shown up twenty years ago when I was still a growin' boy she would have made a real man out of me. Now, all them biscuits she puts out make me round in the middle, but I ain't complainin' and she laughs and pats me there, so she ain't complainin' neither.

  My dog likes her and that's saying a lot. He knows good when he comes into good. Charlene likes him, too. She feeds him her food before she even starts into her own, and she lets him keep his place on the bed beside me with no complainin' about no dirty dog gonna be sleepin' in her bed.

  I ain't never had been with a girl before and she says she's never had no one before neither, and when we lie down for the first time, I'm scared and she's scared and I don't know what to do to make her happy. I never hung with the boys and I never went to look at dirty movies so I don't know what girls like, but then Charlene says I'm doing all right and I keep doing what she says is all right till she smiles and whispers my name like I never heard no one say my name before.

  And she adds "Sweet" before it, saying "Sweet Billy Ray, Sweet Billy Ray." She says she likes running her hand through my hair, with its tight curly and steel-pad feel. She likes to rub her face over my hair, too, but if I get stubble on my chin, she makes me go straight to the shaving kit and make it smooth again.

  I don't know why she likes it so rough on the top of my head but not on my face.

  So I don't let her shave her legs like she wants. Her hair there is soft and I like running my hand over it. Sometimes we jest like curlin' up on the bed, forgettin' to get up and do anything, feelin' each other all over until we get so hungry I make Charlene cook something for me. I never had much good in my life before Charlene came, just days of sweeping up the streets in town and heatin' up the frozen food I buy at the Acme and sittin' on the porch with Big Dog.

  Somethin' was always missing from my life but I didn't know it was missing until Charlene came along. Now I finally have someone to talk to besides myself and someone to listen to my stories, and she likes my stories and she asks me to tell 'em to her again and again even though she already knows exactly how they all end.

  ********************

  Charlene won't never leave the house. She won't go to town and do shopping like you would expect girls to do. She never asks about what I do in town when I come home from my work, and even if I tell her about 'bout something happened, she never asks no questions and after a while I just don't even talk about anythin' outside our four walls.

  She's strange, but she's nice, so I let her be whatever way she wants to be. One day, she hung some garlic cloves right inside the front door and when I asked her what she did that for, she told me it was to keep the vampires out. I laughed cause I never heard of no vampires in these parts; lots of ghosts and spirits, but no vampires.

  I thought she was being silly. I should have paid attention to her and left that garlic hanging there. It was the first of the mistakes I made that started all the trouble with Charlene.

  ********************

  He moved in across the road about a month before our second anniversary. That old house across the way had been empty for as long as I remember. Don't know who owned it and never thought of anyone living there. I was the only one who ever lived on this road since my aunty died when I was fourteen and then I jest kept livin' in the house alone till Charlene came if you don't count Big Dog who showed up when I was about twenty.

  ********************

  He was an old guy. He was white like Charlene, but his skin wasn't creamy like hers. Must be he spent his life in the fields and that made him look two shades darker. His hair was long and gnarled up like he didn't know 'bout brushin' it. He had a mustache and a beard that covered most of his face and since his hair hung down long over it, best you could see was just his eyes. I wandered over cross the road and looked at him more closely and he smelt of liquor.

  He nodded and grunted; I guessed it was a hello. Then he walked away and went back around the side of his house. I went back to my side of the road and the first week he lived there, the old man across the road stayed to himself and never set foot outside. I never went back over to his side of the road, and he never came over to ours.

  ********************

  Charlene sat with me on the back porch with our lemonades. It was a hot June day and we could hear Big Dog across the street, barking.

  "What's he barking at?" Charlene asked me. "I've been listening to him bark all week long and I never heard him bark 'cept for when you come back from town at night."

  I told her about the old man who'd moved in. I told her he was her color and he stunk of liquor and he didn't seem too interested in talkin' much. Charlene and I took to sittin' on the back porch in the evening, listenin' to Big Dog cause a ruckus every time that man must have opened his front door. Didn't bother us none; it would have all been fine if the old man
had just stayed over on his side of the road.

  ********************

  The old man suddenly decided to be neighborly; at least that's what I was guessin' when he showed up at the front door. Charlene was in the back bedroom and I guess she didn't hear the knock or she might have told me to tell whoever was knocking to go the hell away. But she wasn't there to tell me and so I opened the door.

  Even worse, I pulled down the garlic that hung in the doorway lest it scare our visitor away. When I opened the door he didn't say nothing, just stood there, so I told him to come on in though I didn't know what I was inviting him in for.

  Charlene must have heard the door open or me talkin' and she came out of the bedroom. She took a few steps into the room and when she saw the old man at the door, she just stood still and didn't offer any greeting. The old man muttered something about sugar, and seein' that Charlene wasn't movin' toward the kitchen, I went over and scooped two cupfuls into a paper bag and brought it to the old man. It took me a minute to get his attention to take the sack because he was looking at Charlene in a way I damn well didn't like.

  I wanted him to go then, and I shoved the paper sack at him and stood between him and Charlene, and he grabbed it out of my hand, turned and left. I never saw him again.

  Charlene stopped talkin' three days later. She stopped askin' to hear my stories. She moved through the day like the hours was pressin' heavy against her. She didn't leave the house to sit on the back porch with me and she took to using a chamber pot rather than the outhouse. She still did the cookin' and the washin', but I began to feel like I was alone in the house with just Big Dog again.

  I figured it was just some temporary thing, that Charlene would come around in a day or so, but nothing changed all that week, or the next week, or the next.

  ********************

  My other mistake was going out for cigarettes on our second anniversary. Charlene made a nice dinner and afterwards I presented her with a Hostess cupcake with a candle in it. She almost smiled and that made me smile and I helped her blow out the candle and I danced around the room with her and it seemed like she was the old Charlene again. I felt like maybe we was going to be happy like we used to be. I should have kept on dancing with her but I wanted some cigarettes cause I had run out, and I wanted to buy Charlene some candy. But to be honest, I probably wouldn't have gone out to get Charlene candy if I hadn't really been craving a cigarette, so it was thinking about me, not her, that let the bad thing happen.

  "I'll be back in a jiffy," I told her and jumped behind the wheel of my truck. I'd just got her for $100 off of Melvin, who owned the liquor store in town, and said his new truck was too sweet to be parked next to that "Piece of Crap" on wheels, his dented Ford pick-up that was almost as old as he was. Piece of Crap may be headed for the junkyard soon, but for now, it was good for someone like me who just needed a ride once in a while if there was somethin' like an emergency. We got no phone to be callin' for an ambulance so if Charlene would get sick or hurt, I needed some way to get to the big city. Piece of Crap was all banged up and made lots of noises I didn't know nothing about, but Mel told me I could pay him $10 a week till I owned the whole truck and if it broke down before I got to the ten-week final payment, then he would give me my money back.

  I really never drove much before, but there ain't no traffic on the dirt road between my house and the town, so I can't kill nobody if I drive bad.

  I walked into Tom's Grocery to get me the cigarettes and candy. "I need me some of that candy you got there for my girlfriend," I said, pointing to the jar near the cash register. "And I need me some smokes." I realized for the first time since Charlene showed up, I had said something about her to someone else. I guess I'd always been afraid saying she was with me might jinx her staying.

  Lizzie raised her eyebrow and looked surprised as all get out, handed me over my cigarettes and a handful of the little drops in the jar. I grinned and walked back to my truck, feeling like a grown man for the first time in my thirty-four years of life.

  I must have smiled all the way home cause my jaws was achin' when I turned up the mountain. Then I saw the smoke. There was a glow up toward the house and it already felt hotter as I drove up the hill. I knew I was panicking cause I was breathing way too fast. I pressed my foot to the floor but the truck didn't seem to know how to go any faster and it took what seemed like an hour to climb that steep hill.

  I couldn't see over the top of it so I didn't know if the whole forest was on fire. Finally, Piece of Crap bumped over the last rise in the road and I could see a house on fire. Took me a moment for the relief to wash over me that it wasn't mine. It was the old man's house across the way. The thing was blazin' pretty darn good and I could hardly make out the structure, but lucky no wind was blowing and the little house just looked like a well-kept fire someone was watchin' as they burnt up a bunch of scrap wood and old furniture. As I pulled up, I could make out the stove and a couch through the flames, but I didn't see the old man in there.

  I thought maybe he had gone to town when the place went up but then I hadn't see him on the road either way so I figured he should be somewhere around. He wasn't the type to sleep during the day, so the fire couldn't have caught him unawares. From my porch, I could always see him movin' around, nervous as a cat, probably stinking of drink, but the drink never seemed to put him down. I wasn't even sure the man slept at night.

  As I pulled up to our house, I didn't see him outside and Charlene wasn't outside neither. I jumped out of the truck and raced into the house. "Charlene! Where are you, Charlene?"

  "I'm right here," she said and she was. She was sitting just inside the front door looking out the window and she looked happy. She had a slight smile on her face and it was then that I realized she had spoken for the first time in a month.

  "Is the old man in there?" I asked her.

  "He's in there," she answered. She smiled bigger this time.

  "Did you try to get him out?"

  "No."

  I stopped asking her questions and together we watched the house burn itself to the ground. Our house was ungodly hot from the summer heat and what with the fire burning so close, we sat there with sweat pouring down our faces. But we sat there anyway, mesmerized by the fire. I was just happy to be with Charlene, a Charlene with a smile on her face who was talking again. Charlene who just seemed to be happy watching her neighbor's house burn down. And if she was happy, so was I.

  ********************

  Sheriff Hathaway showed up in time to watch the last bit of the flames sputter out. I joined him on the road.

  "What the hell happened?" he asked, wiping his eyes with a hanky to get the ash out of them.

  I shook my head. "I dunno. When I left for town, the house was there. When I came back, it was near gone."

  The Sheriff squinted through the smoke over at the remains of the house." Do you know anything about the old man who moved in there? When I first run up on him in town, he told me his name was Otis Barnes, and since no one ever had a complaint about him, I never asked much more about him. He bought his groceries and liquor once a week. That was it. I passed him a few times on the road." The Sheriff shook his head. "I got no clue where he come from or what he was doing here. No one seems to know."

  I couldn't tell him nothing more. "Never talked to me. Kept to his side of the road." I didn't tell him how his moving in seemed to have made Charlene go silent.

  The Sheriff nodded toward the house. "I hear you got yourself a girl?"

  I grinned. "Yep."

  "Who's the girl?"

  I told him her name. "Charlene."

  "What's her last name?"

  Took me a while to think about that question. I could feel the Sheriff's eyes on me but I didn't have no answer to tell him. She'd never told me her last name and I guess I never asked it.

  I looked at my feet. "Don't know."

  I heard the Sheriff sigh.

  "Where'd she come from?"

  "Don'
t know."

  The Sheriff look exasperated.

  "Come on, Billy Ray. Take me on inside to meet this girl of yours." He opened the front door and I walked him into the house.

  I pointed toward Charlene in the chair next to the window. "There she is. There's my Charlene."

  The Sheriff took off his hat. "Ma'am." He nodded at her.

  She nodded back. "Sir." At least Charlene was still speaking.

  "You see what happened?"

  Charlene nodded again, "There was a fire."

  "Did you see how it started?"

  "It just started." She still had that faraway look in her eye.

  The Sheriff pursed his lips. He ran his hanky over his face and neck. He was perspiring a lot, as stifling as it was with that heat in the air.

  "Did you see the old man leave the house?"

  Charlene shook her head. "No."

  "Do you know if the old man was in the house?" The Sheriff emphasized "was in the house."

  "Yes."

  "Yes, you know, or, yes, he was?"

  "Yes." She stated again. "Yes, he was."

  "Was he drunk?"

  "Probably."

  Sheriff Hathaway looked like he was becoming irritated.

  "Did you try to save him?"

  "No."

  I pulled on the Sheriff's arm. "Come out on the porch, Sheriff. I need to talk to you." I didn't like the way he was looking at Charlene, not understanding her.

  The air on the porch, although it was still hot from the fire, felt good compared to the air in the house.

  The Sheriff wiped at his face again. His hanky was drenched so it likely didn't help much.