Do Unto Others

Shannon wasn’t a body, I reminded myself. She was alive. For now. I felt cold, despite the spring warmth outside. Junebug squeezed my shoulder when I was done. “You okay?” For the first time in all this he sounded like my old friend and rival. I looked up at him with gratitude (not a common occurrence with me) and he smiled grimly. “I just can’t believe this, Junebug. What the hell is going on here?” One of Junebug’s officers, the nervous one with the cropped hair that’d been at the library, stuck his head around the corner. “Busted window in the back bedroom, Chief,” he reported crisply. “Looks like the pane was smashed and the window forced up from outside.” “Thanks. Keep checking around; let me know what you find.” Junebug shook his head, surveying the wrecked room. He walked through the mess, and I followed him. The destruction wasn’t quite complete. One shelf of cheap glass over a secretary-style bureau glittered intact, and another row of Bibles stood on the top-most shelf, probably out of the attacker’s reach. Pictures on one wall, of a younger Beta, a far primmer-looking Shannon in her Baylor graduation gown, and of a nearsighted-looking couple from the Forties peered back at us, still hanging straight from the wall. Shards from a china collection that had seen far better days crunched under my feet. Junebug glanced back at me. “Maybe you were right, Jordy. Beta must’ve been hidin’ somethin’ in here. This ain’t from any struggle Shannon had with her attacker. Somebody was either looking for something or being a vandal.” “If someone broke in, Shannon must’ve walked in on them,” I guessed. “She told me she had an appointment with Reverend Hufnagel before she was meeting us back here. She must’ve surprised the intruder.” “Is that the story you’re peddling now, Poteet?” a nasal voice behind me demanded. Billy Ray Bummel sauntered in like he owned the place. He sniffed the air, like a wine connoisseur inhaling tenderly over a glass of vintage red.

“There’s been a crime here, I do believe.” I was ready to tell him the only crime was his continued employment by Bonaparte County, but Junebug had his own ax to grind. “Lay off Jordy, Billy Ray. He didn’t have anything to do with this.” Billy Ray whirled on the law like it was a misbehaving dog. “And how are you so sure about that, Chief? Let me remind you that Mr. Poteet here has found both members of the Harcher family dead in the past two days.” “Shannon’s not dead,” I argued. He waved off that technicality and tried to get as close to my face as his stunted height would allow. “Not yet. And why not? Because you’re a lousy shot, probably. Because Chief Moncrief here caught you before you could snuff out that poor young thing’s life. What is it that spawns your violence against women-folk, Poteet?” He was about to see what spawned my violence toward balding, onion-breathed lawyers.

Junebug intervened. “Stop it, Billy Ray. Jordy, you take two steps back and don’t pay him heed.” There was a snapping noise and I saw Junebug pulling on plastic gloves. “Billy Ray, Jordy was on the phone with me immediately before all this happened. He wouldn’t have had time to get over here, trash this room, and shoot Shannon.” “We are not talking about running across Houston here, Junebug. We are talking about being three streets over. He would have had plenty of time.”

Billy Ray fumed, the struggle of doing such calculations draining his energy. Junebug began picking through the debris of Beta Harcher’s den carefully, not looking at Billy Ray. “Nonsense.” He told Billy Ray about me finding out what Beta had told Josh, bolstering the theory that Beta was using blackmail to build funds for her proposed church.

Billy Ray didn’t care for that theory. He turned back on me. “You’ve spun a might tricky web here, Poteet,” he sneered. “I guess you think havin’ lived in the big city, you’re going to outfox us reg’lar folk.