Furnace. Muriel Gray
leaned forward, his voice menacingly conspiratorial. ‘Yeah, it’s real lucky. ’Cos if we thought that you’d been drivin’ for more than the legal ten hours when you killed that little baby, I guess I don’t know what the sheriff might do.’
Josh stared back, trying to look unmoved. The deputy hissed, ‘You’re gonna get a fine that’ll make that shaven head of yours curl the goddamn hair it got left. You’re goin’ to think about how poor you are every time you open your log book.’
‘It was a mistake.’
The deputy looked back at him with naked contempt. ‘Sheriff needs a final statement.’
He got up and left the room. Clearly, the impromptu interview had been nothing more than a device to work out his anger at an obvious injustice. If things had been different, Josh wondered how many teeth he might be missing right now, how many broken ribs he might be nursing after having ‘fallen’ in his cell. There was no doubt. They had been trying their damnedest as he slept to nail him with something, and they had failed.
Josh screwed shut his eyes and clenched his teeth. Ten hours? Try thirty-six. The lie was more intolerable for being a lie that could never be uncovered. Only Josh Spiller knew he hadn’t slept. Did it really matter? He hadn’t killed the baby. That woman, that nightmare of a creature, had killed it. How would a night’s sleep have altered that?
Unless …
The tiny seed of doubt that he might have fallen asleep for a split second, for that crucial life-changing, life-ending second, wormed its way back into his mind. He slammed it down. No. He knew what he’d seen. A woman, a mad evil woman, had deliberately murdered a child.
He composed himself and forced himself to concentrate on waiting. For what, he was unsure, but the process of sitting still and expectantly was surprisingly calming. It was out of his hands. Someone, some unseen witness, would have told the police about the woman in the suit and they would be out there looking for her, if indeed they hadn’t already got her locked up. If they could trace Jezebel’s whereabouts to the parking lot last night, surely they would already have her behind bars. Maybe she was in the next cell. He would just wait and see.
He didn’t have to wait long.
The door opened and the square sheriff entered with two deputies, each carrying a cup of coffee. The sheriff carried two, one of which he put down in front of Josh.
‘Coffee. Take cream?’
Josh nodded his head dumbly and cupped his hands around the warm styrofoam as the man serviced his coffee with some mini-cream cartons from his pocket.
The sheriff sat down on the chair opposite and the two other men leaned against the wall, but their presence was casual rather than threatening.
‘I introduced myself earlier, Mr Spiller, but I guess you were pretty spaced out by the whole thing so let me do it again. I’m Sheriff John Pace.’
Josh looked at him expectantly, hoping by the tone of his voice that he brought not a further reprimand, but some news.
John Pace, however, looked back as though the reminder of his name was all that mattered here. When he realized that the man was going to say no more, Josh spoke:
‘Did you get her?’
Pace looked down at his cup and then glanced quickly out the corner of his eye at one of the deputies. The look, unlike that of his deputy before him, was one of disappointment, of someone letting him down. He sighed before he replied.
‘Who might that be, Mr Spiller?’
Josh’s hands, still cupped round the coffee, changed to fists.
‘The woman. The one who pushed the baby under the truck.’
The sheriff cleared his throat. ‘Mr Spiller,’ he hesitated, then said, ‘Can I call you …?’ he fished Josh’s licence from his top pocket and peered at it. ‘Josh? That’s it?’
Josh stared at him as if he were mad.
‘Josh,’ the sheriff continued with renewed confidence. ‘I know how shook up you are, but we need to pull ourselves together here a piece. We already got statements from the witnesses. We just need yours. You know we’ll have to fine you for your log book violation. There’s an eight-hour shut-down goes with that. Guess you know. But since you’ve been out of action damn near that, I reckon once you’ve paid up you’ll be free to go. We know you stopped where you said.’ He hesitated. ‘But ’fore I let you leave I need to know you’re goin’ to be okay. Shock makes you tired. Confused. Whole bunch of stuff. You feel better after your sleep?’
Josh searched the sheriff’s face for irony and oddly found none. He fought back his guilt.
‘What did they say?’
‘Who?’
‘The witnesses.’
John Pace leaned forward and his hand lifted slightly as if he wanted to put it on Josh’s arm. He stopped himself when the look in Josh’s eye warned him that he didn’t want to be touched.
‘No one’s blaming you, son. It was an accident. You weren’t speeding, you weren’t drinking. Just an accident.’
Josh swallowed. He spoke quickly with panic in his voice.
‘A woman pushed the baby under the truck. Deliberately.’
The sheriff was shaking his head.
‘The mother left the brakes off the stroller and the wind caught it. She told us so. Saw the whole thing herself. You think she’d lie about a thing like this?’
It was Josh’s turn to shake his head. Pace looked perplexed.
‘Why you doin’ this to yourself, fella?’
‘I can describe her. In detail. I want it on my statement.’
‘I’m goin’ to say this again. Shock plays tricks on you.’
‘I know what I saw.’
The sheriff sighed deeply and turned to one of the men leaning against the wall behind him.
‘Archie?’
The man opened a notepad, pulled out another chair and joined the two men at the table. John Pace ran a hand over his short sandy hair and sat back in his chair.
‘So?’
Pace gestured at him like a sultan allowing a feast to commence.
Josh took a sip of the bitter coffee in front of him, nervously coughed his throat clear and told them it all again.
He spoke slowly and deliberately, and when once more it came to describing the woman he paused, making sure that the man with the notepad had caught up with his tale. The deputy looked up expectantly, holding his pen like a high-school student paying attention to a dull but insistent lecturer. Josh concentrated on his description of the woman, making it more detailed than when he’d first blurted out his hysterical, ragged tale hours ago, and as he spoke he noticed a change come about the men. The one writing glanced across at John Pace who in turn narrowed his eyes. When Josh had finished Pace sat back in his chair and looked thoughtfully across the table. He nodded to himself for a second or two, then rose slowly to his feet and made for the door. He pointed at Josh as he left the room.
‘Hang on there. Got somethin’ for you.’
Josh blinked at the man’s back then looked quizzically at the two men left in the room. They returned his stare with the dull gazes of small-town policemen and Josh looked elsewhere to avoid those vacant eyes. They waited several minutes until Pace re-entered the room clutching a piece of paper. It had ragged fragments of Scotch tape adhering to three comers, with the fourth corner missing, and looked like it had just been ripped clumsily from a wall.
Pace sat at the table, looked down at his prize for a second, moved Josh’s cup to one side then slid the paper in front of him. Josh looked down