SAFELY BURIED Chapter 13: Return Trip

Edna Mae sniffled loudly. “He ought to be horsewhipped. She still has dreams about it.”

“Who wouldn’t?” I said. “It was a terrible ordeal.”

I had never been a big fan of Chuck Martin. He was a foul-mouthed street brawler, as Carl Eggemann had said, but that was light years away from sodomizing a young girl and threatening to kill her if she talked.

Edna Mae’s eyes were red, her lips pinched together. “We would’ve pressed charges against him, but it was only Paula’s word against his, and we didn’t have any proof. Who would’ve believed us anyway? They had me in jail, and Paula was in a foster home.” She began to cry again and took a crumpled tissue out of her pocket. “And if Paula talked, I hate to think where she’d be now—in a cemetery.”

I wanted to believe Paula’s story. I did believe it. Even so, I had to face the possibility that she had made it up, or embellished the facts.

“Paula,” I said, “when did this happen?”

“I told you . . . when I was fifteen.”

“How old are you now?”

“Twenty-seven. Why?”

She was a little bit younger than I had guessed the other night. “So twelve years ago, 1998.”

“Okay.”

“I believe Martin was first deputy in the sheriff’s department then. He was elected sheriff in 2002, and he held the office until the end of 2006. But he’s no longer sheriff of Meridian County.”

“Good.”

“That means you don’t have to be afraid of talking to the police.”

“That’s what you think. He still has connections.”

“Carl Eggemann is sheriff now. He’s a good man. Nothing will happen to you if you talk to him. You should tell him your story.”

“No thanks.”

“I know you’re scared. I don’t blame you. But—”

“You want me to get my head blown off?”

“Don’t you want Martin to pay for what he did to you?”

“He’ll never go to jail.”

Edna Mae said, “The statute of limitations probably ran out by now.”

I shook my head. “Forcible sodomy on a minor . . . threatening her with murder. . . . I don’t think so. I’m no lawyer, but I don’t think there is a statute of limitations on that. I can ask the prosecutor.”

“Paula’s scared,” Edna Mae said. “You don’t just get over the kind of thing she went through. It leaves a scar.”

“I know.”

“No you don’t,” Paula said. “You’re busy telling me I got nothing to worry about. Jesus Christ! Once I open my mouth, I’m dead. I never should have told you.”

“I understand why you’re scared,” I said. “But sooner or later you’ll have to talk to the police. I just want you to know you don’t have to be afraid of all of them.”

“Forget it!” Paula yelled, waving her hands and twisting out of the chair. “I ain’t going to no cops! Chuck Martin is still around. I seen him yesterday for Christ’s sake! He was at Wayne and Cheryl’s, poking around outside. You showed up not long after he left.” She gaped at me. “Why the hell do you think I took your car? I had to get out of there before he’d find me.” She stood there, angry and rigid, but the way her cast angled to the side made her seem incongruously relaxed.

“Where were you when you saw him?” I asked.

“Where he couldn’t see me.”

A longhaired calico cat strolled into the room from the kitchen and stopped and stared at us. Then it moseyed over to the far end of the sofa and began sharpening its claws on it.

“Stop it, Callie,” Paula said. She took a couple of Frankenstein steps toward the sofa and nudged the cat away with her plaster-wrapped foot.

“Were you inside the house or out in the barn?” I said.

“Why do you want to know? So you can put it in the paper?”

“I’m just curious,” I said. “I can’t help admiring how you managed to evade the police.”

She looked at her mother. “Why’d you have to bring him here?” She turned back to me. “I wasn’t in the house, okay? Now let’s drop it.”

Edna Mae quickly said, “Phil, open the envelope I gave you. See if it’s enough.”

I wanted to pin Paula down even more. I wondered why she was unwilling to say exactly where she had been hiding. Was she keeping her secret intact in case she returned someday? Why would she ever go back there if she was afraid of getting caught?

I let it drop, for now.

I picked up the envelope, which still lay beside me. I tore off one end and found five twenty-dollar bills inside. “Thanks,” I said, “but it’s way too much money. You don’t have to pay me anything.”

“Yes we do,” Edna Mae said. “You take the money.”

After some wrangling, we settled on twenty bucks and the full tank of gas.

“Would you like some lunch, Phil?” Edna Mae said. “How about a nice bowl of soup?”

“That sounds good,” I said, “but first I think I’d better call the bus station and find out when there’s a bus from Campbellsville to Indy today. You’ll have to catch it if you want to get back here in time to go to work tonight.”

I called the terminal in downtown Indianapolis and learned that a bus from Louisville was due in Campbellsville at 3:20 p.m. It was 1:15 now, so we had time for a quick lunch.

We adjourned to the kitchen. Four rickety spindle-back chairs with caned seats stood around an oak pedestal table. I said I liked the chairs, and Edna Mae proudly proclaimed, “They was solid black when we got them, but Paula refinished them. It took her I don’t know how long.”

I half wished Paula could drive back with me to Campbellsville while her mother drove the other car. I wanted to talk to her some more, but it was better if she stayed at home. I didn’t want to take a chance that someone might see us at the bus stop.

While we were eating, I asked Paula how she had broken into my car yesterday and started the engine.

“Piece of cake,” she said. “You left the windows open an inch. All I had to do was poke a stick in and push the lock button on the other side.”

“Did you hotwire the engine then?”

She leaned over the table and slurped her chicken-vegetable soup. “Sure did.”

“Where’d you learn how to do that?”

“On the Internet.”

“How many cars have you stolen?”

“Yours is the first. But I never meant to keep it, or strip it. That’s the truth.”

“Okay,” I said. “By the way, do you have a job now, Paula? Can you work with that cast on?”

She shook her head. “Not since I broke my leg. Before that I had a job in a vet’s office. I don’t know if I’ll get it back. Right now I’m on unemployment.”

“What kind of work did you do?”

“I washed and groomed the animals.”

“Did you like it?”

“It was okay.”

I asked Edna Mae what kind of work she did.

“I clerk in a package-liquor store,” she said.

“What time must you go in tonight?”

“Seven.”

“We’d better get going then.”

Edna Mae went looking for her purse, and I said goodbye to Paula. She seemed sullen and edgy. Her eyes looked tired, yet she seemed ready to fly apart like a broken spring. “I hope you get rid of that cast soon,” I said.

“You and me both.”

“Maybe we’ll see each other again one of these days.”

“I doubt it.”

From somewhere Edna Mae called, “Never say never.”

I held out my hand. Paula hesitated, then took it, and we shook. Her hand felt like a little girl’s in mine.

I gave Edna Mae a key to the Civic. I figured I ought to drive the Focus. If Edna Mae got in a wreck, it would be hard to explain why she was driving a car that belonged to the Gleaner. On the other hand, if she got in a wreck with my car . . . well, I’d think of something.

She chauffeured me back to College Avenue, where I was happy to see the Focus was still there. I asked her to stay behind me on I-65, but if we got separated we should meet at the rest area south of Edinburgh.

We headed south under long, soft-focus clouds streaming in from the west.

For the first half of the trip I passed the time by plotting where we would leave my car. About halfway home I pulled off the interstate at the rest area and told Edna Mae the plan I had dreamed up. She was to leave the Civic in the parking lot of the Frankenmuth Funeral Home, which was one block past the bus stop in Campbellsville.

For the second half of the trip I thought about the foster home where Paula had been sent. Was it still in business? How many kids besides Paula and Rickie had been molested from its doors? What a story it would make, if I could substantiate what she had told me. I wondered how many more stories she could give me.

The Greyhound bus stop in Campbellsville was a self-service laundry across from a strip mall. The mall was not the best place to dump the car—it might go unnoticed for weeks. With Edna Mae on my tail, I passed the bus stop and drove another block to the funeral home, a large building that looked like a southern plantation house. I slowed down to make sure Edna Mae did not miss it, but I did not stop. In my rearview mirror I watched her turn into the parking lot next to the funeral home. She was to leave the car there and take the key with her, then walk to the bus stop. She could mail me the key when she got home, or she could throw it away—I had a spare. Sooner or later the undertaker would notice the Civic and call the police. I’d have to practice acting surprised when they would call to say they had recovered my stolen car.

I just hoped Edna Mae would remember not to leave the key in the car. I had told the police my keys were in my pocket when the car was stolen.

Was I breaking the law? Was it a crime not to tell the police that my car had already been returned? Was I obstructing justice? Perhaps. But I could not tell the police about Paula and Edna Mae. I had given my word. Besides, they were confidential sources. I had to protect my sources.