Coldwater Revenge, James Ross [books for 9th graders txt] 📗

Joe returned his chair legs to the floor and retrieved a sheet of scribbled notes from his folder. “Mrs. Flynn says she found a bunch of wet clothes in the rectory laundry the morning Billy’s body was fished out of the lake. You want to explain that?”

Gauss smiled. “It wouldn’t have been a good idea to be seen driving up to Pearce’s hovel in the church station wagon, Sheriff. I rowed there in my skiff.”

“Did you fall out?”

“Very nearly. Some maniac in a speed boat practically cut me in two as I came into Wilson Cove.”

Joe watched Gauss light another cigarette—his fourth in ten minutes. “Too bad Billy was gone when you got there. You might have saved him.”

“He was beyond redemption, Sheriff.”

“Did he leave a note, or anything to explain why he wasn’t there or when he might be back?”

“Not that I noticed.”

“Did you notice anything at all? Anything unusual?”

“Just that he was supposed to be there and wasn’t. Though in itself, that wasn’t unusual—Billy Pearce telling an untruth.”

Joe removed a sheaf of photographs from a manila envelope and handed one to the priest. “Does anything in this picture look familiar to you?”

Gauss examined the photo and moved his head from side to side. “No.”

“Do you notice anything unusual in it?”

“It looks like the rumpus room of a frat house after an all-night party, if that’s what you mean.”

“But you don’t recognize the room or anything of its contents?”

“Should I?”

He put the photo back in the envelope. “Okay, Father. You can quit fan dancing now. You just screwed up.”

Gauss inhaled a lung full of smoke and ignored the invitation to respond.

“That photo was taken in Billy Pearce’s boathouse loft a few hours after his body was pulled from the lake. If you were there when you say you were, that picture is what his room looked like.”

Gauss opened his mouth to speak.

Joe cut him off. “Don’t say a word. Just listen.”

Gauss drew a lung full of smoke and waited.

“You never made it to the boathouse. The boat you say almost swamped you was hauling Billy Pearce, trussed up in a sleeping bag. Only it wasn’t going fast enough to cut anything in two. It was just put-putting slowly through Wilson Cove, like any other boat going through that rock garden in the dark. Then along came the Coldwater Patrol Boat—me—and the boat with Billy turned off its engine and lights. If you were there in your rowboat, it may even have floated right up to you. You would have heard voices and seen Billy’s sister shove his head over the side to keep him quiet.”

Joe eyeballed his quarry. “When I turned on the patrol boat spotlight, you would have seen Billy clearly, hanging over the side. And he would have seen you in your little rowboat, if that’s where you were. Maybe that’s why he started to struggle and make noise.

“When I pulled the patrol boat alongside the Pearce’s Chris Craft, I heard a thud and then a few seconds later a splash. If the splash was Billy going into the water, then the thud was him hitting something first. It was a long couple of seconds between the thud and the splash, Father.”

Gauss opened his mouth. Joe held up his hand.

“The way I piece it together, Billy Pearce fell right out of that boat and into your lap.”

Gauss stubbed out his cigarette, started to light another and then seeing it was the last in the pack, put it back. “Then what?” he asked, sarcastically. “Am I supposed to have muttered a brief prayer before helping my adversary on to his final resting place?”

Joe gestured at the portrait of Pius XII. “You said that Pope missed his chance when he had it. That he froze in the face of evil. I figure that’s another way of saying that you think you’d act differently, if you had the chance. I think you did. I think you had that chance and you acted.”

Gauss folded his hands as if in prayer and propped his chin on tee-peed fingers. “And what is our Sheriff going to do with his own crisis of conscience—if he believes this clever theory?”

“Don’t bait me, Padre.”

“Would that be unwise?”

“Not even Billy was that reckless.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Nothing.”

“I see.”

“No you don’t. So let me spell it out.” Joe put his hands on the conference table and locked eyes with the priest. “What I care about is keeping Coldwater safe. I do that by locking up the dangerous and letting God, or whoever, take care of the guilty. You’re an arrogant son of a bitch; but you’re not dangerous. So I could give a rat’s ass what you did, or didn’t do, out there on the lake that night. I also know that you don’t corrupt little boys.”

“His Eminence would be happy to hear you say that.”

“Maybe I’ll tell him. But I want something from you first.”

Gauss shook the last cigarette from the pack, lit it and inhaled deeply. “What?”

“I want you to use that priestly influence of yours to get my brother off that phony financial merry-go-round he’s got himself on. Susan Pearce isn’t around to get in your way anymore. Finish what you started.”

“Anything else?”

“Your silence. You don’t tell Tommy any of this. Not ever. You let slip one crumb and he’ll figure out the rest in a nanosecond.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Gauss smiled. “You’re walking away from quite a coup, Sheriff, if your theories are correct. You must love your brother very much.”

“I’m not here for love of the church.”

“Are you afraid that one more fallen hero might be too much…?”

“That’s right, Father. You and our old man put a clamp on my brother’s head so tight the poor bastard can’t feel without thinking first. Lay this on him and he’ll never throw it off.”

“You don’t know your brother as well as you think.”

Joe took another envelope from his jacket pocket and dropped it on the table just outside the