telling me that I gotta pay up, that it’s making ’em look bad, that they can’t keep carrying me. I kept telling them that I’d give them the money as soon as I got it. Meanwhile, while all this is going on, Otis is real quiet, you know, like he’s really listening to what I have to say. He had this sort of cool expression, but he was the only one who seemed to care about anything I was saying. So I start kind of explaining the situation to him and he starts nodding and the others pipe down. Right after I finished, I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t say anything for a long while. Then he leans forward and he says that if I don’t pay up, the same thing is gonna happen to me that happened to Missy Ryan. Except that this time, they’d run me over again.”
Bingo.
So Sims was telling the truth. Interesting.
Charlie’s face, though, showed nothing.
Either way, he knew that was the easy part. Getting him to talk about it wasn’t what he was worried about anyway. He knew the hard part was still coming.
“When was this?”
Earl thought about it. “January, I guess. It was cold out.”
“So you’re there, sitting across from him, and he says this to you. How did you react when he said it?”
“I didn’t know what to think. I know I didn’t say anything.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Of course.” Big nod, as if emphasizing his point.
Too big?
Charlie glanced toward his hand, examining his nails. “Why?”
Earl leaned forward, the chain clinking against the table. “Why else would he say something like that? Besides, you know what kind of guy he is. He’d do something like that in a heartbeat.”
Maybe. Maybe not.
“Again, why do you think that?”
“You’re the sheriff—you tell me.”
“What I think isn’t important. It’s what you think that matters.”
“I told you what I thought.”
“You believed him.”
“Yes,” he said.
“And you thought he’d do the same to you?”
“He said it, didn’t he?”
“So you were frightened, right?”
“Yes,” he snapped.
Getting impatient?
“When did you get arrested? For stealing the car, I mean.”
The change of subject threw Earl for a moment.
“End of June.”
Charlie nodded as if this made sense, as if he’d checked it out beforehand. “What do you like to drink? When you’re not in prison, I mean.”
“What does that matter?”
“Beer, wine, liquor. I’m just curious.”
“Beer mainly.”
“Were you drinking that night?”
“Just a couple. Not enough to be drunk.”
“Before you got there? Maybe you were a little buzzed. . . .”
Earl shook his head. “No, I had them while I was there.”
“How long did you stay at the table with the Timsons?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s an easy question. Were you there for five minutes? Ten? Half an hour?”
“I can’t remember.”
“But long enough for a couple beers.”
“Yeah.”
“Even though you were afraid.”
He finally saw what Charlie was getting at. Charlie waited patiently, his expression bland.
“Yeah,” Earl said. “They’re not the type of people you just walk away from.”
“Oh,” Charlie said. He seemed to accept that, and he brought his fingers to his chin. “Okay ... so let me make sure I understand. Otis told you—no, suggested—that they killed Missy, and you thought they’d do the same to you because you owed them a bunch of money. So far, so good?”
Earl nodded warily. Charlie reminded him of that damn prosecutor who’d put him away.
“And you knew what they were talking about, right? With Missy, I mean. You knew she’d died, right?”
“Everyone knew.”
“Did you read about it in the papers?”
“Yeah.”
Charlie opened his palms. “So, why didn’t you tell the police about it?”
“Yeah, right,” he sneered. “Like you guys would have believed me.”
“But we should believe you now.”
“He said it. I was there. He said he killed Missy.”
“Will you testify to that?”
“Depends on the deal I get.”
Charlie cleared his throat. “Okay, let’s change gears for a second. You got caught stealing a car, right?”
Earl nodded again.
“And Otis was responsible—you say—for you getting caught.”
“Yeah. They were supposed to meet me out by the old Falls Mill, but they never showed. I ended up taking the fall.”
Charlie nodded. He remembered that from the trial.
“Did you still owe him money?”
“Yeah.”
“How much?”
Earl shifted in his seat. “A couple thousand.”
“Isn’t that what you owed before?”
“About the same.”
“Were you still afraid they’d kill you? Even after six months?”
“It was all I could think about.”
“And you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them, right?”
“I told you that already.”
Charlie leaned forward. “Then why,” he asked, “didn’t you try to use this information to lighten your sentence? Or