Page 43 of Left Behind

He got his money first, put it inside the lining of the duffel bag, rolled up the clothing he was taking, and packed it in the bag, then proceeded to shave himself bald and shave his facial whiskers into a vandyke beard. He owned two pairs of shoes. One pair was blood-splattered, so he put them in the bottom of a garbage bag, then stuffed the garbage from his kitchen in on top of it, emptied all of the disposable food from the fridge into a box, and carried it all out to the dumpster.

Then he carried his things to the truck and drove to the bus station, rented a locker, and stashed his belongings until he had time to get back, and headed for a car wash with a pair of gloves in the seat beside him.

The sun was going down when he finished cleaning the truck, both inside and out. He got back in, still wearing the gloves, and drove the truck to the alley behind Henley’s estate and parked it, threw the keys beneath the mat, locked the truck, and took off walking.

His knee was throbbing, and as soon as he was far enough away, he called a cab to take him to the bus station. After his arrival, he retrieved his belongings, bought a ticket to Miami, Florida, and some food to tide him over on the ride, then sat down to wait. It was just over an hour and a half before that bus departed.

When it finally arrived, Gunny loaded his suitcase. When he boarded the bus, he went all the way to the back, chose a seat in the dark in the far corner, and settled in. Less than fifteen people boarded with him and scattered about the bus to suit themselves. It had been years since Gunny had been on a bus, and he wasn’t talking to anybody. He didn’t want to be remembered. He wasn’t here to make friends.

Once the bus was on the road, and Bowling Green was behind him, he pulled out his burner phone and made a call to the Bowling Green PD.

As soon as the call was answered, he started talking.

“I got a message for the cop in charge of Billy Eggers’s murder, so either record this or start writing. Billy Eggers was a friend. DNA don’t prove anything except me and Billy had a fight, and it wouldn’t have been the first time. It don’t prove who shot him. The gun that killed him belongs to Carl Henley. The truck the shooter drove belongs to his son, and I ain’t goin’ down for their deeds.”

Gunny hung up, even as the person on the line was trying to talk to him. He’d just leveled the playing field. It was time for the Henley duo to sit in the hot seat and see how they liked it.

***

When Detective Gardner received the email and the security footage of Trapper’s Bar from Sheriff Woodley, he was shocked, but after hearing the phone call they got from Lonny Pryor, he realized Pryor’s phone call might be on the level, and all of this had just blown a great big hole in their theory. In all the years they’d been trying to find something to link Carl and Junior Henley to illegal activities, this might be the first break they’d been given.

After running info through the DMV, the description Carey Eggers had given of the truck the shooter was driving turned out to be a match for Junior Henley’s truck. And after some online research, they had found photos of Junior standing beside that truck, with the rebel flag in plain sight.

Then Gardner began checking gun registrations and learned Carl Henley owned a number of guns, one of which was a Beretta M9, an older model from the 1990s. Casings from that gun would match the type of one found beneath a chair near Eggers’s body and another found near where Carey Eggers was shot.

Knowing he was skating on thin ice, Gardner wrote up a search warrant for Henley’s home. And a warrant to search Junior’s truck for DNA, using the security footage from Trapper’s Bar and Grill as proof that Junior Henley was fishing for information about Carey Eggers. The warrant pointed out that the only way Junior would have known to ask about her welfare was that he already knew what had happened to her and Billy and was trying to find out if the witness to Billy’s murder was still alive.

***

Lilah Perry brought doughnuts to work, and after taking one for herself, left the rest of them in the PD break room. She knew the officers were already in the morning briefing, but they’d find the doughnuts. They never lasted past noon.

She sat down at her desk with the doughnut and a cup of coffee and booted up her computer terminal. There were always files to be entered and records to update, and after finishing her sweet, she wiped her hands and got to work.

It wasn’t long before she came across a report from an ambulance run up on Pope Mountain that brought in a young woman who’d been shot in the back. She grimaced, thinking about the brutality of humanity, and then noticed the date. It was the night of the big rainstorm. The same night Lonny had shown up at her house with his injured knee. Then she shrugged it off. One thing had nothing to do with another. One of the officers even commented about having some roof damage from the wind, and the clerk where she bought groceries mentioned the wind broke a limb off in their backyard and fell on their roof. It had been a bad night for a lot of people, and with that thought, she went back to work.

***

Conway, Arkansas: July 5

Seven-year-old Ava Dalton learned a long time ago how to shrink herself up as tiny as a mouse by staying silent in the background of her mother’s life. Today Ava was wishing she’d learned how to become invisible, too, because Corina had been raving and throwing things for an hour, all because Miss Mattie dropped dead.

“Most inconsiderate bitch I ever knew!” Corina shouted, and threw a shoe across the room. “I finally get the best gig of my life and now this!”

Ava wanted to slip into the bathroom and close the door, but she was afraid to call attention to herself because she was the problem in Corina’s life.

She had known all her life that Corina never wanted to be a mother, and yet, here they were. Before Miss Mattie dropped dead, Corina used to dump her at Mattie’s house for days, sometimes weeks, before she’d show up again. And when Mattie was unavailable, like the times when she was in the hospital for her asthma, Corina would call everyone she knew until someone said yes, and that’s where Ava would be.

Ava didn’t have a home, and everything she owned fit in a single garbage bag. Corina had given birth to her as a ploy to get child support and more welfare money, but then the father bailed on her, and all she had left was a kid she didn’t want. Ava wasn’t sure what was going to happen to her now, but it didn’t look good, and she was as scared as she’d ever been, watching Corina going through her call list.

Corina was pretty frantic, too, but in a whole other way and for a whole other reason. She needed a place to dump the kid, but nobody was taking her calls. Maybe she’d overplayed her poor-single-mother hand once too often. She turned, glaring at the tiny blond huddled in the corner.

“Why me, God!” she screamed. “Why me?” and threw the other shoe.

She was at her wits’ end when someone knocked on her door. She ran, flung it open, and in grand drama fashion, threw her hand up in the air. “Junie! Am I glad to see you! I thought you and Pete were on vacation!”

Junie Sumner strolled in with an unlit cigarette in one hand and her cell phone in the other, wearing the remains of a healing sunburn beneath a skin-tight white tank top and cutoff jean shorts.

“We just got back, and you will not believe who we saw!”

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