Page 336 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

A nurse came in. She spotted them talking and motioned that she would come back.

“There was a tree in the back yard. An oak, I think,” Mr. Harris began. “We used to climb to the top before supper, and my sister would pull us down so she could be first.”

Jacob recorded the conversation with a handheld voice recorder.

“She pushed my brother once. He fell and broke his arm. She told mother it was me, and I had to sleep the night in the shed.” He swallowed. “I couldn’t sit for a week.”

Jacob wanted to smile, but that wasn’t the kind of parenting he’d been raised with, and neither was it amusing or “just a fact of life.” He didn’t frame the stories he was told with his own experiences, just presented the words of the storyteller.

His upbringing hadn’t exactly been full of peace and love. His parents had argued more than they got along—with him in themiddle. Passed between them like a chess piece when they were “off” and ignored when they were “on again.”

“That was the tree we buried Timmy under.”

Jacob held the question on his tongue.

“Two summers later, after the harvest failed. Pa took him to the shed. Two days later, the sickness took him to Jesus. Ma broke after that. Jennie took up with the preacher’s son, and Pa kicked her out.” He fell into a period of silence.

“What happened to your parents after that?” Jacob asked. Eventually he’d get to the old man’s adult life, but that might take several conversations.

“Pa spent all day drinkin’ at the creek.” Mr. Harris blinked, the only movement aside from the rise and fall of shallow breaths. “Mama saw the preacher’s wife at the house. I thought she had the same sickness as Timmy.”

An orderly pushed another resident down the hall in a wheelchair. Only after the sounds of their conversation faded did Mr. Harris speak again.

“All day, muttering and carrying on. I was sick of it.” His expression flexed like a tick in his cheek muscle. “She wasn’t right. Yelling at me about peelin’ potatoes. Holdin’ that knife out, wavin’ it in my face. That’s why I grabbed the poker. Told Pa she fell over, hit her head. The blood had stained the floor, and she was cold by the time he got there. The water in the pot boiled until there was nothin’ left. The gas ran out. He slapped me for letting the gas run out. Told me I was useless. That I couldn’t even stop her from killing herself.” Mr. Harris blinked. “He never even thought I could’ve done it.”

Jacob held himself still. He’d learned not to show a reaction, or people generally shut down. When he could speak without inflection, he said quietly, “Did he ever find out the truth?”

“I told him,” Mr. Harris said. “The night he had that heart attack. Told him he’d be going to hell, where I put her.”

Harris blinked. It lasted two seconds. He said nothing and blinked again.

Jacob watched him succumb to a nap, thinking about what Mr. Harris had just said. Before he proceeded with the story, he’d investigate the man’s background. See if he could find anything to provide insight into what Mr. Harris said. Jacob had met people who’d done bad things before, but there was something off about the unemotional way he’d told this story.

The sister he had mentioned might still be alive. Any of her children might’ve been told stories about the family.

Jacob looked at the framed wedding picture on the mantel. A bride and groom smiled, but it hardly told the whole story. He needed the words, which meant coming back and talking to Mr. Harris some more.

Not just to find out if he’d ever killed anyone else.

Jacob found himself in the hall with both his bags. He wondered how he got out there without realizing and looked back at the door for a second. No part of him wanted to associate with someone who could turn out to be at all like the man who’d captured him after homecoming, his senior year. A deranged madman who’d been given back-to-back life sentences for what he’d done to not just Jacob but others.

“Everything went okay?” Nurse Naomi stopped in front of him. “You look a little spooked.”

She probably wanted him to talk about what she’d read.

“Everything’s good.” He could find out what he wanted to know on the internet before asking the administrator to reveal personal information for Mr. Harris’s next of kin.

Jacob went to the lobby, where the administrator stood behind the desk with Naomi’s relief. The administrator straightened her suit jacket. It didn’t help the straining buttons. She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with that girl lately.”

“Celia’s been like this since she got a boyfriend.” The receptionist pushed her glasses up her nose. “She said she’d be seeing him this weekend. Maybe they went out of town?”

Jacob frowned. Celia hadn’t felt good about the boyfriend last week when she stopped him in the parking lot to talk. She’d said she wanted advice from someone older. It wasn’t like he knew her well enough. They’d barely spoken before that, but she’d been upset. The whole thing seemed off to him, but he still tried to encourage her.

Until the boyfriend showed up to pick her up, Jacob had just about managed to keep from getting a fat lip and a black eye, but it had been close.

Celia had simply hopped in the guy’s car without a look back.

Jacob didn’t think anything good had happened between them.

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