Over by the well, someone finally shouted, “We got something, Sergeant. Come take a look.”
“Wait here,” Sergeant Mattingly ordered.
I wrung my hands, praying Guyla Belle had escaped the horrors Gillis made her suffer.
Mr. Morgan took one of my busy hands, placed it in his palm, and patted it.
I looked up at him and in a shaky voice said, “Can I wait inside the automobile, sir?”
“Best we do as the sergeant asked and remain on the porch.”
The sergeant walked up to the porch a few minutes later. “I’m sorry to say we found a body. We need help identifying the remains, Miss Lovett. It’ll likely be late night before we can retrieve the body from the well. If it’s Mrs. Gillis, I would need to go ahead and send one of my men over to the hospital and arrest her husband. Do you think you could come over here and do that?”
“What about his sister?” I asked, afraid.
“We’d like to also have you identify the body, if you could,” Sergeant Mattingly pressed.
Mr. Morgan put an arm around my shoulder, and I moaned against his chest. “You’ve been through a lot today, Honey, but if you could do this, you’d be helping Mrs. Gillis and little Johnnie.”
All the men stared at me as I scratched out a yessir.
Stepping around busted concrete, I took a breath and leaned over a gaping hole while the men shined their flashlights down into the well, my hands bruised with the blueness.
A blast of putrid odors of rot, mold, and other dark things watered my eyes and crawled down my throat. Choking, I raised my head and tilted it to the sky. Drawing in several ragged breaths, I coughed and dared to look again, squinting as I stared back down.
Again, the men moved their bright flashlights over the dark hole, and then I saw it and gasped at the partially decomposed body, the limbs all crooked and skewed in every direction, draped under her kelly-green dress. Pushing myself away from the well, I feebly called out “It’s Guyla Belle” and gagged before running behind an automobile to relieve my twisting innards, the horrors of the day emptying onto the ground.
Wrenna’s subtle, sharp warning to Tommie rang in my head and the final lilting coo-coo she’d called to him when it was over. Thoughts of Bonnie and the seeds she threw at Gillis and the look of triumph in her eyes after it all. My worries at the courthouse table, and now poor Guyla Belle and her young son who somehow saw his mama’s murder. I clenched a fist, the deep sorrow and anger stabbing into my indigo-blue palm.
In a few minutes, Mr. Morgan came up behind me. “Sorry you had to witness that, Honey. They’ll see to it the county gives Mrs. Gillis a proper burial and arrest Mr. Gillis, thanks to you.”
Here I was fighting for my freedom and taking another’s away who imprisoned so many. Maybe now, Bonnie, Pearl, Wrenna, and me would finally be shed of the terrifying grip he’d kept us locked in.
Mr. Morgan passed me a clean handkerchief from his back pocket. “Keep it, Honey.”
I nodded and wiped my mouth with the linen and looked around. One officer escorted Ida back out of the cabin and questioned her. Several times, she shook her head firmly, talking with broad, sweeping hands. He finally let her go, and she scurried back inside, slamming the door behind her.
Another lawman came out of the home carrying Johnnie. The scared child stretched out his arms for me. “Buk uman-n-n,” he blubbered uncontrollably.
I looked away, unable to bear the boy’s heartbreak and my own. “What will happen to Johnnie, Mr. Morgan?”
“Relatives will likely take him in after Social Services does its investigation.” Mr. Morgan checked his wristwatch. “The sergeant says we can go.”
“What will they do to Tommie?”