Thrown-away Child

said, “Little matter about a friend of Perry’s, ma’am-by the name of Cletus Tyler.”
    “Mr. Tyler, as I understand it, was a cell mate of Perry’s up to Angola,” Mama said to Mueller. She explained to me, “That’s the penitentiary—Angola. She turned again to Mueller. “Now you know my Perry’s not going to be taking up with Cletus Tyler That’d be a violation of parole, wouldn’t it?”
    “You happen to know Cletus, ma’am?”
    “None of your business,” Ruby said to the detective. “Unless you’re fixing to arrest my mama for whatever trouble you’ve got with this Mr. Tyler.“
    “Of course I ain’t going to arrest your mama. All the same, I thought she’d like to know about poor Cletus.” Mueller looked from Ruby back to Mama. “Fact is, Cletus got himself dead.”
    “La, no!”
    “Oh, yes. I got to say, ma’am, when we found Cletus Tyler he was deader than a deep-fried palmetto. That’s about as gruesome a corpse as I ever want to see. Got him shot up with a dumdum, got his neck whacked so bad his head pretty near rolled off.”
    “Oh, La... Oh, La…”
    Ruby left the couch to stand next to Mama, taking one of her hands into her own. Mama looked up at me, hazel eyes beading.
    “Must of been somebody familiar with the prison ways got to poor Cletus,” Mueller continued, unmercifully- “Yes, ma’am, somebody whacked him— Angola-style.”
    I had to ask. “What style is that, Detective?“
    “Them little rascals up to Angola, let me tell you. Always innovatin’.” Mueller laughed wetly. “Latest thing, somebody gets him a nice stiff wood club for whacking. But before he does the job, he sinks razor blades into the club, along a couple of parallel lines— about a half-inch apart. That way, there ain’t enough stitching surface between the wounds so a doc can sew the skin back together proper.”
    Detective Eckles added, “Leaves a big old snaky scar.”
    “Take a man down Angola-style, every time he looks in a mirror he’s reminded about it. Unless o’ course it croaks him, like our boy Cletus.” Another wet laugh from Mueller, who I began to see was rabid, like King Kong Kowalski. Even worse, Mueller came with chimes, in the form of Ricky Ray Eckles.
    “Haw, Cletus got him whacked real good!” Eckles said. “That Cletus, boy—he’s really, truly dog dead! Got him shot through the heart, and creamed in the gut.”
    Mama’s head fell. I could not see her face, but I knew she was crying.
    I had a decision to make, fast. Should I do what I had to do and get these two thugs out of the house? And what would it take to accomplish such a feat? I should sic Ruby on them? Or should I encourage the usual predilection of rabid thug cops to shoot off their mouths? But to what advantage? And why was I thinking like a cop so far south of my jurisdiction?
    “How do you mean Cletus Tyler also took injury to his gut?” I asked Eckles.
    Eckles tried to say something, but another one of Mueller’s elbows cut him short of breath. “Ricky Ray, you ought not to be blabbing like some old gal with a dryer on her head.”
    Mueller had a warning for me, too. “Obstruction of justice ain’t a particularly pleasant thing, ’specially when I’m the obstructee. Don’t be getting any strange notions about messing around in my case, Detective Hockaday.”
    “I imagine notions around here are strange enough as they are.”
    Mueller’s pasty face was a study in wrinkled confusion, which did nothing to improve his appearance. “What exactly’s your meaning?”
    “Skip it, Mueller. Say, didn’t you come here looking for somebody in particular?”
    Mueller turned to Violet, whose uptilted face had become calm. She brushed her eyes with the backs of her brown hands. Violet’s hands were large as a man’s, but they moved in a delicate and purely feminine way. Mueller asked her, “All right now, where is he?“
    “How’d I know where Perry at?”
    “Ma’am, I as’t you nice as pie.”
    “I answered the same. Trouble is, you didn’t hear what you want to hear.” Violet trembled again, but not from fear. Again there came the brave Christmas smile. She raised her eyes to the ceiling, and I wondered if it might be somebody up in heaven she was really trying to see, somebody mortal. “Trouble is, nobody ever want to know where Perry Duclat is bound to go.”
    “Ma’am, for the love of Christ—please!” Mueller was close to boiling over. Slow-witted people a overheated