My third insight was that I was lying facedown on a narrow iron bed, and that I couldn’t move my arms or legs. I raised my head, sending a spike of pain shooting through my brain, and saw that my hands were tied to the bed’s metal headboard.
“It’s been a while since I’ve used this,” said a voice behind me. “Hope I haven’t lost the touch.” Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the wide, flat strap undulating, and I heard a rasping, slithering sound as the leather snaked across the rough floorboards.
I also caught sight of a human shadow undulating as the right arm swung the strap back and forth. Something about the shadow struck me as odd, and gradually I realized that the shadow of the left arm was incomplete, and that I’d followed the driver of the truck into a trap.
“You’re Cockroach.” The strap stopped its slithering, and somehow the quiet was even more sinister than the sound of the leather sliding over the wood. “Cochran. I thought you were dead. I thought you died in the fire.”
“Whole lotta people thought that,” he said. “It suited me to let them think that.”
“But if you weren’t the guard who was killed, who was it?”
“Nobody. A phantom. ‘Burned beyond recognition’ covers a multitude of sins. There was some shit about to hit the fan even before the fire. So I made a deal with Hatfield. Let the fire burn the slate clean. For the school. For him. For me. You’re a professor, right? Bet you read a lot of books, don’t you?” I wasn’t sure where he was going with this. “Ever read Tom Sawyer?”
“I think so. A long time ago.”
“Remember when Tom gets lost in that cave, hiding from Injun Joe?”
“Vaguely.”
“He finally gets out, and gets back to town, just in time to walk in on his own funeral.”
“I do remember that. But you didn’t walk in on your funeral, did you?”
“No, I didn’t walk in on it. I walked the other way. By the time they got around to burying my empty coffin up here, I was in west Texas, down around El Paso, where my people come from. Stayed there for forty years, under the radar, till you came along and started pulling skeletons out of the closet.”
“So to keep us from finding the closet, you killed Winston Pettis and his dog?”
“I never killed that man or that dog.”
“I don’t believe you. You had the motive.”
“I don’t give a shit if you believe me or if you don’t believe me. But you’re a damn fool if you think I’m the only one with something at stake here.”
“Who else? Look, if you untie me and cooperate with FDLE, I’m sure you can get some sort of deal.”
He spat out a laugh. “Neither one of us is stupid enough to believe that. We both know there’s no way to square this. I’d built a life, I was on the home stretch, but that’s gone. You saw to that. And for that, you need to be punished.” The strap began to slither again, tracing faster, rhythmic figure eights on the floor. “I never beat a grown man before. I’m not sure I’ll like it as much as I liked putting the strap to a boy, but I’ll give it a try.” He gave the strap a quick swing, and it hit the edge of the mattress with enough force to make the bed shiver. “What I like about this barn? The hayloft is right about the same height as the ceiling in the shed at school was. So you’ll hear the strap when it’s coming over the top, just before you feel it. You’ll figure out the timing after just a lick or two.”
I was desperate to stall for time. “One thing I don’t understand. Why did the young boys get more beatings than the older boys?”