Knife River, page 18
I stood in the vestibule as the heavy door swung shut behind me, waiting a moment as my eyes adjusted to the hazy gloom inside. I scanned the room and counted thirteen souls, not including the bartender, the clientele a collection of day drinkers that represented every strata of desolation, from the miserable and the lost to the wicked and morally disfigured. Half of them glanced at me with genuine disinterest as I walked in, while the other half examined me with hooded eyes that strayed toward the cowboy hat I wore, the Colt Peacemaker on my hip, and the badge clipped to my tooled gun belt. I spotted Dewayne Gomer at the end of the bar, seated alone and staring vacantly into a barback mirror that reflected a row of liquor bottles, their images rippled along the smudged and dusty glass that had begun to desilver at the edges.
“How’d you find me?” Dewayne Gomer asked me as I pulled up a stool beside him. He was hunched over the scarred wooden rail behind an empty double-shot glass, peeling the label off a sweating longneck with his thumbnail, and I could smell a stale and musty odor rising from the wrinkles of his clothes.
“Lucky guess,” I said.
The bartender moved down the duckboards and pulled up in front of me, his belly like an overfilled hot water bottle, his hair dyed raven black and slicked along his pate like melted wax. He didn’t speak to me, but his expression was a clear inquiry as to how long I intended to remain inside. I answered his unspoken question by ordering a cup of black coffee.
“I’m sorry about your friends,” I said to Dewayne after the bartender waddled away.
“They were the only friends I have,” he said. “Had.”
His face was still unshaven from the day before, his skin a sallow greenish shade inside the cloudy light, tiny threads of red and purple veins spidering his nose and cheeks.
“How did you come to know them?” I asked.
“What do you want, Sheriff?”
“Just wanted to talk to you.”
The bartender brought me a steaming mug of coffee and slid it across the counter. I peered into the cup and saw the surface was speckled with loose grounds, picked it up and sipped it anyway, ordered another round for Dewayne Gomer as a gesture of goodwill, and waited until it had been delivered and the fat barman moved out of earshot before I spoke again. I watched as Gomer knocked back half his whiskey and chased it with a slug of beer. He stifled a belch and turned to look at me with eyes misted by fatigue, grief, and alcohol.
Gomer coughed up his life story like a hairball, a man born to believe he was an unwanted accident and a failed abortion. Two years spent in juvie as a teen and two hitches in the military helped him shrug off the curse. But once he received his honorable discharge, he fell in with a bad crowd again; ended up in Ely, Nevada, deeply in debt to moneylenders who possessed neither mercy nor compassion. Dewayne Gomer caught a boxcar headed southeast and ended up in Texas, where he learned the ways of the itinerant freight hopper, a bindle stiff and flat-rail boomer, an American nomad.
“Once you start down that path,” he said as he wrapped up his story, “it gets harder and harder to convince folks you ain’t either dangerous or crazy.”
He looked at that moment like one of the saddest human beings I had ever seen.
“From the first time I saw you at the Cottonwood Blossom—you and your three pals—I had you marked,” I said. “I could tell that you’ve had trouble following you like a stink all your life. And the accident that just killed your friends, well, that’s a damn bad stroke of luck. Problem is, I’ve never believed in coincidence, pard, and this one troubles me.”
“You saw where I was standing that night, in the peristyle,” he said. “I was nowhere near that stage.”
“I didn’t say I thought you were guilty of anything, Dewayne. But if you know something I need to hear, you have to talk to me.”
“Like what?”
“Let’s start with how you came to know your three companions.”
“I only really know the two of ’em. The two of ’em that’s dead now. The ones you called Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dipshit.”
“I suspect they have real names,” I said.
Gomer slugged back the remainder of his shot and watched a cockroach the size of my thumb crawl up the paneling behind the bar.
“I don’t think I even heard their real names, just the nicknames we all use out there along the tracks. One of them was called Bongwater; the other one was Fuzzy Sam. You probably don’t want to know how they came to acquire those handles.”
“You are correct,” I said. “But go on with your story.”
“I don’t know, but I think them two might have been related, cousins maybe. I ain’t completely sure. One of ’em was mostly deaf, not all the way, but the other one made signs with his fingers and sort of translated for him anyway. Strong as bulls though, both of ’em. Clever, too. Probably shouldn’t tell you this, but them two could strip the shelves off a Quickie Mart in thirty seconds flat. Kept us fed when we couldn’t land fair wages. Like I said before, not everybody’s willing to take a chance on railroad bums.”
“Who’s the third man you were with?” I asked.
“Calls himself Esau, but everybody I know calls him Bigfoot on account he likes to tell stories about how he’s seen Sasquatch. Me and Fuzzy and Bongwater first met up with him in Tulsa, in a hobo jungle near the railyards. The weather was starting to turn bad down there, so all four of us caught out for someplace warmer, someplace out west. We stayed in Arizona for a bit, then moved on to California for a while longer; then Bigfoot said he knew a place up in the timber country where we could prob’ly find daywork in the lumber mills or maybe cutting trees out in the forest with the ’jack crews. Once we got here to Oregon, ol’ Bigfoot seemed to know his way around, and somehow he landed us a gig with that music producer guy, but I don’t know how he did it.”
“You don’t know how you landed the jobs out at the studio?”
Dewayne Gomer smiled at a private recollection and shook his head; as he took a long pull from his longneck beer, a strange expression crossed his face and disappeared.
“That Bigfoot is a talker,” he said. “He can talk himself up his own asshole, that’s no lie. But he’s handy to have around sometimes. Man can be vicious mean, too, if he’s got the notion.”
That comment got my attention.
“Why is viciousness a ‘handy’ trait?” I asked.
“There’s a gang out there on the tracks—they’re everywhere—they’re called the Freight Train Riders of America. Sounds like a club or one of them animal lodges, don’t it? Like the Elks or Mooses, or what have you. Well, they ain’t like that atall. These FTRA guys don’t fool around. Bad, bad, scary dudes. But they didn’t seem to hassle Bigfoot any.”
I knew the hobo jungle could be a savage and inhuman place, where insanity and violence were not only prevalent but often rewarded, part of a social order that rivaled the complexity of the Levant.
“Maybe he’s one of them,” I said.
“Maybe he is. I never asked.”
“Why not?”
“You never been out there living on the ground, have you, Sheriff? It don’t pay to ask too many questions about other people and where they been and what they done. It’s one of the unspoken rules.”
I had been studying Dewayne Gomer’s body language, his features and his tells, the whole time he’d been speaking to me. I have always been adept at spotting liars and dissimilators, and I didn’t feel like I was looking at one now, but I needed to be certain.
“You got something bothering you?” Gomer asked.
I decided to prod him one last time.
“You’re telling me you’re just little ol’ Charlie Hodge, huh?” I said.
He cocked his head sideways.
“Who’s the hell’s Charlie Hodge?”
“Exactly,” I said.
“I’m serious. Who’s Charlie Hodge?”
“He’s a guy who picks up Elvis’s sweaty capes off the stage floor in Vegas.”
“And you’re saying Bigfoot is Elvis? I’m just some kind of lackey?”
“No, I don’t believe you’re anybody’s lackey, Dewayne,” I said. “But I don’t think you’re Elvis, either, and he’s obviously not one of your two late companions. My deputy interviewed everybody from the crew last night, so I assume he’s talked with your friend Bigfoot. But if this guy has already lit out from Half Mountain, I need to know where you think I might find him. I’d like to have a word.”
Dewayne Gomer cocked his head sideways and looked at me, then spanned an appraising glance across the room. At the far end of the rail, a tall man wearing overalls and a red-and-black hunting jacket sucked on an unfiltered cigarette; he looked at me with eyes as round and vacant as a pigeon’s, flicked his ashes into an upturned bottle cap, and turned away.
“You mind if we wrap this up, Sheriff?” Dewayne Gomer said. “You’re not winning me any friends in here, and I might want to come back some day.”
WE STEPPED outside into midmorning dappled light. Even in the broken overcast, it took a moment for our eyes to readjust. Dewayne Gomer followed as I took a few strides across the unpaved parking lot and leaned against the fender of my truck. There were pockmarks in the soil where a band of deer had wandered through not long before.
“There’s something you’re not telling me, Dewayne,” I said.
“I ain’t lied to you. Not once.”
“I didn’t say you lied straight-out to me. I said there’s something you’re holding back. Something you’re not telling me. I can see it on your face. Now you and I both know that’s pretty much the same thing as a lie, don’t we?”
He cut his eyes across the street, in the direction of the Cayuse Motel and the readerboard sign out front that was shaped like an Indian headdress. The plastic letters from the marquee had all been blown away or stolen, and a brick thrown by a teenaged vandal or a drunk had left a ragged hole that exposed its internal lighting mechanisms.
“I’m trying to help you here, Dewayne,” I said. “I need for you to appreciate where we stand, you and me, and the nature of this situation. I feel bad about your friends. I truly do. But it’s my job to find out if it was just an accident or if it was something else.”
He puffed his cheek into a pocket of air and sighed.
“Look, Sheriff, I don’t know about what happened last night. I was there just like you were. It all happened so fast …”
“But?”
“But maybe there’s something else I know about.”
I looked at my watch.
“That house,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “The one that burned.”
“What about that house?”
“It ain’t been burned on purpose. It was just a place to sleep, somewhere away from the jungle. Bigfoot said he knew about it, so we went there—”
“Who went there?”
“Me and Bigfoot, Bongwater and Sam. Maybe one other guy, I don’t exactly remember.”
“What happened?”
Dewayne’s mouth was drawn tight, eyes darting, landing everywhere except on my face.
“It was really cold that night,” he said. “We stuffed newspapers and sticks and tree branches inside the fireplace … but when we lit it up, the chimney caught. It was like an explosion. That’s all. We were just trying to stay warm and dry, and we barely got out of there alive.”
“You said Bigfoot knew about the house? How?”
“I don’t know.”
“You said he’s the one who brought you all up here to Oregon. You said he seemed to know his way around. Why?”
“I already told you, I don’t ask questions. I. Don’t. Know.”
“Okay,” I said, and I stepped away to give him some distance.
I waited while a compact car pulled in and parked at the far end of the lot. At one time, that car had been showroom-new and painted the same shade as a ripe tangerine. Time and disregard and misadventure had since faded it the color of stomach bile, dropped a quarter panel off the front, and powdered it with road dust. Dewayne and I waited in silence as the car’s two occupants disappeared into the bar.
“There’s a difference between a hobo and a tramp and a criminal, Sheriff,” Gomer said once they’d gone inside. “And I ain’t no tramp or criminal.”
A gust of wind bent the tree branches overhead, carrying the distant wail of a locomotive’s airhorn and the heavy rumble of steel wheels along the rusted tracks.
“What’s your plan, Dewayne?” I asked. “What’s next?”
He shrugged.
“You gonna arrest me?” he asked.
“For what?”
“For what I just told you. About the fire.”
“I swear,” I said. “Sometimes, this time of year, my ears clog up something fierce. Must be allergies.”
Dewayne Gomer showed me a slow smile and looked down at the scuffed work boots he was wearing.
“I was thinking on waiting around until my friends go in the ground,” he said. “Seems like the Christian thing to do. I’ll likely catch out after that.”
“Where do you plan on staying?”
“I’ll find someplace. I always do.”
“Follow me,” I said.
THE MOTEL manager opened the office door and immediately went pale. My presence here had never boded well for him or his establishment in the past.
“Hello, Sheriff,” he said. His eyes were small and hard, and he bore a scar on his forehead from the last time I had saved him from his clientele.
“This man needs a room,” I said. “For a week.”
“In advance?”
“Send the bill to the sheriff’s office.”
He eyed Dewayne Gomer from head to foot, and I could see the predatory calculus operating behind his eyes.
“Standard weekly rate and not a penny more,” I said and peeled off a pair of one-dollar notes from my billfold. “And he’ll need two dollars change for the laundry machines.”
The manager stepped into his office to make change and I moved into the shade beneath the overhang. I peeled off another twenty and a ten and handed them to Gomer.
“For incidentals,” I said.
“That’s very kind of you, Sheriff,” Dewayne Gomer said.
I began to walk back to my truck and thought of one last thing.
“Tell me something,” I said. “Were your two friends men of faith like you?”
A look of puzzlement crowded his expression.
“I honestly don’t know,” he said.
“I get it. You don’t ask questions,” I said and began to walk away. I was nearly there when I turned around again and called out to Dewayne. “Tell you what. I’ll light a candle for the both of ’em, just in case.”
I climbed into my truck and looked out across the pebbled parking lot into the dense woodland. A larch tree teemed with chickadees, and beside it, I saw an oriole perched all alone inside the upper branches of a buckthorn as I pulled out and drove away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE WARMER WEATHER had begun to swell the rivers with snowmelt, white water rushing over cataracts and roiling across boulders that had wedged themselves between steep banks lined with fragrant spruce and cedar. I could hear the grumble of the rapids in the narrows a short distance away, smell the fresh scent of piñon in the air as I unlocked the back door to the substation and went inside.
Jordan Powell was seated at his desk, wearing a khaki uniform shirt that appeared freshly pressed, his boots clean and polished, and his cowboy hat hanging from a hook along the wall beside him. He acknowledged me with a toss of his head as he listened with great interest to the telephone receiver he had wedged between his shoulder and ear.
I stepped into the coffee room and found Sam Griffin sipping coffee at one of the circular tables, several stacks of file folders spread out before him. He looked up from the file he was reading when he saw me come in, put down his mug, and placed the file on the top of the heap.
“Interesting reading?” I asked.
“Interview notes from the other night.”
“Captain Rose tells me you drew the band and the crew?”
“Roger that.”
The whites of Griffin’s eyes had gone red at the corners, dark half-moons of exhaustion underneath. Unlike Jordan Powell, Griffin was wearing a snap-button western shirt that looked as though he had slept in it.
“You had any shut-eye, Griffin?”
“A little,” he said. “I know we’ve got to clear these witnesses ASAP, sir. I can sleep after I’m done with that.”
Griffin was right. It was one of the odd contradictions of law enforcement, but in a case such as this one, if it turned out that it had not been an accident—and we had failed to properly vet the witnesses—then the suspect’s defense lawyer would use that failure against us, claiming that there were literally dozens of viable potential suspects among the attendees. That argument alone had the capacity to create enough reasonable doubt to tank a case.
“What’ve you found out so far?” I asked.
“The musicians, the chopper pilot, the film crews—your wife and daughter included, of course—have all come up clean. Still working through the production people, sound, lights, and stage.”
“Have you run across a man who goes by the handles ‘Bigfoot’ or ‘Esau’?”
“Esau? Like in the Bible? I think I’d remember that.”
