Private Eye Four-Pack, page 42
“Counting today? Oh, I’d say about thirty-two hours, give or take a few minutes.”
“What’s your name?”
“Wyatt Storme. With an e on the end, like Browne. Maybe we’re related.”
“Let’s see some ID, Mr. Storme.” Official.
I showed him my Colorado driver’s license. He pulled a pad from a pocket and wrote something on it. “What do you do for a living, Mr. Storme?”
“A little of this. Little of that.”
He didn’t like the answer. Can’t say I blame him. Few did. “Mr. Storme,” he said, politely. “I don’t have time to be jerked around by some off-the-street wiseass. What is your interest in this investigation?”
“I thought the place needed some comedy relief.”
His eyes narrowed. “Either answer the questions straight, or I can place you under arrest for interfering with a felony investigation.”
“He was murdered, then.”
The look on his face was almost worth being arrested, if it came to that. He knew he’d been had. For a moment I thought he was going to cuff me, that is, unless he Maced me or just popped me in the mouth. Instead, he smiled, then nodded his head.
“That’s pretty good, Storme. Now, once more without the folksy accent. What’s your interest?”
“It’s possible I gave Kennedy information that may have caused his death.” He looked back over his shoulder and then back at me.
“Okay,” he said. “Shoot.”
I started to tell him about the marijuana field, about the little rocks in my pocket. Started to tell him several things, when Deputy Les Baxter spotted me. He took three strides and pointed a sausagelike finger at my nose. His face was red and agitated and his breath stank of Red Man and stale coffee.
“What the hell are you doin’ here?” he said, spitting a little when he did. No breeding at all.
“Don’t point your finger at me,” I said.
“You’re not outta here in thirty seconds, I’ll throw your ass in the can.”
“For what? You’re the one doing the overweight Barney Fife routine.” I screwed up my face. “And what have you been eating? You own a toothbrush?”
“That’s it, mister big-shit football player.” Who told Baxter I’d played football? “One more smart crack from you and—” He started to poke me in the chest to punctuate his speech, but on the first poke I slapped his hand away.
“Don’t do that,” I said. Serious.
He went ballistic. “You son of a bitch! You’re going to jail. When you get out they’ll be driving rocket cars.”
The activity in the cop station ceased. Baxter pulled a sap from a leather holster. Trooper Browne stepped between us. “Take it easy, Deputy,” he said. “I was interviewing this man when you interrupted.”
“I’m running this investigation,” Baxter said. The veins in his neck were swollen and white against the red flesh. His bad eye had filled with purple-black blood, and the other eye was bloodshot and his complexion sallow. Obviously hung over. “As acting sheriff I’ll decide who’s interviewed and who’s locked up in my county. We don’t need you state boys to direct us.”
I took a step back. Didn’t want in the middle of this. Baxter was fifty pounds heavier than Browne, but I wouldn’t bet he could take the trooper. Browne was chiseled from quartz, hard-edged. But Baxter was too loutish to know better. He was used to using his bulk to intimidate. I didn’t think anyone intimidated Browne.
“Look, Deputy,” Browne said evenly but firmly. “We’re here to assist one another. It’s not my intention to step on your authority, but if you don’t modulate your voice when you talk to me, I’ll jack your ass in front of everybody. You understand?”
“You won’t always be wearing the Smokey the Bear hat.”
“You’re right. I won’t. I’ll give you my address and duty schedule if you’d like to look me up so we can get this all hashed out.”
I love it when cops fight over me. I was wondering if I should blush, when a big trooper with sergeant’s stripes intervened.
“Browne!” he said. The name McKinley was embossed upon his pocket nametag. “You back off!”
Browne took one step back without his eyes leaving Baxter. “Now what’s going on here?” asked Sergeant McKinley.
“Your boy here’s interfering with my job,” Baxter said. Stupidity never takes a vacation.
“The deputy was attempting to physically roust me when Trooper Browne interceded, sir,” I said helpfully. “Trooper Browne was conducting himself with professionalism and dignity when—”
“You shut up,” said the sergeant. I did. I adopted a cooperative-citizen pose. Maybe they’d give me an honorary highway patrol badge. Maybe not, too.
“What happened here, Sam?”
“I was questioning Mr. Storme. He has information pertinent to this investigation. Baxter interrupted and began to insult Storme. Storme objected when Baxter poked him in the chest.”
“Sonofabitch slapped my hand,” Baxter said. A stream of tobacco juice rolled like a tear from the corner of his mouth. He ignored it. Not only a colossal bore, he was also the king of slobs.
McKinley looked at me with raised eyebrows. Probably wanted to slap Baxter’s hand himself. “Why are you here, Storme?”
“I wanted to find out what happened to the sheriff.”
“What’s your interest?”
I nodded in Baxter’s direction. “Not in front of the children.”
“His interest is he’s a smartass with a big nose,” said Baxter. “Wouldna poked him if he wasn’t a wiseass.”
“You a wiseass, Storme?” McKinley asked.
I shrugged. “It’s a gift.”
“Well,” said McKinley, “you try it with me and I’ll do more than poke you in the chest. Savvy?” I nodded. “Now, what is it you have?”
“He don’t know nothin’,” said Baxter, ever the poet.
“He’s not alone in that respect,” McKinley said. “You know, Baxter, I heard you were a jackass, but had no idea how big a one you are. Now, I’m going to ask you not to interrupt again.” McKinley and Baxter looked at each other, then McKinley said, “Browne, take Storme out to your unit, interview him, then use your discretion whether to release him or not.”
We exited. As we left I stuck my tongue out at Baxter. He looked like he might froth at the mouth at any moment.
In the patrol car, Browne pulled a clipboard from the passenger-side visor. The transmission hump was a collage of radios and scanners. Intermittently, one or more of them would crackle and hiss with an electronic rasp, spitting numbers and call letters. I told him about the marijuana field and my visit to the sheriff’s office, leaving out the rifleman and the rocks for now. I related my encounter with the local media also.
“Brown-haired girl?” he asked. “Five five? Hundred and eighteen pounds? Attractive with a heart-shaped chin? Pushy?”
“That’s her. How’d she know about me?”
“I don’t know. We don’t talk to the press. Not permitted. McKinley is media officer. But Baxter talked to her anyway. Pissed Mac off. This isn’t the first problem we’ve had with Baxter. Baxter didn’t tell her Kennedy was murdered, and I doubt he told her about you.” He put the clipboard back on the visor. “Kennedy was close to firing him. McKinley will try to get Baxter off the case, if he can. But Baxter is a local and it will be a problem, so you’d better steer clear of him for now. He’s a nasty asshole. Roughs up people he arrests.”
“What about the marijuana field?”
“I don’t know. Nothing in the log. Kennedy went to check it but never reported it. Whether he was killed going to it or returning, we don’t know. However, you’re right. The information you gave him may have had something to do with his death.”
“What if Baxter killed him so he could become sheriff?”
He laughed. “You watch too much television. When a cop goes down it’s usually some lightweight little puke with a gun and a bellyful of whiskey or a head full of dope. Forget about Baxter. He’s a bad cop, not a killer.”
I fished in my pocket and brought out one of the rocks. “Here. I found this. Guy that shot at me dropped it. Don’t know what it is.”
He turned over the crystallike rock in his hand. “Something else, Storme. How did you take out the Doberman with a bow and arrow?”
“Lucky.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “I’ll run a check on this.” He hefted the rock and put it in his shirt pocket. “And you stay away from this investigation.”
“Let me know what you find out.”
“Can’t do that. Only the major case squad has access. Best thing for you is to stay out and read the papers. Get you a buck. Go back to Colorado.”
“Give me the rock candy, then,” I said. I held out my hand.
He patted his pocket. “No way.”
“There’s more,” I said. “But I’m rapidly developing selective amnesia.”
“What do you mean, there’s more?”
I put the back of my wrist to my forehead. “It’s slipping away from me even as we talk. Everything’s cloudy. I see a man with an arrow wound. He looks like…wait, he’s gone.”
“I could hold you as a material witness.”
“I could get laryngitis.”
He sighed. Rubbed his face with a hand. “All right. I’ll let you know what’s happening. But what you have had better be bottled-in-bond, grade-A info. And if you leak anything, I’ll drop-kick you around Paradise County.”
I couldn’t turn down an offer like that. I described the rifleman. Gave the location of his wound. Asked how they could get away with planting that large a field of marijuana on public ground.
“Happens all the time in Missouri,” he answered. He pronounced Missouri like it had an “uh” on the end. “They find a place way back and plant. Booby-trap the fields or, like they did here, they use guard dogs—Dobermans, Rottweilers, pit bulls. There was a place down in the bootheel where they posted a fucking jaguar. Guy had been given the cat by his Central American drug connection. One of our guys killed it with a shotgun. Pumped the entire load into the animal before it stopped coming. Animal rights people went crazy. Okay if a trooper gets torn to pieces, but don’t hurt the little animals. We’ve come across bear traps, pungi sticks, fishhooks at eye level; you can expect about anything. Getting dangerous. The conservation department has been warning hunters about public-use land. Big money involved. Domestic grass, even Missouri Mud, packs a big jolt. More potent than the imports. Midwest agriculture at its best.” He paused, as if remembering something, then said:
“I didn’t recognize you back at the station. Not at first, anyway. Wyatt Storme. Fastest hands in the West. Used to be one of my favorite players. Where have you been all these years? Why’d you give it up?”
SIX
“So, Fatty Baxter may or may not have leaked your name to the press?” said Chick Easton, between bites of prime rib, rare. One of the best things about Missouri is the quality of the beef. It’s like getting seafood in San Francisco or New Orleans—you’re right next to the source, and it’s fresh. The restaurant was McNaughton’s, a steak-and-seafood restaurant with dark wood beams, thick mocha-colored carpet, and a large fireplace and hearth. It was connected to the Best Western motel where Chick was staying. Waiters in short tartan waistcoats and waitresses in tasseled knee socks and tartan kilts bustled about. Pretty nice for a Midwest cow town. “That doesn’t tell you much.”
I said, “I’m heading out by the end of the week. Can you be ready by Friday?”
“Thought you wanted to hunt another week or so.”
“Something’s come up in Colorado.” I meant Sandy.
“Like what?”
“Unfinished business.”
“Woman, ain’t it?” he said, then continued as if not requiring confirmation from me. “Might be ready. Got unfinished business here myself. I might have it done by Friday. If not, go on back. I’ll catch another ride. Don’t wait up for me.”
“I’ll wait until you’re ready.” I had promised Matt Jenkins I’d bring Easton back. I would do so.
He chuckled. Took a bite of steak. Chewed it, slowly. Swallowed. “Jenkins said you felt like you had to accomplish everything you set out to do. Climb every mountain. Swim every stream. Said you could trust your wife or girlfriend with you even if she looked like Christie Brinkley and was a nymphomaniac who’d been living in a convent.”
A Scottish lassie brought him another drink, Cutty Sark, his third. I was on my third drink also. Coffee. Black.
“You drink too much,” I said. He looked at me, squinting with one eye. He looked bemused, as usual. It was somewhat irritating. “An observation,” I said. “Not a criticism.”
“What about you? Notice you don’t drink.”
“Didn’t know I needed a reason not to.”
He laughed. It was laughter with a hint of pain, but only a flash, like summer lightning. The laugh turned into the type that invited you to join in. Bite on the bullet and don’t let them think you are afraid. I could accept him on the basis of what I’d seen. But something was eating away at him. Not taking big bites, just nibbling, but it was there.
“You want to go hunting in the morning?” I asked.
“Sure. Where?”
“I know a place.”
“You sure you want to go back there?” he asked, reading between the lines.
“Have to,” I said.
“Figured it that way,” he said.
Easton slept in the guest room of my cabin. I fixed pancakes and sausage for breakfast. Ground coffee. I gave him an extra pair of camo coveralls. They were new and had been given to me by a friend. I preferred my old ones. Chick had brought his bow because Jenkins told him I would be hunting. We checked our tackle. Fresh strings. Broadheads tight and sharp. Fletching undamaged. I cut a ten-foot length of nylon rope from a spool I kept, gave it to Chick. He would need it to drag out a deer if he took one. He rolled it into a ball around his hand and put it in his pocket. I poured coffee into a steel-lined thermos. I also took something I never take when bowhunting unless I’m in grizzly country—my Browning 9-millimeter semiauto pistol. Easton packed a .357 Colt Python.
There are no bears in Missouri.
It was Halloween dark when we arrived at the road I’d parked on the day I’d killed the dog. The moon was a sliver in the mattered sky, the air smelled of the loamy decay of autumn. All sound and movement was amplified, and there was a damp snap in the air, which lay cold against my exposed face. Before leaving the truck we agreed to meet at 10:30 a.m. to investigate the marijuana field. I used a small pocket flashlight to lead us through the woods.
We were intruders as we moved through the woods, and the silence spread before us like a stain, dozens of unseen eyes watching, dozens of ears straining to hear. Easier to hear me than Chick Easton. I had never known anyone who could move as stealthily as he could. He was a whispering shadow behind me. Spooky. Ethereal. More than once I stopped to see I hadn’t lost him. Each time he was close by, within a few feet, sometimes mere inches away.
Who was this man? And where had he acquired such unusual talents? He was an enigma to me. A puzzle with parts withheld.
I led him to the base of a forked tree and pointed up to a natural seat in the lee of the fork. I don’t nail boards into trees. God got it right the first time. Chick nodded, handed me his bow, then scaled the tree, soundlessly, as if he were a lizard rather than a 190-pound man. When he was seated, I handed up his bow and left him there, silent and motionless in his perch like a huge bird of prey.
I kept the wind in my face and worked my way to another tree I’d marked on an earlier scouting foray. At the base of the tree, I used nylon cord to tie a slipknot at one end of the bow. I tied the other end of the cord around my left wrist and climbed. Once situated, I pulled the bow up hand-over-hand into the tree with me. Waited.
The sun peeked over the horizon as I nocked the arrow. It had black fletching. All my arrows had black fletching. Real feathers rather than plastic vanes. Many of my friends told me plastic vanes were more accurate and durable, citing test reports in sporting publications. I would nod at them and continue to use my black feathers. Always the last to learn.
I thought about Sandy. Sandy Collingsworth. I loved her. Always had. Always would. She was the only media person I’d ever granted a personal interview. She had crystal-blue eyes and a face-lighting smile. She possessed dignity and intelligence. Honest. Never posed or preened. “You’ll never make it big in this business,” I had told her, “unless you get over this vicious streak of honesty.”
“Maybe,” she’d said. “But I get to be me.”
Good trade.
I was hard in love with her. We shared thoughts. Hopes. She understood things without my having to say them. And she loved me. At one point we had agreed to marry. Then one day it changed. She changed her mind. “I love you,” she said. I didn’t understand. She would explain it, later, she said. Just needed time. So I gave her time. And distance. And my trust. I believed in her. When the time came, she would tell me. I understood about time and didn’t ask much from it, just enough to warm my memories when needed. I waited. It was a dry trail. A lonely one. And now the time neared. The weekend looked far away but would come. Soon I would know. Soon I would see her. Fill my eyes with her. Fill my mind. And my heart.
Soon.
At 8:00 a.m. two does wandered by my stand. They were alert, testing the air, watching with their 180-degree vision, moving silently, wraithlike, then passing on.
Within the half hour, the ten-point buck came by. The buck I’d been waiting for, the buck I’d passed up lesser animals for. The trophy I’d made the trip for. He was a beauty. Magnificent. He sniffed at the trail of the does. They say the rut doesn’t come until November, and then only after the first hard freeze. But I’d witnessed rutting behavior at earlier times. Like now. His neck was swollen with the blood of his libido. His rack was majestic and symmetrical. Slowly I raised the bow, putting the thirty-yard pin high on his shoulder, allowing for the height and angle of entry. I pulled the black-feathered shaft to anchor at the corner of my mouth, let out half a breath. He was mine. It would be clean, a classic shot, one that didn’t come along often. No obstructions, no twisting of my body to shoot. Almost two weeks of waiting was over.
