A Line in the Sand, page 13
He squatted down and looked at the dirt road’s surface and what he saw perplexed him until he realized the tracks were made by a dually. Tracks on one side of the narrow surface seemed to go four wide and cloverleafed where the truck had turned around and went back out toward the road. He followed the other set on the other side a little farther up until he saw blood in the middle of the road and drag marks that paralleled the tracks and more blood here and there along the way. “God-dang poachers,” Gene said aloud without thinking.
He went forward with the tracks. The drag marks stopped, and the blood pooled a bit where the animal must have been loaded into a vehicle. Whether it was a deer or a bear taken, he could not say. He was puzzled that there seemed to be no track marks turning to leave the way there had been with the other set behind him, and there were none advancing farther into the swamp. He keyed his handset and waited for a voice on the other end. “Go ahead,” it said.
“That call by the WMA last night, did they say anything about dogs?”
“Wait one.”
Gene turned back to the tracks. This was some hellacious country to take an animal without dogs, even if you were spotlighting. Something had to get them out from cover. And it seemed curious to Gene that there’d be two vehicles out poaching. He’d have to ask the Yanceys if they’d ever heard of folks bringing two vehicles spotlighting.
“Negative. Someone on the hardball saw lights through the trees and heard a gunshot.”
“This was around midnight?”
“That’s what the caller said. You find anything?”
“Well, sure does look like someone took an illegal animal. Beyond that, I can’t say.”
“You want to sit on it tonight?”
“Not really,” Gene said. “Do you?”
“Very funny.” The radio crackled, and the voice on the other end of the line signed off.
Gene turned to the tracks again and saw where the tire tracks curved off and disappeared but could not figure for the life of him how the vehicle had left the swamp afterward. He looked down at the Yanceys a half a mile away, just shapes in the heat. He walked to the Blazer, turned around, and drove back down the causeway. When he had covered the ground, the Yanceys were loading the dogs in their boxes, and Lester was sweetly scratching behind the ears of one beautiful hound and making baby talk to it and letting it lick all over his face.
“You out of here already?” Tom said.
“No. Not just now. Wondering if I can ask y’all a favor.”
“Ask away, Gene,” said Lester.
“How’s y’all’s tracking?”
“Better than yours, I’d bet.”
“All right, get on in the truck. I got a puzzle for you up the road a piece.”
They shut the dogs in their boxes and shrugged at each other, and both went to get in the Blazer’s back doors.
“One of y’all sons of bitches get in the front seat, will you? I ain’t your chauffeur.”
Lester opened the back door and got in, and Tom went around to the front passenger side. He made a big show of getting comfortable and said, “Sorry, Gene, we just don’t have much practice riding in the front of law enforcement vehicles.”
Gene tried to hide his smile but could not. He drove the truck down to where he had parked previously and they all got out.
“So what is it?” Lester asked.
“I don’t know. You tell me what you think, and let’s compare notes after.”
Tom and Lester seemed to have an unspoken plan for how to proceed. They each took a side of the road and followed the tracks slowly, pausing every ten feet or so to ponder some aspect of the scene. Once in a while, one of them spat tobacco juice into the dust, and Gene finally said, “Come on with the dip spit, fellas. This might be a crime scene.”
“You really gonna get all CSI out here on account of someone bagging an animal out of season?” replied Tom.
Gene leaned against the hood, crossed his arms, tilted his ball cap back, and rubbed the sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform. It took the Yanceys about ten minutes to cover the ground from where the tracks started to where the drag marks began.
“Hey, Gene?” said Tom loudly, his eyes fixed on the road.
“Yeah,” he answered.
Gene watched Tom wave him up and then started walking toward him. By the time he got to Tom, Lester had joined them, and all three stood bent over the drag marks and their accompanying blood trail.
“You ever hear of someone going for headshots when they out spotlighting?” asked Tom.
“What do you mean?” Gene asked.
“Well, look it, you see how the blood trail is all off to one side? Ain’t no overlap at all between it and the drag marks.”
“Okay.”
“Seems to me whoever was toting this end had the hind legs, and the other fella had the fore. I’d expect blood, such as there would be, to be laid down more or less where they drug the critter. Pretty close to the center, right? Give or take a few inches.”
“Right,” said Gene.
Lester looked up at him. “Everybody I ever met aims to put it behind the shoulder, generally speaking. Don’t see how you’d even consider a headshot, especially at night.”
“Not unless you don’t have a lick of respect for the animal,” added Tom.
“Funny how I don’t see a single track of either in the road,” said Lester. He looked at Tom and then at Gene. “You say they was spotlighting?”
“That’s right. Someone driving by reported a gunshot and lights back down the causeway here.”
“You putting it together, Tom?” Lester asked.
Tom straightened up and walked over to the end of the tracks, tires and footprints both. He looked around at the shuffle of boot prints in the dust. He looked back to where three sets of tracks terminated in a pool of blood, but only two continued, now joined by drag marks and a blood trail. “Yeah, Les. I believe I see what you’re seeing.”
Les was standing at the edge of the road, looking out over an unremarkable stretch of open water, black as wet coal on the surface and still as ice. It was not black all the way down. When Lester looked carefully, he found the water’s transparency. Where it turned from black to brown, the light broke through and lit the depths like darkened honey. He saw particles and all manner of microbes and insects for which he had no names suspended in it. His heart pounded. He pulled the dip out of his mouth and tossed it to the ground. With shaking hands, he took a pack of smokes from the pocket of his Wranglers and knocked one cigarette free from the pack along with a lighter.
“Les?” Gene asked. “You okay?”
“Somebody got killed out here, Gene. Weren’t no poaching.”
“What?”
“Les said them tracks is two fellas dragging a third. More than likely after they shot him in the head,” said Tom.
Lester took a long pull on his cigarette and waved Gene over to him. When Gene stood alongside him, Lester pointed down to the murky water of the swamp. “You see it, Gene?”
Gene looked down Lester’s arm, following it to the hand, the finger, and what it pointed to. “I can’t see shit in there, Lester.”
Lester pulled his hand away. “Keep looking. You’ll see it.”
Gene focused and looked past and through the swirling blue-gray smoke from Lester’s cigarette as it dissipated. “Is that—”
“The roof of a car?” said Lester. “Sure looks like it to me.”
“About three feet down?” asked Tom.
“Yup.”
Gene stuck his hand out to Lester. “Gimme one of those butts, Les, will ya?”
Lester handed him a smoke. “Hundred dollars says old boy’s down there too.”
“Goddamn,” said Tom. “It’s a hell of a place to get killed, ain’t it?”
Lester brought the smoke to his lips and tilted his head back, closing his eyes to the bright sun above them. He exhaled and blew the smoke skyward. “Ain’t they all, little brother? Ain’t they all?”
An hour later, while Lieutenant Billings was in the break room trying to sleep away the double at the Sea Breeze he’d finally come off of a few hours before, he heard his Nokia buzz. Behind him, the sizzle and boil of the ancient percolator sent the smell of tar-dark coffee wafting under the Casual Male XL sport coat he’d wrapped his head in to make something close to darkness for himself. He didn’t move toward the phone, letting it buzz itself in erratic arcs across the table. Finally, he said, “Will somebody get my fucking phone?” to whatever creature was shuffling through Second Patrol’s break-room drawers somewhere to his left.
“Lieutenant Billings’s phone,” he heard a disembodied voice say, then a few seconds later he felt a tap on his shoulder. Billings pulled the sport coat off his head and sat up, blinking through the unnatural yellow light at one of his uniforms, who was mouthing, Are you here? with the phone held to her chest. He gave her the give-it-here motion, mouthed, Thank you to the patrolwoman, and closed his eyes again. He kicked his chair back, put his feet on the table, and sighed “Lieutenant Billings” into the mouthpiece.
“Hey, LT, your name came up on a BOLO for a Dodge Charger, partial plate XY, bull bars on the front.”
“No, that’s Detective Wheel, Violent Crimes. Or her partner, what’s his name. New guy, whatever.”
“Sorry, LT, I called the number in the system.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Billings dug around in his inside jacket pocket until he found his notepad and pen and shifted the phone to his other ear. “I didn’t ask—who’s this?”
“Gene Marshall, Conservation Police officer.”
“No shit. Okay. What happened, someone, like, run over a fucking deer or something?”
“No, sir. Chesapeake PD search and recovery team is about to hook the vehicle up to a wrecker and pull it out of the water.”
“Thanks for the heads-up. You first on scene, then?” Billings started scratching info into the notepad.
“That’s right. Chesapeake PD took over when they got here, but dispatch told me about the BOLO when I called it in. Figured you’d want to know.”
“Give me… shit, I don’t know where it is.”
“You’re an hour out, give or take.”
“Okay. Walk me through it when I get there?”
“Of course. Sir, you mind if I ask what’s the Charger mixed up in on your end?”
“Double homicide.”
“Well, we’ll find out once the car comes out of the water but pretty sure there’s a dead guy in the trunk.”
“Thanks, Gene. I’m on my way.” Lieutenant Billings wrote +1 in the notepad, slung on his sport coat, and headed for the door. When he reached his unmarked, he clipped his phone to the dash and pulled out a card from his wallet. He punched in the number for Matt Jacobson, assignments editor, Virginian-Pilot, put it on speaker, and pulled out of the parking lot toward the military highway.
“Matt Jacobson,” said the voice through the speaker.
“Matt, Jack Billings.”
“What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”
“I was wondering if I could interest you in buying me dinner at Mizuno?”
“Pretty pricey spot, Jack.”
“Twenty dollars says your next call is to make a reservation.”
“Okay. You’re on. Let me hear what you got.”
FOURTEEN
Cat looked at her watch, then over at Arman, with his eyes darting around the terminal. Quarter after one. Too many faces moving too fast. She was about to wave him and Lamar over and call the whole thing off when her phone buzzed in her bag. She pulled out the phone and walked over to the bench where the two men sat and held up two fingers.
Lamar leaned over to Arman and said, “Two minutes, and we’re gonna bail.” He reached over and awkwardly patted Arman on his shoulder and then said, “We tried.”
Arman nodded, took a deep breath, and let his eyes fall to the dirty concrete. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. What now?”
Lamar just nodded toward Detective Wheel, flipping her phone open.
“Wheel,” she said.
“Hey, Wheel, Lieutenant Billings. Game warden found your Charger in some swamp or some shit way out in Bum-Fuck, Egypt.”
“No shit, Jack? Jesus. Who’s on it?”
“Chesapeake PD. I don’t know who. I got it from… hold on a second… Gene Marshall, Conservation Police.”
“You know I’m in DC right now. Can we get anybody out there?”
“Detective, I am your knight in shining armor. I’m gonna drive out to this mosquito-swamp motherfucker myself.”
“Are you bringing the reporters with you or what?”
“Wheel, I’m insulted. You know how much I just love police work.”
“What’s-his-face is buying you dinner, isn’t he?”
“Mizuno.”
“Well, at least give me something before you give it to him, will ya?”
“I’ll call you when I know what’s what. Right now looks like one dead guy in the trunk with a GSW to the coconut. I don’t know how they’d know that yet. That’s just what the game warden told me.”
“Let me know. And get me this game warden’s info. I’m gonna want to talk to him.”
“You got it. Oh, yeah, one more thing. Guy at the Pilot is gonna have one of his reporters call you.”
“About the Charger?”
“I don’t know. I think he’s got her on the John Doe at the beach. Anyways, Sally something. She’s gonna call you when she gets back from DC.”
“Jack.”
“What?”
“Come on, Jack. Any chance you asked what she’s doing in DC?”
“He said she’s meeting some tipster up there.”
“Did he say where?”
“Hold on a sec, Wheel. Jeez Louise. So pushy. I do outrank you, remember?”
Arman and Lamar both looked at Catherine’s foot tapping impatiently on the concrete, wondering what had her so worked up.
Cat heard Billings’s weight shifting in the driver’s seat, digging through his pockets and the console. “Tell me she’s meeting someone at the bus station, Lieutenant.”
There was silence on the other end of the line as Billings stopped looking for his notes. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah, Cat. Meeting a source is supposed to come in on a Greyhound. Jesus. Sherlock Holmes got nothing on you.”
“Compared to you, Jack.”
“Fuck yourself.”
“Get me her number, will you? ASAP?”
“Of course. Hey, Wheel, now that I think of it, he sounded a little worried about the kid. Said he didn’t like the meet. Y’all watch your six, okay?”
“Yeah. Hey.”
“What’s up?”
“Thanks, LT,” she said.
“Seriously, Catherine. Sounds like Important Police Shit,” he said, and ended the call.
Arman and Lamar just looked at her, waiting. “I think we got something,” she said.
Sally and Trey stood on the steps of Union Station, not knowing they were waiting for a dead man to appear. They checked their watches and then each other’s faces to see if either thought it was worth staying longer.
“What do you think, Sal?”
“You’d think whoever it is would be on time, at least. What time you got?”
“Quarter of two.”
“Yeah. Me too. Can we give it five more?”
“Probably better to wait until the rain lets up a little before you head back anyway.”
Sally scanned the faces swirling around her, but most of them dashed to the waiting taxis. Not many lingered, and those who did seemed unlikely candidates for a meet like this. A handful of tourists in red, white, and blue shirts and hats. A few Acela riders left over from the previous workweek. Two young boys drummed a steady go-go beat on upturned buckets just under the awning enough to clear the rain.
“Maybe it’s not—” Sally’s phone rang. She looked at Trey and let it ring three more times.
He said, “Sally. Answer it,” and mimed pulling it out of her bag.
She took the phone out and flipped it open, her throat suddenly dry, her voice shriveled up in her mouth as she said, “Sally Ewell, Virginian-Pilot,” twirling underneath the arches as if she might spot the caller on the other end of the line.
“Sally, this is Detective Catherine Wheel, Norfolk PD. Tell me where you are right now. We need to talk.”
Trey asked, “What is it?”
Cops, she mouthed.
“Sally, this is very important. You were supposed to meet a source at Union Station. He’s not coming.”
“How do you—”
“Sally, I’m here at the station with another detective. The man you were supposed to meet is dead. Those bodies piling up at Ocean View, the ones your editor told you about? They’re related.”
“How do you—” Sally whispered, leaning down and into the stone wall at the arch’s base.
“I just got off the phone with Matt Jacobson. One more time, Sally. Please listen carefully. I need you to tell me where you are, and we’ll come to you.”
“Okay… okay. We’re out front under the awning, center arch.”
“Who’s with you, Sally?”
“A friend.”
“Sal, I can’t—” Trey started.
Sally lifted her hand to cut him off. “You trust him?” Catherine asked.
“Yeah, of course.”
“All right, hon,” said Cat. “Stay put, keep your eyes on. We’ll be there in a minute.”
Sally closed the phone, took a deep breath, and shut her eyes tightly. She opened them again and looked up at Trey.
“Sal, what the hell is going on?”
“We’re waiting for a dead guy.”
“What are you talking about?”
