Deep House, page 8
“Banks did really well,” said Al. “Remember that guy from Wells Fargo who said that we’re all in it together? Guess the ‘we’ didn’t include them.”
“Most of my friends haven’t found jobs.” Tess put two dollars on the counter. “It’s really bad out there.”
Al pushed the money back. “You keep it. I just won’t give Mr. DreadfulWater here a refill.”
THUMPS FOUND A STOOL and settled in. There was a great appeal to a quiet place. It was akin to being in church, Thumps decided, if church had a grill and a coffee machine and wasn’t under the illusion that god existed.
Al set a cup in front of him. “You look like you slept with the dogs.”
“Cats,” said Thumps.
“Cats?”
“Freeway came home.” Thumps could feel his whole body smiling.
Al grinned. “So the cat came back.”
“She did.” Thumps watched Al pour the coffee into the cup.
“I thought she was a goner.”
“She had kittens.”
Al set the coffee pot down with a bang. “The hell you say.”
“I thought she was spayed,” said Thumps, “but it appears I was wrong.”
“So you’re a father.”
“More like Freeway’s a mother.”
“How many did she have?”
“Five,” said Thumps. “But one died.”
“That’s always heartbreaking.” Al started back to the grill. Halfway there, she stopped and came back in a rush. “I hope to hell you didn’t throw it in the garbage.”
“No.”
“I hope you buried it in the backyard.”
“I did.”
“You and Freeway, right?” Al looked at Thumps hard. “Freeway was there when you buried her child?”
“She was.”
“Okay,” said Al, “then I’ll make you breakfast. With kittens, you’re going to need your strength.”
Thumps leaned over the coffee cup and let the warmth drift across his face. He’d have to buy kitty litter, some more food for Freeway, maybe a couple of toys for the family.
And he’d have to name the babies. That would be fun. But he didn’t have to do that right away. It might be better to wait to see if the kittens’ personalities suggested names.
“Roxanne Heavy Runner stopped in this morning, looking for you.”
“Roxanne?”
“Don’t panic,” said Al. “She wasn’t here to hurt you.”
Roxanne was a large woman with the personality of a cruise missile. She had been the band secretary long before Thumps arrived in Chinook, would probably be the secretary long after he was dead.
“She wanted me to tell you that Claire is expecting you for dinner tonight,” said Al. “Early evening. Around six.”
“Dinner?”
“Maybe Ivory would like a kitten.”
“Claire’s going to cook?”
“Yeah,” said Al, “that could be a problem.”
Claire Merchant was many things. A fine administrator, who had been tribal chief on several occasions. A mother to a worrisome son. A sometimes lover. And now a mother a second time around.
“I’m guessing a frozen dinner of some sort,” said Al. “So you’re probably safe.”
What Claire wasn’t was a cook. The woman just had no aptitude for cooking. And little interest in learning.
“Roxanne said you should bring flowers and something sweet.” Al put a plate in front of him. Eggs, sausage, hash browns, toast, salsa. All the major food groups in one place. “Almost forgot, Wutty is now the proud owner of a bus.”
“Wutty?”
“Don’t be like that,” said Al. “The man tries.”
“He bought a bus?”
“Not exactly,” said Al. “You remember that big yellow school bus been sitting behind Stas Black Weasel’s garage?”
Thumps put his head in his hands. “The one with no engine and no tires?”
“Now it has an engine,” said Al, “and tires as well.”
“Stas repaired the bus?”
“He’s Wutty’s new partner,” said Al. “Wutty runs the tours, and Stas looks after the maintenance.”
“You fill Stas in on Wutty’s other enthusiasms?”
“Sure,” said Al, “but Stas said that the bus wasn’t doing anything, and fixing it up wasn’t a big deal. And he gets a fifty-percent stake in the business.”
“What happened to the Uber/DoorDash/FedEx look-alike plan?”
“Going to concentrate on tourism instead.”
Thumps pushed his coffee cup to the edge of the counter.
“No can do,” said Al. “I gave your refill to Tess.”
THUMPS TOOK HIS TIME with breakfast. Langfield’s would be open soon. He’d stop in early, show Lynn the shots he had taken at the test facility and in Deep House, see how the camera had managed the colour rendition of the paint panels and the surrounding rocks and canyon foliage. If nothing else, it would be a pleasant conversation, a chance to find out just how far photography had moved on into the future without him.
Al was back with the coffee pot. “I decided to relent,” she said as she filled his cup. “And just so you know, I wouldn’t object if you named one of the kittens after me.”
14
There was a young, dark-haired man behind the counter at the camera store.
“I’m guessing you’re Mr. DreadfulWater,” said the man. “Lynn said you’d be in first thing.”
“Thumps,” said Thumps.
“Ameet,” said the young man. “Ameet Zalera. Fujifilm rep extraordinaire.”
There was a laptop on the counter. Thin and sleek, with a soft black finish that made you want to rub it in the hope that a genie would pop out, the kind of laptop Thumps might like to have if he wanted a laptop.
Which he didn’t.
“People hear my name and want to know where I’m from.” Ameet opened the laptop. “Bet you get that too.”
“DreadfulWater’s Cherokee,” said Thumps.
“Oklahoma, right?”
Thumps nodded. “Never lived there. Born and raised in California.”
“East Indian,” said Ameet. “Zalera is more a Portuguese last name. Grandparents are from Gujarat state, north of Mumbai, but I was born and raised in Saskatoon. You ever go back to Oklahoma?”
Tahlequah. And Park Hill. His mother had told him that he had relations in the area. But that was a lifetime ago.
“Nope. Family’s all gone. Nothing left for me there.”
“I got an uncle in Rajkot,” said Ameet. “But that’s about it.”
Thumps tried to remember the other family names in Oklahoma. The grandparents. The uncles and aunts. The Phillips? The Hunts?
“Lynn says you’re a film guy. Medium format? Large format?”
“Guilty.”
“It’s not dead.” Ameet took several cameras off the shelf. “Got a lot of customers who still shoot film. Some shoot both.”
“Both?”
“Sure,” said Ameet. “I have an old Nikon film camera with a fifty-millimetre lens, and a Fuji mirrorless with a twenty-three millimetre. You do mostly landscape, right?”
“Mostly.”
“Lynn says you’re interested in giving digital a look.”
“I’m curious.”
“I have a loaner that’s out with a photographer in Helena. Soon as it comes back, I’ll drop it off with Lynn. He’ll set you up. Next time you’re in the field, take a couple of shots with it and take a couple of the same scene with your rig.”
“Can’t get a better deal than that.” Lynn had come out of the back. “I’ll be curious to see how the two compare.”
“In the meantime,” said Ameet, “Lynn tells me you’re looking to score some free crime-scene photos.”
Thumps took the Panasonic out of his pocket and set it on the counter.
Ameet slid the SD card out of the camera and slipped it into the side of the laptop.
“All right, so we have a . . .” Ameet turned the computer so Thumps could see the screen.
“Burned Mercedes van.”
“Don’t see that every day.” Ameet scrolled through the photos. “And these are?”
“The paint panel field out at the test facility.”
Lynn made a popping sound with his mouth. “Is that Deep House?”
The photo on the screen was of one of the shelters. A dark, damp landscape. Confined and slightly disturbing. Thumps couldn’t remember which one. Not that it mattered.
Lynn pushed his glasses up his nose. “You actually went hiking in the canyon?”
Thumps was surprised at the sharpness and clarity of the shots.
“Couple of these are underexposed,” said Ameet, “but that’s the beauty of digital photography. With digital, you can change the exposure.” The young man moved a slider on the screen and the image brightened. “It’s that easy.”
“Great.”
“And that’s before you get into the various filters and algorithms.”
Thumps watched as Ameet changed the saturation and the intensity of the image.
“Bada bing, bada boom.”
Or, Thumps thought to himself, you could expose it correctly the first time and not depend on a computer to do it for you.
“And if you don’t like colour, you can switch to black and white.”
Thumps had to admit that he was impressed. All this without having to put one foot in a darkroom. All this without having to mix chemicals and hope that the fumes didn’t destroy your liver.
“What I like best,” said Ameet, “is that you can enlarge sections. Course, you can do the same thing with an enlarger, but this is so much quicker.”
The image on the screen was of Cooley standing next to the paint panels. The big man was smiling, one hand resting on the silver panel, as though it were something he had bagged on a safari.
“Depending on the size of the sensor and the file, you can go as large as you want.”
Cooley suddenly disappeared, and Thumps realized he was looking at the rocks in the background.
“Like this,” said Ameet.
Lynn leaned in. “What’s that?”
“What?”
“There.”
Ameet squinted at the screen. Then he worked a slider and made the image larger and smaller, larger and smaller, trying to get the correct magnification.
“Shit,” said Lynn. “Is that what I think it is?”
SHERIFF DUKE HOCKNEY was enjoying a cup of coffee, and he was not amused.
“A body?”
Thumps handed him the photograph that Lynn had printed off.
“In Deep House?” There was a small bag on the desk. Duke pushed it to one side and studied the photograph. “You sure Lynn isn’t pulling your leg?”
“What?”
“I’ve seen some of the things you can do with digital. They got tidal waves breaking over Manhattan, whales in a bathtub.”
“Don’t think he’s fooling around.”
“Dinosaurs walking across the Golden Gate Bridge.”
“I think that’s an arm.”
“You know that this is my first cup of coffee?” Duke turned the photograph upside down. “And in this bag is a raisin Danish. From the new bakery.”
Thumps glanced at the bag.
“I have a routine to my day,” said the sheriff. “And I don’t like it interrupted.”
“Could be a dead body.”
Duke snorted. “Damn it, DreadfulWater, you sure know how to ruin a man’s pleasure.”
“I could stay here and guard the Danish.”
Duke reached for the phone. “You know what misery loves best of all?”
TWO HOURS LATER, there were four vehicles and six people at the entrance to Deep House. Cooley Small Elk and his pickup truck, Sheriff Duke Hockney and his cruiser, Deputies Lance Packard and Deanna Heavy Runner, Beth Mooney in her station wagon.
And Thumps DreadfulWater.
“Why am I here?”
“You’re a material witness,” said the sheriff. “You and Cooley found the body.”
“The only thing we found,” said Thumps, “was a bunch of busted paint panels.”
“Everybody knows everybody,” said the sheriff. “So let’s not waste any time. Canyon’s no place to be after dark.”
“Thumps doesn’t have to come,” said Cooley. “I can show you where the photograph was taken.”
“He interrupted my morning routine.”
Thumps held his hands out. “Sitting in a chair is a routine?”
“And he ate part of my Danish.”
“Unfortunately,” said Beth, “I seem to have worn the wrong shoes. So I’m going to wait here until you bring the body out.”
“Don’t you want to see the crime scene?” said the sheriff.
“Take lots of photos,” said Beth.
“I’ll stay and protect her,” said Thumps.
“Don’t need protection,” said Beth.
“I’ll stay anyway.”
Duke pulled his hat down on his head. “Going to be boring just standing around.”
Beth’s face brightened. “I can give Mr. DreadfulWater his annual physical.”
Thumps didn’t waste any time. “She’s kidding.”
“No, I’m not,” said Beth.
“Now there’s a difficult choice,” said the sheriff. “Don’t suppose you could wait until I get back?”
“Canyon gets dark quick,” said Thumps. “You guys are burning daylight.”
“You know,” said the sheriff, “one of these days, I’m going to arrest you for aggravated annoyance.”
“I’ll be happy to testify for the prosecution,” said Beth.
Hockney pulled the backpack out of the cruiser. “About that physical,” he said to Beth, “if there are sharp instruments involved, I’d appreciate it if you’d use your cellphone to capture the moment for later viewing.”
Thumps walked with the sheriff as far as the first boulder field. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“You mean our missing driver?” Duke stopped and considered the mountain of rocks in front of him. “In law enforcement, we call that ‘jumping to conclusions.’”
“Could be a tourist,” said Lance. “Got too close to the edge.”
“Or it could be a hiker,” said the sheriff. “Though why anyone would go into Deep House for shits and giggles is beyond me.”
Thumps looked up at a boulder the size of a three-storey building. “You’re actually going in?”
“My job,” said the sheriff. “I don’t have to like it. I just have to do it.”
“It’s not that bad,” said Cooley. “So long as you don’t get hurt.”
“It might not even be a body,” said Deanna. “The photo isn’t all that clear. It could be the arm from a mannequin. Maybe someone dumped a bunch of fixtures from a store that went out of business.”
Duke’s face darkened. “What was the most important thing they taught you at the academy?”
“Don’t piss off the boss,” said Deanna.
“And if it is a mannequin,” said Duke, “who gets to carry it out?”
“I do,” said Deanna.
“Only because Special Deputy DreadfulWater here has an appointment for a physical.”
Deanna didn’t even make an effort to keep the smile off her face. “Special Deputy?”
“It’s honorary,” said Duke. “It doesn’t mean shit.”
BETH HAD HER DOCTOR’S KIT OUT and was arranging the pieces on the tailgate of Cooley’s pickup.
She motioned him over. “How long do you think they’ll be?”
Thumps kept his distance. “Couple of hours.”
“Then we have plenty of time.”
“Not happening,” said Thumps. “I’m thinking I should go back to town.”
“You don’t have a car.” Beth set a small rubber hammer next to a tongue depressor.
“You have a car,” said Thumps. “We could go back together.”
“I’m an officer of the court,” said Beth. “I can’t leave my post.”
“And I have to look after Freeway,” said Thumps.
“Freeway.” Beth stopped what she was doing. “Your dead cat?”
“She’s not dead,” said Thumps. “And she had kittens.”
“Kittens?”
“Four,” said Thumps. “It’s my job to make sure that they’re okay.”
“So you’re a father.” Beth picked up the tongue depressor. “All the more reason to have a physical.”
Thumps glanced at the entrance to Deep House. Maybe he could catch up with the sheriff.
“Don’t do it for yourself,” said Beth. “Do it for your family.”
THE SUN WAS FADING and the shadows were gathering up the land when Cooley strolled out of Deep House.
“Took us longer than we thought.” Cooley stopped and shook himself. “Carrying a body bag over the boulders is tricky.”
Beth cocked her head. “Duke carried a body bag over those boulders?”
“Nope,” said Cooley. “Me and Lance and Deanna took turns. Duke supervised.”
“So it was a body?”
“It was.” Sheriff Duke Hockney came out from the shadows on the canyon walls. “No wallet, so we’re going to have to wait on a name.”
Beth opened the back of her station wagon. “In the meantime, let’s get John Doe somewhere more comfortable.”
Thumps flashed on Beth’s morgue. “Comfortable” was not the word he would have used for the basement room with its body lockers and stainless-steel table.
“Found more of those paint panels,” said Duke. “Yellow was kinda nice. The silver was ugly as hell.”
“Just painted my apartment,” said Beth. “You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to get the colour right.”
Duke hooked his thumbs in his Sam Browne belt. “You got any other bodies on the go?”
“You don’t know how long I’ve waited for a man to ask me that.”
“Just need to know if we’re looking at an accident or something more nefarious.”
Thumps looked at Duke.
“Not my place to guess,” said the sheriff. “That’s the job of the county coroner.”
BETH SHUT THE BACK DOOR of the wagon. “Let the guessing begin.” Cooley headed home. Lance and Deanna drove back to the office. Beth set out for the old Land Titles building and the morgue. Thumps rode into Chinook in the cruiser with the sheriff.
