I gave Woody a call after the Feds left and told them what had happened.
"I’d say this confirms the Feds were following Isaac," Woody said. "And it sounds like they're more interested in the marijuana business than in the cryptocurrency."
"I love how casual you say that. 'Cryptocurrency.' Like you fucking understand what it means."
"I understand enough. I've got a Reddit account. People like to talk about those sorts of things."
"Why don't we discuss how come the Feebs came and saw me, and not you?"
"I make a concerted effort to stay out of federal radar."
"There a reason for that?"
"Many reasons."
"Any we can discuss?"
"Nope."
“All right then; we'll put in a pin in that for another day. Moving onto Pete and whether we tell him about this?”
“We do. He’s got to figure out what he wants his next decision to be about all of this.”
“It’s a lot to keep dumping on the poor guy.”
"He’s an adult; we can’t make his choices for him. We’ll go out after the meeting tonight. See you there."
And he hung up.
17
I didn't listen much during the meeting. Me not listening wasn't uncommon; some nights, some meetings, I zoned out. The words would mean nothing, and I stopped paying attention. The meeting was the same people, the same problems, the same issues, the same blame game played out night after night, and everything turned into white noise, humming and buzzing you got used to, almost a dull aching that became somehow familiar and comforting.
But it gave me somewhere to be, and people more clueless than me to be around, and that was often all I needed to make it through the night.
Woody and I brushed off invites from some regulars to go to the Riverside for coffee and pie, and instead we got into the Aztek to drive over to the Days Inn. As soon as we were inside, Woody's hand reached for the radio.
"Don't you dare," I said. I had a Fleetwood Mac CD in, and the thundering drums of "Tusk" had just started.
Woody looked at me like I'd slapped him for stealing cookies. "What?"
"You'll put it on NPR, and I'm not in the mood to listen to people talk. I just spent an hour doing that."
"They switch over to music at night."
"Is it music I'd recognize?"
"You listen to classical music much?"
"I do not. I do, however, listen to Fleetwood Mac, and so we're listening to Fleetwood Mac. When we're in your truck, we listen to NPR, and it fucking drives me insane, but it's your truck, so you can run the radio. This, however, is my car, and I'd like to hear music I can sing along with."
"No one can sing along to 'Tusk.'"
"I'll hum."
I put on my seat belt and pulled out of St. Anthony's parking lot.
We were a block down the road when Woody said, "What are you so grumpy about?"
I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, roughly in time to the song. "Am I being grumpy?"
"'Grumpy' at the mildest, 'bitchy' at the most honest. You ready to start your period or something?"
We stopped at a light.
"There're times where I come to realize I don't know shit about you, and I'm mostly good with it, because you've saved my life a few times, both literally and metaphorically," I said. "You're smarter than me, you're better armed than most European militaries, you can shoot wings off a fly from a quarter-mile, and you've never talked about anything in your life before you came back to Parker County. I'm okay with all of your mysterious past, since we're supposed to be dealing with the here and the now. But what you did was, you did my thinking for me when Pete offered us money and you turned it down and spoke for both of us, and it pissed me off."
He pointed ahead. "The light turned green."
About the same time, a car behind me honked its horn. I shifted my foot from the brake to the gas and moved us forward.
"I wasn't trying to talk for you," Woody said. "I couldn't take the money, though, because we never did what Pete asked us to do."
"I understand that, but see, you have a real income from somewhere. God knows where, because again, I don't know what the hell you did before you ended up on a farm where you won't grow anything, living with a million dogs. But me, I'm busting my hump at Witcher Shoals #4 while also being bored off my ass, hoping I can squeeze enough nickels together on a frequent enough of a basis that no one turns off my power and leaves me jerking off in the dark with nothing but my imagination."
Woody ran a hand over his beard. It was grayer than his hair, and as we passed through waves of sodium vapor street lights, the lines of his face showed more. They were harsh and deep, and they betrayed the possibility of what his years might have been like. They weren't the same age lines I saw in the guys who worked the mines, who packed on 30 years in 10 and looked like grandfathers by the time they had kids learning to drive. These were creases cut into flesh by stress greater than finding coal seams and making weight counts; they were age markers earned in ways I didn't comprehend, and maybe I was better off for it.
"It wouldn't have been the right thing to do simply because it wasn't," Woody said. "Because nothing's only about money. Pete asked for help, and we should have helped him because he needed help. The money, that's secondary. When you do something only because a paycheck is attached, or the promise of a payout, you're riding the line between doing a job and you being a whore. What we could do, and what we can still do, is something good and right in helping Pete. You can say it sounds like fairy tale bullshit to you, but I'm at an age in my life, this is the way I have to be. Just do the right thing because it's the right thing." He looked at me. "If you want the money, you're welcome to it, but that can't be why I do a thing. I've done shit for money, and I didn't like the way it made me feel."
We were at the Days Inn, and I parked. Neither one of us moved to get out, and neither of us looked at the other, and instead we stared forward into the darkness.
"This is an honor thing to you?" I said. "Like you're a goddamn samurai or something?"
"It's more complicated than that," he said. "You'd like the money, but deep down you want to be a cop. You want to feel like what you're doing still matters, and you're willing to replace that missing sensation with money. But my experience is when you replace one thing with another that way, it's all empty. You don't sleep well, and you don't like the face you see in the mirror. You do things because they represent who you are, not because they're replacing who you think you are." He unbuckled his seatbelt. "Let's go talk to Pete."
Pete's car was in the spot in front of his room. I knocked on his door and waited and got nothing. The curtains were drawn, but a light flickered on the edges and I could make out the dulled sound of the TV. I knocked again. Still nothing.
We walked around to the front, to the little restaurant attached to the lobby, checked there but didn't see him. I called his cell phone and, after five rings, it went to voicemail. I gave him another call and got the same response.
Woody brought out a zippered case from his jeans pocket. Inside was an assortment of small steel tools.
"Do you bring a lock pick kit with you everywhere?" I said.
He crouched level to the door lock. "Don't you?"
The motel had switched over to the electronic locks that opened with key cards, but they still had manual locks you could use a traditional key on. Woody fiddled with the lock for about 30 seconds, there was a click, and he opened the door.
The air conditioner was running full steam, and the blast of cold air hit us as we walked in. It was meat locker-level frigid in the room.
The bed was still made, but the sheets were ruffled, like Pete had been laying on top of the covers. On the TV, a bunch of rich-looking women glared at one another. A beer bottle was tipped over on the floor, its contents half-poured into the carpet.
Pete's suitcase sat in the corner, his clothes hanging in the little dressing area. His razor and to
othbrush rest on the sink counter. The bathroom door was closed. From within the bathroom, the exhaust fan whined.
"Hey, Pete!" Woody said. "You in the john?"
I walked further into the room. "You ever stayed in a motel and closed the bathroom door when you did your business?"
"Can't think I have."
"Because you don't. Bathrooms in motels are too small, especially if you're a big guy like Pete." I draped a hand towel over the knob and opened the door.
Pete laid in the bathtub, sprawled out, one arm hanging over the tub's edge. His eyes were open, head turned to the door, so it was as if he was staring at me when I walked in. From the middle of his chest, a bloom of blood spread out across him. In the center was a dark, crusty, nearly-black iris, a gaping hole exposing enough of his internal workings to count as an anatomy lesson.
Woody came up behind me and peered over my shoulder. "We should go," he said.
"We have to call the cops."
"And we'll tell them we broke into his motel room and found him dead in the bathtub?"
"But it's the truth."
"How much truth you think matters when someone sees a big old dead ex-cop lying in a bathtub, Henry?"
"What about doing the right thing? All the stuff about honor?"
"Trust me when I tell you there's no honor in people thinking you killed a retired cop."
I heard a knock at the room door. The Parker County sheriff's deputy in the doorway was young and skinny, and the uniform didn't fit him right, like he'd borrowed clothes from his older brother so he could play dress-up. I knew most of the sheriff's department on account of the stuff with the National Brotherhood, but him I didn't recognize him. He looked new, and a little nervous.
His hand rested on his service weapon in its holster, and his eyes moved from Woody to myself to the bathroom.
"Evening, deputy," I said. "What can we do for you?"
"Front desk got complaints about noise, sounded like a fight. Asked if we’d check into it. Mind if I come in?"
"No, not at all."
Woody shot me a look that said I was the stupidest creature to have ever walked the face of the earth, and an embarrassment to the evolutionary process. My expression tried to convey a sense of "what the fuck else are we supposed to say?"
I stepped away from the bathroom door. "We were getting ready to leave, actually."
"This is your room?" the deputy said.
"No, deputy, it is not," I said. "A friend of ours is staying here."
The deputy walked up next to Woody. "I didn't get your name."
"I didn't offer it," Woody said.
The deputy pointed toward the table and chairs near the window. "You mind taking a seat over there for a moment?"
"Are you holding us under suspicion of a crime?" Woody said.
"I'm asking you to sit down for two minutes."
"I can arrest you, if that's what you want."
"What charge?"
"Since this isn't your motel room, trespassing. Now, please, have a seat."
Woody walked over to the chairs and sat down. The deputy faced me. "Why don't you join him?"
I crossed the room and dropped myself into the other chair. Woody glared at me.
The deputy walked to the bathroom and nudged the door open with his foot and looked inside. Even from across the room I could see his eyes pop open big enough to make Bugs Bunny proud.
Woody set his hands flat on the table. "You might as well do the same."
The deputy pulled his service weapon and aimed it at us. "Hands where I can see them," he said.
"Fuck," I said.
18
The Parker County sheriff was a guy named Matt Simms. Even though I was tangentially responsible for him getting back with his ex-wife, he didn't seem to like me. As we stood outside of the motel room in the flashing lights of a half-dozen different police cars, and he appraised me with a scorn saved for old women who catch boys playing with themselves, I became positive he didn't like me.
"What the hell, Henry?" he said. "What the fucking hell?"
I hadn't seen him in a few months, and he looked as if he'd lost weight. Simms still carried himself like someone who'd been the high school football star, confident in his motions, but his blue jeans and sheriff's department polo shirt sagged where they shouldn't have, the waist of his jeans cinched up where his belt was too tight. He was further into his 40s than me, his dark hair graying, his patchy stubble even grayer. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, and the eyes behind them seemed tired.
Guys from the county coroner’s office wheeled Pete's body out on a stretcher and loaded into the back of a van. One guy guiding the stretcher asked the other about the chances for the Buccaneers to make the football playoffs in the fall.
Woody and I smoked and stood next to Simms' police vehicle, an unmarked Ford Expedition with the lights on the dashboard. Simms leaned on the fender.
"Pete needed help," I said. "He was an ex-state guy from Morgantown, trying to find a guy who disappeared. He asked me for help, and I got Woody involved."
"You ever thought of staying out of the missing-person business, Henry?" Simms said. "It brings trouble along with it whenever you do." He bought out a notebook from his back pocket and poised his pen at the ready. "Who's the missing guy?"
"Isaac McCoy."
Simms' pen paused in mid-stroke. "McCoy? Of the marijuana McCoys?"
I nodded.
Simms replaced the notebook in his back pocket, shut his eyes and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "I'm not even going to bother. This won’t belong to me in 20 minutes, anyway."
A West Virginia State Police cruiser pulled up at the end of the motel parking lot and Jackie Hall got out. Jackie was a lieutenant with the state criminal investigation unit, and we knew one another from our younger days with the state police. He was a big man, not in a "former athlete" way, but in a "I'd have two of the combos and make them both a 'supersize'" way. The front end of the cruiser rose as he got out of the car. He wore a powder blue short-sleeved dress shirt and a red tie knotted too short to reach over his expanse of stomach, his blonde hair cropped short and plastered flat across his head. He moved like a hippo at its first ballet lesson, arms swinging so loose at his sides they barely seemed connected to the rest of him.
"The motherfucking hits keep on coming," Simms said.
"What's the issue with you and him?" I said.
"We have a mutual understanding where we both think the other one is an asshole. Only thing is, I'm right."
The last bit of words, Simms rushed out, in a hurry to put them in the air before Jackie could hear them. The message was clear: Hate Jackie all you want, but he was state police, and Simms was county. In law enforcement, there was a hierarchy in place, and everyone understood it, especially those hanging from the bottom rungs.
Jackie stepped into our circle. He smiled at me, nodded toward Woody, threw his chin toward Simms.
"Sheriff, I understand you got a dead body," Jackie said.
"Your grasp of the obvious is astounding, Lieutenant," Simms said. "A gentleman by the name of Pete Calhoun."
Jackie's features drew in on one another, as if his nose had become the vortex for a sinkhole. "Why's that name sound familiar?"
"Because he was in the Morgantown outpost same time we were," I said.
Jackie snapped his fingers and the little lights of recognition lit up on his face. "Okay, I remember him now. Paper pusher. Body still on scene?"
"County examiner just took him," Simms said.
"What was he doing in Parker County?" Jackie said.
"He had a private investigator's license," I said. "Came down on a missing-persons."
"What they told me was that he was stabbed, right?"
"You could phrase it that way," Simms said. "You could also say he got carved up, too."
"Found a murder weapon?"
"Nothing yet."
Jackie's gaze shifted to Woody and me. "And what about these two joke
rs? What are they here for?"
"Because my deputy found them in the room with the body."
Jackie's shoulders slumped forward, as if the structural foundation holding him up had collapsed. "For the love of fuck, Henry, what the hell did you do?"
I took a long drag from my cigarette and blew out the smoke and explained the situation, including the visit to the McCoy farm and the money.
"Your boys find this money?" Jackie said to Simms.
Simms stiffened. "No, Lieutenant, my men didn't find anything, but we will let you know if they do."
Jackie loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button on his shirt. "This falls within county jurisdiction and everything, Sheriff, but since this is a former state trooper, I'm sure you won't mind if we take the lead on this. No offense, but when you and these characters worked together before, you left everyone else with their dicks in their hands."
"You kids have at this," Simms said. "I only came by because I saw the pretty lights." He fished his keys out of his jeans pocket. "You mind getting your asses off my car? I'm gonna go home and throw rope at the wife."
Woody and I moved and Simms got in and drove off without another word. Jackie was already on his cell phone.
"Where's this put us, you suppose?" I said to Woody.
"On someone's shit list."
"That feels familiar."
"I'm struggling to remember a time we weren't on someone's."
"It's been a while."
Woody lit a fresh cigarette. "I will concede that going into Pete's room wasn't the best idea."
Jackie ended his phone call and looked at me. "The state superintendent's not thrilled with me, but I owe that to the fact he doesn't like it when former troopers gets killed, queer or not."
"You've taken the sensitivity training to heart, Jackie," I said.
"Henry, I don't care if someone's gay, but it's not my thing, either. I never once looked at a guy and thought 'Yeah, I want my dick in him.'"
Complicated Shadows Page 7
