Ghost of the Karankawa (The Bill Travis Mysteries Book 10)

by George Wier

  “What’s wrong?” Wolf asked.

  I turned in my seat and regarded him. “Let me ask you something. Did we or did we not perform emergency surgery on a sasquatch last night?”

  “That’s why your hands are bloody,” Julie said. “I was afraid to ask.”

  “We did,” Wolf said. “In awhile, though, you’ll begin to forget.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You remember how you froze up when you smelled him? Got all scared?”

  “I did?” I asked.

  “You did. It’s one of his defense mechanisms. Another one is the forgetting thing. It’s part of the smell-thing. Don’t bother trying to figure it out. It’s like trying to understand the incomprehensible. The two don’t match up very well, you know.”

  I nodded.

  “You might remember that you did a certain thing, that you saw a certain thing, but you won’t necessarily recall it. By which I mean, you won’t get a picture in your mind of it. Most people forget all the time. Some people can’t get a picture of what they had for breakfast.”

  “Food,” I said. “I need food. Right now.”

  “Yes,” Julie said. “Let’s go eat, then to the Sheriff’s Office.”

  “Just so you two know,” I said. “I’m not nearly half as mad at Randy Marshall and his grad student goon squad as I am at Evanston Cooper. When I find him—if Sheriff Renard doesn’t find him first—I just may kill him.”

  “Why?” Julie asked.

  “He’s the one back of this whole thing. I’m pretty sure he had something to do with the killing of Purcell Lee as well.”

  “Wait a minute,” Wolf said. “Who did you say?”

  “Evanston Cooper.”

  “Shit,” Wolf said.

  “What?”

  “I’m hesitant to say.”

  I gave Wolf a cool long look.

  “I think you’d better,” Julie said. “When he gets quiet like that, look out.”

  Wolf sighed. “He’s the one who’s been paying my bills for this little trip.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I wasn’t feeling up to walking into Dixie’s with dried blood on my hands, so Julie pulled into the Sunrise Grocery store on the road into town and she went inside while we waited. She was back inside of five minutes with a loaf of bread, a couple of small bottles of mustard and mayonnaise, and a selection of luncheon meat and cheese. Also, she brought three cups of coffee which she handed around and sat in the driver’s seat and made sandwiches while Wolf, Franklin and I salivated.

  All the while, my mind was in hyperdrive.

  Evanston was the key, but the key to him was Cathy. I reviewed our meeting with her in her trailer and came up with none of the questions I should have asked and therefore none of the answers I could have gotten had I been more savvy. If Cathy was telling the truth—and I had no reason to believe, thus far, that she hadn’t been—then she had not seen her brother in months. If that was indeed the case, then it stood to reason that Evanston wanted something else out of the deal in bringing Julie and me down here, other than keeping Cathy from moving to Austin. That part of it made absolutely no sense. If he was in something foul up to his earlobes, then it stood to reason he would want quite the opposite. He would want her out of his hair, out of the picture, gone. I had to talk to Cathy, and I had to find Evanston. Also, I hoped Sheriff Renard had managed to snag Randy Marshall. A scientist trying to trap a Bigfoot. That wasn’t just a foul ball, that was grounds for ejection from the ballgame. While Julie slapped what looked like hard salami onto a patch of mustard on white bread, I got a visual picture of the mound. Whoever had permission or license or whatever the hell it was to dig there, desperately needed his permits cancelled and his chain yanked, but hard. Also, that dirty, four-foot wide slash marring the perfect green surface of the mound had to be filled-in and the grass replanted. As long as it was exposed, the Old Man wasn’t safe.

  A sandwich came my way and I gobbled it down in about four bites and chased it with overly hot black coffee. Another one was being assembled. Maybe the bread supply would hold out.

  “Bill,” Julie said, “Lately you’ve been...”

  “What?” I asked around a mouthful of sandwich meat and bread.

  “Surly.”

  “Surly?”

  “Surly. Obstreperous. Unprepossessing in demeanor.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Wolf chimed in. “I would just take that one at face value, is what I would do.”

  “You stay out of this,” I said, and took the second sandwich.

  “Like that,” she said. “I know Evanston Cooper gave us a raw deal, but you’re taking it out on everyone you meet. Well, everyone you’ve met where I’ve been there.”

  I thought on it. None of us carries around a mirror where we can see our own face in any given situation. But we do have ears. We do hear our own voices.

  “Wolf,” I said. “Have I been surly with you?”

  “No. I’d say you’ve been all right. But then again, you like me.”

  “I do not like you. I mean, I don’t dislike you. You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I do. Maybe you should shift gears.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” I asked, and took another bite of sandwich.

  “Maybe you could shift from I’m-being-attacked mode into listening-and-learning mode. It couldn’t hurt, you know.”

  I paused. Took another drink of coffee.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  Franklin barked at me. Julie handed me a rolled-up wad of salami and I handed it to Franklin, who ate it in one bite. At the last second, I felt his teeth snap at the tip of my fingers.

  “Close one,” I told him.

  “He’s hungry. We were in a hurry to find you, so he missed breakfast too.”

  I reached back my free hand and petted him.

  “Where to?” Julie asked.

  “Cathy’s first. Then the Sheriff’s Office.”

  Julie nodded, threw the car into gear and on into town.

  I turned to Julie. “Have I been...surly with you?” I asked.

  “You know better than to do that,” she said.

  *****

  “If he’s in town, then I haven’t seen him or heard anything from him,” Cathy said. “And let me tell you, if he was here, he wouldn’t pass up a chance to pay me a visit.” I stood at her opened front door, hesitant to come inside. I wanted to ask my questions and leave. I didn’t know why, but it felt like time was of the essence.

  “Okay,” I said. “So you’re sure.”

  “Yes, Bill. I’m quite sure. Is Julie with you?” She poked her head around the door jamb and looked. I was sure all she could see was what I saw, which was nothing more than the blinding ten o’clock sun reflected off of the windshield.

  “She’s in the car. I have a couple of questions more, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure it’s okay. But what is happening? I checked my horoscope for the day, then cast a reading. It wasn’t...uh, swimmingly bright.”

  “Maybe you should stay indoors today, then,” I said.

  “Most accidents happen at home,” she said.

  “Yes, they do. But that’s because that’s where people spend most of their time. Cathy, I need to know a few things about Evanston. Would you be all right talking about it?”

  She poked her head out of the door again and looked at the car, got sunlight in her eyes again for her troubles, then looked at me. “I’ll answer whatever I can, but I’m coming with you.”

  Cathy turned away from the door. She was going to get her purse. I had two seconds to try to talk her out of it. “Cathy, I don’t think—”

  “Julie needs my company,” she said from behind her beaded interior doorway. She was back within seconds with her purse. “Besides, we’re BFF’s now.”

  I nodded slowly as she turned, closed and locked the door behind her.

  “Whatever,” I said.

  *****

&nbs
p; Cathy was in the back seat with Franklin between her and Wolf. I waited for Julie and her to begin chatting, but it began to look like that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. I made introductions. Wolf and Cathy shook hands. The two were probably no more than a few years apart in age, or at least in appearance they weren’t. I pegged Cathy as the older one, but not by much.

  “Why have you joined this merry crew?” Cathy asked Wolf. “It looks like both you boys have been gutting a deer.”

  “We do both need a shower,” Wolf said. “Bill needs one worse.”

  I was sorely tempted. I got so far as to begin to open my mouth, when I noticed the look Julie was giving me. I kept my trap shut.

  “There was a...uh...mishap at the Caddo mound. Somebody got a bullet in his leg. Bill and I had to dig it out.”

  “Oh my. That sounds exciting. And a little...gross. Honest, Wolf,” Cathy said, “you don’t smell bad.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  I looked over to see Julie suppressing a smile. The tumblers clicked in my head. Oh no, I thought. She’s in matchmaker mode.

  “In fact, all I really smell is mustard.”

  “I think,” Wolf said, “they’ve got more kinds than you can shake a stick at. I’ll bet this bucket collects all kinds of smells.”

  “You keep looking at me like you know me,” Cathy said.

  “You remind me of someone. Sorry.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Her name is Eula. I haven’t seen her in a long time. Used to work at the diner in the little town I’m from.”

  I’d had enough and began to drown them out. My thoughts went to Evanston, Randy Marshall, Sheriff Renard, and Purcell Lee, in that order. I flipped through them like Tarot cards. First was Evanston. Whenever I found Evanston and had his attention, I was going to put a few hard questions to him. Next up was Randy Marshall. Randy had set a trap for the Old Man and pulled his graduate students in on it, if in fact he was a scientist and a Ph.D., and if, in fact, they were actual grads. They had certainly looked the part, though, as had Randy. The tools they had been using were standard issue arch-dig tools. The site had been precisely laid-out and excavated. The whole set-up had smacked at legitimacy. I would have to ask Sheriff Renard some questions about that. Questions about permits, landowners, and the like. The Sheriff, of course, was next in line. The last one was Purcell Lee—a man I knew next to nothing about. That was where I decided to begin.

  “Change of plans,” I said into the space inside Julie’s SUV.

  “Okay,” Wolf said. “I didn’t know there was a plan, so there’s no skin off my teeth in changing it.”

  “Let’s get to the hotel, get a shower and a change of clothes, first. Wolf, you still have a room there, right?”

  “I do. And a change of clothes.”

  “Good idea,” Julie said. “Then what?”

  “Cathy,” I said, “do you know where this Purcell Lee character lived? He lived in a small trailer that’s been sitting where it is for a very long time.”

  “I’m pretty sure I know,” she said. “It’s on the north side of town, not far from the library.”

  “That makes sense,” I said. “He was supposed to have been out for a walk at night near the library when he heard a shriek in the night and went to the Sheriff’s Office. The way he’s been described to me, he was a big man, by which I mean overweight. Overweight people don’t walk far from home, as a rule.”

  “You’re thinking out loud, aren’t you, Bill?” Wolf asked.

  “He does that,” Julie said. “Let him continue.”

  “Okay,” I said, “so I want to have a look in that trailer.”

  “Why?” Julie asked.

  “So that I can see if he has any pictures of himself.”

  “Why pictures of him?”

  “So I can go find him, wherever it is he’s hiding.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I had decided to take it all one step at a time. I didn’t want any distractions. I wanted Wolf with me, and I wanted Julie and Cathy to stay at the hotel. I knew I would have to sell that one hard and the bill might pass on the floor of the house outright or it could easily die in committee—which is to say that it could go either way. There would also come a point when I needed to talk to Sheriff Renard, and probably, once again, Harley Feltheimer, his night-shift deputy, but I wasn’t ready for that yet. If I found what I wanted, my interview with one or both of them would be no more than an hour hence.

  At the hotel I took a quick but nearly scalding hot shower. When I was done and dry and donning some clean clothes again, I held up the stained and bloody shirt I had worn the night before and sniffed it. I could smell the Old Man on my shirt mingled with sweat and dried blood. It was a horrific combination. Both Julie and Cathy had lied to us men. We had smelled awful. I stuffed my shirt and pants into the bottom of the small bathroom wastebasket, upended a small bottle of Julie’s perfume on it for a few seconds, then tied off the plastic bag. Finally I shaved.

  When I came out of the bathroom, Julie and Franklin where lying on the made-up bed. They looked at me.

  “I’m leaving you here,” I said. “That is, if that’s okay with you.”

  She nodded. “Before you go, let’s call the kids and check in. Also, you should probably call your office and see if there’s anything that needs your attention.”

  “Can you do that for me? I can’t think about the office right now.”

  She nodded again. “You’re taking Franklin with you.”

  I thought about it for about as long as I could bear her penetrating green eyes, which is to say for no more than three seconds. “Of course,” I said.

  “Where’s Cathy?” I asked.

  “She followed Wolf to his room. I wonder if they’re showering together right now.”

  “That would be a little soon, don’t you think?”

  “Not for Cathy,” Julie said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “And not for Wolf either. I’d say those two have been...what’s the word?”

  “Deprived,” Julie said.

  “Yeah. Good word. I wonder if I dare knock on his door.”

  “Give them another ten minutes, while I make the calls.”

  I looked at Julie, the way she lay there watching me. In fact, I looked her over from head to toe. On my way back up, my eyes came to rest on her belly. “I think you’re starting to show,” I said.

  “I’ve been showing for the past week.”

  “Have you been thinking about baby names? I know. Stupid question.”

  “We’ll talk about it on the way back home. I’d like to go home no later than tomorrow.”

  “This will be wrapped up soon. Tonight, probably. Tomorrow for sure. Then, yes, we’re out of here. I can’t wait to get back.”

  Julie smirked.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You, my friend, are a liar. You love this.”

  “Am I getting any better at it? Lying, I mean?”

  “Not one iota.”

  “Okay. Good,” I said.

  *****

  Julie made the calls. The kids were fine, although Jessica seemed a little frayed at the edges. This, according to Julie, since all I could hear was half of the conversation. When Julie called my office she got Penny, of course, who apparently had everything under control. I doubted it, but kept my mouth shut.

  I decided Franklin didn’t need a leash. He’d earned his spurs, and I doubted that anyone in the small town would say anything about it. I kissed Julie, extracted her keys from her with a promise I wouldn’t damage her car, and left with Franklin leading the way.

  I had no idea which room Wolf was in, so Franklin and I went down the stairs to the lobby and asked the owner, who didn’t hesitate and gave me his room number. It was one floor up from ours. We went back up the stairs and I noted that Franklin moved much more slowly going up than coming down. How old was he now? Seven? Eight? That would put him older than myself in dog years. I felt a stitch of worry about i
t, but then we came to the third floor and Wolf’s room, and I let it go. If you can put if off until tomorrow, you may not have to worry about it.

  I tapped on the door and Cathy answered.

  “We’re almost ready,” she said.

  “We? Oh. Cathy, Julie is waiting for you in our room. We’re in 206 downstairs. She’s not coming with us. Would you do me a favor and watch out for her while we’re gone?”

  She started to protest but I cut her short. “We’ll likely not be more than a few hours. You two could go have lunch together while Wolf and I go on the prowl. There could be some danger in this, so the women-folk are restricted to the immediate downtown area.”

  Cathy laughed. “Chivalry is alive and well in Texas.”

  “Yes. And hope springs eternal. Can you describe for me where I can find Purcell Lee’s trailer?”

  “I think so. Four blocks west and one, maybe two, south. It’ll be the only trailer on the west side of town. It’ll be right up against the wilderness.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Wolf came up beside her and began buttoning his shirt. “Ready,” he said.

  As the entourage went down the loud, wooden stairway, Wolf paused on the second floor landing and turned and gave Cathy Baha a kiss. I caught it all out of the corner of my eye. Cathy turned toward our second floor room and whispered something to Wolf as he came down the stairs, but I was too far along to hear it. It wasn’t for me, anyway.

  By the time Wolf, Franklin and I got to the car, I decided not to ask or make the slightest hint of an innuendo. If he wanted to say something, that was his business.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  We found the trailer, right where Cathy said it would be. It made me wonder if she knew Purcell Lee, or whether she only knew of him. In very small towns almost everyone knows everyone else.