by Jason Miller
I nodded at his agreeableness. “Okay. Thanks. What if we start fresh with the fact that I didn’t do anything.”
“Just an innocent bystander, that right?”
“Innocent as a napping puppy,” I said and told my story. Parts of it, anyway. I left out that I’d been the one to cuff Reach to the drain, that I’d cut off his thumb, everything about Wesley Tremble, and the fact that Dennis was angrier at someone called Carol Ray than he was at me. Call me crazy, but when you deal with rural cops it’s best to keep your cards in your sleeves and a chain on your wallet. Plus, there was the little matter of me wanting first crack at whoever had killed Dennis Reach. So what was left wasn’t much, and a lot of it was lies or lies of omission. A cheese grater has fewer holes.
“So you’re just a guy looking for a dog? That what you’re saying?”
“Yep.”
“For sixty bucks?”
“Sixty-five,” I said.
“Sixty-five.” He nodded. He mulled it over some and then finally said, “Okay, then, way I see it is this. And feel free to stop me if you disagree.”
“I’ll stop you.”
“Way I see it is this. Either you’re a liar and a killer, or else you are some kind of major-league chump. I’ll let you tell me which.”
“What if I want to call myself something else?”
He shrugged.
“Stick a feather in your ass, call yourself a Tyrolean hat, all I care. You still got to choose one of mine. You got a reputation in this part of the world, Slim. That business last year—Luster and Galligan and that mess—they say you were right there in the middle of it, and they ain’t even ever accounted for all the bodies. Plenty of stuff since then, too. This thing recently with the chickens.”
“I don’t like to talk about the thing with the chickens.”
Lindley ignored me. He said, “I don’t even know what to say about that kind of a thing. Grown person behaving that way. I kind of wondered when you might bring your act into my county. Kind of wondered what I’d do when you did, too.”
“So what’s your decision?”
He thought a little about that, consternation in his face. You could tell he wasn’t about to offer me five dollars and a yellow balloon. Finally, he said, “I got to think you’re on the hook for this. Whether or not I can charge you for it today, you’re on the hook. People have a habit of disappearing around you, Slim. Dying, too. And too many parts of your story plain old don’t add up.”
He banged the table with his hand. Right on cue, a pair of deputies came back in and plucked me from my chair.
“Do me a favor, would you?” I said before they led me out.
Lindley looked at me with smiling eyes. He said, “Oh, gee, I was hoping you’d ask.”
“Come on, man.”
“Sitting here this whole time thinking, why hasn’t Slim asked me to do him a favor? I wish he would. And now you have. Makes my night.”
“Okay, please.”
“Well, since you sprinkled a little sugar on top . . .”
“Call Ben Wince.”
“Your sheriff buddy over there to Randolph? He’ll vouch for you, that it?”
“I like to think he would, yes.” But for all I know Lindley wasn’t listening. Some jokes weren’t worth more than one laugh.
I never found out if he did my favor. They kept me seventy-two hours then kicked me loose when I didn’t cry on their shoulders and sign a confession. They couldn’t tie me to the murder weapon, maybe, but possibly there was something else.
Even my cut-rate lawyer didn’t know. Maybe I should say especially my cut-rate lawyer didn’t know. You never met a person who didn’t know so many things with so much conviction. This was a kid from Red Bud, a farm boy who’d got his law degree at a college they advertise on television and who reminded you of nothing so much as a mobbed-up version of Huckleberry Finn. He had ragged red hair and an odd birthmark on his left cheek and a slight overbite. He struggled pitiably with courtroom Latin. The rest of his personal style he appeared to have gleaned from B-grade gangster flicks: double-breasted pinstriped suits from the Walmart, a black Lincoln Continental he must have inherited from a dead relative, and, in his imitation snakeskin briefcase, a Colt .357 Python. A volcano of a gun I liked to think he had never fired and hoped he never would. When he materialized near the end of my third day of incarceration, sporting a brand-new set of black eyes from a vacation to West Memphis, Arkansas, the cops acted like he wasn’t worth wasting a Kleenex on.
“The police are hiding something,” he said, and the desk sergeant winked at the two of us and cracked a theatrical grin as he handed over the manila envelope with my name on the front and my life inside, but the kid didn’t get it. He never got a joke, that I know of, not even his own.
Lew’s truck was impounded in the car yard across town, so I got a lift from the kid, handed my ticket to a fat lady in a climate-controlled metal box, and in ten minutes was on the road back toward Tolu and the Mandamus compound. My head was full of worries, though, the dark arithmetic of murder, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to just set it all down and walk away. Whoever had shot Dennis Reach hated him so much that they’d killed him like an animal on a leash. I wanted to know who and I wanted to know why and I wanted, if possible, to atone in some small way for putting that leash on him in the first place. Halfway to Harrisburg, I dialed the Randolph County sheriff’s office on my cell.
“What is it, Slim? I’m eating my supper,” Ben Wince said.
“Filling station burrito?”
“No.”
“Filling station corn dog?”
“Strike two.”
“Something from a filling station, though?”
“Between you and me, it’s one of these frozen diet dinners.”
“Lean Cuisine?”
“Healthy Choice. Chicken Florentine. Supposed to only have two hundred ninety calories, but I’d be shocked if it had even that many. I’ve seen bigger food in a dollhouse. Is there a point to this call? Or are you just filling time with your favorite hobby?”
“I guess you heard about my troubles.”
“Everybody has.”
“Do me a favor, would you? Find out why the Jackson County sheriff let me go.”
“Don’t have to find out. Already know. They didn’t have evidence to hold you, they let you go. That’s how these things work.”
“No, they don’t.”
“I know.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, in this case here, it’s enough. Dennis Reach was shot at close range with a Colt rifle. AR-15 model. Dang things seem to be everywhere these days, don’t they? I guess there really is no such thing as bad publicity. Anyway, your man Reach was shot with one of them nasty things. He must have turned his head at the last second, because the shell glanced off his right cheekbone and tunneled through the nasal cavity before blowing his brainpan all over the dirty dishes. Otherwise, it would have taken his head clean off. How’s that for TMI?”
“What?”
“It means too much information. It’s a thing the kids say. Like when you give them too much information about a subject, they say TMI.”
I said, “I know. I know what it means. What I’m wondering is why are you saying it.”
“New girl in the office. Guess I picked it up from her.”
“Might also pick up that grown women don’t like being called girls anymore. That’s another thing the kids say.”
“It’s a bad habit,” he admitted. “Anyway, this thing. Your thing. The gun.”
“I was hoping we’d get back to that eventually.”
He grunted at me and my attitude. “Funny thing, Jackson County found it floating in the shit-pond behind the house. The lagoon, that is. I reckon they let a new guy go in after that one.”
“Registered?”
“Nope. Not stolen, neither. Least as far as we can tell. Fact, it’s as clean as a beaver. Probably a gun-show gun. Loophole gun.”
<
br /> “A dead end, then.”
“Appears so, anyway. I suppose it’d be stupid to ask if there’s anything personal in this with you?”
I said, “Nothing personal, except that I spent three days in lockup for a murder I didn’t do.”
“I’m guessing Peggy’s none too thrilled about it, either.”
“Don’t know about it yet. She’s visiting her sister in Kankakee. Anci’s pretty upset, though.”
“I guess that would sting some. Anci more than the time in lockup. Unofficially, I can’t blame you for being sore about it.”
“What about officially?”
“Different story. And Lindley will play it official all the way down the line.”
“He thinks I’m good for it,” I said.
“He’s leaning in that direction, anyway, and you can hardly blame him, story you’re telling. Slim, I like you. You’re a pain in my ass sometimes, but I like you, and I got to tell you, you’re putting your pecker in a hornet’s nest with this thing. Dennis Reach was what you’d call flush with enemies. There were three pretty nasty divorces and some lawsuits against former business partners that led to death threats and the whole nine. Little shit had his fingers in so many people’s eyes I’m guessing he carried insurance against pitchfork mobs. Tell the truth, I think Lindley was surprised it took this long for one of them to do something about it.”
“Yeah, but which ‘it’?”
“Good question,” he said. “But not really yours to answer. Now get yourself on home. Make things right with Anci. Get her some of that orange soda she likes. Maybe some pizza. She like pizza?”
“All kids like pizza.”
“Okay, then. Soda. Pizza. Get it done. That’s an order.”
I didn’t have time to question the chain of command. He hung up.
And looking back now, I know that’s what I should have done. I should have collected Anci and the bottled sodas and some pizza. I like pizza pretty good my own self, so there was that, too. I should have made some kind of reparations to Lew and Eun Hee Mandamus and then gone on home to hide under my bed until the police cleared the case. Hindsight may not be 20/20, exactly, but it sure seems a lot clearer now. Right then, though, I was mad enough to chew nails and spit out staples. Somehow or other, I’d played a part in Dennis Reach’s murder. I didn’t know what part and I didn’t know how. I didn’t know why he’d been killed, and I didn’t know what or whether that red dog had to do with any of it. And I didn’t think I wanted those questions haunting the inside of my head for the rest of my life. Plus, there was the small matter of avoiding an indictment for capital murder.
I made a U-turn and drove Lew Mandamus’s truck back toward Loves Corner.
WES TREMBLE, THE SKINNY WEED DEALER, DIDN’T TRY TO shoot me in the head this time. That was a relief. He was wearing more than tighty-whities this time, too. That was an even bigger relief. He opened the door and smiled a sour smile as though to say my reappearance was something he’d expected. He took my arm and led me into his house and shut the door behind us and locked it. He turned the bolt and put the chain on. The curtains were closed, but he closed them again.
“Look at you out there,” he said. “Standing there. It’s like you’re trying to get seen.”
“Seen? Seen by who? There ain’t anybody around.”
Just then, he wouldn’t have taken a bishop’s word for it. Living where he did, he probably could have heard cops coming ten miles up the road, but as far as he was concerned they might as well have been hiding in his pants.
“There was a silver pickup out there a while ago. Last night, too. It’s been watching the house.”
“A silver pickup? Any idea who it might belong to?”
He shrugged but didn’t answer. “I remember you,” he said instead. “You’re the one stuck me in the butt.”
“You’re the one wanted to shoot me in the head.”
He wanted to forget that part of it, I guess. He shook it off and said, “What was that stuff? In the needles, I mean.”
“Diazepam, I think. Valium. They use it as an animal sedative sometimes.”
“Well, it worked pretty good, whatever it was. I kinda wish I had some more.”
“Me, too. For you, I mean. You’re making me a little anxious.”
He didn’t want to be rude, and he didn’t want to make a guest anxious. He might try to put another hole in your head, but he still had those kinds of house manners. He sat down stiffly on an ottoman and grabbed his knees. I sat on the couch.
He said, “You aren’t the police. What are you, like a rent-a-cop or something?”
“Mall police,” I said. “But our powers extend way outside the malls now.”
“Malls have taken over everything,” he said, and frowned at the regrettable state of it.
“Maybe remember that next time you decide to play tough with us.”
“I will.”
“Good. Now I got a question or two for you I hope you won’t mind answering.”
“I guess I don’t mind.”
“Thanks,” I said. “By the way, where’s Tiffany?”
He looked confused.
“Star-Child.”
“Oh. Her.” Like it was ages ago. “She’s cleared out. You know. After what happened.”
“I guess I’m not surprised.”
“The guns and stuff. And then the po-po. She ain’t into any of that.”
“Maybe she’ll come back when it blows over.”
He didn’t have an answer for that. Maybe she’d come back, maybe she wouldn’t. He said, “It’s not my fault.” He wrapped his arms around his skinny chest. They almost went twice. “I wasn’t even there. When Dennis took the dog, I mean.”
“So the cops have been to see you? The non-mall cops, I mean?”
“Not here,” he said. “Not yet. But they grilled everyone at the Classic Country, asked if we knew anything. I told them I didn’t know anything. Did you tell them about the dog?”
“I didn’t have any choice but to explain the dog,” I said, “but I didn’t mention your part in it all. I told them Reach had nabbed her and left it at that.”
“I hope they believed you.”
“They don’t believe anything yet, which is most of the reason I’m here. I got busted for the whole thing.”
“It wasn’t my idea,” he said. “Dennis needed a place to keep her for a few days. I agreed to watch her. I shouldn’t have.”
“Probably not.”
He said, “I’m sorry about the water dish, too. I’ve never been able to take care of a plant, much less a pet.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously, what?”
“There’s a jungle of plants in here, man. And they all look pretty healthy to me.”
He waved a hand at it all.
“That’s different. That’s business.”
I shook that off. “So Dennis gave you the dog to look after?”
“Yeah. He said he was dogsitting but that he couldn’t breathe on account of his allergies, something like that. I knew he was up to something, though. You could always tell when Dennis thought he had someone’s shit in a sack.”
“But then after a couple days you figured you’d make a few bucks off her, extort her owners a little?”
He almost looked ashamed.
“I guess I did. I saw a flyer for the dog up there near Belco and it mentioned a reward. Another thing about Dennis is he doesn’t pay very well.”
“Didn’t pay very well,” I corrected.
“That neither.”
“Did Reach tell you why he snatched her in the first place?”
“He never even really admitted that he’d stolen her. Folks around the club had it that her owner was supposed to owe him money or something. Maybe that has something to do with it.”
“I don’t guess you ever met anyone named Cleaves, did you?”
“Cleaves? Not to my recollection, no.”
“Who’s Carol Ray?” I a
sked.
“Dennis’s ex. Wife number three, memory serves.”
“You have any idea where I can find her?”
“I think she lives somewhere near Freeman Spur. Look out, though.”
“Tough?”
“Like all Dennis’s women. He liked them that way, I guess.”
“Ask me, he liked things tough all around.”
Wesley said, “Lots of folks do, you look around a little.”
I said I guessed that was right. I thanked him for his time and stood to go. I walked to the door and paused a moment and finally turned and said, “Son, you really should get these things out of here. Your crop. If the sheriffs ever stop by for a chat, you’ll need to get reincarnated to serve out the jolt they’ll drop on you.”
“I know,” he said, and swung his head away with something like emotion in his eyes. “It’s just I’m having a hard time saying good-bye.”
IT WAS AFTER TEN THIRTY WHEN I FINALLY REACHED THE Mandamus compound, and the night was still and heavy with humidity. Bats fluttered here and there in the cool sodium light of the security lamps, snapping insects from the air. Lew was making a last round with the animals in the pole barn. He raised a hand when he saw me but didn’t call out and then quickly disappeared up the hill and into the dark. I circled the house and found Eun Hee sipping bourbon and soda from a rocks glass on the back porch. Anci was already asleep.
Eun Hee said, “You raised that one right, Slim. She’s an angel.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But soon as I wake her, that angel is going to give me the Nine Hells.”
“She surely will, but that’s family.”
“Mad?”
“She was at first. Mad as a hornet. But mostly she was upset. Worried. You won’t let her come see you?”
“In jail? No, I won’t. One thing, I don’t think it’s good for her to see me like that. Another, she’d take a picture of me with her phone, and it’d be on our Christmas card until the day I die and probably after.”
“Likely for the best, then. You all right?”
“I’ve had better times. Mostly I’m sorry for adding to your woes.”
She said, “Don’t be silly. And don’t feel sorry for me, Slim. I’m doing well enough these days.”
