Courtin' Murder in West Wheeling

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  Sendin’ somethin’ to the Traffic Commission is kinda like sendin’ it into the Twilight Zone. Anytime anyone makes a fuss about a traffic matter, Mayor appoints him to the commission—must be 50 or 60 members by now. Nothin’ ever gets settled ’cause gettin’ a quorum together is like winnin’ the lottery. Anybody really wants a new traffic sign or street light just calls up the County Highway Department. They send a engineer out to take a look, an’ if he recommends somethin’ they send out a crew to put it up.

  Mayor looked real hard at Councilman Pappy Jackson, who piped up with, “I move we send this to the Traffic Commission.”

  Mayor looked around fer a second an’ got it.

  “All in favor?”

  Six of the nine councilmen raised their hands.

  “Any opposed?”

  Two hands went up. Andrews’s an’ Cramer’s.

  Mayor banged his gavel and said, “Motion carried.”

  Cramer opened his mouth, an’ Mayor pointed at him with the gavel. “I’m appointin’ you to the Traffic Commission. You kin bring up your fool idea at the next meetin’.”

  Cramer looked fit to kill but he shut his mouth. Mayor glared at Andrews, who kept quiet.

  Then Mayor banged his gavel as if that settled everythin’. “Moving right along, I understand we got some new business.”

  That was Roy Peterman’s cue. He jumped up an’ said, “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “This ain’t a court a law,” Mayor said. “Just Mayor’ll do.”

  “Yes, sir. I got a proposal that’ll bring life to the town an’ revenue to the county. I propose annexing my farm to the town, an’ changin’ the zoning from agriculture to business.”

  “Fer what?” Pappy Jackson demanded.

  “Fer a shoppin’ mall. I got a anchor store all lined up.”

  “What’d that be?” Pappy asked.

  “Cheap-Ass Likkers.”

  Silas Hanson

  Silas Hanson was one of them thin-as-a-post fellas that could work sunup to sundown, then put away a six pack at the local choke ’n’ puke ’fore goin’ home to sleep. On Sundays, he favored the Baptist church. He had a wife he never talked about, an’ two grown sons. Nobody’d ever seen him drunk, or heard him say a mean or angry word. Until Roy Peterman asked for that zoning change. Peterman’s farm was right next to Hanson’s.

  Silas was one of the loudest opponents of the rezonin’ plan, goin’ on about how it’d ruin the best farmland in the county, promote the evils of drink, an’ attract flocks a yuppies. For twenty minutes, everybody just listened gap-jawed—in his whole life Silas had never spoke so many words all at once. When he started repeatin’ hisself, Mayor cut him off.

  “We ain’t takin’ no action on this matter tonight, Silas.” Mayor looked at Pappy Jackson. “I’m lookin’ for a motion to table this project ’til next month. By which time Silas an’ Roy will’ve had plenty a chances to buttonhole the council members an’ make their positions known.”

  Pappy Jackson sat up straight in his chair and said, “So moved.”

  Mars Boone, who was knowed to be a early riser, yawned an’ said, “Amen.” When Mayor glared at him, Mars blushed an’ said, “Seconded.”

  “In favor?” Mayor said, an’ there was a chorus of ayes. “Opposed?”

  Councilman Cramer said, “I am.”

  “You’re outnumbered, Cramer,” Mayor said. “Motion carried. Let’s get the hell outta here.”

  Silas Hanson sat lookin’ like he’d been pole-axed while everybody else stampeded out. I took the opportunity to amble over an’ interview him.

  “’Fore you take off, Silas, I need to know what you kin tell me ’bout the skeleton turned up in your ditch.”

  Silas shook his head—sorrowfully it seemed to me. I waited, figurin’ he was just getting’ over his first town council meetin’.

  Finally, he said, “Nothin’ Homer. I can’t be expected to keep track of every litterbug that drives past my place.”

  “You have any disagreements with anybody lately?”

  “Just Roy Peterman.”

  I couldn’t think why Peterman’d dump a skeleton in Silas’s ditch, so I asked, “Your opposition to this zonin’ request wouldn’t be ’cause you got two sons who’re farmers an’ only one farm to leave ’em?”

  “Well, of course. Peterman’s place is one of the best farms in the county. Why’d anyone with two wits to rub together wanna cover it with asphalt?”

  I could think of a few reasons. But I didn’t want to get Silas more riled up so I kept ’em to myself.

  “An’ once it starts, it’s all downhill,” Silas added. “Next it’ll be go-cart tracks, an’ X-rated en’ertainment, an’ ultra-light airports.”

  “Ah hunh. Anybody you know fond of practical jokes?”

  He shook his head. “Dumpin’ a body in a ditch ain’t a practical way to get rid of it. An’ it ain’t especially funny.”

  dead ends

  Next mornin’, after droppin’ Skip at school, I went back to my office to catch up on my paperwork. First thing I noticed when I walked in was the new computer on my desk. Second thing was all the Post-it notes I’d had stuck up on my filin’ cabinet was missin’. I turned on the computer an’ a white box come on the screen askin’ for my name an’ password. I grabbed the phone.

  “Merlin,” I said when he come on the line, “how’m I s’posed to get into this thing. An’ what’d you do with my Post-its?”

  “Take it easy, Sheriff. Type ‘Sheriff’ an’ ‘Deters’ on the password screen an’ it’ll let you in. If you get stuck from there, call me back an’ we’ll set you up with a lesson. Oh, an’ I transferred your notes onto your desktop an’ put the Post-its in your top desk drawer.”

  I hung up the phone. I fished the Post-its outta the desk drawer an’ stuck ’em back up on the filin’ cabinet. Then I turned off the computer an’ got down to work.

  Most cops hate fillin’ out forms an’ writin’ reports. If I ain’t bein’ rushed, I don’t mind much—gives me a chance to put the facts in order an’ check was I overlookin’ somethin’.

  Facts was, I had two bodies—two different cases, I was pretty sure; a truck load of wild horses; an’ a jackass. Not to mention Wilma Netherton’s rat complaint; a peculiar distillery; an’ a on-usual stranger in a plaid truck. As far as solid information goes, I had a shovelfull a chicken tracks.

  Loomis’s murder was the most serious problem, an’ the rule in dealin’ with homicides is if you don’t nail the killer in the first two days, chances are you never will—the forty-eight hour rule. We was already well past forty-eight hours, so I stacked up my files on the other cases and spread out the photos I’d took at Car Wrecks and at D.W. Truck’s.

  ’Fore I was done writin’ up my report, the fax machine spit out the autopsy report. I read it over—mostly it backed up what Doc’d told me already about the cause of death. Loomis died from a head injury ’fore the fire could do him in. Small comfort. I added the report to the file.

  I didn’t have enough facts to know who’d cut Loomis’s brake line. Best bet was someone he’d hurt or coulda hurt—a former friend or lover, a business associate or boss. Not likely anyone from BLM, but maybe someone else. A jilted wife or girlfriend mighta shot or stabbed or poisoned him. Probably wouldn’t cut his brake line, though. That was more of a guy thing to do, ’specially in the short time between when he got locked up an’ when he stole his truck back. Which left former friends an’ business associates.

  I rang up Sergeant Underhill an’ asked him who Loomis had made his phone call to when I brung him in.

  “Dunno,” he said. “We tried it on the reverse directory—it’s an unlisted number—probably a cell phone.”

  “Who bailed him out?”

  “Bail bondsman.”

  “You talk to the bondsman?”

  “Your prisoner,” Underhill said. “Your job.”

  “You got this bondsman’s name?”

  “Billy Bonds.”

&n
bsp; “You’re kiddin’!”

  “Deters, you ever know me to kid?”

  I rung off an’ started a “To Do” list: Do pick up Loomis’s personal effects an’ look ’em over. Do interview this Billy Bonds. An’ find out the name of the lawyer that got Loomis released ’fore I had a chance to interview him. Do find out if Loomis really lived where his fake license said when he wasn’t on the road. And who he lived with. Whether anybody’d seen any suspicious person hangin’ ’round Truck Towing between the time D.W. towed the truck an’ it was stolen from his yard. An’ whether anybody seen Loomis in the vicinity of Truck Towing the night he stole back his semi an’ crashed it.

  That was about all I could get from what I had so far, so I shuffled all the reports an’ pictures into the Loomis file and started on the John Doe file.

  Nothin’ jumped out at me right off. Accordin’ to Doc, the killer—if there was one—had long since passed away. An’ illegally dumpin’ a body didn’t seem like much of a ’mediate threat to the community. So I added Doc’s “autopsy” report to that file an’ set it aside, too.

  One of the notes I’d made earlier was to check out Donatello Firenzi, so I asked our State Police dispatcher to run his plates. Then I called the Illinois State Police to see if he had any wants or warrants. Hit pay dirt there. Firenzi was wanted in Highwood, Illinois. For attempted murder. I put in a call to the Highwood Police to see how bad they wanted him.

  Not very, as it turned out. After spinnin’ a yarn about the most half-assed attempt to knock somebody off I’d ever heard, the Highwood detective asked me if I had Firenzi in custody.

  “Hell, no. He ain’t broke no laws here.”

  “What made you call about him?”

  “Jus’ checkin’ up. I thought maybe he was crazy, the way he painted his truck.”

  “If you see him again, arrest him. We’ll get an extradition order.”

  “I’m kinda short on time an’ manpower just now. But you’re welcome to come arrest ’im yourself.” I hung up ’fore he could tell me what he thought a that.

  Next item on my agenda was the horses an’ the jackass. The feller from the BLM hadn’t wasted any time sending me the fax sayin’ his truckload of horses had been killed when the truck burned up in Car Wrecks. I wasn’t all that sure a faxed letter was gonna cover my behind if I got rid of the horses an’ the BLM decided they wanted ’em back, so I took Mr. William Smith’s fax an’ meandered down the hall to the County Attorney’s office, where I laid out the problem to get his professional take.

  He read the fax an’ said, “Well, Homer, this makes it pretty clear your horses don’t belong to the U.S. government. I’d say they were unclaimed property. All you have to do is put an ad in the paper three weeks running, asking the owner to come forward and claim his property. If no one does, you can auction ’em off just like anything else you’ve got in your lost and found.”

  “What if someone does claim ’em?”

  “Then you present him with a bill for storage.”

  • • •

  When I got back to my office, Rye was sittin’ at my desk with the Loomis file open an’ spread out all over the desk top.

  “Mornin’, Homer,” he said.

  “Rye.”

  Rye’s of the opinion that if somethin’ ain’t forbidden, it’s allowed. So I didn’t lay into him for messin’ with the file, just dropped the BLM’s fax on top of the page Rye was studyin’. He looked over the fax, then held it up and waved it at me. “How’n Hell did they come up with this?”

  “The insurance adjuster seen cow bones down in the creek bottom. ’Member when Mars Boone’s prize heifer got herself stuck down there an’ starved to death before he found her?” The cow’d been dead a week an’ the meat was spoiled, so Mars just left the carcass to rot. That’d been a year ago. The cow was just a skeleton, now. “An’ there’s been a couple a road kills dumped down there recent.”

  “I ’member those,” Rye said. “Don’t see how even a city fella could mistake cow bones fer a truckload of horses.”

  “What about huntin’ season?” Lots a cows got blown away in the fall, even ones that had COW painted on their sides in big red letters.

  “Oh, yeah. Right. But them hunters is usually drunk.”

  I just shrugged. “Most likely the BLM don’t want them horses to be alive for some reason.”

  Rye put the fax down, an’ I axed him if anything else in the file had jumped out at him.

  “Just this.” He held up my picture of the Lower Fork Distillery. “This looks more like a warehouse to me. If it’s a distillery, they’re makin’ their likker with a replicator.”

  “What’s a replicator?”

  Rye looked at me like I was feeble-minded. “One of them gadgets on Star Trek—looks like a microwave. You put in your order an’—vwal-la—you got likker. Or steak an’ fries, or whatever.”

  “Gotcha.”

  I shooed Rye outta my chair an’ put in a call to the County Clerk to ask how I could find out about county records in another jurisdictions.

  Three phone calls later, I had the name of the Lower Fork’s parent company, an’ a promise that they’d fax me a copy of the company’s incorporation papers. ASAP. Which I took to mean sometime in the next month or so.

  I called the State Police back and had ’em run the plates on Wilcox’s yuppie cars—found they was registered to his wife.

  I was just fixin’ to take Rye out fer a policin’ lesson when Martha called to say she’d located some rat dog pups—Owen Rhuddlan oughta have a couple left—an’ if I hurried I could get one.

  Then Nina called to ask me to drop by the post office an’ take a crime report when I had a minute.

  Time I got off the phone, Rye was squirmin’ like he’d sat on a ant hill. “I thought you was gonna show me how to do police work.”

  I scooped up all the pictures an’ put the Loomis file back together. “What do you think I been doin’ all mornin’?”

  ’Fore he could answer, the lady who’d turned the horses loose stepped through the doorway.

  I said, “Mornin’, ma’am. May I present my new deputy, Rye Willis. Rye, this is Ms. Alice Bowne.”

  I could see right off she made a impression. While he was stammerin’ his how-de-dos, I locked my open cases in my safe. Then I said, “What can I do for you this mornin’, Ms. Bowne?”

  “I’m thinking of settling in West Wheeling, Sheriff. Before I make up my mind, I’d like to look at your crime statistics.”

  “Sorry, ma’am. We don’t have any.”

  “Crime?”

  “Statistics.”

  “How can you run a police department like that? How can you budget?”

  “Well, the county just budgets fer me an’ the dispatcher and two part-time deputies. An’ we get new vehicles every ten years or so.”

  “What about equipment?”

  “We supply our own firearms. City Hall pays fer ammo along with paper clips an’ forms. The radios is paid for. They don’t wear out real often.”

  “How do you outrun criminals in such old cars?”

  “We don’t outrun ’em, we outsmart ’em.”

  She just shook her head.

  Me an’ Rye made a run for the door ’fore she could think of somethin’ else to ask.

  bribe

  Rye was getting’ antsy with all the callin’ an’ follow-up aspects of police work, an’ I needed someone patrolin’ the streets while I was out chasin’ leads, so ’fore I headed for the state cop shop, I run him through the basics. Didn’t have to go into too much detail ’cause he’s had plenty experience with traffic stops, but I took a little more time to show him the finer points of workin’ radar. We’d just set up on County C, when this silver-colored Beemer come dustin’ on by. I put on the Mars lights an’ pulled it over, all the while fillin’ Rye in on what we was doin’.

  All of which took so long, the driver got out of the car an’ sauntered towards our cruiser. The guy looked kinda like
Kojak—big an’ bald, with a pricey pin-striped suit.

  I got out an’ put my hat on, an’ pointed to his car. “Get back in your vehicle, sir.”

  “Could I just have a word with you, Sheriff?” He glanced at Rye. “In private?”

  “Let’s just go back to your car.”

  ’Fore followin’ the driver, I told Rye to run the plates.

  I give the Beemer a look-over. Didn’t see nothin’ suspicious, so I asked the driver could I see his license, registration, an’ proof of insurance. He told me the registration was over the sun visor, help myself.

  That seemed a mite peculiar, so I watched him close while I checked. Didn’t find the registration, though a twenty dollar bill dropped down on the seat. At that point I reached in an’ took the keys outta the ignition.

  “I don’t see no registration.”

  He come over an’ looked, acted like he was really surprised.

  “An’ you better put your money up ’fore it blows away.”

  Then he offered me his driver’s license wrapped in a fifty dollar bill.

  I told him, “Just the license, sir.”

  He said, “Oh, sorry,” an’ put the money ’n’ license back in his wallet. Then he took the license out again folded up in a hundred dollar bill.

  I said, “’Scuse me, sir,” an’ I signaled Rye to come on over.

  Rye rabbited out of the cruiser. “What’s up, Homer?”

  “I need someone else to see this, Rye. Otherwise won’t nobody believe it.” I turned back to the driver an’ said—real slow an’ clear ’cause I figured he must be feeble-minded, “I need to see your license, registration, an’ proof of insurance. Sir.”

  This time when he handed me his license, it had two hundred dollar bills wrapped around it. I took it an’ offered him the money back.

  He wouldn’t take it. “There has to be some way we can work this out, Sheriff.”

  I just shook my head an’ handed the money to Rye. “Hold on to this for me.”