Courtin' Murder in West Wheeling

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  Up in my office, Rye opened the boxes, one at a time, an’ hauled out the contents while I took inventory.

  The investigatin’ officer had included a note with the chain of custody sheet, sayin’ Ames’s room had come furnished an’ had a kitchenette, so—thankfully—there wasn’t any furniture or kitchen equipment. The TP cartons was mostly clothes. We went through the pockets—found a couple lottery tickets an’ receipts, a rabbit’s foot, an’ a roll of antacids. There was a Louisville slugger, which I’d bet Loomis never used fer playin’ ball; a fishin’ tackle box full of truck fuses an’ replacement bulbs—stuff he used to keep his truck up; some DVDs, CDs an’ video games; an’ a video game player.

  In all seven boxes we only found one item of interest—a small ledger book with pages labeled Nags an’ Drags. There was dates, an’ numbers that I figured must represent money even without any dollar signs. The numbers added up to a considerable sum, though—if it was money—there was no clue as to where it might be located. We hadn’t found any bank books or statements, no check book or ATM card, no numbers that might lead to off-shore accounts.

  “This another dead end, Homer?” Rye asked.

  I shrugged. “Probably would be a waste of time to show his picture around Churchill Downs.”

  “You think ‘Nags’ means he was bettin’ on horses?”

  “Mebbe. But since we caught him haulin’ horses no one seems to want to claim, my guess is he was in on some sort of horse truckin’ scheme.”

  “What do you s’pose ‘Drags’ means? Drugs?”

  “At this point, I have no idea.”

  We put everything but the ledger back in the cartons an’ sealed ’em up. Then I put in a call to the state cop shop. “You got any other reports of missing or dead horses?” I asked the feller that answered the phone.

  “Not that I’ve heard. But you’d better talk to Sergeant Underhill.” He put me on hold an’ I waited about five minutes ’fore I heard Underhill say, “Deters?”

  “Speakin’.”

  “There’s a state cop just over the line who collects weird. He might be able to answer your horse question.” Underhill gave me his name an’ phone number an’ wished me luck.

  • • •

  Sargeant Bilford of the Kentucky State Police told me he’d collected reports of six other horse hijackin’s or crashes endin’ in horses or their carcasses turnin’ up missin’. He promised to fax me his reports if I’d oblige him with a copy of my case.

  His reports covered hijacks in Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana an’ southern Illinois of horses goin’ to auction or dog-food plants. When I marked off the locations on my big US map, they made a circle around the nearby town of Looney.

  I decided to have Rye head over there an’ have a look around. Looney was a close little community—everybody, including the police chief, was first—or closer—cousins to one another, so I asked Rye to go undercover.

  “What’m I supposed to be doin’ there, Homer? Case the local law asks.”

  “House huntin’.”

  “Huh?”

  “Lookin’ at real estate. An’ you got to ask about local nuisances like sewage treatment plants an’ dog food factories ’cause your uncle bought next to one an’ lost his shirt.”

  Cheap-Ass Likkers

  Since I was outta leads an’ tired of paperwork, I moseyed across the street to the post office to see about takin’ Nina’s crime report. She an’ the Reverend Elroy’s wife was in the middle of discussin’ the new Cheap-Ass Likkers store Roy Peterman was tryna put over on the town. Bein’ naturally opposed to politics, I tipped my hat an’ walked right back to City Hall. But the ladies’d give me a idea. I got in my cruiser an’ headed for the highway.

  With my pull-over lights flashin’, it took twenty minutes to get to the nearest Cheap-Ass outlet. It’d been in business a little over six months, but I’d never set foot inside. I figured it was time to see what all the hoopla was about.

  The place was big an’ clean’ and well stocked, an’ Rye was right about the prices. Everything ’cept the imported stuff seemed to be retailin’ for wholesale prices. The clerk who rushed over to help me didn’t look old enough to drink, much less sell likker. So, first thing, I asked to see his ID.

  His driver’s license looked okay, but after fallin’ for Loomis’s fake Ames ID, I looked real close at the kid’s.

  An’ sure enough, it had the same tell-tale signs.

  Technically, I was outta my jurisdiction, so I put the kid’s license in my shirt pocket an’ pulled out my cell phone.

  The kid said, “Hey!”

  I held up my pointin’ finger. “Just a sec.”

  He stood there openin’ an’ closin’ his mouth like a fish on a dock while I rang up the State Police. He turned white as a fish fillet when he heard me ask for Sergeant Underhill.

  When Underhill come on the line, I said, “Dan, ’member that slick counterfeit we was discussin’ recently?”

  The kid looked like to pass out.

  “What about it?” Underhill said.

  “I believe I just turned up another one.”

  “Where?”

  I told him. He said he’d be along directly. I put the phone back in my pocket.

  The kid said, “Mister, can I have my license back?”

  “Sheriff.”

  “Sheriff?”

  Just then, a guy in a white shirt wandered up. “Is there a problem?”

  “You the manager?”

  He nodded.

  “I guess hirin’ underage kids could be a problem.”

  “Who’re you?”

  “Sheriff Deters.”

  “You’re out of your jurisdiction, sheriff. Sonny, get back to work.”

  “Stay put, Sonny.”

  ’Fore the manager could mention jurisdiction again, I told him, “Let’s just call this a citizen’s arrest.”

  The manager started wavin’ his arms in the air like, Whoa!

  I snapped my handcuffs around one of his wrists and swung his arm around behind his back ’fore he knew what hit him. I give the cuffed arm a little twitch upwards an’ said, “Put your other arm behind you. An’ Sonny, don’t you move.”

  When I had the manager’s second hand cuffed, I patted him down an’ said, “I was just gonna arrest Sonny, but you had’a interfere.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You got the right to remain silent.”

  He shut up. I pulled out the fake ID an’ asked Sonny, “Where’d you get this?”

  Sonny put on that stubborn, teenaged face I’d seen Skip make so many times. “At the driver’s license place.”

  I thought I caught him sneakin’ a look at the manager. “What place would that be? It wasn’t the department of motor vehicles.”

  Sonny didn’t answer.

  I decided to wait for Underhill so we could separate the prisoners an’ play good cop/bad cop on ’em. Meantime, I made like Sheriff Redneck—shooed all the customers outta the store an’ turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED.

  “You can’t do this!” the manager kept sayin’.

  We was all pretty happy to see two state cop cars pull up.

  The manager greeted Underhill with, “Thank God you’re here!”

  Which clued Dan into what part he’d been assigned. He jumped right into his good cop act. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “This guy—” the manager didn’t seem willing to admit I was a peace officer. “—came in here and took Sonny’s driver’s license and handcuffed me.”

  “What do you have to say for yourself, Deters?”

  “Well, Sergeant, when I’m questioning a suspect, I don’t like to be threatened or interrupted.”

  “You’re out of your jurisdiction!” The manager looked like to bust a gut. “If you even are a cop.”

  Underhill looked at him. “The sheriff has the right to go out of his jurisdiction to investigate crimes.”

  “What crime?”

  I said, “Your boy
, Sonny, had a phony ID in his possession.”

  “It looked real enough to me.”

  “Which is why you’re not bein’ arrested for hirin’ a minor.” I looked at Sonny. “You ain’t 21, are you?”

  Sonny blushed an’ looked down at the floor. “I want a lawyer.”

  I shook my head an’ looked at Underhill. “They’re learnin’ younger an’ younger every day. Think they might be watchin’ too much TV?”

  • • •

  When we got Sonny to the state cop shop, Underhill told me, “Deters, you’re spending so much time here we’re going to have to give you a desk.”

  “I hear that.”

  “How do you want to play this?”

  “Let’s get his date of birth an’ see if he has a real license so we know are we dealin’ with a minor. If we don’t have to get his parents involved, we can put the fear of God in him. Mebbe he’ll give up where he got that fake.”

  Which is how it went down. Sonny did have a real driver’s license identical to the fake in all the particulars except his D.O.B. Under pressure, he admitted he’d got the phony ID from Lester, another kid who worked at Cheap-Ass. Lester was a real hard case with a extensive juvenile record. As for Sonny, we had forty-eight hours to hold him, so we did—to keep him from givin’ Lester a heads-up.

  It took about a hour to get a warrant to search Lester’s premises, another hour to toss the place. We found Lester an’ eighteen fake IDs he hadn’t got around to delivering. Using our good cop/bad cop routine, Underhill an’ I got him to give up his supplier—a computer geek in Tennessee.

  Underhill passed the geek’s name along to the Tennessee Department of Safety, an’ started the paperwork on Sonny an’ Lester.

  ’Fore I headed out, I said, “Tell me more about these likker heists you been havin’.”

  “You haven’t got enough crime in your own jurisdiction?”

  “Mebbe they’re related.”

  missing mail

  Friday mornin’, after feedin’ the jackass an’ droppin’ Skip at school, I finally got back to the post office to take Nina’s crime report.

  “Sheriff!” Nina calls me that when she’s teed off.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  She don’t like bein’ called “ma’am.”

  “Good thing it wasn’t a murder.”

  “I’m here now. What can I do fer you?”

  “Ain’t you supposed to enforce federal laws same as county ones?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, openin’ other people’s mail is a federal offense.”

  “You’d know that better’n me. You’re the expert on post office matters.”

  “Well, take my word. It is!”

  “So?”

  “So somebody’s been openin’ someone else’s mail, an’ I want you to arrest ’em.”

  “You’ll have to be a tad more specific. Who’s been openin’ whose mail?”

  “Heck if I know.”

  Most of the time, Nina’s a model of good sense an’ practicality. But sometimes she gets crazy as a squirrel.

  “Then how’d you know anybody’s been openin’ someone else’s mail?” I asked.

  “’Cause of this!” She handed me a bunch of catalogs an’ open envelopes with the addresses tore off. “Ed Smithson found these dumped in a ditch near the Soames’s driveway.” Smithson is one of West Wheelin’s two postal carriers. “Weren’t the Soameses done it, an’ it ain’t their mail.”

  “Well, it was probably just someone too cheap an’ lazy to take their trash to the dump.”

  “Then I want you to arrest ’em fer litterin’.”

  “Nina, I ain’t got time for this.”

  “What if it’s a gateway crime?”

  “What do you know about gateway crimes?”

  “Just what I learned from readin’ your police magazines. It’s a little crime that leads to bigger ones if it ain’t stopped.”

  “How’d you figger dumpin’ junk mail in a ditch—which is litterin’—is gonna lead to—What’s it likely to excalate to?”

  Nina shrugged. “Dumpin’ bodies in a ditch?”

  I just shook my head. There’s no use arguin’ with her when she’s got her mind made up. “I’ll look into it—when I got all this other crime under control.”

  Nina patted my arm. “I knew I could count on you, Homer.”

  • • •

  Which may be why I found myself stoppin’ a hour later when I spotted West Wheelin’s other postman makin’ his rounds. I rolled down my passenger’s side window and said, “Hold up, Len.” Then I put the cruiser in park, put on my hat, an’ got out.

  Len gimme a suspicious look an’ said, “What’s up?”

  I took out my pen an’ notebook an’ parked my butt against the side of the cruiser. “Miz Ross ask you about the mail that was dumped in a ditch?”

  I could tell by the sour look on his face she had. “I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that.”

  “I didn’t say you did. That don’t mean you can’t shed no light on the problem.”

  “How?”

  “She show you the stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You recognize it?”

  “Mostly just regular bulk mail. Get tons of it. All the time. An’ some first class envelopes. Opened.”

  “Anything specific you can tell me about it? Where it come from? When it shoulda been delivered?”

  “It was delivered. A week ago. I ain’t responsible for what someone done with it after that.”

  “Who was it from?”

  “Damn near everyone—everyone sends out flyers now-a-days.”

  “’Member any in particular?”

  “Pick’n’ Save—had a good deal on box pizza. An’ Best Buy.”

  I nodded to encourage him. I was gettin’ a inklin’—something I just couldn’t quite put my finger on—that I was onto somethin’.

  “An’ Cheap-Ass Likkers. They was sellin’ Bud fer a song.”

  “You remember what day that was?”

  “Hadda been Wednesday. That’s the day the Walmart flyers always comes out.”

  “Anything in particular stick out about Wednesday?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Thanks, Len.” I handed him my card. “You think of anything that might lead to gettin’ this dangerous fly dumper off the streets, I’d be obliged if you’d gimme a call.”

  • • •

  I’d just got back to my office when Sergeant Underhill called. “Tennessee Highway Patrol picked up our counterfeiter and squeezed him ’til he squawked.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Seems he kept pretty good records, including a sale to one Henry Ames. Had Ames’s picture in his computer. Care to guess who he looks like?”

  “Sam Loomis?”

  “Bingo. By the way, the lab’s done processing the evidence in that case. When do you want to pick it up?”

  I didn’t. We don’t have a real evidence locker at City Hall. And my office was already filled with cartons of stuff from the Loomis case.

  “Any chance you could fax me a list and hold onto the stuff for the time being?”

  “I guess so. But you owe me. Big time.”

  Rye’s Looney report

  Rye was done with his undercover assignment when he come into the office later that mornin’. He took off his hat an’ said, “Looney don’t come near to describin’ it.”

  I waited.

  He shook his head. “Town’s just a speed bump on the state road—gas station-convenient store, hardware, Baptist church, bar, feed’n’ seed, an’ a little greasy spoon. Stranger sticks out like a black guy at a Klan rally ’cause every one of them Loonies looks alike. They gotta all be clones—like somethin’ outta Twilight Zone.”

  “Set down an’ start at the beginnin’.”

  Rye grabbed a chair an’ turned it around, straddled it, an’ leaned his arms on the chair back. “I done like you said—went in undercover. With a doze
n jugs a White Lightnin’ under a tarp in my truck.”

  “That ain’t what I told you to do.”

  “Well, think on it, Homer. You told me to preten’ I was house-huntin’. But who in his right mind’d relocate to Looney?” Don’t make no sense. So I improvised. Went undercover as a moonshine man. Worked, too. Seems my reputation proceeded me. Didn’t take but a hour to unload my whole inventory.”

  “How long’d it take you to learn what I sent you to find out?”

  “Not too long. After I went through all my stock an’ took orders fer future deliveries, I showed Loomis’s pi’ture around. Told folks he messed with my sister an’ I’d be obliged to know where I could get my hands on ’im.”

  “Ah huh.”

  “Have some faith, Homer.”

  “That mean you found somethin’ out I can use?”

  “Nobody’d seen him for a while, but he used to pass through Looney regular, deliverin’ livestock to the pet food plant.”

  “What kinda live stock?”

  “Horses, mostly.”

  “That musta been where he was headin’ when he overshot his turnoff fer Grover. Wonder what kinda scam—”

  “Why ain’t whoever was s’posed to get them horses lookin’ for ’em?”

  “Mebbe ’cause the BLM guy sent another shipment. Problem is, the other shipment arrived almost ’fore the first one was lost. How do you s’pose he knew to do that?”

  Rye grinned. “Bet Nina could beat it outta him.”

  “If she finds out what he was up to, she’ll beat him to death.” I pointed at Rye. “Don’t you dare tell her.”

  Rye held up his hands. “I ain’t crazy.”

  “Tell me more about this pet food plant. You didn’t list it as one of the amenities in Looney.”

  “Ain’t in Looney.” I waited. “It’s just outside the city limits. In fact, it’s across the county line. But half the Loonies work there.”

  “They make a lot of—What, exactly, do they make?”

  “Some kinda special gour-met stuff. Mostly ship it overseas.”

  “Where overseas?”