The Huckleberry Murders: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery

by Patrick F. McManus

  “Oh, Sheriff Tully!” gasped a plump gray-haired lady with a red bandanna tied loosely around her neck. “Are we ever glad to see you!”

  Tully smiled at her. “What seems to be the trouble, Blanche?”

  “Bodies!” blurted out a younger blond woman, perspiration streaming down her reddened face.

  “Bodies?” Tully said. “What kind of bodies?”

  “Dead bodies!” blurted another one.

  “Dead bodies all over the place!” cried another woman, who looked as if she were about to be sick. The women were now all leaning against the Suburban. He hoped none of them was going to faint.

  He peered off down the road. “Exactly where are these bodies?”

  One of the ladies pointed. “Down around that bend.”

  Tully studied the group. They looked relatively sane. “Okay, ladies, you all get in your vehicle and rest, but don’t leave. I may need your names, addresses, and phone numbers.” He took a pen and small notebook from his shirt pocket. “You can write them in here while you’re waiting.”

  He walked down the road, watching for any movement ahead of him. Reaching under his vest as he moved around the bend, he unsnapped the strap retaining the Colt Commander. The dry grass along the edge of the road had grown up knee high and he had no trouble finding where the ladies had matted it down. He stepped off the road and began working his way down the slope toward a mass of huckleberry bushes. Three bodies lay on their bellies at the edge of the patch. They had ropes around their waists, maybe to hold berry buckets they were now lying on. He sat down on a stump and studied them. All had been shot in the back of the head. Each of them wore sneakers, now barely holding together, and pants and shirts in scarcely better condition. Clearly, they hadn’t been killed for their money. He got up and lifted one of the hands. It was callused and darkened, probably from hard labor involving dirt. They appeared to be laborers of some kind, probably from a farm of some sort. None appeared older than twenty. He pulled one of the victims up slightly so he could see beneath him. As he expected, a two-pound coffee can had been outfitted with a wire bale. A length of rope ran around the picker’s waist and through the bale.

  Weird, Tully thought. All three had apparently intended to pick berries when someone shot them in the back of the head. There must have been three shooters. Otherwise at least one of the victims would have spun around at the first shot or reacted in some way. They were lying in a perfect line. He imagined himself as one of the young men headed down toward the berry patch. Why does someone haul you up in the woods to pick huckleberries? If he had been one of the intended victims, he would have sensed something funny from the start. The minute his feet hit the ground he would have run like a spooked deer down the side of the mountain. If there were three shooters, the three intended victims would have died instantly and simultaneously. On the other hand, if there was a fourth intended victim, it was possible he had managed to escape. Tully got up and walked down through an opening in the brush, examining leaves as he went. On the lower side of the berry patch he found what he was looking for. A tiny spot of dried blood glistened on a leaf. Maybe the fourth intended victim was lying dead somewhere down on the steep slope of the mountain. Or maybe, somehow, miraculously, he had gotten away. Tully worked his way back to the road. This was the worst case of cold-blooded murder he had encountered in his entire career in law enforcement. He noticed that his hands were shaking. He squeezed them into fists as he walked back to the Suburban.

  Blanche, the apparent leader of the group, handed him the notebook. The ladies seemed exhausted. Tully suspected they had picked their last huckleberry. He checked the notebook to make sure they had included all the information he had asked for. They had. He walked back to his pickup and backed it out onto the main road so the Suburban could get by. After pulling back into the logging road, he stopped halfway to the dead tree, took out his cell phone, and called Lurch.

  “Yeah, boss,” the Unit answered. Tully suspected Lurch received phone calls only from him.

  “Lurch, I’m up here on Scotchman Peak Road, about a mile from Henrys Pass. I’ve got three dead bodies in a huckleberry patch. They’ve each been shot in the back of the head. So bring your kit and a metal detector. We might be able to find some shell casings. Call Dave Perkins at the House of Fry and tell him I need him up here, too.”

  There was no reply.

  “Lurch, you there?”

  “Yeah. Give me a second. Three bodies. Dave? How come Dave?”

  “He’s probably the best tracker in the entire country.”

  “You think the killer might still be around?”

  “No, but I need Dave up here.”

  “How about Pap?”

  Tully thought for a moment. The old man relished any chance to relive his sheriff days and would never forgive him if he were left out of a triple murder. “Yeah, tell Dave to pick up Pap on his way.” Then he remembered the medical examiner. “Call the M.E. and tell her we need her whole outfit up here. Tell Susan we’ve got three bodies, maybe a fourth.”

  “A fourth!” Lurch let a long breath sizzle through his teeth. “Right, boss.”

  5

  TULLY HAD HEARD a logging truck go by earlier, so he walked out to the main road. He sat down on a large rock to wait for the next truck. Presently he could hear it growling down a steep slope up near the pass. It soon came swaying around the bend with a massive load of logs. He got up and waved his arms. The driver started working his way down through the gears and pulled up next to Tully with a hiss and squeal of brakes.

  “Bo!” the driver said. “What the devil you doing out here?”

  Tully climbed up on the running board. “Pete, I was trying to pick some huckleberries,” he said, “but before I could get to it, I found three young guys out there in the brush, all of them shot in the back of the head.”

  Pete gasped out an obscenity. “What’s the world coming to, Bo? Even way up here in the mountains you got folks getting themselves murdered!”

  “As to what the world is coming to, I wish I knew, but I don’t. Have you heard any shots the last few days?”

  “Can’t say I have. Oh, you know grouse season is open and occasionally we hear somebody popping off at one of them.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. I suspect revolvers were used. Otherwise, the casings would have been flying off into the brush and hard if not impossible for the killers to find. I figure there had to be three shooters. I’ve got Lurch headed up here with a metal detector, and maybe we can find some casings, if the shooters were using automatics.”

  Pete said, “We got trucks driving this road constantly, and I’ll spread the word to the other drivers. Maybe one of them heard some shots. There’s a driver either going up or down this road about every half hour. I’ll pass the word, see if anybody’s heard or seen anything.”

  “Thanks, Pete. They may know something useful.” Tully dropped back to the ground. Pete gave him a little wave, and the truck went growling down the mountain.

  Two hours later a caravan of cars came streaming up the road. Tully had built a small castle of rocks and was trying to think of something else to do when they finally arrived. He directed them into the logging road and walked up to the head of the line. They stopped behind his pickup, a hundred feet in front of the dead tree. It was possible Lurch might be able to find some tread imprints from the shooters’ tires in that hundred feet, even though the women’s Suburban had been driven all the way to the tree. A couple of state patrolmen had joined the group, as well as a U.S. forest ranger. Susan arrived in a coroner’s van, trailed by another van. Stepping out the passenger door, she gave him one of her special smiles. They still hadn’t gotten back together after their last breakup, a result of Tully’s failure to be sufficiently attentive. Oh, yeah, and there had also been his brief affair with Daisy. That was before he made Daisy a deputy and issued her a department gun. It had later occurred to him that it wasn’t such a good idea to issue a gun to a woman with whom you had bro
ken up. He had so many women in his life he might have to hire a secretary to keep track of them. Then he would probably end up having an affair with the secretary. That’s how his life went these days. Not bad, actually.

  “Hey, Susan!” he said. “You get to go first.” He pointed down the slope in the direction of the bodies. “If you need some help with your stuff, I’ll haul it down for you.”

  She grinned at him. “I know, you’re just trying to be attentive, Bo, but I’ve got some helpers along.” She looked down the slope at the bodies and shook her head. “This is just so terrible!”

  “Yeah.” He remained on the road. Observing medical examiners at their work was not on his list of favorite activities.

  Lurch hauled his metal detector over. Tully pointed out where he thought the shooters must have stood, and the Unit began sweeping the instrument back and forth. Nothing. “Looks as if they picked up their casings, boss. Or maybe they were using revolvers.”

  “Give it another pass down the slope a ways.”

  Lurch walked a few steps down toward the bodies, swinging the detector back and forth. The instrument beeped.

  “What is it?” Tully asked.

  Lurch bent down and picked up the object. “A bottle cap.” He cocked his arm as if to throw the cap off into the brush.

  “Stop!” Tully yelled. “Let me see it.”

  Lurch climbed back up the slope and handed him the cap. “You think the killers took time out to share a beer?”

  “Who knows?” Tully looked at the cap. “It’s a twist-off, Lurch. Dos Equis. Mexican beer. Look around and see if you can find the bottle. We could get fingerprints off the bottle. If you can’t find a Dos Equis bottle here, I want you to check the brush on each side of the road all the way back to that downed tree.”

  Lurch shook his head. “You want to arrest these killers for littering?”

  “Just see if you can find me the bottle, Lurch!”

  “Maybe I can get a print off the cap, Bo.”

  “Just find me the bottle! The guy twists the cap off the bottle here and starts drinking his beer on the way back to his car. When the bottle is empty, he tosses it out into the brush.”

  “Jeez, boss, I’d have to scour ten acres of brush!”

  “What else do you have to do? You want to go help Susan?”

  “Only kidding. I’ll go look for the bottle.” He sighed and started scanning the brush.

  “If you find it, Lurch, don’t mess up any possible prints.”

  “Thanks, boss. I’d never have thought of that.”

  Dave Perkins came walking up. He wore a buckskin shirt, jeans, and moccasins. His long gray hair hung in a thick braid down his back.

  “I see you’re wearing your tracking clothes,” Tully said.

  “Yeah, they help me concentrate.” He glanced down at Susan and the three bodies. “Some really bad people running around nowadays. Maybe there always were. These guys look pretty young.”

  Tully nodded. “Yeah, I figure none of them is over twenty. No ID on any of them, at least that I could find. I did check their hands. Lots of calluses. I make them out to be farm laborers.”

  “Latinos?”

  “Nope, all gringos, far as I can tell. They’ve been doing some hard labor, though, and I don’t think they’ve been paid much, if anything. Their clothes are barely holding together.”

  Dave squinted down at Susan, then jerked his head around and gave an exaggerated shudder. “I can’t believe you once dated her, Bo.”

  “Yeah, it was rough duty, particularly when she rehashed her day’s activities while we were having supper.”

  “So what do you want from me, Sheriff?”

  Tully told him about the possibility of an intended fourth victim who may have gotten away. “If I had been one of the intended vics, I’d have been very suspicious of anyone who took me up to pick huckleberries. At the first shot I would have taken off and run like a deer. So I walked down through the berry patch and found a tiny spot of blood on a branch down there. If one guy did get away, he may have been hit pretty hard, but I don’t think so. Still, it’s possible you’ll find his body down the slope somewhere. On the other hand, if he was only nicked by the bullet, maybe he’s alive and out there someplace. If we find him alive, we’ll nail the killers.”

  “It’s possible,” Dave said. “Won’t hurt for me to take a look in any case.”

  “You come up with Pap?”

  “Yeah.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of his truck.

  Tully looked back down the road but couldn’t see his father. “I’ll have him drive your rig back to town. Once you’ve cut the track, if there is one, mark it and head out to the road. I’ll pick you up on my way back into town.”

  Dave nodded. He circled far out around Susan and the victims and headed down the slope, zigzagging back and forth in order to cut the track, if there was one. Tully watched him until he was out of sight.

  Pap came ambling up the road and stood beside him. He wore jeans, a denim work shirt open at the collar, cowboy boots, and a khaki vest similar to his son’s. His thick white hair was cropped close to the scalp. The old man had been out of law enforcement for over ten years but he seemed as fit as ever. “A triple murder! You have all the luck, Bo.”

  “Yeah, don’t I?”

  Pap stared down at the bodies. “I see you got Susan up here already, along with most of the county. Everybody loves a murder, and here you land a triple. In all my years as sheriff, I didn’t have but two triples.”

  “One that you committed?”

  Pap blurted out an obscenity. “Those were three bank robbers and you know it! I killed them fair and square! Got plugged three times myself and even was awarded a commendation from the governor.”

  “I believe you’ve mentioned that to me a few hundred times. What was the other triple?”

  “You made me mad, Bo, so I ain’t going to tell you.”

  Tully glanced at his father. The old man was tall and lean, his skin deeply tanned from a lifetime of hunting and fishing and roaming the mountains. “Tell me,” he said. He knew the old man couldn’t resist.

  “They was all gamblers. They cooked up a scheme to rip off one of the joints. Not a good idea. It was one of the few crimes I never solved.”

  “That because you had an interest in the joint?”

  Pap laughed. “That’s for me to know. I see you’ve notified just about everybody in the entire state, Bo. So I was wondering why the FBI hasn’t showed up.”

  “The FBI? Why should I notify them?”

  “This is a national forest. The last time I looked, national forests were on federal land. The FBI usually likes to investigate murders on federal land.”

  “Is that right? I didn’t know. Well, as soon as I get back to town, I’ll have to give them a call. If I don’t forget. So why do you think these fellows might have been killed?”

  “A killing like this, Bo, you got to figure it’s about money.”

  “You think these fellows were done for money?”

  “Somebody wanted to dispose of them, that’s pretty obvious. The question is why. You usually dispose of a person because you don’t want him blabbing something he knows about you. These fellers look pretty young, from what I can see of them. It’s doubtful any of them knew enough of anything to get them killed. So what does that leave?”

  “Beats the heck out of me.”

  “You’re so dumb, Bo. The only other sensible reason to kill a person is money.”

  “I don’t think these guys had any money at all.”

  “Maybe they was killed to keep them that way. And maybe to keep them quiet, too.”

  “You may be right.”

  6

  BY LATE AFTERNOON, the bodies had been loaded into the coroner’s vans to be hauled back to Susan’s lab. She stood at the edge of the road, her face glistening with sweat, a wisp of hair stuck to her cheek. “I have to find another line of work,” she told Tully.

  “Can�
��t blame you for that,” he said. “So, can you tell me when they were killed?”

  “Right now all I can tell you is, within the last couple of days, because—”

  “Skip the details, please! Just give me your best estimate.”

  “That is my best estimate, Bo. I’ll be able to narrow down the time once I get them back to the lab. If any of them has a record, you might be able to get an ID from his prints. My guess is that at least one of them has been arrested for something one time or another. You usually don’t meet guys at a church social who wind up shooting you in the back.”

  Tully tugged on the corner of his mustache. “Yeah, I guess you’re right about that. Print them for me, please, and I’ll see if Lurch can find a match.”

  “I’ll get them over to Byron tonight. Since you keep him working night and day, you might have at least one ID by tomorrow.”

  Tully laughed. “Sounds as if you’ve been listening to Lurch complain. Which reminds me, I’ve got him checking out a partial tire track as well as looking for a beer bottle.”

  Susan shook her head and climbed into the passenger side of the last van to back out. Other hangers-on had left the scene earlier. A few were standing around in groups out on the Scotchman Peak Road. The Unit came walking up carrying a plaster cast.

  “You able to get anything we can use, Lurch?”

  “Maybe. The lady pickers’ car pretty much rolled over the top of the lower track, but I was able to cast several inches on the edge. The vehicle that made the lower track had very wide tires. Could even be dual tires. Probably made from the shooters’ tires because the track looks just a bit older than the Suburban’s. Has to be from a truck tire, or maybe a big van. I’m pretty sure if we find the vehicle, we can get a match.”

  “A big pickup maybe? Then the shooters would be in the cab, with at least some of our vics riding in the bed.”

  “Has to be, if this is a print from one of their vehicle’s tires.”

  “Good work, Lurch. I’ll see you back at the office. Did you ever find the Dos Equis bottle that goes with the cap?”