Dead Air

by David A. Poulsen

  “It’s one of the traits I like least about me,” I said, nodding, “but the thing about a dog with a bone is that the bone is pretty important to that dog.”

  “And this is important to you.”

  I nodded again. “Me and my partner.”

  Crombeen didn’t look like Jackie Gleason. More like a bigger, older version of Lanny McDonald, with the same never-ending moustache. Except that whenever you saw Lanny, on TV or around town, he always looked like he was in a good mood. Jud Crombeen looked like decades passed between his good moods, millennia between grins.

  He wasn’t in a good mood now. And he definitely wasn’t grinning.

  “I appreciate your agreeing to talk to me,” I said. “I know we maybe didn’t get off on the right foot when I called.”

  “I didn’t agree to talk to you.” Crombeen leaned back in the booth. “I agreed to meet you for a beer. I told you all I had to say on the phone.”

  “I understand that, but I was hoping I could ask you a couple more questions.”

  He shrugged. “You can ask.”

  The implication that he might not answer was not lost on me. I nodded.

  “I understand hunters found John Bones?”

  Long pause. I hoped this wasn’t going to be a childish game that would result in a lot of wasted time for me.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How did that come about?”

  “How did what come about?”

  “Did they just stumble across some bones, or were they digging, making a campfire or something?”

  “They were tracking a bull elk. Came across some bones — one of the hunters was a doctor, recognized the bones as human — and they poked around and found some more. That’s when they came to see me.”

  “Which is when you began your investigation.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And that was 2008?”

  “Uh-huh. Late summer.”

  “You said the skull and some of the bones were missing.”

  Pause. “That’s right.”

  “Would you say most of the skeleton was still there?”

  “I’d say maybe seventy percent. But like I said, not enough for an ID. And with no skull, no dental records, we had no luck with Missing Persons.”

  “Was there any clothing still left intact?”

  Up until that moment Crombeen had been relaxed and borderline co-operative. Even helpful. But now we were crossing a line, some barrier, real or imagined. The lines on his face that suddenly became furrows told me that. He looked at his drink, at the tabletop, and at the floor, then finally at me. But his mouth was closed and set.

  “Sheriff, there’s something I should tell you. We’re not on some witch hunt here. Neither my partner nor I are interested in finding fault with the previous investigation or throwing anybody under the bus. We’re trying to find information that will help us prove our client innocent. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  He mulled that over and that’s when I decided to try something I wasn’t sure Cobb would have approved of. But I thought that if I gave him some information maybe there’d be a quid pro quo without my having to mention it. I told him about the traces of Hugg’s blood in Larmer’s car. That someone had attempted to clean it up.

  “But, of course, it didn’t work,” Crombeen said. “Just about impossible to get rid of it totally.”

  “Let me ask you something, Sheriff. It’s something I’ve been thinking about. Is it possible, or plausible, that the real killer planted the blood in Larmer’s car as part of the attempt to frame him, then made it look like it was cleaned up, knowing that there would be traces still there for the police forensic people to find? Wouldn’t that be a nice part of a frame?”

  “Maybe … can’t really say, not knowing more about the case, but you asked me about possible or plausible. I’d say yes it’s possible. Don’t know about plausible.”

  It was a fair answer and I nodded my appreciation.

  “What about the other investigators — the state police and the FBI? They have any theories?”

  “The state guys worked it pretty hard, just like I did. We came to the same conclusion. As for the feds, that was bullshit. The kid did more than that FBI clown.”

  “The kid?”

  Crombeen drank beer and looked at me. “Yeah, there was a university kid who spent a couple of months out here doing his own crime-solving exercise — some school-project thing.”

  I ordered us a couple more beers. Crombeen nodded his thanks.

  “Local kid?” I said.

  Crombeen shook his head. “Never saw him before. Or since for that matter. He was from the University of Wyoming — some criminology thing they teach out there. I told him book shit will only get you so far — you gotta be out there workin’ it on the ground. Looking people in the eye, asking questions, getting dirt under your fingernails. And in a way, I guess, that’s what he was trying to do. He ‘interviewed’ me” — Crombeen made quotation marks with his fingers — “a couple of times. He wanted to talk about the 2003 gathering, too. Just like you. And just like you he got nothing … not on John Bones and nothing on the big secret conference. Finally he just went away, probably back to school.”

  “You remember his name?”

  “No, hell no — too long ago. But I’m not so sure he didn’t leave a souvenir behind. A few people saw him hanging around with a local girl — Becky Cardell, she was then; she married later, so her name’s Hicks now, but Noah Hicks took off on her, moved south somewhere, Texas maybe. Anyway, she had a baby sometime after that kid was out here. It might be Noah’s, but there was gossip — I never paid much attention to that kind of crap, too busy for it — but there was gossip to the effect that her and the university kid might have doin’ the dirty and … shazam.”

  Crombeen laughed at his choice of words and took a long pull on the beer.

  “Becky still live around Buffalo?”

  “Yeah, in town, last I heard. She works cleaning houses for people. Single mom, you gotta do something, right?”

  “Right,” I agreed. “So we were talking about John Bones’s clothing remnants.”

  He drank again.

  “You were asking about clothing remnants. Don’t think I’m getting drunk enough to be stupid, boy.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that, Sheriff. I was just hoping you might be able to answer that for me.”

  He drank again, but a sip this time as if to punctuate what he’d just said, then set the bottle down.

  “There wasn’t much. Most of it had rotted or been carried off like the skull. There were a few scraps. One piece of a shirt, red I think, with the chest pocket still there. That’s where we found the poker chip.”

  “Poker chip?” I sat up in my chair. “How was that still intact after all that time?”

  “That’s what I wondered. State forensics figured it was protected by the pocket. I mean, it was pretty damaged and faded and all, but they took it away and went over it like crazy.”

  “I don’t suppose they happened to find the name of a casino or anything like that on it?” Surely I couldn’t be that lucky.

  “No nothing like that. Just a number.”

  “Number.”

  “Yeah, there was a number scratched into the surface of one side. If I remember correctly, the number was fifty-three.”

  The drive to Buffalo was short and pleasant. Forty-five minutes after I’d left Jud Crombeen with a third beer and a couple of his pals who’d come by, I was at the door of the house that, according to the Buffalo phone directory, was the residence of Becky Hicks.

  The house was small but the yard was neat and the smell told me the grass had been mowed in the last day or so. I wondered if Becky did it or if she had a neighbour who helped her out.

  When the door opened on the second knock I decided it was t
he former. Becky wasn’t overweight but she wasn’t small either. She had the look of a farm-raised girl who didn’t shy away from physical effort. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that read Daddy of ’Em All, with a bucking horse forming the crest. I knew the caption was the slogan for Cheyenne’s Frontier Days — I’d seen it on posters in the airport when I’d flown into Cheyenne that morning.

  “Mrs. Hicks?”

  “She shook her head. “No Mrs. to it. I kept the name, but there isn’t a Mr. Hicks. I’m just Becky. And I’m not buying whatever it is you’re selling.”

  I smiled at her, hoping I didn’t look like a salesman when I did that.

  “Actually, Becky, I’m not selling anything.”

  A small, shy face peeked out from behind her. It belonged a five- or six-year-old boy. Slender, not built like his mom. Lots of brown hair, eyes to match; a handsome little guy with a baseball glove on his left hand.

  I smiled again, this time at him. I thought about chatting with the boy, asking him if he liked baseball, but I knew that was probably exactly what a salesman would do so I looked back to her.

  “I’m a journalist. I’m here from Canada. I’m interested in an event that took place in this area back in 2003. A gathering of right-wing folks for a big conference. I’m told that you became friends with a young man, a university student who was here to study that event, as well as a murder that happened around the same time. I’d like to talk to that young man, see if he can maybe shed a little light on some of the areas of the investigation we’re struggling with.”

  “I don’t think I —”

  I held up my hands. “Listen, Becky, I don’t blame you for wanting to shut that door. I’m a stranger to you. I get that. And I’m not asking you to let me come inside. We could talk out here in the yard, or —” I looked again at the boy I guessed was her son — “I noticed an ice cream place on Main Street. I’d be happy to buy both of you an ice cream and we could talk in a place where there are lots of people around. I promise I won’t take any more of your time than it takes for your son to eat his ice cream.”

  I heard a small voice say, “Mom,” and I noticed a tug or two at Mom’s T-shirt.

  “I’m just waiting for a call from my mom in Sacramento.” Becky glanced at her watch. “I … we could meet you at Lickety Splits in about twenty minutes.”

  It was more like half an hour, but the wait was worth it. Even if Becky Hicks had refused to talk to me, the ice cream was as good as ice cream gets.

  As we sat outside on the patio, Becky worked something called Moose Moss, which she assured me was a mint flavour, and Bart, who I learned would be six in two months, was enthusiastically licking away at his Cookie Dough, getting most, though not all of it, in his mouth. I’d opted for Huckleberry, and for a few minutes our voices were on mute as we focused on our ice cream.

  A couple of kids about Bart’s age arrived with their moms and set up not far from us. Bart knew them and asked if he could go sit with them. Becky nodded, then turned to me.

  “Tell me again why you want to know about Shane — he’s the young man I was … friends with.”

  I explained in a little more detail my journalistic interest in the Right to Be Proud, Proud to Be Right event. I told her about Larmer and what appeared a well-orchestrated attempt to frame him for a murder he didn’t commit. I didn’t go into the conspiracy to kill right-wing media types because I didn’t want to clutter the conversation, and I knew that to keep my promise about wrapping up before the Cookie Dough was gone meant that I needed to keep my explanation to a minimum.

  “Both Mr. Larmer and the murder victim were at that gathering,” I finished. “I was hoping that Shane might have learned something during his time here that might help us.”

  “He didn’t tell me very much. Just that he was working on a school project for one of his classes and that conference you were talking about — I can never remember the name — was part of what he was studying.”

  “What school was he attending?”

  “The University of Wyoming. It’s in Laramie. I’ve never been there.”

  “And what was he taking?”

  “Criminal Studies or something like that. I can’t remember the exact name. Sorry.”

  “And what was Shane’s last name?”

  “Kent. Shane Kent.”

  “And is he Bart’s dad?” Before she could answer I held up a hand and shook my head. “I’m really sorry. That was thoughtless and rude and it’s none of my business.”

  She looked over at her son, who was now exchanging licks of the various ice-cream selections with his two friends. It looked like the object of the exercise was to get as much of the ice cream on your face and T-shirt as possible. If it was a competition I would have given Bart the early lead.

  She nodded and a tear appeared at the corner of one eye.

  “Have you seen him since that time?”

  She shook her head. “He left when I told him I was pregnant.”

  “Have you heard from him?”

  “Every once in a while he sends me some money. It just comes in the mail — nothing with it, no note, no return address. And I really believed he was the guy, you know? But after so long I thought he really didn’t want to see me ever again.” She stopped and both eyes now glistened.

  “Thought?” I said. “You don’t still think that?”

  She shook her head and dabbed a tissue to her eyes. “He phoned a couple of weeks ago.”

  I didn’t say anything, gave her time to say more.

  “He said he wondered if we might get back together.”

  “Did he say where he was?”

  She shook her head again. “Uh-uh. And the number didn’t come up on my phone.”

  “What else did he say, Becky?”

  “Just that he wanted to see me and maybe we could talk about a life together. And that he would call again in the next few weeks.”

  “And has he?

  “Not yet,” she whispered. “Not yet.”

  “I want to thank you for talking to me, Becky. And if … when Shane comes to see you, if you could give him this —” I handed her a business card — “I’d really appreciate it if he could give me a call.”

  She took the card as I rose and waved to Bart, who was near the bottom of his cone. I hadn’t lied about the time it would take and for some reason I felt good about that.

  Becky Hicks was a nice woman, and though I didn’t know Shane Kent other than as a guy who’d ditched a pregnant girlfriend, I hoped things would work out for them. And I hoped he’d call me.

  I didn’t really have an awful lot more to do in Buffalo or the surrounding area, but it was getting late in the afternoon and I was operating on minimum sleep. I decided to put off my drive to Laramie until the next morning, checked into the Occidental Hotel and, after a brief stop at the Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum, headed out for a drive around the area.

  It was beautiful country with the Bighorn Mountains off to the west and plenty of woodland between the town and those mountains. I’d asked a volunteer at the museum about the Wagon Box Fight. A small, frail man, he had white hair that provided a stark contrast to one of the reddest faces I’d ever seen. He’d told me his name was Addison Belt and that he was eighty-four years old. He’d seemed very knowledgeable and happy to share that knowledge with anyone who would listen. I’d listened long enough to get a fairly thorough history of the battle. Mr. Belt also knew about the discovery of John Bones and had given me a fairly detailed set of directions to that site, which he figured was about three miles from the battlefield.

  Darkness was starting to settle in as the winding, narrow road took me farther into the deeper woods to the west, the sun breaking through the trees only intermittently. I got to the area described by Addison Belt and parked in a small clearing just off the road. I sat in the car for a time looking arou
nd the area, trying to imagine some kind of impromptu encampment popping up, then disappearing.

  I stepped out of the car and slowly made my way down a meandering path.

  I wasn’t sure why I was here. Perhaps for the same reason I wanted to get close to the place where Faith Unruh had lost her life — a desire to feel the place, to sense what it had been like to be here during the heady Right to Be Proud, Proud to Be Right days and nights. If indeed this was the right place.

  But standing there looking at the woods and clearings and paths around and through them, I was certain that this was where the conference had taken place. I walked slowly, venturing off the path a couple of times to poke around areas that looked like good spots for campers to pitch their tents. I knew that there was virtually no chance of my stumbling across something that related to the camp that had been somewhere in the area almost a dozen years before — the knife that had killed Mr. Bones stuck in a tree, a business card with “I’m the murderer” scrawled on the back of it. But I didn’t feel I was wasting my time.

  Looking around, I was able to get some sense of this place in another time. I stepped through some denser undergrowth into another clearing, larger than the one where I’d left the car. Even in the diminishing light I could see that some of this clearing was man-made — trees cut down and just beginning their re-growth, long grass covering what had once been treed areas. I walked around it, kicking at loose, broken limbs and scuffing dirt-grass lumps here and there. And thinking about political fanatics. Could they kill? Would they kill?

  The darkness was settling in and I started working my way toward the path that would take me to back to the car. That’s when I heard it. Breaking twigs underfoot, branches whipping and snapping against something approaching.

  I stopped to listen, my heart beating out its terror-rhythm in my chest. I saw the light next, bobbing toward me. Not something then. Someone. I thought of Jill’s words. Whoever had killed four people was still out there.

  Out here?

  He emerged from the deepening shadows, saw me, and stopped. It was Jud Crombeen and he was carrying a rifle. Loosely and not pointed exactly at me, but that was of little comfort. I tried to read his face, but couldn’t.