Spirit Trap (The Dutch Curridge Series Book 3)

by Tim Bryant

  Obviously, with the way things had turned out, I was not about to suggest that the man, as sick as he may have been, was suffering from paranoia. But if I had been, that would have gone right out the window. I had seen a wild boar hog that someone had killed between Fort Worth and Dallas years before, and it had been heavier than a full-grown man.

  I asked if he knew any of the guys from The Jazzbillies. I was beginning to wonder if any of them had had a clue what was going on with Werner. If they had, they had remained mum to a man.

  "I know two of them," Wolfshaut said. "Ballard and Roosevelt. I played in the Rag & Bone band with Ballard. Roosevelt's not really with them, but he sings for them some. The rest I only know from seeing them around. They probably don't know me from a hole in the wall."

  "Any of them know what Werner was going through?" Slant Face said.

  "They had to. I mean, they knew he'd been in the hospital. They knew he wasn't well."

  Wolfshaut and me might have lived next to each other in the Stockyard Hotel for a hundred years, and we probably wouldn't have ever become great friends. We didn't have the rapport that I had with Elias Groves. And yet, Wolfshaut had come through with the goods, and I don't think he even realized it.

  As we were making our exit, I asked him how much money a good fire insurance salesman made. The implication being that I might consider getting a real job one of these days.

  "It depends on how many sales we make," he said. "Good months, I get by. Bad months, I look for another new place to live."

  Seemed like my kind of job. I told him I had lived in the Stockyard for a couple of years, for the sole reason that it was the cheapest place in town.

  "I just moved in," he said. "If I can stick around for two or three years, I'll be lucky."

  You shared a bathroom and shower with other tenants at the Stockyard, same as I did on Sharon Road. The thin walls meant you shared pretty much everything else, too. It wasn't the worst place in the world, though. You never knew what you might find there.

  25

  Miss Sarah met me in the front yard when I got home that afternoon. More phone calls. Two of them this time, both from the same woman.

  "That newspaper lady."

  She handed me the messages. The first, just her number with the words please call, the second asking me to meet her at the Star-Telegram offices at five o'clock.

  "Is there some kind of trouble?" Miss Sarah said.

  She knew I made my living off of trouble. That wasn't what she was worried about. Miss Sarah ran a tight ship, as Slant Face would say, and if she thought I was causing trouble instead of trying to clean it up, I would likely be moving back into the Stockyard and sharing a bathroom with Wolfshaut.

  On the other hand, Miss Sarah hadn't forgotten Ruthie Nell one bit. She remembered when Ruthie used to stop by, and she also remembered when that all stopped. What she really wanted to know was, Is there something going on here that I should know about? Of course, there was nothing going on and certainly nothing that she needed to know about. It was like I had traded my momma for Miss Sarah. A fact I hadn't quite come to terms with.

  I met Ruthie Nell just as the day shift was clocking out and going home for supper. She was sitting at the front desk explaining to another woman why the phone switchboard wasn't the same as a party line. I listened in for a while then looked over the day's edition, which had nothing to say about the Athey investigation.

  With the secretary finally convinced, the two of us moved back to Ruthie Nell's office, which was big as my room on Sharon Road.

  "I share it with whoever's working night shift," she said, as if that somehow cut it in half.

  I took a seat at the end of her desk, pulled out my notebook and looked over the day's notes. I hadn't asked for the meeting, so I didn't see any reason to share any of my information just yet.

  "I have confirmation that Werner Athey is alive and well. Actually, I don't know how well he is, but he's been popping up on Jacksboro Highway."

  Back when Ruthie had been a reporter at the Fort Worth Press, she had always complained that the Star-Telegram specialized in old news. I started to remind her of it.

  "The 2222 Club," I said.

  She didn't look too surprised.

  "Yes, the 2222 Club and The Green Parrot."

  I hadn't been to The Green Parrot in ages. Ever since the city closed them down for a couple of weeks a year or so back for selling meat from a local plant that hadn't passed inspection.

  "The Green Parrot," I said. "I heard it was the Skyliner."

  All three places were within a half-mile stretch. Still, Werner seemed to be getting around.

  "I'm concerned with a few things," Ruthie said. "First and foremost, I'm worried for Werner. For all we know, he's in some kind of shock. Maybe he isn't fully aware of what's going on."

  "You mean like amnesia or something?" I said.

  I had read about amnesia in dozens of books, but I had never once seen it or known anybody who had. Far as I was concerned, it was a clever plot line that bore no resemblance to reality.

  "I don't know," she said. "I heard tell they were putting him in Harris Methodist a while back, but nobody seems to know why."

  I told her that it was a fairly well-known secret. That all of his band knew and a few other friends. What else did she have?

  "Dutch, here's the deal. I'm not ready to go to Wiley King with this information. At the same time, I can't go in and out of clubs on Jacksboro without raising suspicions and a whole bunch of questions."

  Fair enough. Even when we were going out to places together, I'd never taken her up Jacksboro, except to the Skyliner once or twice to see some big name performer that she liked. I never would have been okay with the idea of her hanging around that area, especially alone.

  "So you want me to keep an eye out for him," I said.

  I could tell she hated having to ask me for anything. If she could've asked Jerry Paul Crum to do it, she might have. But Crum was just another loser she'd tossed aside and left behind, and sending a district attorney to Jacksboro would have been asking for it anyway. I wasn't just her best bet. I was probably the only bet she had.

  "I don't want you to keep an eye out," she said. "I need you to find him for me."

  The fact that she needed me to do anything but drop dead was a pleasant surprise to me.

  "For you," I said.

  "Dutch."

  "I just want to be sure I know whether to bill you or the newspaper," I said.

  She had changed the rules when she took up with Crum and then disappeared, all in the name of getting a scoop. It had worked, and she was reaping the rewards. Now that she was back at the table, she would have to play by the new rules too.

  "This is not official," she said. "It has to be kept under the table."

  I understood all too well.

  "Off the books," I said.

  She was looking for another scoop. One to certify her new status. Who was I to blame her? It was her job, and doing your job at a place like the Star-Telegram didn't mean writing stories that would actually help matters. That would right wrongs. It didn't even mean getting to the truth. It meant getting to something you could sell to people before anybody else got there. She was good at it.

  "Dutch, I have another question for you."

  I was a lot more comfortable asking than answering.

  "This under the table, too?"

  She put down her pen.

  "Wiley King says you refused to identify the body of Patrick Cavanaugh. Said you never really believed he was dead. And yet he says when I went undercover, you were absolutely convinced I was."

  I waited for the question part, but she just looked at me like maybe she was sorry but probably she just felt sorry for me. There were a few different answers I could have given her. That if everyone had thought she was dead, she might have come back and worked undercover with me. That I was giving her a new start at a life without me and all the hacks in this crummy town. That part o
f me had hoped beyond all hope that she was gone for good.

  "It looked like you were gone."

  I could tell she wasn't satisfied with that one. I stood up and put on my hat. Sometimes the only power you have is being an asshole. When you get to that point, you have to decide whether you'd rather be an asshole or be powerless.

  "You know I can't go to Wiley with this, Dutch," she said.

  I shrugged it off.

  "I don't care where you go," I said. "You can go to hell with it, far as I'm concerned."

  I left the Star-Telegram swearing I would never return. To be honest, I was just swearing. It hadn't seemed the least bit implausible just a few months ago that Ruthie would come back to work with me. With all of Fort Worth thinking she was dead, she would take a new name and go completely undercover. We would be a team, and we would nail every dirty son of a bitch in town.

  I stopped by the Cut Rate on Throckmorton and grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels. I was back on Jacksboro Highway in no time, but I wasn't looking for Werner Athey.

  26

  The Tarrant County Sheriff's Department didn't believe in calling and leaving messages, and it's just as well. While Miss Sarah liked that I worked at catching bad guys, regular reminders in her own apartment might have been too much. Wiley King and Dewey Mitchell were two of a handful of people who knew where to find me if I wasn't at Peechie Keen's, and so when the knock came at my door the following morning, I knew it was one of them or a Bible salesman. We already had one of those living right behind me.

  I pulled on a shirt and holstered my gun, just in case it was a Bible salesman with a stubborn streak. By the time I got the door open, I was almost disappointed.

  "Goddamn it, I was hoping for a door-to-door salesman."

  "Morning, Deputy."

  Wiley had a smile on his face big as the Blackstone Hotel. It suddenly occurred to me that he had an arrest warrant out on me for a rusty old bear trap that was on the floor right behind me.

  "Can I do something for you?" I said.

  I stepped out into the light and pulled the door to behind me.

  "They found a body this morning in that heavily wooded area behind the Athey house," Wiley said. "Not much left to identify. Thought you could either drop by the coroner's office and take a look or find some kin somewhere that can. "

  I ID'd bodies often enough that the city ought to have put me on a retainer. In fact, I had come to know the coroner's assistant well enough to name everyone in his immediate family and a few of his cousins. Of course, Wiley knew that me and Bennie got along, and so he was quick to call me even if sometimes there were others better suited for the job. I had ID'd thugs, politicians, preachers, local personalities and people I didn't even know at all. Sometimes it was just an old street singer who had finally used up everything he had and fell over right on the sidewalk.

  I usually ID'd at one of two locations: Harris Methodist or the coroner's office on Fifteenth and Main, same block as the Sheriff's Department, different parking lot. Harris Methodist got the D.O.A.s and the ones who died on the table; the coroner got the ones who were good and dead to begin with.

  I got to the office within half an hour, washed up, smeared a little mentholatum under my nose, and met Bennie Enders at the door into the autopsy room. I could tell right away this was going to be a different kind of thing.

  "No need for the smell good," he said. "This one ain't going to the dance."

  Behind him, the coroner, Ted Dyess, was hunched over a table with a headlamp strapped to his head. The body wasn't a body at all.

  "That's all y'all have to work with?" I said.

  Wrapped in a dark green tarp with a Sheriff's Department stamp on it was a complete skeleton so white, so clean, it looked like it had been stolen from a medical school classroom. It was so unreal, you could forget that you were looking at a real person.

  "I've never seen a one picked so clean before," Dyess said. "I'm having trouble finding anything other than teeth to work with."

  Enders came around the end of the table where the skull was, propped up on a pillow for easier inspection.

  "Look at my friend Dutch here," he said. "Maybe he'll recognize that pretty smile."

  No teeth were missing, a fact which immediately eliminated more than a few acquaintances.

  "It's a man," Dyess said, "approximately five-foot-eight to five ten when he's all put back together. One leg was separated at the knee. Both hands had come apart at the wrist. He has all of his teeth, but that's about it. If you look real close right here, I want you to see something."

  He pointed out a hole in the lower left of the skull, behind what would have been the man's ear. A small hole, but almost perfectly round.

  "A bullet hole?" I said.

  He nodded.

  "Small caliber. Possibly .22. No exit wound, so the bullet probably stayed in his head."

  This seemed to focus everything. We were looking at a murder or a suicide, right?

  "Nope," Dyess said. "It's old. Probably something the guy lived with just fine. Might be a combat wound, although the caliber would almost surely be bigger than that. Could even be a childhood accident or something."

  "No body organs or other identifying marks," Enders said.

  I had no idea how long a body would have to be out in the elements to look like this. I was guessing months, if not years.

  "Not necessarily. The place they found him, it could have happened in a matter of days. Most likely, animals had their way with him."

  Dyess showed me where the leg had disconnected.

  "Probably a coyote or something pulled him apart, trying to get at him."

  I thought immediately of Wolfshaut's story.

  "A wild boar."

  Bennie nodded at that possibility.

  "Maybe. Maybe not."

  Dyess switched off his lamp and pushed it up on his forehead.

  "Mr. Curridge, I know you were familiar with Mr. Athey. You see anything here that would make an identification possible?"

  It honestly hadn't entered my mind that I could be looking at the bones of Werner himself. This, to me, was almost certainly the man responsible for the murders in the Athey household, but it wasn't Werner.

  "I'm pretty sure it's not Werner Athey," I said.

  Bennie looked surprised.

  "You positive?"

  How positive can you be? If I trusted what at least three different people saw with their own two eyes, I didn't see why Werner would have killed his family, eluded police, been seen more than once fiddling around on Jacksboro, only to return to the scene of the crime and get eaten up by a wild boar hog. Not to say it couldn't happen, but I didn't see it.

  "I would hold this one open," I said.

  I looked at the skeleton, and it grinned at me. Werner wasn't a giant of a man, but it looked too small. Bennie must have read my mind.

  "Don't matter if you're skinny or what. We all end up pretty much alike."

  Dyess tilted the skull at a different angle and shined his lamp down into its earhole.

  "Nothing on the inside either. Clean as a whistle," he said. "That means you might go back to where they found him and look around for the bullet he was carrying around in his head."

  "That would still be out there, huh," I said.

  "Likely to have dropped right on through," Enders said.

  There was nothing I could identify, so I didn't sign off on anything. Dyess said Old Boney would go into a drawer—hands, leg and all—until more information came along. A missing person's file or something.

  "We do have something else I want you to see," he said.

  He opened the drawer and pulled out a big leather bag that looked like something a mailman might carry. He picked it up and slid a piece of rusty chain and a Colt Trooper .357 onto a desk. The .357 had an ebony grip. A nice gun.

  "Sheriff King said these were found nearby."

  A gun left out in the elements for long will rust just like a chain. The gun hadn't been the
re too long. It still looked new.

  "How nearby is nearby?" I said.

  I picked the chain up. It was heavy, like a tow chain. I wondered if Werner had had a dog tied up out there. Or maybe a wild boar.

  "You'd have to take that up with the Sheriff," Dyess said. "He left a piece of it here in case someone might recognize it."

  I asked to hold the gun, and he handed it to me handle first.

  "Definitely not the gun that made that little bitty hole in his head," I said.

  A .357 magnum bullet would have left more hole than head. I looked it over good and returned it to the envelope.

  It had occurred to me just days before that Werner might have killed the man who murdered his family and left his body in the area behind the shed. Information had changed considerably since then, but it was still enough to make me wonder. Was I looking at the good guy there on the table or was it the murderer? You couldn't tell. Everything that made him whatever he was in this life was long gone. You couldn't even be sure if he was a piece to the puzzle or a whole new puzzle all his own.

  27

  I went to see the man they called Little Nicaragua Tramell for reasons I couldn't easily put into words. I guess I still believed there were pieces of the puzzle out there, and I couldn't say that he didn't have one. I think it was more that I didn't have anything better to do, and I needed to do something.

  I didn't expect Nic to know much. I wasn't even sure if he knew who Werner was. He lived in Como, a colored neighborhood, in a little blue house with his mother and her boyfriend. She worked at a clothing store. Nic had played baseball for the Fort Worth Black Cats in the Texas Negro League for several years, until he stopped to take a job in construction. I knew him better as ball player than I did as a musician, having watched him single-handedly knock in three runs to beat the Mineola Spiders 5-2 in the Negro League playoffs a few years earlier.

  Nic and his mother's boyfriend, a blues singer named Burl Johnroe, were sitting on the front porch playing guitars when we drove up. I sat in the truck and listened for a spell, because I knew they would stop as soon as we got out.