Rust on the Razor

by Mark Richard Zubro

  “Is the autopsy report on the sheriff in yet?” I asked.

  “I’ve gotten some reports.”

  “It would help if I could get some details about his death. Was he drugged? Did he struggle? Where was he?”

  Wainwright laughed. “Why would I have to give my prime suspect that information? You should know it already. I can tell you one little thing. We found plenty of your fingerprints at the scene. We’re going to take your buddy’s so we can eliminate his.”

  “You’ll find everybody’s prints who’s rented the car or who worked at the car rental agency. Prints don’t mean anything.”

  “I’m going back to Judge Collins with the state’s attorney again today. Maybe this time we’ll get a warrant. I was surprised when you pulled that much power out of a hat. I thought we had you.”

  He would tell us no more, and moments later he stood up and led us out of the room.

  His secretary said, “Mr. Wainwright, there are reporters outside the door, three or four of them. One is from the Truth Express, that horrible gossip paper.”

  “Can you let us out a quieter way?” Violet asked.

  Richardson puffed on his pipe once or twice and then grinned. “They’ll find you. This town isn’t that big, but sure.” He opened a side door and ushered us into a narrow hallway and then into a vacant courtroom. He pointed to a door on the opposite wall. “That way.” He turned and left.

  Outside the door was a man in his mid-twenties. He wore faded blue jeans, a blue-and-white striped shirt, and a brightly colored tie. He was five-nine and maybe all of one hundred thirty pounds. His most striking facial feature was a sea of prominent zits.

  “I knew I picked the right door,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t want to come out the front way. Those national reporters aren’t so goddamn smart. Yes!” He jerked his left arm in the annoying pumping gesture of triumph currently popular. Light from fluorescent tubes overhead glinted off his silver wire-rimmed glasses. “I’m from the Burr County Clarion,” he continued.

  “Aren’t you Dennis?” Violet asked. “Mrs. Hale’s boy? I thought you were at college.”

  “I graduated last year. I’ve been working for the paper. They’ve got everybody trying to dig up stuff about Scott Carpenter’s past, talking to everybody who knew him.” He pointed to me. “Nobody seems to care a lot about you, except as a murder suspect.”

  We stood in a back entrance of the courthouse and watched enormous black clouds drifting toward us from the southeast.

  “Don’t they care who killed the sheriff?” I asked.

  “Everybody thinks you did it. The regular courthouse reporter on the paper just calls Wainwright Richardson or goes over to the police station and talks to all his buddies.”

  “But you don’t have any contacts,” I said.

  “No, sir. Plus I don’t think you did it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I want to help, and, to be honest, if I get the real story, it’ll be a big boost to my career. It could make the wire services, and I could get out of this town.”

  “You could leave now,” I said. “Got to be some jobs in bigger towns for kids just out of journalism school.”

  “Not many at all. I tried for six months. For the last two weeks in Nashville, I only had enough money to buy eggs and day-old bread.”

  “I appreciate your offer of help,” I said. I didn’t know if he could be trusted, and I figured I was going far enough relying on Violet.

  “I know you don’t have a reason to trust me, and I’m not going to say that some of my best friends are gay, although there were gay guys at the university. Some were okay, some not, like everybody else. I’ve got a girlfriend, so I’m not some closet case. I just think you’ve gotten a raw deal, and maybe I can hitch my career to the truth. I wouldn’t mind that. Make some of these people realize what a good reporter they lost.”

  “What do you think, Violet?” I asked.

  “It’s not like you’ve got so many friends in town that you can afford to be picky.” She smiled at Dennis. “You might not remember, but I do, Dennis. I used to baby-sit for you when you were little. You used to always bring books and more books for me to read to you. You asked me once what these were.” She pointed to her breasts. “Then you tried to grab one. You were precious at five.”

  Dennis blushed. “Did I really?”

  “I held your little hand carefully that night.” She laughed. “We need all the help we can get.”

  “What’s the plan?” Dennis asked.

  “First of all, we’re trying to find out the results of any of the police tests.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t help you there. The cops would never tell me any secrets. If Jackson—he’s the courthouse reporter—has information, he’ll never give it to me. I’m just a twerp to him. He just tells me to shut up, do the obits, and attend the meetings that he thinks are boring.”

  “We might have a contact on that,” Violet said. She didn’t name Cody or how we could get the information. Dennis might be on our side, but why test his gentle loyalty with one of our best pieces of leverage?

  “Who else have you talked to besides Clara and Wainwright?”

  I gave him a look.

  “Well, it’s not a big secret. Everybody saw you walk in. Wasn’t hard to find out where you’ve been.”

  “What we need to know are people who didn’t like the sheriff or people he had secrets on, who might have been scared of him. Somebody with a motive to kill him.”

  “I don’t know,” Dennis said. “I’m pretty young to know that kind of stuff, and I’ve been away at college. Nobody at the paper would confide that kind of stuff to me. Although Dr. McLarty stopped me this morning and wanted to know what I knew about the murder. He also asked if I’d talked to you, and if I knew where you were staying.”

  “That’s Scott’s dad’s doctor,” I said. “You think he knows something?”

  “We should at least talk to him,” Violet said.

  “I’d also like to talk to this Jasper Williams,” I said. “If he’s the local Nazi, he might be capable of anything. Supposedly, he’s harmless, but we heard a story about some hikers that showed him capable of violence. Jasper is high on my suspect list.”

  “He is crazy,” Dennis said.

  “That’s what Lisa indicated at the library.”

  “I’m not sure where exactly he lives,” Violet said. “Certainly not so that I could drive you there—plus I wouldn’t want to go. It’s someplace in Thomas Jefferson Swamp, and it’s supposed to be really strange.”

  “It’s not just a rumor,” Dennis said. “I’ve been there, once.”

  “Why on earth for?” Violet asked.

  “It was a big joke at the paper. They do it to all the new kids, send them out to talk to Jasper. It was sure strange out there. He was in my class at school. Everybody avoided him. He dropped out in ninth grade and nobody missed him.”

  “Did he used to torture animals and set fires?” I asked.

  “No … . Why? Should he?”

  “Classic patterns of a serial killer,” I said.

  “I don’t know about that. He was just weird. Talked to himself. He slapped a teacher in first grade. Bit a girl in third grade. Mostly he kept very quiet. He never raised his hand and sat by himself at lunch. During all of sixth grade, whenever he walked anywhere, he would goosestep. Fat little nerdy kid all those years.”

  “What happened when you went out there?”

  “It was freaky. I left in a hurry.”

  “Why?”

  He hesitated, then shrugged. “I never actually saw him. It just … well, I just heard this whispery voice telling me to go. So I went.”

  He seemed uninclined to elaborate. I wondered how frightened he’d been. Telling the story with an elaborate amount of detail might damage his code of masculinity.

  “We have anybody else in town to talk to?” I asked.

  Violet said, “While you’re out trying to talk to Jasper,
I can try and see Leota. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go with me to see her, you being a suspect and all.”

  I agreed.

  “Plus,” Violet continued, “I can try and find out some of that police-report material. Be careful out there. Don’t turn your back on him.” She gazed at the darkening horizon to our south and east. “If it starts to rain hard, get out of the swamp.”

  “We had a dry spring, and it hasn’t rained but a quarter of an inch for six weeks,” Dennis said. “It could rain a foot and it wouldn’t raise the level of the swamp much.”

  “Just be careful,” Violet warned. She got in her Cadillac while Dennis and I walked to the other side of the square and got into his Volkswagen Beetle. It was painted a dull brown and did not have air-conditioning. He shifted gears and pulled out.

  “You know it’s not going to be a secret you’re helping me,” I said. “Half the town must have seen us talking together.”

  “I don’t care if they think I’m gay. I know I’m not.”

  “You don’t think it’ll hurt your career if you’re seen with the number-one murder suspect in the history of the county?”

  “I’m not going to be hanging around this burg that long. And you’re not the biggest killer ever in these parts.”

  “Who has that honor?”

  “Billy Joe Barnett back in the 1890s did in most of his kin one hot summer night. Biggest flood ever in the county. It had stopped raining, but the waters were still rising. Thought he could get away with it by drowning them all in the rush of water. Rescue workers came by in time to see him holding his aunt Jessie’s head underwater.”

  We drove out the same road that led to Scott’s house, but instead of turning at the first left past the second crumbling gas station we continued straight for at least another fifteen miles.

  “How’d you find your way the first time?” I asked.

  “They’ve got a mimeographed set of directions at the paper that they drag out.”

  “And you remember the way?”

  “As long as you get the first turn correct, you can’t miss it. Once you’re off this road you take every fork or possible turn to the right.”

  He slowed down when we got about a mile past a little red schoolhouse that looked like it came right out of a first-grade primer.

  Dennis said, “This is the tough part.” A car behind us honked and then sped past. On our left giant weeping willow trees bent their branches all the way to the road. The more violent gusts of a rising wind whipped the branches nearly horizontal. A few fat raindrops spattered down on the car, then stopped. Going slowly caused the breeze from the windows to die, and between gusts of wind the car was nearly unbearable.

  “Hell of a lot of humidity in the air,” I said.

  “‘Bout the same as usual. Still, we could get a mess a rain.” His eyes inspected the left side of the road carefully. “There it is.” He pulled through what looked to be little more than a gap between two trees.

  “Are you sure?” I asked as the car bucked and rocked over what even the most generous person might call an ill-used cattle path. Tree branches and leaves pushed against the car.

  “This is right,” Dennis said. “I remember it clearly.”

  “Any particular leaf that looks familiar or just all of them?”

  Trees hemmed in the car on both sides and above. The darkening gloom of the afternoon combined with the shadows of the trees made this a twilight world I wasn’t happy to be entering. Maybe it would be a good idea to invite Jasper to tea at high noon with half the National Guard in attendance instead of trying this mad trail.

  Moments later the car stopped bouncing as much and the trees thinned a little.

  “Great,” Dennis said. “This is perfect. We’ve only got a few miles to go.”

  I was suspicious of his enthusiasm.

  “Maybe we should turn back,” I suggested.

  “Will if you want to, but I thought you needed to talk to this guy.”

  A path forked to the right and Dennis slowly turned onto it. For a few minutes, my paranoia fought with my need to find the killer. It was daylight and I wasn’t alone. “I guess we’ll keep going,” I said.

  Two right turns later, the wind died down and it began to rain. No thunder and lightning, and it wasn’t a downpour, just a steady afternoon shower. You’d think with only right turns we’d simply arrive back where we started, but because the serpentine path we followed angled and twisted numerous times, it didn’t seem to matter that at every fork or junction we took the way to the right. The rain drummed on the car roof and the engine snarled and whined in that way the old Volkswagen Beetles have, as if the engine were twice as large as it really is.

  “Snakes in here?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Deadly ones?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t want to hear about it.”

  “Okay. As long as you’re here, can I ask, what is it like living with Scott Carpenter and being gay and all this coming-out stuff?”

  “When all this is over, if we need a reporter, we’ll call you. Right now I’d rather concentrate on catching a killer.”

  “Can’t blame me for trying.”

  I lost count of the number of turns we made. The first rumble of far-off thunder came about ten seconds after Dennis stopped the car.

  “Why are we stopping?” I asked.

  He pointed to the left. “See that barrel stave around the base of the tree? That’s his marker. It’s the only left we take. We drive a couple hundred feet to the end of a lane. Then we have to walk about a hundred feet beyond that to get to his place.”

  “We’re going to walk in the rain, aren’t we?”

  “Unless you know a way of running between the drops.”

  We turned onto the lane and drove for less than a minute. The thunder and lightning were still distant and infrequent as we got out of the car. As we took our first steps, the rain increased. My head and shirt were soaked in seconds.

  “This is nuts,” I said. We followed a muddy path, the only sign that humans might be present. About one hundred feet in, as Dennis had said, we came to a clearing about fifty feet wide. On the other side was a small cabin.

  Between us and it was an enormous cross, with a six-foot crosspiece and a ten-foot pole embedded in the ground. It was obvious that it had recently been set on fire. Water dripped off a small animal skull that had been nailed to the top of the cross with a large metal spike.

  I shuddered and looked beyond it to the cabin. The one window I could see had a lace curtain. An aluminum screen door hung in the entrance. It gleamed as if it had been polished. The front of the cabin was maybe fifteen feet wide. The tips of nails shone on the porch, holding down what looked like newly sawed and regularly spaced pieces of wood. The entire structure was set up on pilings about a foot above the ground.

  “You sure he lives here?”

  “He has for years.”

  I pointed to the space under the cabin. “It flood much here?”

  He shrugged. “Protects against snakes too.”

  We crossed the clearing and stepped onto the porch. It seemed sturdy and well made. It was a delight to be out of the rain. Drops covered Dennis’s glasses. He pulled out his shirttail to try and dry them. I knocked on the screen door. There didn’t seem to be an inner door.

  No one answered my knock. I peered through the screen. The cabin seemed to consist of one large room. To the right was a cot, the corners of which were tucked in with military precision. A row of cupboards stretched halfway around the far wall. Below them was a stainless steel sink, a small white refrigerator, and a Franklin stove.

  I knocked again. “Nobody home,” I said.

  Then I heard the ka-chunk of a shotgun being pumped.

  7

  “Don’t turn around. Don’t move. Don’t think. Just obey.” A male voice, barely above a whisper.

  Dennis began to turn around. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the tip
of a shotgun barrel poke its way into the young reporter’s ear. Dennis stopped turning and faced front.

  “Hands on top of your heads.”

  I complied. Dennis hesitated. Seconds later he pitched forward. His arms weren’t quick enough to break his fall and he slammed face-first into the log wall. Blood spurted from his nose.

  “Now you’ve got it dirty,” whispered the voice.

  Dennis whimpered.

  The butt of the gun smashed down on the back of Dennis’s knee. He screamed in agony. I turned to help or fight or escape but got the barrel of the shotgun rammed under my chin.

  What startled me into inaction, besides the whap from the shotgun and a gleaming revolver in Jasper’s other hand, was my first look at our captor. I was expecting a snaggletoothed behemoth in bib overalls.

  What I saw was perhaps the most handsome man I had ever seen. GQ would rush to put his face on the cover and thousand-dollar suits on his body. His hair was slightly longer than a brush cut and parted neatly to the side. It gleamed with the rain. His eyes were brown and were shaded by beautiful long lashes—bedroom eyes. His jaw was firm, and the bottom half of his face had the kind of five o’clock shadow that some male models worked to achieve. He was just short of six feet tall, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. He wore a white T-shirt that was damp from the rain, and the fabric clung to his washboard-rippled stomach. He had on black nylon running shorts, cut up each thigh almost to the waistband, with white ankle-length sport socks and black running shoes. Put him in a commercial, and people would stampede to the stores to buy whatever he was selling. The fat little nerd Dennis remembered had long since been transformed.

  He never spoke above a whisper.

  He said, “Very slowly turn back around. The slightest swift movement and I will kill both of you.”

  I turned slowly and faced the door.

  My hands were seized and a pair of handcuffs applied. Must have taken five seconds, if that much.

  “Open the screen door and walk in.” He nudged me in the back with the shotgun. Awkwardly, I turned sideways and grabbed the knob. I swung it open as far as I could and then caught it with my elbow. I stepped into the doorway. The rest of the cabin was as pristinely neat as the part I had seen from the porch. He prodded me in the back until I was halfway to the west wall of the cabin. “On the floor,” he ordered.