Gray Ghost

by William G. Tapply

  He riffled through the files in the pair of steel two-drawer file cabinets that flanked the desk. Insurance policies. IRA statements. Letters and contracts from publishers and editors. Photocopies of tax returns. Old bank statements and bills marked paid. All neatly organized, what there was of it. Calhoun surmised that Paul Vecchio cleaned out his files periodically. He was a neat man who didn’t mind throwing things away.

  The bed in the back bedroom was unmade but not messy. The clothes hung neatly in the closet. The bureau drawers were organized. A novel by Steven King, Vecchio’s fellow Downeast writer, sat on the bedside table with a bookmark indicating he’d just started reading it. A small framed photo sat beside the novel. It showed Vecchio—Calhoun guessed he was five or six years younger’ standing with his arm around a slim, dark-eyed girl, a young teenager. The man’s daughter, most likely. In the photo she was looking up at him and laughing.

  That was the only family-type photo Calhoun had seen in the entire house.

  All he learned from the bathroom was that Vecchio was taking medication for high cholesterol.

  A trapdoor in the hallway outside the bedroom opened up to the attic. Calhoun hoisted himself up and shone his flashlight around. There was no floor—just beams and joists and insulation and wires—and nothing was stored up there.

  He went through the house a second time, looking harder. He poked through all the kitchen cabinets and drawers; he looked into the freezer compartment; he took off the toilet lid. He got down on his knees and shone his light under the bed, where he saw nothing but a dusty pair of bedroom slippers. He rummaged around among the socks and underpants in the bureau. He opened all the shoe boxes in the closet. He scanned every sheet of paper in the file cabinets.

  All the time he was inside Paul Vecchio’s house, Calhoun kept an ear tuned to outside. He could handle it if somebody’a relative, say, or a friend, or a local cop—showed up. He’d flash his shiny new deputy sheriff badge at them. He hoped he wouldn’t have to.

  He spent almost three hours searching the house for clues, and he didn’t come up with a single thing that he was tempted to take back and show to the sheriff.

  That, he figured, was pretty significant.

  He made sure the doors were locked when he went outside. He went over to the truck and let out Ralph, who proceeded to sniff the bushes and pee on those that smelled right.

  Something was buzzing against his leg. It felt like a pissed-off bumble bee had gotten itself stuck in his pocket.

  Then he remembered the damn cell phone. He fished it out, poked the green button, put it to his ear, and said, “That you, Sheriff?”

  “Who else would it be, Stoney? How’d you make out at Vec-chio’s place?”

  “I just finished up.”

  “And?”

  “And you better find out if that Gilsum or some other cops’ve been here and made off with all the evidence, because there ain’t anything here.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nope. A lot of stuff, but no evidence. And just in case you’re feeling dubious, you can be assured that I was trained to search a house for clues. I don’t remember it happening, but I can tell. I knew what I was doing in there.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying,” said Calhoun, “that somebody beat me to it. Mr. Vecchio was a writer, right? There’s a surge supressor on his desk, but no computer. No laptop anywhere to be seen. No printer. No floppy disks, no CDs, no modems, no external hard drives. No research notes, no notebooks full of ideas, no tapes or tape recorders. Nothing.”

  “Hm,” said the sheriff. “I’ll talk to Gilsum.”

  “Mr. Vecchio didn’t have his car keys on him, right? When we found him dead, I mean.”

  “That’s right. No keys.”

  “So whoever plugged him could’ve taken his keys and gone to his house and cleaned him out.”

  The sheriff was silent for a minute. “That’s good thinking, Stoney. Like the dog that didn’t bark. Clues that aren’t where they’re supposed to be are clues all by themselves.” He hesitated. “So maybe Vecchio was working on something about that burned-up body. Maybe he had information, and they found out about it, so they killed him to shut him up, and then they went to his house with his keys to get anything he might’ve written down. Computer stuff, notebooks, whatever. That what you’re thinking?”

  “Pretty much,” said Calhoun.

  “I’ll check with Gilsum,” said the sheriff. “Listen, Stoney. Reason I called. Something’s come up here and I need you.”

  “I’m supposed to be at the shop this afternoon, Sheriff. I can’t leave Kate hanging. This deputy business ain’t paying me enough to quit my day job, you know.”

  “It isn’t paying you anything, actually,” said the sheriff. “I took the liberty of talking to Kate. Told her I needed you this afternoon, and she said she didn’t care, I could have you.”

  “Can’t say I like the sound of that,” said Calhoun.

  “I see what you mean,” said the sheriff. “She said she’d get that college kid over to help out.”

  “Adrian,” said Calhoun. “Got his degree from some university down in Massachusetts, and now he can’t find a real job.”

  “That’s the one,” said the sheriff. “So let’s meet there at the shop. You can check in with Kate, and we can leave your truck there.”

  “I got Ralph with me.”

  “Bring him. Or leave him at the shop.”

  “I’ll bring him,” said Calhoun. “I ain’t ready to leave him anywhere. You want to tell me what’s up?”

  “Probably nothing,” said the sheriff. “But I’ve got to check it out, and if it turns out to be something, I don’t want to be there all by myself. Does that make any sense?”

  “You saying you’re scared?”

  “No,” said the sheriff. “I’m saying I don’t want to mess up a crime scene.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The sheriff’s Explorer was parked in the side lot when Calhoun got to the shop. He parked beside it, and he and Ralph went in.

  Adrian, the college kid, was behind the counter talking to a couple of young women who Calhoun figured had come into the shop to flirt, not to buy flies or waders. Adrian gave Calhoun a goofy grin, which pretty much confirmed it.

  The sheriff and Kate were in Kate’s office in back. Kate was behind her desk, leaning on her forearms talking to the sheriff, who was sitting in the wooden chair across from her sipping from a can of Coke.

  They looked up when Calhoun went in.

  “Talking about me?” said Calhoun.

  “You nailed us red-handed,” said the sheriff.

  “Must be pretty boring,” said Calhoun.

  “You got that right,” said Kate.

  Ralph went over to her, and she reached down to give his ears a scratch. The sheriff pushed himself up from his chair. “Ready to go, Stoney ?”

  “You’re the boss.” He turned to Kate. “You gonna be all right here, honey?”

  He’d done it again. Even when things were good between them, Kate didn’t like him calling her “honey” in the shop. It just slipped out, and he regretted that it made her uncomfortable.

  But she nodded and gave him a quick smile, forgiving him his little trespass. “I got Adrian,” she said. “You boys go ahead, catch some bad guys.”

  Calhoun hesitated, then turned and walked out of the shop.

  The sheriff and Ralph followed him.

  “Let’s take your vehicle,” said the sheriff, “if you don’t mind.”

  “Gonna sneak up on ‘em, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  They piled into Calhoun’s truck. Ralph crawled into the narrow area behind the seats and positioned himself so he could poke his nose out of the passenger-side window over the sheriff’s shoulder.

  The sheriff said to get onto Route 1 heading down to South Portland.

  “Any information on Mr. Vecchio?” said Calhoun.

  “He got shot dead
with a .22, just the way it looked. They didn’t find anything by way of useful clues at your place. No tire tracks, no footprints, no empty cartridge cases. That bottle of sunscreen was half full of sunscreen. Vecchio’s were the only prints on it. What we need is somebody with a motive to kill him.”

  “Don’t look at me,” said Calhoun.

  The sheriff turned and looked at him, then shook his head and smiled.

  They rode without talking for a while. Then the sheriff said, “Kate seems kinda depressed.”

  “Hard to blame her,” said Calhoun. “Walter’s in bad shape.”

  “She feels bad about how she’s been treating you.”

  “So do I,” said Calhoun. He hoped he wouldn’t have to talk about it anymore.

  The sheriff apparently got the message, because they went the rest of the way without saying much, just the sheriff giving occasional directions.

  They crossed the Veterans Memorial Bridge and went through several stoplights, and then the sheriff said, “Hook that left up there after the liquor store.”

  Calhoun turned onto the narrow side road. It was lined with small ranch houses that featured concrete birdbaths on the lawns and children’s riding toys in the driveways. There was a sandy cul-de-sac at the end with some even smaller ranch houses.

  The sheriff pointed to one of the houses. “That’s the one.”

  The white shingled siding was streaked with rust, and a complicated television antenna sprouted from the roof. A pair of big propane tanks stood beside the front door. There was a black mailbox in front with no name on it.

  Calhoun pulled into the dirt ruts that passed for a driveway and told Ralph to stay put. He and the sheriff got out.

  They stood there looking around. “I got a call from the dog officer this morning,” said the sheriff. “Somebody reported that this big dog, a shepherd, I think he said, was going around knocking over their trash barrels looking for pizza crusts and growling at the children. The dog belongs to the guy who lives here in this house. The officer wanted to give a citation to the owner, but he wasn’t home, and the neighbors said they hadn’t seen him around for a while.”

  A rusted-out Dodge pickup was pulled up beside the house. A charcoal grill and a lawn mower and a few bald automobile tires were half buried in the shin-high grass and droopy weeds on what passed for a front yard.

  “What happened to the dog?” said Calhoun.

  “The officer finally caught him,” the sheriff said. “Took him to the pound, I guess.”

  They walked slowly around the little lot of land where the house stood. Out back was a wooden doghouse and some plastic trash barrels and a motorcycle covered by a tarp.

  Suddenly the sheriff stopped. “Listen,” he said.

  Calhoun listened. He didn’t hear anything. “What?” he said. “I only got one good ear.”

  “Inside,” said the sheriff. “Voices.”

  Calhoun moved closer to the wall of the house, and then he heard it. He listened for a minute, then said, “It’s the TV. There was some music, and then they applauded.”

  The sheriff nodded. “Let’s see who’s at home.”

  They went around to the front. Some stacked-up cinder blocks served as the front stoop. The sheriff stepped up on them and banged his knuckles on the aluminum screen door. “Anybody home?” he called. “This is the sheriff. Open up, please.”

  Nobody opened up. The sheriff knocked again, yelled louder. Then he turned to Calhoun, shrugged, opened the screen door, and tried the front door latch.

  The door pushed open. The sheriff poked his head inside, then yanked it back out again. “Jesus,” he muttered. “It’s nine hundred degrees in there. Smells like a garbage dump.”

  They went in. To Calhoun’s nose, the odor was a stew of rotten food, sour milk, unflushed toilet, and uncirculated air.

  “No dead body in here,” he said, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I kinda was,” said the sheriff. “You know what a body that’s been dead for a while smells like, do you?”

  Calhoun shrugged. “I guess I do. I don’t specifically remember doing it, but I know I’ve been in houses where there were old dead bodies, and I’d remember that smell. This ain’t it.”

  “Don’t touch anything,” said the sheriff.

  “Hell, I know that.”

  The front door opened directly into the living room. On a coffee table in front of a dirty old sofa were an empty beer bottle and an aluminum tray of half-eaten food—one of those microwave dinners, looked like mashed potato and gravy and sliced carrots and some kind of gray meat, pot roast would be a good guess, all of it now covered in fuzzy green mold. The sofa faced the television, which was playing a quiz show.

  A folded-open newspaper lay on the floor beside the sofa. Calhoun bent to look at it. It was dated two weeks ago the previous Wednesday.

  “Stoney,” said the sheriff, “this place isn’t big enough for the two of us. Why don’t you go ahead and wait for me outside. I won’t be a minute.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Calhoun. “It’s hard to breathe in here.”

  “If I should come up with something’”

  “I understand,” said Calhoun. “Better if you don’t have some amateur like me bangin’ around in there contaminating the evidence.”

  When Calhoun went out, he saw a chunky woman in cutoff jeans and a tight T-shirt standing by his truck talking to Ralph through the half-open window. A roll of fat bulged out between the bottom of her T-shirt and the top of her shorts.

  “Watch out he don’t bite you,” said Calhoun.

  When she whirled around, he saw that she was just a girl, a young teenager, fourteen or fifteen, he guessed. She had a helmet of short, curly blond hair, wide-spaced blue eyes, and a little rosebud mouth. “He seems friendly,” she said.

  Calhoun smiled. “He is. I was kidding. His name is Ralph.”

  “Ralph,” she said. “That’s a pretty funny name for a dog.” She turned to the truck window. “Hi, Ralph.”

  “He was named after Ralph Waldo Emerson,” said Calhoun.

  “Who’s that?”

  “He was a philosopher.”

  She shrugged. “Never heard of him.”

  Calhoun gave her a smile. “I’m Stoney.”

  She held out her hand to him. “I’m Mattie. I live over there.” She pointed at a little green ranch house across the cul-de-sac. “You looking for Errol?”

  “That who lives here?” said Calhoun, jerking his head back at the trailer. “Errol? Errol who?”

  “Errol Watson, that’s who,” she said. “He hasn’t been home in quite a while. The dog catcher come and took away Grunt.”

  “Grunt?”

  “His dog. My mom finally called about him. He was gittin’ into our trash and scratchin’ at the door and howlin’ all night long.”

  “Where’s Errol now?” said Calhoun. “Do you know?”

  She shook her head. “Errol and me, we ain’t exactly best friends. My mom tells me I’m s—pose to steer clear of him.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. She don’t like men very much.”

  “Is your mom home?”

  “Nope. She’s at work. She cleans rooms over at the Ramada.”

  The sheriff came out of the house. He stood there looking at it for a minute, then wandered over to the truck.

  Calhoun introduced him to Mattie.

  “What’s your last name, Mattie?” said the sheriff.

  “Perkins,” she said. “You’re a sheriff?”

  “That’s right. And this here is my deputy.”

  “Mattie says the man who lives here is named Errol Watson and he hasn’t been home for some time,” said Calhoun. “It was her mother who phoned in about Watson’s dog. Grunt.”

  The sheriff smiled. “Grunt?”

  “That’s the dog’s name,” said Calhoun.

  “What do you know about Mr. Watson?” said the sheriff to Mattie.


  “Nothin’. My mom tole me not to be friendly to him.”

  “Do you always obey your mom?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Mostly I do, sure. Errol’s okay, but my mom really means it about him. She says it all the time. Don’t you go near that man, she says, or I’ll take the strap to you.” Mattie rolled her eyes and smiled to make it clear that she wasn’t afraid of her mother.

  The sheriff nodded. “Did she ever tell you why she’s so emphatic about it?”

  She shrugged. “Not really. I was over there one day watchin’ him work on his motorcycle, and she seen us and started yellin’ at me. Next thing I know, my mom calls up my daddy and he’s over there yellin’ at Errol. My daddy’s a pretty good yeller. You could hear him all over the neighborhood. After that, Errol and me, we steer clear of each other.”

  “What was your daddy saying?” said Calhoun.

  Mattie shrugged. “Mostly swears. You want me to repeat them?”

  “Nope,” said Calhoun. “That’s okay.”

  “What’s your daddy’s name?”

  “Lawrence. Everybody calls him Perk, though.”

  “Where is he now?” said the sheriff.

  “He lives in Kittery,” said Mattie. “Works at the boatyard. He and my mom got divorced.”

  “What do you know about Errol?” said Calhoun.

  “Not that much,” she said. “He just stays home most of the time. Watchin’ TV and drinkin’ beer, I guess, or else he’s out back workin’ on his bike. Only time you ever see him, he’s comin’ in or goin’ out. I think he works at a lumberyard.”

  “Does he drive that truck?” The sheriff waved his hand at the Dodge pickup in the driveway.

  She nodded.

  “What about the motorcycle?”

  “I never saw him take it out,” she said. “I think he just likes to tinker with it.”

  “The pickup,” said the sheriff. “Has it been moved lately?”

  Mattie shook her head. “Been sittin’ right there for a week, at least.”

  The sheriff nodded. “What did you and Errol talk about that time he was working on his motorcycle?”

  “Not much. I asked him some questions, but he just pretty much ignored me.”