by Bill Crider
He chuckled--a wet, unpleasant sound--filtered as it was through the snuff in his mouth. "You sure got a long way by lyin', didn't you?" he said.
Temp shook beside him with silent laughter. It didn't take much to get a laugh from those two, but then they didn't often have the opportunity to make fun of someone like me.
"I apologize," I said.
"Yeah, I heard you. So is that why you came back? To tell me and Temp how sorry you was?"
"Not exactly," I said. "I wanted to ask you about something else."
Hurley looked at Fred and spit in the direction of his shoe. "I didn't kill no gator," he said.
Fred didn't say anything. We'd agreed on the way over that he'd keep out of things, thanks to his mutual antagonism with Hurley. I could see that he was having a hard time controlling himself, however. The back of his neck was getting red.
"It's not about a gator," I said.
"I didn't kill neither of them Holts," Hurley said. "They was good customers."
Temp shook his head sadly. It was tough to lose good customers.
"That's not it either," I said.
For a second he looked puzzled, like a frog surprised by a sudden light. He took off his shabby old hat and fanned it in front of his face.
I didn't say anything.
After a few seconds of fanning, he said, "Well, what is it then?" He put the hat back on.
"A couple of things, really," I said. "Do you know anybody by the name of Ransome? Gene Ransome?"
Hurley thought about it. His eyes behind his glasses were a watery blue. "I might've fixed a flat for a fella named Ransome."
"Yesterday?"
"That's right."
"Ever see him before."
"Don't recall that I ever did."
There was nothing evasive in his tone. He was either a very good liar, or he was telling the truth. I didn't know which. Somebody was lying, either him or Ransome.
"All right," I said. "The other thing is about a truck, one of those jacked-up swamp buggies, a black Ford. You ever see one around here?"
"There's two or three of those around the county. Ain't that right, Temp?"
He looked at his friend, and I thought that I was going to hear him speak, but I was wrong. Temp just looked at Hurley and nodded. Slightly.
"Your brother-in-law's got one of 'em, don't he?" Hurley said.
Another slight nod.
"Fairly common," Hurley said. "I don't see why anybody'd want one, myself. Damn tires cost you a fortune, and if a fella was to be a little drunk he might miss that first step and break his neck. 'Course Temp's brother-in-law don't drink. He's a Baptist."
"Has he been around today?" I said. I looked at Temp. "Your brother-in-law, I mean."
Temp shook his head. Not vigorously.
"Well, that's all I came to ask about. Thanks for your time."
Fred and I started back to the Jeep. Hurley called out to us as we were climbing in.
"I forgot to tell you," he said. "Sheriff's office has one of them big Fords. Use it to get around in the bottoms when the ground's all wet and swampy. Which is a lot of the time around here."
"What do you think?" I asked Fred as we rolled along, the hot breeze blowing in our faces.
"About what?" he said.
"About those trucks."
"Lots of 'em around, like they said."
"Hurley and Temp have access to one. So does Deputy Jackson."
"You really got it in for the Deppidy," Fred said.
"I know it," I said. "I guess he rubs me the wrong way, but there are a lot of things about him that bother me."
"He's a lawman," Fred said, as if that settled everything. "He wouldn't mess around with anything illegal, much less a murder."
I thought that was a naive point of view, but I didn't question it. "What about Temp, then? Who's this brother-in-law of his?"
"Temp's all right, just a little slow. Makes good company for Hurley. His brother-in-law's Dan Bryson. Lives way over in the west part of the country. Lives over in the west part of the county. Prob'ly never comes around here if he can help it."
I dropped the subject of the truck, and Fred discussed the property and houses we were passing and made some comments about the owners. When we got fairly near the field where I'd had my encounter, he pointed out a neat frame house that I'd noticed earlier. There was a neatly trimmed yard, and the paint job on the house was fairly recent.
"That's where the Stones live," he said. "Perry and his wife live on down the road a piece."
"How far is this from where Zach Holt lives?" I said.
"Not too far. If you went on past that place where you were this afternoon and turned left instead of right, you'd get down there pretty quick."
I hadn't recognized the turn earlier, but given my state of mind, I supposed I could be excused.
"So the Holt property was close to yours, too," I said.
"That's right. But like I told you, that part's hard to get to. I don't ever go there much, and--" He took his eyes off the road briefly and glanced at me. "What're you gettin' at?"
"I don't know," I said. "What about alligators on that part of your land? Aren't you worried about them as much as you are about the others?"
"Nope. Shouldn't be that many around there. Not that much water. Oh, there's a lot of shallow little pools, places that hold water when it rains, and a few ditches that might've eroded down toward the river, but that's all. Nothin' like what I've got ever'where else."
"I was thinking that Holt might have been poaching back in there, I guess. And I don't have any idea what Ransome would be doing there, or who he might be meeting."
"I don't either," Fred said. "That's why we're gonna check it out. So we can see what's there."
"Isn't there an easier way in? Couldn't we just have gone in from your property, the way we went to look at the dead gator?”
"Could have, I guess. Not a very good way to do it, though. Lots of swampy land in between, hard to cross, even in this Jeep. Mosquitoes you wouldn't believe. In fact, I don't know that we could've made it without gettin' out and walkin'. And then there's the leeches."
"I can see why you don't keep it up too well," I said.
"Yeah. Be interestin' to find out that there's another way in that's easier."
"Even if there is, what would anyone want to do there?"
"Like I said, that's what we're gonna find out."
When he said that, I looked up and saw the tumbled-down house in the field. "Here we are," I said.
He pulled up in front of the house and stopped. We got out and walked over to the remains.
"I remember when the last of the Overtons moved out of this place," Fred said. "Must've been sometime back in the middle 'fifties. Long time ago."
"Where did they go?" I said.
"Don't know. I drove by here one afternoon and their old broken-down truck was in the yard, kids were runnin' around all over the place, and there was a wash hung out on the line. Few days later, I came back by and there wasn't a cryin' thing here except for the house. They were gone, ever' last one of 'em, and took ever'thing they had with 'em. Never heard of 'em again after that."
"Who owns this land, then?"
"Probably the county's taken it in for taxes by now. Or maybe it's been sold to somebody who doesn't have any interest in it. It's not much, just a few acres--not enough to farm unless you clear the trees, and by the time you got most of the trees cleared, you'd be back to my acreage, which is too swampy to do anything with."
"I guess the Overtons wouldn't recognize the house now," I said.
Looking at the pile of boards sticking crazily this way and that gave me a weak feeling in the knees, especially in the bad one. I could have been in it when it collapsed, and if I had been, I would probably still be there, maybe with a two-by-four sticking halfway through me.
"Looks like one of those Gulf storms hit it," Fred said. "We've had 'em come this far in before. I expect that back in those woods the
re's trees that were split and bent by the 1900 storm in Galveston."
We both looked up at the late afternoon sky as if expecting to see a hurricane coming in off the Gulf. We didn't, but we did see that the sky was clouding up.
"Looks like we might get us a little shower," Fred said.
There were two things I didn't like about Fred's Jeep. It didn't have a radio, and it didn't have a top.
"Maybe we'd better just forget this," I said.
"You afraid you'll melt if you get wet?"
"I've been wet recently," I said. "I didn't melt, but I got really uncomfortable. And bird’s shit on me."
"A little water never hurt anybody, and besides that, didn't no bird shit on you," Fred said. "It'll be a while yet before it rains, anyway. Maybe we'll go back in there, see what we came to see, and get out before it starts."
"Exactly what is it that we came to see?"
"Whatever it is that's back in those trees. Whatever it is that your buddy in the Oldsmobile drove back in there to see."
I'd been thinking about that. "Maybe he didn't go back in there to see anything. Maybe he just went to meet somebody."
"I don't think so," Fred said. He stretched out his right arm and pointed. "You see anything funny about those trees where the road goes into 'em?"
It wasn't much of a road, just a set of ruts, and the trees just looked like trees to me. I told Fred that I didn't see anything unusual.
"Yeah, well, I guess that's 'cause you're a city boy. Or maybe I'm just so old and far-sighted I can see better'n you. Look at the limbs."
I looked, but I still didn't see anything.
"Look how they're all broken off or bent back. Somethin' big's been driving back in there. See?"
I saw. I wished I'd brought a pistol. For that matter, I wished I'd brought a cannon.
"What if it's still back there?" I said.
"Only one way to find that out, I guess," Fred said.
I looked at the wreckage of the house. "If there's anyone back there, they aren't going to like it when we come poking our noses in."
"Prob'ly not. But it's likely as not they're on my land, and I don't like the idea of that one bit. I don't like it much more'n I like somebody killin' one of my gators."
"You didn't happen to bring a rifle with you by any chance?" I said.
Fred shrugged. "Didn't think about it."
"I was afraid you'd say that."
"Nobody shot at you today, did they?" he said.
"Not today."
"Nothin' to worry about then. As long as they just try to run over us, we got 'em beat. This Jeep can run away from anything around, even that Ford you're so worried about."
"I'm not worried," I said.
"Sure sounds like it."
"A little nervous, maybe. If you'd been in that house, you'd be a little nervous too."
"Maybe. Well, we goin' or not?"
I looked at the clouds one more time, saw a flash of lightning and heard a low rumble of thunder. I didn't know why I was so leery of going back in the woods. I was the investigator, after all. I shouldn't have to have Fred tell me what we needed to do.
"Why not?" I said.
We got in the Jeep and Fred headed it down the ruts for the woods.
"You can see it don't fit the ruts," Fred said, referring to the Jeep. "They were cut by somethin' a lot bigger."
I could tell, and hearing him say it didn't make me feel any better. I didn't mind trouble so much if I knew what sort of trouble I was getting into, but uncertainty bothered me. I liked to have a plan, even if it wasn't a very good one.
When we got to the trees, the broken branches that Fred had pointed out were much easier to see. The lower limbs, up to about twelve feet, were broken, cracked, and in some places bare of leaves.
"Bob-tail truck," Fred said. "Maybe a trailer."
I thought about rustling. "How would rustlers go about getting cows transported?" I said.
"That'd take a trailer, all right," Fred said. "It'd be easy to steal cows, I imagine. Just find a fence you could back up to, cut it, and drive the cows into the trailer. Then you could drive off with 'em and nobody the wiser. At least not till they checked out their stock the next day or the next week. If it was a week, you'd already have sold 'em and stole some more, most likely."
We were into the trees now, and what with the clouds, almost all the light was cut off. It was almost as if night had suddenly fallen. Fred turned on the headlights, which picked up the ruts in front of us and the trees to the sides.
"You think that's what's going on here?" I said. "Rustling, I mean?"
"Doubt it," he said. "You see any cows around here? Besides, this place's not even fenced."
"I thought maybe someone could be stealing cattle somewhere else and bringing them in here," I said.
"Why would anybody do that?"
"I don't know," I said. "It was just a thought. Perry Stone said something about hearing the trucks at night, and he lives near here."
"Anybody'd be crazy to bring cows back in here. Cows and swamps don't mix too well."
We came to a barbed-wire fence that ran through the trees. It had been cut, and the strands had been pulled back from the ruts, making a wide opening.
"That's my fence," Fred said. "This is for sure my business now."
What he meant was that it was my business, but I still couldn't see how it tied in with the dead gator.
"Could anyone get from here to where we found that carcass?" I said.
"Not any easier than I could get from there to here, and that ain't easy. Like I told you."
There was a crash of thunder, and the rain began, not where we were, but farther off. I could hear it rushing through the leaves of the trees, getting closer and closer.
"Sounds like a pretty good one, after all," Fred said.
He was right. When it hit, it sluiced over us in rivulets, even though we were to some extent protected by the trees.
"This road's gonna get real slick, real quick," Fred said. "Good thing we're in the Jeep."
It would have been better not to have been there at all, I thought. I was soaked to the skin in minutes. It was very dark.
Then the trees began to thin out. It was still dark, and the rain was even harder. Through the weeds and water, I could make out a lumpy, uneven terrain, with trees spotted here and there in it, some them dead and bare of leaves.
The Jeep was sliding a little on the road now. "Here's the swampy part," Fred said.
There were low patches of land, most of them covered with shallow standing water. A real mosquito paradise, I thought. It was hard to see much more than that, even with the headlights.
"Road goes around here," Fred said, turning the Jeep to the right and following the ruts.
We went around a hummock, and the ruts made a wide loop, passing by some more of the standing water and then swinging back into the original track to head back out again.
Fred cut off the engine. "I got a flashlight under the seat," he said, reaching with his right hand. He came up with it, a long black tube that looked as if it would hold three "D" batteries at least. "Waterproof, got a halogen bulb. We'll be able to see a little bit."
He turned it on and waved it from side to side. The beam cut through the rain, all right, but I didn't see anything significant.
Fred cut the Jeep's headlights off, and the darkness sprang to meet us. The flashlight beam was thin but strong as it shone through the rain. I was so wet by now that my short-sleeved sweatshirt was sticking to my chest and back. It felt as if it weighed ten pounds. I knew that when I stepped out of the Jeep my feet would squish wetly in my shoes, even if I were lucky enough to step on solid ground. The way it was raining, solid ground didn't seem like a very good bet.
"Maybe we should have done this in the morning," I said. "We could have seen a good bit better."
"We got to work with what we got," Fred said. "Let's get out and look around."
He swung his legs out of the Jeep
.
Well, if an old guy like Fred could take it, so could I. My eyes were getting adjusted to the darkness now, and if we got it over with maybe we wouldn't have to come back.
Fred was standing in front of the Jeep, searching with the light. "You notice anything funny?"
I watched the light carefully, trying to see whatever it was that he could see. I couldn't.
"No," I said.
"Let's walk over this way a little," he said, moving off to the right, keeping the beam in front of him.
I followed along, trying not to step in any holes. Mud oozed around my shoes, and I thought that I would have one hell of a clean-up later. I stepped out of the ruts to the area between them, which was just as wet but not quite as muddy.
"Somebody's been comin' in here for somethin' or other," Fred said. "The ruts don't make any sense otherwise."
I agreed with that, but I couldn't see why anyone would want to be there. There was nothing to see but trees, mostly dead where we were, grass and weeds, and pools of greasy-looking water. Not exactly the kind of spot that anyone would be likely to have a picnic.
"I think the rain's slackin' up a little," Fred said.
He was right. I was so wet that I hadn't noticed, but the main part of the thunderstorm had passed over us. The rain was still pattering down, big drops of it, but not nearly so hard as it had been a few minutes before. Too bad we were already soaked.
"What's that over there?" Fred said, shining the light ahead and to our left.
It was something, all right, sticking up out of a shallow pool of water. I couldn't tell what it was, though, and I didn't particularly want to look at it more closely, since doing so would involve a certain amount of wading.
"What the hell," I said. "I can't get any wetter."
I stepped across the ruts and into the water.
"That's a good place for you to stop," said a voice behind us. "Both of you hold still, or I'll gut-shoot you right here."
I like to think that I'm a semi-enlightened male, at least in some ways, so it pains me to admit that the thing that bothered me most about the voice was that it belonged to a woman.
11
It's funny, the things you think of at a time like that.
