The Tamarack Murders

by Patrick F. McManus

  Tully went into his office. Daisy followed him in.

  She pointed to his window. “I hope you like the view. One of the janitors about drove us crazy scraping the paint off. The screeching was awful. I still get shivers up my spine.”

  “Your screeching probably got on his nerves, too.” Tully spun around in his chair and looked at the lake. For as much as the window paint had irritated him, he hadn’t even noticed it was gone. He swung back around and pointed to a chair. Daisy sat. “One of your jobs from now on, Daisy, will be to watch for any boat out on the lake with a man in it holding a rifle.”

  “Sure, Bo, no problem. I was just hoping you would come up with an extra chore for me when I wasn’t sitting with the widows of murder victims.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “You have such a hard job. So maybe you can tell me the name of the weather girl at the TV station?”

  “Don’t you ever watch the weather on TV, boss?”

  “Once in a while, but the weather girl is so cute I don’t hear what she’s saying.”

  “Her name is Wendy Crooks.”

  “See if you can get her on the phone for me.”

  Daisy frowned at him. “I can’t believe you want to talk to a weather girl!”

  “I need her to help me solve a murder.”

  Daisy laughed. “You really are desperate, Bo.” She went back to her desk and a few minutes later yelled at him. “Wendy on line one, boss!”

  Tully picked up. “Wendy, I need you to help me solve a murder. Is there anyway you can check your Doppler thing and tell me the exact time we got a brief snow flurry out on Chimney Rock Mountain, say between six and ten Monday morning?”

  “Yeah, we’ll still have it, Sheriff. I’ll see what I can find and get back to you. If we don’t have it here at the station, I’ll have it at home. I record all my weather casts so I can evaluate my performance later. I just get better and better, Sheriff.”

  “That certainly has been my impression, Wendy.”

  “Thanks, Sheriff. I’ll get back to you as soon as I find out. That’s Chimney Rock Mountain between six and ten a.m. Monday, right?”

  “You got it, Wendy.” He hung up.

  Lurch stuck his head in the door. “I got five sets of prints off that mess in the blue dishpan. One set is yours, one is Shank’s, and three others belong to guys who have all done time for robbery.”

  “Great! I thought so!” He took out his pocket notebook and opened it to the pages the waiter had pressed his finger prints on. He handed the open notebook to the Unit. “You can eliminate this guy. He’s the waiter. The other two sets belong to two of our bank robbers, if my guess is correct.”

  “Great, boss!”

  “I’m pleased you appreciate my effort, Lurch. Anything going on here besides our murder and bank robbery?”

  “Not much. Oh, one of the deputies arrested Petey again.”

  “Petey! I can’t believe it! What this time?”

  “Another chain saw.”

  “A chain saw! Petey doesn’t even know how to run a chain saw! Why does he keep stealing them?”

  Lurch shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess because they’re not nailed down. Maybe he figures he can sell it to someone. Luther Hawkins called up and said somebody stole a chain saw out of his garage. Petey lives a couple blocks away. The deputies picked up Hawkins, drove over to Petey’s house and found the chain saw on his back porch. So they hauled Petey to jail.”

  Tully sighed. “I wish they would stop doing that. I’d better go down and talk to him. Petey’s probably starting to think of jail as his home away from home.”

  Lulu, the jail matron, was sitting at her desk when Tully walked in.

  “Come to see the vermin, Bo?”

  “One in particular. Petey!”

  “Oh, dear. When Petey’s out for more than a week, I start to worry about him.”

  “Yeah, well, I worry about him, too, Lulu. Don’t they have special places for people like Petey?”

  “Yeah, they do. They call it jail. If it’s not tied down, Petey takes it home with him. I guess this time he walked into a garage and made off with a chain saw. That’s getting pretty close to burglary, Bo. Old Judge Patterson might even send him away.”

  “Patterson is senile enough, he might do just that!”

  “Don’t knock old Patterson, Bo. He gives you just about anything you ask for.”

  “Yes, he does, but I don’t want to risk sending Petey up before him again. Go bring the criminal out here, Lulu.”

  “You going to resort to the Blight way again, Sheriff?”

  “Afraid so. Destroy all the paperwork you have, and go up and make sure Daisy takes care of any in the office. I’ll have a word with the deputies and Luther Hawkins.”

  Lulu shook her head. “Hawkins will be tough.”

  “I’ll handle Hawkins.”

  As Tully drove Petey back to his house, he warned the little man, “You steal one more thing, Petey, I’m not saving you. This is the last time.”

  “But, Bo, it was only a chain saw. I couldn’t even get it started. Luther probably couldn’t start it either. You shouldn’t arrest a person for taking a piece of junk.”

  “Petey, if the piece of junk is in a person’s garage, it’s his personal junk. You take it, you’re stealing. Given your record, you could go to jail for a long, long time. Maybe even to prison. For a stupid chain saw that doesn’t even run! One more time before Judge Patterson, and you could be on your way.”

  “Luther Hawkins is gonna be pretty mad at you, Bo, for letting me go.”

  “I’ll take care of Hawkins. You take care of Petey.”

  “I still don’t think I should have been arrested.”

  Tully rolled his eyes. “This is the last time I bail you out, Petey, and I mean it. I don’t care how many times I’ve done it before, this is the last!”

  Tully drove up in front of Petey’s house, shoved the criminal out the door and watched the little man walk up the driveway muttering to himself.

  Tully made a U-turn in the street and drove down to Luther Hawkins’s house. He parked, walked up, and beat on the door. Hawkins answered.

  “Luther, I just let Petey out of jail, and I don’t want you raising a fuss about it.”

  “Bo, this is the second time he’s stolen my chain saw!”

  “I don’t care. The chain saw doesn’t run anyway.”

  “I know. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t report it getting stolen.”

  “Listen to me very carefully, Luther. You perhaps remember the shop-lifting charge I made go away.”

  “But that was all a mistake! I completely forgot about that package of pork chops!”

  “You had it stuck down the front of your pants, Luther. Nobody forgets what’s stuck down the front of his pants. Ed Riker is still mad at me for getting you off.”

  “I appreciate it, Sheriff. I’d appreciate it a lot more if I’d got to keep the pork chops. My mouth still waters when I think about them.”

  Tully sighed. He hadn’t felt like eating a pork chop since arresting Luther. “I’m sorry about your pork chops, and I’m sorry about the theft of your broken chain saw, and I’ve put them ahead of several other things like a murder and a bank robbery, but now I have to get back to solving those minor crimes.”

  “Oh, all right, Bo. As a favor to you, I’ll forget Petey stole my chain saw.”

  “Good. I appreciate it.”

  Back at the courthouse, Tully went up to his office and flopped into his chair. Then he got up and walked to the door. “Hey, Lurch!” he yelled across the briefing room. “Come in here for a second.”

  Lurch sauntered over and took a chair across the desk from Tully. “Yeah, boss?”

  “You turn up anything of interest on our victim?

  “Got the bullet analyzed. It’s a seven-millimeter, all right. If you find the rifle that fired it, we can get a match.”

  “Seven millimeter. That’s an elk-hunting caliber. Could be a hun
ting accident.”

  “Possible, but I don’t think so,” Lurch said. “I couldn’t find a shell casing, so the shooter must have picked it up. In a hunting situation, it seems likely he would have jettisoned the empty and jacked a fresh shell into the chamber. My guess is he worried about the empty. Maybe he’s done this sort of thing before.”

  “Maybe he likes being tidy.”

  “He also had a scope on the rifle.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I measured the distance between the grove of trees and the body. A hundred and twenty yards. That would be a heck of a shot with open sights, nailing a guy precisely between the shoulder blades. The guy knew something about shooting. At least a scope would have let him see clearly that his target was a man. You don’t snap off a shot at something over a hundred yards. He would have had to rest the rifle on something, maybe a tree limb. I just don’t think you would risk an off-hand shot at that distance.”

  “It wasn’t a tree limb he rested the rifle on, Lurch, it was his knees. He shot from a sitting position. Dave Perkins found two little scuff marks where the shooter dug in his heels. No criticism of your good work.”

  “Dave Perkins? Dave is as good as it gets.”

  “There’s one more thing, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Dave showed me an impression the shooter made with his rear end. I’d like you to make a cast of it.”

  “A cast of a rear end! I’ve never made a cast of a rear-end. Supposing I do get a usable cast, whose rear end are we going to compare it to?”

  “Maybe the shooter’s, if we ever find him.”

  Lurch scratched his head and frowned. “Do you think rear ends are unique to each individual, Bo?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve seen some unique ones, though.”

  “Let’s leave Daisy’s out of this, Bo.” Lurch burst out laughing at his own joke. Tully joined in.

  Daisy popped open the door. “What’s so funny? I know it has to be nasty.”

  All Tully and Lurch could do was shake their heads. “Forget about that impression,” he told Lurch.

  Daisy’s phone rang, and she went to get it. She picked up and said “Sheriff’s Department.” She listened and then said, “One moment please.” She covered the mouth piece and yelled. “Your weather girl on line one, boss!”

  Tully walked back to his office, slid into his chair, and picked up. “Yes, Wendy.”

  She said, “ I hope this will help you solve your murder, Sheriff.”

  “I hope so too, Wendy. What did you find?”

  “That dusting of snow on Chimney Rock Mountain was very brief. It started at 6:00 in the morning and ended at 6:30.”

  “Super! Thanks, Wendy, you’ve been a big help. I’ll let you know how this turns out. Maybe I’ll take you to lunch as a token of my appreciation.”

  “That would be wonderful, Sheriff!”

  He thanked her again and hung up.

  Daisy was standing in his doorway. “Lunch wouldn’t be your only token of appreciation.”

  “This is serious, Daisy. It could unlock our whole mystery.”

  Daisy walked back to her desk shaking her head.

  He studied the time for the snow flurry. Very interesting. Here he had thought Beeker was the type who couldn’t tell a herd of deer from a herd of elk. To get a dusting of snow in their tracks, the deer would have had to go through between six and six-thirty, which means Beeker would have had to be on the mountain then. He had actually seen the herd of deer, which meant he had to be on the mountain nearly four hours before he claimed to be, over three hours before Tully and the deputies showed up on the scene. What would he have been doing there that early, except getting prepared for Vergil before anyone else showed up?

  That afternoon Tully drove over to Judge Patterson’s house. Mrs. Patterson answered the door. “Why, Bo! How nice to see you! You need to drop by more often.”

  “Why, thank you, Mildred.” He whispered to her. “Does the judge still drink single-malt?”

  She whispered back. “Yes, but he’s awfully stingy with it. You’d think he paid for it himself.”

  “One of the perks of being a judge, Mildred.”

  “I suppose. There should be some perks.”

  “Is himself available?”

  “Yes, dear. Unfortunately. Otherwise you and I could have a little party, you know what I mean?” She winked at him.

  “I do, indeed, Mildred. The thought of such a party keeps me awake nights.”

  “Ha! You lie, Bo. But I like it. I’d better go get his holiness, before we get carried away. Grab a chair in the living room. He’s locked up in his study, supposedly going over some points of law.”

  Tully doubted old Patterson had even stumbled over a point of law in thirty years.

  The old man came harrumphing into the living room, closely pursued by his wife.

  “So, Bo, you managed to track me down in my lair on one of my few days off.”

  “Sorry about that, Judge. It’s just that criminal investigation waits for no man, and I’m not sure how much time I have to get to the bottom of this one. So I need a search warrant pronto.”

  “Good heavens! You don’t expect me to have search warrant forms here at home, do you?”

  “That’s my expectation. If you don’t have a real one, I figure you could phony up something that looks like one. I have to serve it today. So it would be nice if you put yesterday’s date on it.”

  “Bo, the things you ask me to do for you, we could both be thrown in prison!”

  “It’s the Blight way, Judge.”

  “The Blight way! I get so sick and tired of that phrase. Well, it so happens I do have some searchwarrant blanks in my study. Give me the pertinent info you need on it.”

  Tully thanked the judge and gave him the information.

  “Gridley Shanks?” Patterson said. “That’s a new one on me. I thought all of our citizens had passed through our legal system by now.”

  “Really, Judge, I’m surprised this Shanks fellow hasn’t come to your attention before.”

  “He probably has. I vaguely remember the name. A name like that is hard to forget.”

  Mildred said, “While you’re writing that up, Judge, Bo and I will have a drink!”

  “Good idea, my dear. I think we have some rather decent bourbon left, enough for the three of us.”

  “Actually, I think Bo might prefer some of the single-malt.”

  “Oh, by all means. I’d forgotten all about the single-malt.”

  Mildred winked at Bo. “I’ll be right back. You take anything with your scotch, Bo?”

  “A glass would be perfect, Mildred.”

  She returned shortly with a tray of drinks, all of them substantial.

  Tully sipped his. Perfect. He thought it was too bad he hadn’t gone to law school and become a judge. At moments like this, that boring grind seemed almost worth it.

  Mildred sat down on a couch, a coffee table between her and Tully. She sat very straight and proper and took tiny sips of her scotch. “I have to tell you, Bo, I was very upset when I heard you and Daisy had broken up.”

  “Yeah,” Tully said. “I was pretty upset myself. Actually, I was kind of surprised so many people knew we had a thing going. We tried to keep it a secret. How did you hear about it?”

  “Oh, I really shouldn’t say.”

  “It was Rose, wasn’t it?”

  “Your own mother! Good heavens, no!”

  “Remember, Mildred, wives of judges are not allowed to lie.”

  “I didn’t know that. You’re right, of course. Your mother let it slip one day while we were having lunch.”

  He and Mildred had barely finished their scotch when Judge Patterson walked in. “I don’t know why I let you draw me into your various schemes, Bo, but here’s your doctored-up warrant for a seven-millimeter rifle from one Gridley Shanks.”

  “Thanks, Judge. Just remember it’s all in the cause of proper law enf
orcement for the citizens of Blight County.”

  “If you say so. I think it smacks an awful lot of the Blight way.”

  “Well, that too. But I’m sure you’ll agree, Judge, that we have to fall back on what works, not stick to minor legalities.”

  The next morning Tully drove over to the Shanks’. The red Cadillac was nowhere to be seen. He parked in front of the open-sided woodshed, again glancing at the four-wheel-drive all-terrain vehicle parked near the back. He knew it was four- wheel-drive because he himself had longed for that particular model. If Shanks had one, he thought the only decent thing was for the county to buy its sheriff one. He imagined a chase with him on one ATV and Grid on the another.

  He knocked on the door. Sil answered. He was disappointed to see she was fully dressed.

  “Why, Bo, what brings you out here?”

  “Sorry to bother you, Sil, but I need to see Grid.”

  “You may have to wait awhile. I haven’t seen him for a couple of days.”

  “Do you have any idea where he might be?”

  Sil laughed. “None at all, Sheriff. I learned long ago not to waste my time trying to keep track of Grid. He could be in Japan for all I know.”

  Tully glanced at the rack of rifles and shotguns on the wall across from the bookshelves. There had to be twenty or more firearms there, ranging from blackpowder firearms to modern rifles to shotguns to handguns, all showing signs of serious use. He heard a car pull up outside.

  Sil said, “You’re in luck, Sheriff. There’s Grid now.”

  Tully wasn’t at all sure about the luck part.

  Shanks came through the door. “Back already, Bo?”

  “Yeah, Grid, but I’m afraid my visit doesn’t give me any great pleasure, though.” Tully handed him the warrant. He detected no sign of annoyance as the man read it. Shanks then walked across the room and with one powerful sweep of his arm sent all the rifles and shotguns clattering to the floor.

  “I think there’s a seven-millimeter or two in there somewhere, Sheriff. Help yourself.”

  Tully said, “I’m not impressed with grand gesture, Grid, but that’s as good a one as I ever seen.”

  Grid’s eyes widened in surprise. Then he smiled. “Usually I get at least a shocked reaction with that one,” he said. “Anyway, you might find a seven-millimeter rifle in that mess.”