“Only the drunk wasn’t drunk.”
“Whether he was or not, that wasn’t his major problem. Put it that way.”
“Got to give it to you, Keane. You’re observant.” Hank let his gaze wander back over the scene. “What else did you see that none of these others will think to look for?”
“Not a thing. I’ll have to read the paper when it comes out to find out what happened.”
“You and everybody else.” Hank focused on Michael again. “So help me out with a few facts. Who is the victim?”
“Never saw him before. How about you?” Michael looked from where Buck was helping Justin load the body in the Hidden Springs Funeral Home hearse back to Hank. Sometimes the editor surprised him. This might be one of those times.
But Hank shook his head and pulled the little notebook out of his shirt pocket to scribble something in it. “If he’s a Gazette subscriber, he’s never been in the office. I remember faces.”
“Even more telling, Miss Willadean didn’t know him.”
“A total stranger then for sure.” Hank jotted down a few words.
Michael had seen the notebook pages once. They were covered with nothing but disjointed letters that could be deciphered by Hank and Hank alone.
“What else can you tell me, Michael?” Hank looked up.
“You know as much as I do.”
“You came out to investigate. The man was deader than a doornail. So you called in the troops.”
“That pretty much covers it. I’m sure Officer Osgood will be able to fill you in on more details.” Michael nodded toward Paul Osgood making his way over to them.
4
The editor’s demeanor changed as Osgood came up. No sign of a grin on his face now. He was all business, his eyes sharp on Paul’s face. “What can you tell me about the murder, Officer Osgood?”
Paul pulled himself up to full height at the word “murder.” Paul was always stretching up until he was almost on his tiptoes, like a kid hoping to look taller. Paul blamed not getting into the state police academy on his lack of inches. Whether it was true or not, he didn’t make it and had to settle for a spot on the city police force. Some folks in Hidden Springs claimed he’d only married Caroline Sibley because her father was police chief. After all, Caroline was an inch taller than Paul. But if she slumped and Paul stretched, they were close to the same height and were always calling each other honey and darling.
So if it was a sacrifice Paul made, he didn’t appear to regret it. His only complaints were about the job itself. “A man only has so many parking tickets in him,” Paul told anybody who would listen. “Doesn’t anything exciting ever happen around here?”
Something had happened now, and Paul seemed eager to take full advantage of it. “The case is under investigation.” He used his most official voice.
Hank chewed his lip to hide a smile and scribbled in his notebook. Michael turned away from them, not wanting to hear any more.
“Wait, Michael.” Paul put out a hand to stop him. “I need to talk to you.”
“I’m not leaving the county.” Michael stepped back from Paul’s hand. “But Lester needs help with the crowd. It’s time everybody went on about their business before somebody decides this might be a good time to clean out the bank up the street.”
Paul’s face was a mixture of worry and hope. A bank robbery would be almost as exciting as a murder.
Hank shot Michael a look without giving any sign of a wink, but the wink was there. He turned back to Paul. “Do you think this could all be a diversionary tactic, Officer Osgood?”
“You mean somebody may have planted the body here just so the bank would be unoccupied?” Paul glanced up the street nervously. The trees on the courthouse lawn hid the bank on the next block from view. “Maybe I should send somebody up that way.”
At times, Michael wouldn’t spoil the editor’s fun, but today wasn’t one of those times. A murder was no joking matter, whether they knew the victim or not. “Nobody’s going to rob the bank, Paul.”
Paul caught on then and glared at Hank. “I have more important things to do, Mr. Leland, than play games with you.”
“You’ve got me all wrong, Officer Osgood. No game playing here.” Hank widened his eyes and adopted an innocent look. “A good newspaperman has to be ready to follow up every potential lead in a story, no matter what the odds are of it amounting to anything. Some of our best stories are uncovered in that way. I’m sure it’s the same with you. You can’t afford to ignore even the smallest clue, right?”
Paul looked mollified. “If you have any questions about the case at hand, I’ll be glad to answer them for you.”
Michael left Paul at the mercy of the editor and began easing around the crowd, telling everybody to go on back to work or home since the show was over.
Buck Garrett fell into step beside Michael. “What’s Osgood telling Leland?”
“Nothing but the facts, I’m sure.”
“Facts.” Buck spit on the ground. “Osgood wouldn’t know a fact if it jumped up off the ground and smacked him full in the face.”
“What are the facts, Buck?” Michael asked.
“The John Doe is Caucasian, about fifty years old. No ID on his body. No cell phone. A cheap department store watch. No rings or signs that he had been wearing rings. Small change in his jacket pocket, a roll of bills in his pants pocket. Two twenties on the outside, the rest ones. Clothes clean. Nice crease in his pants. Shoes shined. Colored his hair with that comb-in stuff. Shot at close range with a small caliber revolver. Maybe a Smith & Wesson or a Ruger. Probably by someone he knew. Shot in the back. Might have powder burns on his jacket. Must have staggered around a step or two and then landed against the pillar before he slid down there and stopped breathing. Three, four minutes maybe. Or not that long.”
Michael was impressed by Buck’s recital and a little embarrassed he hadn’t noticed as much when he looked at the corpse.
Buck saw Michael’s surprise. “I know what to look for, Mike. I’ve been a state trooper a long time. Going on twenty years now.”
“But I wouldn’t have thought you’d handled many murders.”
“Not here in Hidden Springs, but something’s always happening somewhere in the state. I keep up, and you know how we are. Always talking cases.” Buck looked closely at Michael. “How about you? You see murders up there in Columbus?”
“Some, but I didn’t have much to do with them. I was just a beat cop,” Michael admitted. “Found a few bodies. That’s all.”
“And now you found another one. What’d you think when you came out on the steps and saw the stiff?”
“I don’t know, Buck.” Michael paused, considering the question seriously, even though Buck wasn’t expecting a serious answer. “I was surprised, I guess. And sorry. Especially sorry.”
“What’d you have to be sorry about? You didn’t shoot him, did you?” One corner of Buck’s mouth lifted up in a smile.
“I didn’t shoot him, but somebody did.”
“That’s for sure.” Buck’s half smile disappeared. “And Little Osgood with some help from his friends will have to find out who.” Buck glanced back at Paul Osgood still talking to Hank Leland and made a growling noise down in his throat. “I can’t wait to read the paper tomorrow.”
“Maybe Leland will go easy on him,” Michael said.
“Fat chance of that. Leland enjoys making us all look like idiots. He’ll have a field day with this.”
Michael didn’t bother to argue the point. He’d seen a few of his own quotes in the paper. Words that had sounded fine to his ears when he was speaking them often as not looked foolish in print. He steered the subject back to the murder. “You have any idea who might have shot the guy?”
“There are always suspects,” Buck said.
“Then where are they?” Michael looked around at the thinning crowd. “I didn’t see anybody conveniently hanging around with a smoking gun in hand. No witnesses have run up claiming to
have seen it all. And the victim isn’t talking.” Michael frowned at Buck. “Looks to me like we don’t have suspect one.”
Buck shook his head. “You’ve been watching too many detective shows on television. Most murders are pretty simple affairs. I expect this one will be too.”
“You do? In what way?”
“I don’t know. We might go out to the campgrounds and find some wife who just got tired of looking at the bozo’s face over breakfast, or it could be a jealous girlfriend, or the guy might have owed the wrong people money.”
“That doesn’t explain how he ended up getting shot on the courthouse steps,” Michael said.
“Maybe he and the little woman were coming in to file for a divorce and they had one last doozy of an argument. Or he was running from somebody to get help and whoever he was running from caught up with him first. People get shot all the time.”
“Not usually in the middle of a town like ours.”
“That’s so,” Buck said cheerfully. “But you wait and see. It’ll be something simple. We just have to find out what.” Buck looked back toward Hank and Paul still talking. “I’m going to have to go break that up.”
“Watch that you don’t get knocked down yourself,” Michael warned. “Hank is quick with his pencil.”
“He won’t get nothing out of me. Just you make sure he don’t get nothing out of you either.”
“He can’t get anything out of me. I don’t know anything to tell him.”
“Don’t worry, Mike. Somebody will have seen something.” Buck glanced around, then grinned a little. “In this town you can’t even scratch your backside on the courthouse steps without somebody seeing you, much less get shot.”
Buck was right. Somebody had to have seen something. Michael looked past the people still clustered on the courthouse lawn to the other side of the street. Joe’s Barbershop, Reece Sheridan’s law office, and Jim Deatin’s auto supply store. One of them might have seen something. He’d check that out. Right after he found Anthony Blake to put a little scare into him so he’d go on to school. He didn’t want any throwaway kids in Hidden Springs.
Michael worked his way through the people still milling around, but Anthony was nowhere to be found.
5
After people drifted away to their jobs and errands, Michael went back to the sheriff’s office to listen one more time to Miss Willadean’s version of finding the body. With each retelling the story grew and changed a bit until what she had to say was next to useless.
The sheriff thanked her and told Lester to escort her home since she claimed to still be feeling faint. Miss Willadean touched a handkerchief edged in purple pansies to her nose as she slowly stood up, reluctant to give up the spotlight. She smoothed down her hair and started in again about how the man had just been sitting there and how peculiar he’d looked and how she’d suspected something must be dreadfully wrong with him right away.
“That’s fine, Miss Willadean,” the sheriff put in when she paused to get a breath. He tapped the recorder in front of him. “We have it all right here.”
Miss Willadean glared at him and spluttered a few more words about what a sorry state the world had come to when a person could no longer feel safe on Main Street. At last she swept out the door Lester held open for her. She hadn’t had much good to say about Sheriff Potter since she reported her purse stolen last year and he suggested she might have merely misplaced it. The fact that he retrieved her purse from under her regular booth at the Grill hadn’t made her like him one bit better.
The sheriff kept an impassive smile on his face until the door closed behind the old lady and Lester. Then he gave his head a quick shake, as if clearing it of Miss Willadean’s words, before he turned to Michael. “Okay, Mike. You tell us what you saw when you went outside.”
So Michael went over everything he’d done from the minute Miss Willadean had come into his office. There wasn’t much to tell, and it didn’t take long.
While he talked, Paul took notes, Buck studied the coffee in his cup, and Chief Sibley slouched down in the only comfortable chair in the office with his eyes shut. Betty Jean made a fresh pot of coffee and answered the phone that started ringing again the second she hung up the receiver. Only the sheriff and Judge Campbell, who had followed them into the office, kept their eyes on Michael as he talked.
When Michael ran out of details, there was a little silence except for the phone ringing, the last drops of water gurgling through the coffeemaker, and Paul flipping over his notebook page.
“That doesn’t tell us much,” the sheriff said finally.
“You think he was shot out there then?” the judge asked.
“That’s how it appears,” Michael said. “I didn’t see any blood leading up the steps, but by the time I looked, several people had already walked around out there.”
“I sure am sorry about that.” The judge hung his head a little. “I wanted to get a closer look at the man. See if maybe I knew him, you understand.”
“Had you ever seen him before?” Michael looked over at Judge Campbell.
“Why are you asking me that, Michael?” The judge frowned. “Don’t you think I’d have told somebody straight off if I’d ever seen him around Hidden Springs?”
“Nobody knew him.” The sheriff gave Michael a look that said let him ask the questions. He turned to Buck. “What do you think, Buck?”
Buck had barely started on his theories about the murder when Paul interrupted to be sure they all understood he was in charge of the investigation. “Whatever you do find out when you check out those leads, Buck, you need to report directly to me immediately. Then I can decide how best to proceed on the findings. The same goes for you, Michael.”
Michael managed a little nod, but Buck just glared at Paul while his knuckles turned white on his coffee cup until it looked as if he might crush the cup in his bare hand.
“Now, boys, we’re all on the same team, and won’t any of us forget that you’re in charge, Paul. No need to make any speeches. We all want the same thing. To apprehend the responsible party as quickly as possible.” Sheriff Potter smiled at Paul and then nodded toward Buck. “And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Buck turns out to be right and this is just some kind of domestic dispute. It’ll no doubt sort itself out quick enough once we get a positive ID on the victim.”
“I’m working on establishing that.” Paul glanced up from his notebook.
“Of course you are, Paul,” the sheriff said. “And we’ll help you every way we can. Mike here will let you know if anything comes in through this office.”
Paul looked toward Michael without making eye contact. That was all right with Michael. They might have to work together at times, but they didn’t have to like one another. Michael couldn’t help it that he was a head taller than Paul or that Paul didn’t get the jobs he wanted while Michael had been part of a big city police force. The fact that Michael gave up that job to come home to Hidden Springs and spend his time directing traffic and writing up fender-bender accident reports merely seemed to make Paul resent him more. And now Michael was the first officer on the scene of an actual serious crime here in Hidden Springs.
Paul studied his notebook again, then droned on about things they all already knew.
Judge Campbell stood up in the middle of Paul’s monologue. “Well, I guess if that’s all, I’ll head back over to my office. Folks will be calling in about their potholes just to find out what’s going on, but then they’ll still want their potholes filled in. Nobody likes a bumpy ride into town.”
When everybody except Paul laughed a little, the judge, who like the sheriff was a politician from way back and knew when to pat a shoulder or tell a joke, looked at Paul. “I’m sure you’ll have our murderer behind bars in no time flat, son.”
The phone rang for about the twentieth time, but this time Betty Jean didn’t take on her “reassure the public” tone. She pointed the receiver at Michael. “Your Aunt Lindy.”
Nobody
dared suggest he not take the call until their meeting was over, especially Michael.
“Tell Malinda we’ve got things under control,” the judge boomed as he went on out of the office.
Michael turned his back on the others and spoke into the phone. “Aunt Lindy? Is everything okay?” Aunt Lindy had been teaching algebra out at the high school since before Michael was born. Never once had she called him during school hours.
“You tell me. Are things under control the way Wilson says?” Aunt Lindy was one of the few people in Hidden Springs to call the judge by his first name. Even the judge’s wife often did not.
“If the judge says it, it must be so. The sheriff and Paul have just been going over a few things to make sure we have everything covered.”
Aunt Lindy’s voice was crisp along the phone line. “What you’re saying is that you are all sitting around Alvin’s office drinking coffee while a murderer is on the loose in Hidden Springs.”
“I guess that about covers it.” Michael pressed the phone up closer to his ear so none of Aunt Lindy’s words could leak out into the room.
“So there was a body on the courthouse steps. This isn’t just a wild rumor circulating in the halls.”
“No, it’s true.”
“You let someone get killed on the courthouse steps?”
“You could say that. It happened.” Michael kept his voice level, conscious of the men behind him listening to his every word.
Aunt Lindy was silent for a minute, then almost as if it were an afterthought, she asked, “You are all right, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Michael almost smiled. That question was the sole reason she’d called.
“Good.” Her voice recaptured its briskness as she went on. “I need to get back to my classroom. The tardy bell will ring in three minutes, and there could be one child here still ready to learn something in spite of the uproar in the halls.”
Aunt Lindy loved teaching. She said it was her calling. An honorable calling and every bit as important as being a preacher. Michael just wished she thought being a police officer was the same kind of honorable calling, but she didn’t. At least not for Michael. She was certain the Lord had something special planned for Michael’s life, and she wasn’t sure that was being a police officer in Hidden Springs or anywhere else. She didn’t know what it was, but she claimed if Michael listened a little harder to what the Lord might be telling him, he’d figure it out.
Murder at the Courthouse Page 3
