Bitch Creek

by Tapply, William

  Calhoun caught the arm of a dark-haired cocktail waitress in tight jeans and a white T-shirt, gave her his best lopsided grin, and said, “Excuse me, miss. I need a phone.”

  She jerked her head sideways. “Ask Kevin.”

  Kevin, the bartender, was a smooth-faced young man with a thin black mustache and high forehead. Calhoun wedged himself between a middle-aged woman and a boy who didn’t look legal, spotted the phone on a shelf behind the bar, and said, “Hey, Kevin.”

  The bartender turned and looked blankly at Calhoun. “How ya doin’?”

  “Good. Look,” he said, pointing. “I need to use that phone.”

  “It ain’t a public phone, mister.”

  “It’s an emergency.”

  Kevin shrugged. “House rules.”

  Calhoun leaned over the bar and crooked his finger. Kevin frowned, then bent toward him. Calhoun grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him close so that their faces were inches apart. “Listen,” he said. “I said I got a goddam emergency. Maybe you didn’t hear me.”

  Kevin nodded. “Hey, no big deal, man. Use the phone. I don’t give a shit.”

  Calhoun smiled, let go of his shirt, and patted his shoulder. “Thank you kindly. Appreciate it.”

  He moved around to the side of the bar, reached over, and snagged the phone. He pressed it against his good right ear, got the number for the sheriff’s office from information, and dialed it, holding his hand over his deaf left ear.

  “York County Sheriff.” A woman’s voice.

  “I need to talk to Sheriff Dickman.”

  “He ain’t on duty now, sir. I can put you onto Deputy Langley.”

  Calhoun hesitated, then said, “No, I’ve got to speak to the sheriff. This is an emergency. I’ve found a dead body.”

  “Who is this?”

  “My name’s Calhoun. It’s connected to the murder up in Keatsboro.”

  “You say you found a body?”

  “That’s right. Can you patch me through to the sheriff?”

  “Where are you?”

  Calhoun told her.

  “Right,” she said. “I know the place. What’s the number there?” Calhoun read it off the phone to her.

  “Sit tight, Mr. Calhoun. The sheriff will call you there.”

  He disconnected. When he looked up, Kevin was staring at him.

  “I’m waiting for a callback,” said Calhoun.

  Kevin nodded. “You want a beer or something?”

  “Coke would be good.”

  Kevin slid a glass of Coke in front of him. Calhoun took out his wallet. “How much?”

  Kevin waved his hand. “On the house, man.”

  Calhoun nodded and put a dollar bill on the bartop for a tip. He took a sip of Coke and glanced at his watch. It was nearly ten.

  The phone rang twenty minutes later. Calhoun grabbed it and said, “Calhoun.”

  “Stoney,” came the sheriff’s voice, “what’s this about a dead body?”

  “Ralph found somebody’s foot sticking out of the ground,” said Calhoun. “I figure there’s a body attached to it. It’s buried in the woods out in back of that pond where I found Lyle.”

  “You sure about this, Stoney,” said Dickman.

  “It’s wearing a sock,” said Calhoun.

  “A foot, huh?”

  Calhoun heard the doubt in the sheriff’s voice. “You think this is another one of those . . .?”

  “Ghosts? How the hell do I know, Stoney. What do you want me to do.”

  “I want you to come take a look. This foot wasn’t any ghost, Sheriff. It was a damn foot. Look—even if you doubt me, don’t you think you better see for yourself?”

  “I don’t doubt you saw it,” said the sheriff. “Whether it’s real is something else.” Calhoun heard him sigh. “Okay, Stoney. I guess you’re right. You wait there. It may take a little while to get this organized.”

  Calhoun hung up, drained his glass of Coke, waved at Kevin, and went out front to his truck. When he climbed in, Ralph, who was curled on the passenger seat, opened his eyes and looked up without lifting his head. Calhoun scratched Ralph’s muzzle. “You might as well snooze,” he said. “We’ve got a little wait.”

  So he sat there in the truck in front of the little restaurant in Gallatin while the Saturday-night folks filtered out, got into their vehicles, and emptied the parking lot, and it was nearly midnight before a car pulled in behind Calhoun’s truck and left its motor running and its headlights on.

  Calhoun got out and went back to the sheriff’s Explorer. Two other vehicles had pulled in behind him. One of them was a state police cruiser. The other was an emergency wagon.

  Dickman looked up at him through the open window. “Why don’t you climb in here with me,” he said. “We can talk about it on the way over.”

  “Ralph comes with us.”

  “That’s fine.”

  Ralph hopped into the back of the sheriff’s vehicle. Calhoun got in front. “Head over to where we went into the pond,” he said. “It’s a long walk in through the woods. Hope you’ve got flashlights.”

  “We got flashlights,” said Dickman. “Now talk to me.”

  As they drove, Calhoun recounted his decision to revisit the place where he’d found Lyle, how he’d been trying to make sense of the fact that Fred Green’s rented Taurus was right where he and Lyle had left it, how he’d been hoping for some kind of insight and hadn’t received one, how he’d gone up the hill to the burned-out cellar hole because he figured that’s what Lyle would’ve done, and how Ralph had found the foot buried in the boggy low ground behind the cellar hole.

  Dickman did not interrupt, and when Calhoun finished, the sheriff said, “So you’re thinking Mr. Green killed two people, buried one of ’em, left the other in the water.”

  “Guess so,” said Calhoun.

  “No one else has been reported missing.”

  “Well, someone’s missing, all right. I found him.”

  “Maybe it’s Mr. Green himself,” the sheriff said. “I guess when we dig him up we’ll have some answers. Assuming you can find him in the dark.”

  “I can find him, goddammit.”

  The sheriff glanced at Calhoun. “You don’t need to get mad.” He hesitated. “Everything okay with Kate?”

  “The shop isn’t doing that well. Walter’s getting worse. She’s upset about Lyle.”

  “That’s not exactly what I meant.”

  Calhoun said nothing.

  They drove through the dark countryside for a couple of minutes in silence. Then the sheriff said, “It’s none of my business, Stoney, but—”

  “That’s right.”

  “—but a fella dropped by my office yesterday. He was asking about you.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Really?”

  Dickman shrugged. “Really.”

  “This man,” said Calhoun. “He was wearing a gray suit?”

  “Yes.” The sheriff hesitated. “Understand, Stoney. It doesn’t matter to me what you might’ve done. Your past is your past. None of my business. I like you. Consider you my friend. But if there’s something I should know, I’d sure appreciate it if you’d share it with me.”

  “What was he asking you? That man in the suit.”

  The sheriff said nothing.

  “You’re not at liberty to say, is that it?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What exactly are you thinking, Sheriff?”

  Dickman let out a long breath in the darkness of the car. “You show up in these parts five years ago. You got all the money you need, apparently. You hermit yourself up in the woods like you never wanted to see another human being for the rest of your life. Word gets around that you spent some time in a hospital, that you’ve got no memory of what landed you there. You’re a man without a past, Stoney. It makes a person wonder, can you understand that?”

  “Why don’t you say it straight out for me.”


  “Fair enough.” Dickman turned onto the road in Keatsboro that would take them to the woods road into the millpond. “Was that really a hospital you were in, Stoney?”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “Christ,” muttered the sheriff. “I mean, were you in prison?”

  “Is that what that man told you?”

  “No. He said nothing like that.”

  “But his questions . . .”

  “They made me wonder. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “The answer is,” said Calhoun, “it was a hospital, not a prison. I got hit by lightning. It messed up my head.”

  “Lightning, huh?”

  “Yes. I got a big scar down my back.”

  “What was it like, getting hit by lightning?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  In the lights from the dashboard, Calhoun saw the sheriff frown. “You’ve told me about your ghosts, Stoney. You can understand my confusion.”

  “Sure can, Sheriff. And maybe you can understand mine.”

  “Like I said, it doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Sounds to me like it does.”

  “I was just wondering if that man might’ve talked to Kate, too.”

  “If he did,” said Calhoun, “I’m promising you right now, I’ll kill him.”

  “Speaking officially,” said the sheriff, “I’ve got to advise against it.” He slowed down and tapped Calhoun’s knee. “There’s a flashlight under your seat. Why don’t you shine it along the side there, make sure we stop at the right place.”

  Calhoun reached under the seat and found the flash. It was one of those long, heavy-duty models that held six batteries. He rolled down his window and shone the light along the stone wall that paralleled the road.

  “What’re you thinking, Sheriff?” said Calhoun.

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re suspecting me of something. I want to know what you’re thinking.”

  “Now don’t go getting paranoid on me, Stoney. I don’t suspect you of a damned thing.”

  In the beam of the flashlight Calhoun saw the break in the stone wall where the old woods road cut into the millpond. “Stop here,” he said.

  They pulled to the side, and the other two vehicles pulled in behind them. They all got out, and Dickman introduced Calhoun to a state police forensic expert named Weems, a tall guy with two cameras around his neck whose name Calhoun didn’t get, a homicide detective named Bellotti, a doctor from the State Medical Examiner’s office named Scolnik, and a young EMT who went by the name Woody. Calhoun shook hands with each of them.

  The gang of them stood there beside the road, each with a flashlight. “Okay,” said the sheriff. “Stoney here will lead the way. It’s a long walk in. I hope you’re all wearing comfortable shoes.”

  “What about Ralph?” said Calhoun.

  “You better leave him in the car,” said Dickman.

  Calhoun went to the sheriff’s Explorer and made sure the windows were open a crack all around and that the doors were locked. “You sit tight,” he said to Ralph. “You’ve made enough trouble for one night. I’ll be back.”

  Ralph was standing on the backseat with his nose pressed up against the crack in the side window. Calhoun poked his fingers in and let him lick them, then turned and headed into the woods.

  It was a moonless night, and the woods outside the cones of the flashlights were black. When they got to the millpond, the sheriff halted the procession and shone his light against the reeds where Calhoun had found Lyle’s body. “That’s where Lyle McMahan was found,” he told the others. He moved his light to the ground beside where he was standing. “And here’s where we figure our shooter, Mr. Green, was lying.” He pointed his light across the dam to the hillside. “Up there is where Mr. Calhoun spotted the other body. Lead on, Stoney.”

  They trooped across the dam single file, then up the hillside to the cellar hole. Calhoun stopped there and flashed his light through the undergrowth on the other side of the hill. “Down there,” he said. “It might take me a minute to find it.”

  He moved down the hillside, stopping every few steps to play his flashlight around. “There was still some light in the sky when I was here,” he said to the sheriff. “The shadows were different.”

  “Take your time.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, re-creating the picture of it, a sharp memory photograph. Then he quickly led them down to the foot of the hill, moved the light in a half circle over the ground, and said, “Okay. Got it. Over there. Around behind that patch of alders.”

  Bellotti, the homicide cop, cleared his throat. “Step carefully,” he said. “This is a crime scene.”

  Calhoun led them around the little island of alders to the place where Ralph had dug up the foot. Then he stopped.

  There was no freshly dug-up dirt. Nor was there a foot sticking out of the ground.

  There was only the woods, with old brown leaves blanketing the earth where they had fallen quietly eight months earlier.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  “IT WAS HERE,”SAID CALHOUN. “Right here.”

  He knelt down and moved his flashlight over the blanket of dry leaves, then turned and looked up at the others, who had gathered in a semicircle around him. “Here,” he repeated.

  The sheriff squatted down beside him. “Must’ve been someplace that looked like this,” he said quietly. “Let’s look around some more.”

  Calhoun shook his head. He raked some leaves away from the ground with his fingers. Underneath was a layer of half-decomposed twigs and pine needles, and under that was moist black earth. He began digging in the dirt with both hands. He felt the sheriff touch his shoulder. He shook away his hand. “Shine your light here,” he said.

  “Come on, Stoney,” said Dickman. “This isn’t the place.”

  “The hell it’s not,” said Calhoun. “It was right here.”

  “You said a foot was sticking up.”

  “It was here,” Calhoun repeated.

  One of the other men grumbled, “Jesus,” and another said, “Let’s move around. See what we can find.”

  “You’re not gonna find anything,” said Calhoun. “This is the damn place.”

  The others wandered away. Their flashlights flickered through the bushes. The sheriff squatted down beside Calhoun and put his hand on his shoulder. “Stoney, listen—”

  “I’m not crazy, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He scooped away some more dirt, on his hands and knees, digging furiously now, throwing handfuls off to the side, his fingers scraping into the soft dark earth, gouging out a hole the way Ralph had done.

  Dickman grabbed him by both arms and held him that way until Calhoun sank back onto his heels.

  “I’m not saying you’re crazy,” said Dickman quietly. “You’ve mistaken the place, that’s all. It’s a big woods. It looked different in the twilight, you said so yourself.”

  Calhoun shook his head. “I’ve got this gift,” he said. “I can remember things exactly. I have these pictures in my head. It’s why I could draw Mr. Fred Green’s face for you. I can see him. You want, I’ll draw you another picture, and you’ll see that it’ll look exactly like that other one. I got a picture of this place in my head, too, and by Jesus, it’s here, right where I’m digging, where Ralph found that foot.”

  “Tell you what,” said Dickman. “Suppose you and I come back here tomorrow when the sun’s out and we can see it better. Maybe that picture in your head will be clearer then. What do you say?”

  Calhoun turned to look at him. In the darkness, the sheriff’s face was a shadow. But Calhoun had heard the kindness in the man’s voice, a gentle concern mingled with doubt. There was no anger in it, no frustration that he’d been dragged out of his house at midnight on a Saturday night, that he’d assembled a posse of skeptical homicide authorities and been led on a wild goose chase through the Maine woods.

  Calhoun figured he knew the difference between one
of his brain tricks—like a naked body drifting in a trout stream—and the real thing.

  Maybe not. He knew his grip on reality was shaky. Sometimes all of it—Kate, Ralph, his house in the woods—seemed to exist only inside his own imagination. Sometimes he wondered if he’d never regained consciousness when that lightning bolt zapped him five years ago, and while all these things were happening, he was actually lying motionless in a hospital bed somewhere, with tubes and wires and machines keeping him alive and doctors looking at him, stroking their chins and mumbling to each other.

  He let out a deep breath, shrugged, and said, “Okay. I guess we can come back tomorrow.”

  The sheriff stood up and held down his hand.

  Calhoun took it and pulled himself to his feet. He wiped his hands on his pants. “I know how it looks,” he said.

  Dickman shook his head. “It doesn’t look like anything except that we can’t find the place. It’ll look different in the daylight. We’ll bring Ralph. He’ll help. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Why don’t we try Ralph now?”

  The sheriff shook his head. “We’ll do it tomorrow.”

  Calhoun stood there while Sheriff Dickman moved away and spoke to the others. They gathered around him and grumbled and mumbled for a few minutes in voices too low for Calhoun to understand, then the sheriff said, “Come on, Stoney. You’ve got to show us how to get back. These city boys’re all worried about bears.”

  No one said anything as they trekked out of the black woods. When they arrived at their vehicles, Calhoun climbed into the sheriff’s Explorer. Ralph, who’d been sleeping in the back, stood up and dropped his chin on the back of Calhoun’s seat. “Wish you could talk,” Calhoun said to him. “You’d tell them that I’m not nuts. Hell, you could tell me, too.”

  The sheriff was outside, leaning against the state police cruiser, talking to the others. In the rear-view mirror, Calhoun could see him gesturing with his hands while the other men stood there shrugging and shaking their heads.

  After a few minutes, the sheriff climbed in behind the wheel, switched on the ignition, and pulled away. The others followed along behind.