Bitch Creek

by Tapply, William

  “How about a nap, then?”

  “I’m kinda wired, honey,” he said. “Not sure I can sleep.”

  “I bet we can figure out a way to get ourselves unwired.” She stood up, stretched, then held both hands to him.

  After they made love, Kate dropped off to sleep. Calhoun lay there for a while, watching her face and feeling the warmth of her leg where it pressed against his. He knew he’d never get back to sleep himself, so as soon as her breathing slowed and deepened, he slipped out of bed, gathered up his clothes, and shut the bedroom door behind him.

  He dressed in the kitchen and put on some more coffee, and when it was ready, he poured himself a mug and took the portable phone and his coffee out onto the deck.

  A high-pressure front had moved in behind yesterday’s storm. The morning sky was cloudless. The sun was so bright he had to squint, and the air was dry and cool, almost chilly for late June. A persistent northwesterly breeze ruffled the oak leaves and swayed the high branches of the pines. It would’ve been a poor day for fishing—which was no consolation. A poor day of fishing with Kate was always a damn good day.

  He sat there with the phone on his lap, sipping his coffee and thinking about what he wanted to do, trying to order his thoughts, to make sense of things. But his mind refused to focus. Fred Green had shot Lyle, and maybe he’d shot somebody else and buried them in the woods, and now he had tried to shoot Calhoun. Calhoun believed he would try again.

  He had no idea why Mr. Green was doing this.

  He picked up the phone and dialed Millie Dobson’s number.

  She answered on the second ring. “Millie here.”

  “It’s Stoney Calhoun.”

  “Well, hello, there, stranger. You looking to buy some more property?”

  He considered lying to her, then changed his mind. “Nope. Calling to ask for a favor, Millie. Nothing in it for you.”

  “What kind of favor you got in mind, Stoney?”

  “You can trace deeds, right?”

  “Well, sure. Of course, it takes a lawyer to make it legal. But I can do it as well as they can. It’s not hard.”

  “What if that parcel happened to be up in Keatsboro?”

  “Not a problem. I’ve got listings all over York County. You want me to check some Keatsboro property for you?”

  “There’s a piece of land up there that used to belong to folks named Potter. They got burned out in forty-seven. Mr. Potter died in the fire. I don’t know the name of the road it’s on, but I can show it to you on a map.”

  “Stoney,” said Millie, “I know damn well that you found Lyle McMahan’s body on that property last week. You want to tell me what you think I might find if I traced that deed?”

  “I don’t know what I expect, to tell you the truth. I’m just thrashin’ around here.”

  “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I’m wondering why it’s you who’s doing the thrashin’. Isn’t that the sheriff’s job?”

  “Lyle was my best friend,” he said. “It’s kind of personal with me, Millie.”

  She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “I’m a businesswoman, you know. I don’t work for free.”

  “I’m happy to pay you for your time, Millie.”

  “You can buy me dinner at Juniper’s tonight. I’ll tell you what I find out then. Deal?”

  “You drive a hard bargain, ma’am. Seven o’clock sound about right?”

  “See you then, Stoney.”

  He disconnected from Millie, and when he turned to put the phone on the table, he saw Kate standing in the doorway buttoning up the front of her orange dress.

  “Jesus,” he said. “You snuck right up on me. When I’ve got a phone covering my only good ear, I don’t hear much of anything.”

  She came onto the deck and stood beside him. “What’re you doing?”

  He waved his hand. “Nothing, honey.”

  “Having dinner with Millie, huh?”

  He grinned. “You jealous?”

  She smiled and rolled her eyes. “Millie’s a very attractive woman, all right. And I bet she’s got her eye on you.”

  “Aw, Kate—”

  “But no, Stoney, I’m not the least bit jealous. Curious, though.”

  “Like I told Millie,” he said. “I’m just thrashin’ around, trying to figure things out.”

  “Did you call the sheriff?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You’re going to, aren’t you?” She narrowed her eyes. “Dammit, Stoney. You could’ve got yourself killed last night. Somebody came here to shoot you, remember?”

  “I know what I’m doing, Kate.”

  She shook her head. “Like hell you do. We’ve got an attempted murder here. Who do you think you are?”

  He gazed up at the sky for a moment. “I think I’m a trained investigator,” he said.

  She cocked her head. “What’d you say?”

  “I’ve spent the last five years trying to figure out who I am. I haven’t had much luck at it. But in the last few days, since Lyle got killed, things are starting to click for me. I haven’t figured it all out by a long shot. But I’m observing how my mind’s been working, and I’m collecting some new memories, and I don’t think that man in the gray suit showed up by accident. I’m pretty sure I used to be a cop of some kind, and I want to do this my own way, see where it leads me, see what it teaches me about myself. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “No,” she said. “Frankly, it doesn’t. I don’t care what you were. You got zapped by lightning and you know as well as I do, it messed up your brain. You’re gonna go thrashin’ around until that Fred Green shoots you dead, and when that happens, Stoney, so help me . . .”

  Tears had welled up in Kate’s eyes. Calhoun reached over to touch her hand, but she yanked it away.“Don’t,” she said. “I don’t want to lose you, too.”

  “You aren’t going to lose me, honey. I promise you that.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she said. “I should’ve known better than to give my heart to you.” She shook her head, looked into his eyes for a long moment, then smiled. “But I guess I did, didn’t I?”

  Calhoun nodded. “That’s what we both did,” he said. He hesitated for a moment, then said, “I think it would be best if you steered clear of me for a while.”

  “You think Id’m scared?”

  He shook his head. “I just . . . need to take care of business.”

  She stood up, folded her arms, and looked down at him. “You’re gonna get yourself killed.”

  “Trust me.”

  She laughed softly. “Funny thing is, I do trust you. I guess I am scared, Stoney. I want you forever and ever.”

  “Me, too,” he said. He got up and wrapped his arms around her. “It’ll be over soon,” he whispered into her hair. “I’ve got to get it done. Okay?”

  She tilted her head back, looked at him steadily for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.” She kissed his mouth hard, gave him a smile, then stepped back from him. “Just do it, Stoney. Get it done.”

  Then she turned and walked off the deck. She slid into her old Blazer, started it up, and drove away.

  He stood there listening to the rumble of her broken tailpipe fade in the distance. Then he went inside. He had a lot to do, and the sooner he got it done, the sooner he’d see Kate again.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  AFTER KATE LEFT, Calhoun wandered through his little house in the woods, cataloging his possessions according to whether he’d feel seriously deprived if he should lose them. It was a liberating exercise. He’d left the hospital in Virginia with nothing, and now, after five years of accumulating things, he realized that if he lost everything, he was still better off than when he’d started.

  Before last night, he’d felt absolutely secure and private on his property in the woods. He never locked his doors or worried about leaving Ralph.

  That’s how it was in the Maine countryside. Folks shot deer and ducks out o
f season and cheated on their wives and their taxes and drove drunk. On occasion, they even killed each other. But Mainers, by God, respected their neighbors’ private property. Nobody ever came down his long driveway whom he didn’t trust.

  But now it had changed. Last night Stoney Calhoun had been invaded. Fred Green had actually snuck onto his property, and it was this more than actually getting shot at that bothered him. There was nothing to stop the man from coming back when Calhoun wasn’t home, stealing or trashing anything he wanted.

  On the table beside Calhoun’s bed in a silver frame stood a five-byseven photograph he’d taken of Kate two summers ago. She was standing knee-deep in the water struggling to hold up a forty-one-inch striped bass, the first really big fish she’d ever caught on a fly rod. Behind her, the flat water of the half-tide creek reflected orange and pink, and the rich, sharply angled rays of the rising sun glowed in Kate’s eyes and on her skin. Her T-shirt and shorts were soaked and plastered to her body from when she’d fallen into the water chasing the big fish up and down the banks of the creek, the same creek where he’d first met her, and there were spots of mud—along with the biggest, goofiest, happiest grin she’d ever given him—on her face.

  Calhoun did not want to lose that photograph.

  He ended up putting a few things into the truck—his photograph of Kate, his secondhand anthology of American literature, his old Remington 12-gauge autoloader, a box of double-ought buckshot, the aluminum tube that held his favorite Sage six-weight fly rod, his packed fishing vest, and Ralph.

  He figured you could learn a lot about a man if you told him he might lose everything he owned except for what he could stuff into the cab of an old Ford pickup truck.

  That’s how he was feeling.

  He had no doubt that Fred Green would be back, and who knew what he’d decide to do next time? But Calhoun was damned if he was going to change his life because of it.

  He shoved the framed photograph and the box of shotgun shells into the glove compartment. He slid the fly rod and the shotgun behind the seats and stuck the anthology under the driver’s seat. Ralph sat on the passenger’s seat with a frown on his face.

  “I know you’d rather hang around,” he explained to Ralph, “and I know you’d love to bite the ass of anybody who comes trespassing. But I’m going to need your company today.” He didn’t tell Ralph that he figured anybody who’d shoot a man in a float tube would have no qualms about shooting a dog. No sense in upsetting Ralph.

  It was around nine in the morning when he pulled out of his driveway. He felt calm, ready for whatever might happen. He had his dog and his truck and the only possessions that mattered to him. If Mr. Green came by to trash his house in the middle of the day, he couldn’t stop him. He wouldn’t like it. But it wouldn’t touch his heart.

  He drove east until he picked up Route 1 in Falmouth, just outside Portland. He headed north, through Yarmouth and Freeport and Brunswick and the old ship-building city of Bath, and then across the bridge that spanned the Kennebec, still following Route 1 as it wound northeast toward Craigville.

  He’d originally assumed that Fred Green was staying in the biggest, most expensive hotel in Portland. When he saw The Lobster Pot Motel, he smiled. It had to be the cheapest, seediest motel in southern Maine.

  It looked like they’d run out of money after they built the sign, which towered tree-top high beside the highway. It was surmounted with a big red lobster which, Calhoun assumed, flashed neon at night. The sign itself was in the shape of a lobster trap, of course. On the bottom hung a smaller lighted sign that read CABLE TV. OLYMPIC POOL. ALL CREDIT CARDS. VACANCY.

  He turned into the gravel parking area. There were two cars, both with out-of-state plates, parked there. The motel was a single-story rectangular building with eight units in front and eight in back. Its unpainted shingles had weathered silvery, and the white trim paint was flaking and peeling. The Olympic pool was barely the size of Calhoun’s living room, and it sat on the edge of the parking lot within spitting distance of the highway.

  A sign over the doorway of the front unit on the far left read OFFICE. Calhoun nosed his truck up to the door, told Ralph to behave himself, got out, and went inside.

  Nobody was in the office. A table fan sat beside a rack of pamphlets on the counter, rotating back and forth, blowing the stale air around the tiny room. A cigarette machine leaned against the wall, and beside it hung what looked like a paint-by-numbers seascape—surf crashing against rocks and flying into the air, stiff-looking seagulls pasted onto an unnaturally blue sky, a lighthouse on a bluff in the background. A small desk holding a telephone and a pile of papers huddled in the corner behind the counter, and beside it was a half-opened door.

  From beyond the door came television noises. A game show, it sounded like, judging by the phony-enthusiastic tone of the announcer’s voice and the frequent bursts of laughter and applause.

  Calhoun paused for a moment, then said, “Hello? Anybody here?” When there was no response, he spoke louder. “Hello?”

  “Hang on,” came a woman’s voice from beyond the doorway.

  A minute later she pulled open the door and came into the office. She couldn’t have been much over twenty. A mound of caramel-colored hair was pinned loosely to the top of her head. Strands of it had broken loose and were dangling in front of her face. She wore a shapeless flowered dress that hung to her ankles. Her eyes looked smudged, as if she needed sleep. Her skin was pasty and colorless, and she wore no makeup.

  Calhoun noticed that she was pregnant.

  “Need a room?” she said.

  He shook his head. “No, ma’am. I need some information, if you’ve got a minute?”

  She gave him a wry smile. “A minute? Hell, mister. I got a lifetime. What were you you lookin’ for, a nice place to stay?” She laughed.

  “I believe a sheriff’s deputy was in the other day,” he began. “Was it you he spoke with? Are you Mrs. Sousa?”

  “I sure am,” she said. “Mrs. Roland Sousa. That’s me. You can call me Amy, though.”

  “So you were at the desk when Mr. Fred Green checked in a week ago Sunday?”

  “The fella that deputy was askin’ about? The old guy with the funny ears? Sure. Hell, I’m on the desk all the time. Roland, he’s got better things to do than sit around this shitty place all day and night. He says it’s the only useful thing a fat old pregnant girl can be expected to do.” She patted her belly. “Mr. Green was the fella that deputy was askin’ about. He showed me a picture.”

  “Yes,” said Calhoun. “I’d like to talk with you about Mr. Green.”

  “You bet,” she said. “Nail the sonofabitch. String him up by the nuts. I keep tellin’ Roland we gotta get one of them automatic creditcard checkers, but he’d rather spend our money on his boat. That guy stayed here two nights, and now they’re sayin’ they ain’t going to pay us. Hell, it ain’t my fault that card was stolen.” She shook her head. “Well, that’s not your problem. What’d he do, anyway? Besides stiff us with a stolen credit card, I mean?”

  “He’s under suspicion for several serious crimes,” said Calhoun. “Not that stealing credit cards isn’t serious. So you checked him in, then?”

  She nodded. “I guess I told that other deputy everything. He checked in Sunday, early evenin’, and he checked out first thing Tuesday morning. Seemed polite enough. Elderly fella, but he had a bounce in his step.” She looked sideways at Calhoun. “He gave me the old onceover, he did. Imagine. A fat old thing like me.”

  “Oh, you can’t blame a man for lookin’ at a pretty girl,” said Calhoun. “Did you have any conversation with him?”

  “Well, the usual. TV, towels, check-out time.” She shrugged.

  “Did he have luggage with him?”

  “I don’t know. I gave him the key—it was number eleven, out back—and he drove around. I don’t carry bags, you know. This ain’t a fancy place, in case you didn’t notice.”

  “So other than checking him in
and out, you didn’t talk to him?”

  “Well, he did drop in the office the next morning. Monday, that would’ve been. Asked where he might get a good breakfast. I suggested a couple places up the road, and that seemed to satisfy him.” She hesitated. “Oh, yeah. He asked about fishing.”

  “Fishing?”

  “Well, I don’t know if he was interested in fishing, exactly. Said he was lookin’ for a guide. Truth is, he didn’t actually mention fishing at all. I just assumed. I sent him over to Blaine’s. Know where that is?”

  Calhoun shook his head.

  “Right over the bridge, on the left.” She gestured in a vague northerly direction. “Head on into town and just stay on Route 1 where it hangs a right there at the lights. You can’t miss it. Sits right there at the marina. Kinda rundown, like most everythin’ around here, but Blaine’s the only fishin’ guide I know of. Couldn’t tell you if Mr. Green actually went there or not.”

  “When he asked about a guide,” said Calhoun, “can you remember exactly what he said?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. A guide.” She wrinkled her brow as if she was pondering a difficult problem. “Oh, well, now that I think of it, what he actually said was, he needed a guide because he wanted to do some exploring. Whatever that meant. I guess it was me who mentioned fishing. And he said, Yes, that’s what he wanted. A fishing guide.” She looked at Calhoun with her eyebrows arched. “I mean, what else is a guide for except fishing and hunting? And it sure ain’t legal hunting season.”

  “Did he actually go fishing, do you know?”

  She shrugged. “He was gone most of the day. I happened to see him drive in sometime in the afternoon, and I guess he drove out when I wasn’t lookin’, because I seen him drive in again, oh, sometime in the evening.”

  “What kind of car was he driving, do you remember?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then shook her head. “Sorry.”

  Calhoun nodded. “Did he use the telephone?”

  “We don’t have phones in the rooms,” she said. “That’s another thing I keep tellin’ Roland. But no, he needs new brass or somethin’ for that damn boat. Guests can use this one here for local calls, or if they got a credit card” —she waved her hand at the telephone on the desk—“but Mr. Green, he didn’t use it.”