Dearly Departed

by David Housewright

  “Trust me,” I told him.

  “Trust him,” he muttered. “Big-city homicide cop.”

  “Amateur,” I muttered back.

  I went into the bathroom. It was small, dirty, and stank of mildew. Thilgen had taped several suggestive photos—they were suggestive in the way a slap in the face was suggestive—to the dirty mirror fronting the medicine cabinet. I opened the cabinet. Thilgen’s toothbrush, toothpaste, electric shaver, and hairbrush were all accounted for.

  “If Thilgen is running, he didn’t plan to,” I called out.

  “Huh?” Loushine grunted.

  I moved to Chip Thilgen’s bedroom and immediately regretted it. The small room reeked of sweat and semen, and the sordid odor made me gag. The unmade bed was soiled; its sheets looked as if they hadn’t been changed in months. More pornography hung from the walls, and several life-sized posters were stapled to the ceiling above the bed.

  “You’re one strange biscuit,” I told the absent Thilgen as I went through his bureau drawers. They were filled with clothes and assorted sex aids—manual and electric. Two small suitcases, both empty, were hidden under his bed, and the tiny closest was filled with shirts, pants, and jackets. In the pocket of the jacket hung from a hook on the back side of the door I found his checkbook. Again I concluded that if Thilgen was on the run, it wasn’t something he had planned. At the bottom of the closet I discovered a cardboard box filled with his financial records: old tax returns, receipts, bank envelopes stuffed with canceled checks, and several check registers. I set the checkbook on top and carried the box back into the kitchen with me.

  “Whaddaya got there?” Loushine asked, rushing to my side— anything to quit searching through Thilgen’s unsavory life. He watched over my shoulder as I examined the contents of the box, paying particular attention to the checks written most recently.

  “This is interesting,” I said at last.

  “What?”

  “Nearly every check Thilgen wrote paid for monthly bills or purchases—groceries, gasoline, utilities, that sort of thing—except for these six that were made out to James Johannson.”

  “Jimmy Johannson is an asshole,” Loushine told me. “An asshole with a record.”

  “Yes, I know,” I recalled. “We met.” I studied the check amounts. “Five checks were written for five hundred dollars each over the past nine months except for this last one.” I gave Loushine a look at the carbon in the checkbook register. It was for twenty-five hundred, and it was made out the day the Buick was stolen from the Wascott fire chief.

  “The day before Michael was shot,” Loushine noted.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Let’s go,” the deputy said excitedly.

  “Go where?” I asked.

  “Go and brace Johannson, whaddaya think? Bring him in for questioning.”

  “On what grounds?” I asked.

  “On what—?”

  “What probable cause are you going to give the judge when he asks?”

  Loushine gave it two beats then began to curse bitterly.

  “Dammit, Taylor. You’ve compromised the investigation.”

  “Would I do a thing like that?”

  “We can’t use any of this shit now,” Loushine told me as I returned the check registers to the box.

  “Unlawful entry … proceeds of an illegal search … fruits of the poisonous tree …” Loushine went on like that while I took the box back to Thilgen’s bedroom. He was just finishing up when I returned.

  “Is this how you do things in St. Paul?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” I told him. “It’s illegal.” I smiled—and inwardly shuddered—at the thought of what Anne Scalasi would do to me if I attempted the same nonsense in her town.

  “So now what do we do?” Loushine asked.

  “So now I go talk with James Johannson. Alone.”

  Deputy Loushine cursed some more.

  twenty-one

  Deputy Loushine’s directions—or my misunderstanding of them—got me all turned around. I ended up at a service station off the county road, absolutely lost. The kid manning the pumps regarded me suspiciously, and when I asked him for directions to Johnny Johannson’s place, he asked, “Why do you want to know?”

  “So I can talk to the man. Is that a problem?”

  “Let’s just say it’s a small county, and it’s getting smaller all the time, and I have to live in it, and I don’t want to do anything that will make living in it harder than it already is.”

  “I just want to talk.”

  “There’s a phone inside.”

  “Swell.”

  And people say I’m cynical.

  A phone book was attached to the telephone stand with a chain in case someone wanted to steal it. It listed John Johannson’s address as 315 Fire Road 21. Next to the unmanned cash register was a rack filled with maps going for a buck-fifty each. I stole one labeled Kreel County and took it back to my car.

  No fewer than five wrecks littered Johnny Johannson’s yard, the hood of each car opened to the elements. Most of the cars were rusted through, dead but unburied. I parked in the driveway next to them, thinking that my ’91 Dodge Colt fit right in.

  The house itself—an ancient ramshackle two-story in need of paint and a new roof—was situated at the end of a dirt road in a weed-infested clearing surrounded by a wall of trees. There was no lake that I could see, only woods. I followed a worn dirt path to the front of the house and knocked on the door. Johnny Johannson answered it. He clenched his fists and went into a defensive stance at the sight of me. It had been weeks since he had seen me last, yet he still wanted to know, “You lookin’ for more?”

  “Not me, sir,” I told him. “I figured I got off lucky the first time.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “I’d like to speak with your son, James, if I might?”

  “What for?” still on the defensive.

  I showed him my photostat.

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said. “Guy named Chip Thilgen. I was told James might know where I can find him.”

  “James isn’t in trouble?” Johannson asked.

  “Not that I know of.” I shrugged, acting oh-so-innocent. “Not with me, anyway.”

  “That’s good, that’s good, ’cuz Jimmy, he’s had his share—if you know what I mean.”

  I pretended that I didn’t.

  “Is he around?” I asked.

  “Well, now, I can’t say that he is,” Johannson replied. “He’s out”—Johannson gestured toward the trees surrounding his home—“workin’ his new dog. But I expect he’ll be back anytime now if you care to wait.”

  I said I would and followed him inside.

  Johannson offered me a cold beer, which I accepted, and led me to his workroom in the basement.

  “You had me, you know,” he said as we descended the stairs. “Back at The Last Chance, you had me. With them moves of yours, you coulda killed me easy. A lot of them assholes be happy to see it, too.”

  “Why didn’t you just stay down?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t give ’em the satisfaction.”

  I watched in true awe as Johnny Johannson gave me a tour of his workbench. He was a flytier like my grandfather, and he had all his paraphernalia meticulously arranged—in direct contrast to the rest of his home. The benchtop looked like a surgical tray, filled with a scalpel, scissors, pliers, tweezers, a dubbing needle, a magnifying glass, single-edge razor blades, an emery board, an Arkansas point file, and an eyedropper. Three different-sized transparent plastic boxes labeled THREAD, FLOSS, and TINSEL were neatly stacked atop each other. Fixed to the wall above the bench was a large shadowbox with over two dozen compartments, the compartments filled with jars and paper bags, each labeled for capes, fur, hair, hackles, hooks, and so on. An English vise was mounted to the bench. It was exactly like my grandfather’s, and I told Johannson so.

  “This is so cool,” I said aloud, and he smiled.

  “Whaddaya thin
k of this?” he asked after opening a large wooden box lined with foam and containing about fifty wet flies. He placed one of the flies in my palm.

  “Very nice,” I said.

  “What is it?” he asked, testing me.

  I studied it carefully, examining the fly the way Granddad had taught me. The fly had a black wool body shrouded in deer hair and a fluffy turkey feather dyed black; the wing was extended about an inch beyond the shank, that straight part of the hook between the bend and the eye.

  “I’d guess a black marabou muddler, except—”

  “Except?”

  “The hackle is dyed bright yellow instead of scarlet.”

  “So?”

  “Shouldn’t the tail be scarlet?”

  “I don’t know, should it?”

  “It’s how my grandfather tied them.”

  “Your grandfather still with us?”

  “Eighty-six and going strong.”

  “Keep the fly.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Give it to your granddad, and tell ’im he should experiment some.”

  I smiled my sincere thanks. Johannson showed me more, demonstrating with surprisingly nimble fingers the proper preparation of deer tails; advising me how to select the correct thread for winding the hair. I’d been down there for nearly an hour when we heard three muffled shotgun blasts in quick succession.

  “My son,” Johannson said. He sounded disappointed.

  We went upstairs. Three more shotgun blasts greeted us when we stepped outside. They were coming from the side of the house facing away from the road. We made our way around slowly. I knew I wasn’t being fired upon, but the shots activated my internal fight-or-flight response mechanism just the same, and I instinctively searched my jacket pocket for the Walther PPK.

  Jimmy Johannson was facing the forest, a twelve-gauge pump resting on his shoulder. He was scolding a black Labrador puppy at his feet. Next to the puppy was a small boy, a frail, skinny little thing dressed in dirty T-shirt and sneakers held together with duct tape. When Jimmy Johannson nodded, the child tossed a dog dummy with all his might at the trees. Johannson fired three shots in the air in quick succession. The dog flinched and cowered, and Johannson kicked it, cutting loose with a string of obscenities that did not seem to shock the boy at all.

  “That’s no way to train a dog,” I said.

  “Jimmy don’t mean no harm,” Johnny Johannson told me, but he didn’t sound convincing.

  “Who’s the boy?” I asked as we approached.

  “My grandson, Angel’s kid, Tommy,” Johannson said softly; then louder he called, “Jimmy! Man here to see ya.”

  Jimmy Johannson glanced at me without curiosity and yelled, “Pull.”

  Little Tommy heaved another dog dummy into the woods, and Jimmy fired three times. Again the dog cowered, and again he was beaten. I shook my head. The dog wasn’t frightened by the noise of the shotgun. He was frightened because he knew the shots would soon be followed by punches, kicks, and screams. I was tempted to tell Jimmy so but held my tongue.

  “Whaddaya want?” Jimmy asked after he had finished assaulting the puppy.

  “I’m a private investigator,” I told him and flashed my photostat.

  “Minnesota license don’t mean shit in Wisconsin,” he informed me.

  “Don’t mean much more than that in Minnesota,” I replied.

  “So?” he asked. I could tell he was warming toward me.

  “I’m looking for a guy named Chip Thilgen.”

  Jimmy didn’t even hesitate. “Who?” he asked.

  “Chip Thilgen.”

  “Never heard of him,” he said.

  “Sure you have,” Johnny Johannson volunteered.

  Jimmy turned on him. “If I say I don’t know him, old man, I don’t fucking know him,” he snarled.

  “I was told you and Thilgen were seen driving together just two days ago,” I lied.

  “Who the fuck told you that?” Jimmy asked angrily.

  “Does it matter?” I asked in reply.

  “It matters a lot if some asshole is putting me with this Thilgen guy,” he said. “It matters a fucking lot if people are lying about me.”

  “It could have been an honest mistake,” I ventured, not wanting to unduly anger a man with a loaded shotgun in his hands.

  “Got that fucking right,” Jimmy spat.

  “Tell me, then,” I asked cautiously, “where were you around noon the day before yesterday?”

  “Right here,” he said.

  “Doing what?”

  “Sucking on the welfare titty,” he announced almost proudly. Then, “Pull!”

  Another dog dummy into the woods, another three shots. The dog laid at Jimmy’s feet and began to whimper even before the man hit him.

  I had seen enough.

  “That’s a piss-poor way to train a dog,” I told him.

  “Who fucking asked you?” he snapped. Then, to prove who was boss, he clubbed the puppy with the stock of the gun.

  “Sonuvabitch,” I muttered.

  “I’ll show you how to train a dog,” Jimmy boasted.

  He took two steps backward. The boy seemed to know what was coming because he dove out of the way. Jimmy pointed the shotgun and pulled the trigger. A round of six shot took the dog’s head off.

  “Play dead!” Jimmy shouted at the corpse. “Play dead!” He laughed as if the sight of the headless puppy was the funniest thing he had ever seen.

  “See? The dog’s trained,” he told me and laughed some more.

  The scene made Johnny Johannson turn pale. The boy nudged the black Labrador’s body with his battered sneakers, staining the tips of them with blood. I gripped the butt of the handgun hidden inside my pocket.

  “Ahh, fuck it,” Jimmy said, suddenly speaking in a monotone as he zipped the twelve-gauge into a leather case. “Dog was no good. Gun shy. Can’t hunt with no gun-shy dog.”

  Jimmy went around to the front of the house; his father, visibly shakened but saying nothing, dragged his silent grandson inside the house through the back door. When Jimmy reappeared, he was carrying a spade. Without expression—without any emotion that I could observe—he began digging a shallow grave for the dog’s still-warm carcass. I waited. I don’t know why I waited. Maybe it was so I could tell Jimmy something when he had finished.

  I gripped the Walther inside my pocket and asked, “What’s the only thing money can’t buy?”

  “Huh?”

  “What’s the only thing money can’t buy?” I repeated loudly.

  “Shit, I dunno. Love?”

  “The wag of a dog’s tail,” I answered.

  Jimmy sneered at me. “Fuck that.”

  He heaved the spade in the general direction of a large shed and walked slowly to the house. I did not take my hand out of my pocket until he was well inside.

  twenty-two

  The sign outside The Wheel Inn Motel read: STAY SIX NIGHTS GET YOUR 7TH NIGHT FREE. Now that was optimism. I wondered if anyone ever took the proprietor up on his offer. I meant to ask him, only I didn’t like the way he smirked when I checked in without luggage, paying cash instead of using a credit card. He looked at me like I was a talent scout for a porno magazine. Still, he showed me to my room with a certain amount of pride. I don’t know why. It looked like any other motel room you’ve ever been in except it was older and crummier. The wallpaper was faded and crumbling along the edges—large yellow flowers on a blue background. The bed and bureau were bought new in, say, 1933. And the toilet was operated by a chain. All the comforts of home. The owner told me there was no cable, and the ancient black-and-white TV took a good fifteen minutes to warm up, but the Brewers were playing on channel ten later that evening if I was interested.

  I had two questions: Where could I buy a change of clothes? And where could I get something to eat? As to the former, he directed me to the combination clothing/appliance store attached to the grocery store in Deer Lake: King’s One-Stop. As for the latter, he recommended
the $5.95 all-you-can-eat buffet at The Forks Restaurant and Casino, about fifteen miles down the road just this side of the county line.

  Before I left, I made two phone calls. The first was to Deputy Gary Loushine, but he wasn’t in. The woman who answered the sheriff department’s telephones promised she’d deliver my message. The second call was to Cynthia. The voice on her machine promised she’d return my call, too.

  King’s One-Stop was located just off the main drag in Deer Lake, not too far from Koehn’s counterfeit log cabin. It offered only a limited selection of men’s fashions. I found white athletic socks (two to a package), white briefs (three to a package), a white shirt with button-down collar, and a pair of blue jeans all in less than ten minutes. What made me linger was a gray-black silk-blend sports jacket sewn in Korea by a company I’d never heard of that was marked down to $34.95. I spent five minutes trying to determine what was wrong with it and couldn’t, except that the sleeves were about a half inch too short. But for thirty-five bucks, what’s half an inch? I bought the jacket, the other clothes, a plastic razor, a small can of shaving foam, a toothbrush and paste, and deodorant, paying with a check. The cashier looked at me like I was challenging her arithmetic when I asked for a receipt, but I figured Hunter Truman would insist. If he didn’t reimburse my expenses, I’d take my chances with the IRS.

  On the way back to the motel, I listened to the music broadcast by the public station at UMD: Jane Olivor’s cover of “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.” According to the missing person’s form I had worked with over the past few weeks, it was Alison’s favorite song. I listened to it carefully. It was peculiar, knowing so much about a stranger. I couldn’t have named Cynthia’s favorite song if my life depended on it.

  When I returned to the motel, the owner said that a woman had called for me, a woman with an “underage voice” who promised she would call back. I swear to God he winked at me.

  I had showered and changed—happy to know I was wearing clean underwear in case I had an accident—when the owner put Cynthia’s return call through to me. I greeted her as “counselor” in case he lingered on the line.

  I was so pleased by the sound of Cynthia’s voice that I didn’t say anything after I said hello; I just wanted to listen. Was she the someone?