Thereby Hangs a Tail
Page 24
Meanwhile, there was talking in the front seat. “Start with the money,” Bernie said. “Payment for something you already did or that you’re going to?”
The sheriff didn’t answer. I could see the side of his face, green from the dashboard lights. He smelled green, too: a weird kind of thought I’d never had before.
“Got to be one or the other,” Bernie said.
The sheriff kept silent.
“A real easy knot to undo,” Bernie said. “One little tug.”
The sheriff took a deep breath, began talking in a very low voice.
“Speak up,” Bernie said.
“You’re smart,” the sheriff said, a bit louder. “You can figure it out.”
“That’s not going to work, Earl,” Bernie said. “Try some—” Bernie’s cell phone rang. He answered. “Janie? Have to call you back. Kind of busy right—”
He listened. I could just hear the sound of Janie’s voice— one of my favorite voices—but couldn’t make out what she was saying. Have I mentioned Janie? She’s the best groomer in the Valley, has a great business with a great business plan: Janie’s Pet Grooming Service—We Pick Up and Deliver. Loved Janie, and she hadn’t picked me up in way too long. She even brushes my teeth! The fun we have with that, let me tell you.
“Post-it note?” Bernie said. “I never saw a Post-it note. What did it—” His voice rose. “A lump?” He listened; I heard Janie talking fast. “What kind of lump?” Bernie said. “Where?” He listened some more, then clicked off. “Stop the car,” he said.
“Huh?” said Earl Ford.
“Pull over. Stop the goddamn car.”
The sheriff pulled over, parked at the side of the road, a quiet desert road with no traffic. Bernie twisted around, looked at me through the space between the front seats.
“Chet? You okay?”
Okay? I was a lot better than just okay. This was pretty exciting stuff. Had we ever taken down a sheriff before? Not that I could remember. I just hoped Bernie knew what he was doing, but of course he did.
Bernie reached through the space, patted my head. Always very nice. Very, very nice: all the exciting stuff—taking down a sheriff, bloody wads of cash, gunplay—slipped my mind for a few moments, my tail sweeping back and forth on the seat. Bernie patted down my back—hey, this was great, even though I had a vague idea we might be a little pressed for time right now—over to my side, where he patted some more before his hand went still. His eyes were on me, big and liquid in the night.
“Chet?” Bernie’s voice was soft and strange, even sounded a bit scared. Impossible: had I ever heard Bernie scared before? No way. Nothing scared Bernie. “You okay, boy?”
What was going on? I wagged harder so he’d get the message: I was feeling tip-top, couldn’t be better. Bernie withdrew his hand—have I mentioned how nice his hands are, big and strong?—and turned around. “Drive,” he said.
“I’m not feelin’ so good,” Earl Ford said.
“Drive.”
The sheriff pulled onto the road and drove. No traffic, a quiet night, a pair of glowing yellow eyes in the distance, and then just the darkness. I watched the back of their heads, Bernie’s and the sheriff ’s. The shape of Bernie’s was much nicer.
“I’m not hearing you,” Bernie said.
“Huh?”
“The money—payment for work done or work to do?”
The sheriff was silent. Bernie reached for the dishrag strip. The sheriff shrank away, the SUV swerving across the road, tires squealing. “You’d do that to me?” he said, steering back to the other side. “Be murder, pure and simple.”
“But you wouldn’t be around to argue the case,” Bernie said. “Here’s what you’re missing—you can tell us the truth and live, or not tell and die, but we’ll find the truth anyway. Got that?”
The sheriff nodded.
“Don’t think you do,” Bernie said. “Say it.”
“Say what?”
“The situation—what I just told you.”
“What the hell? Now you’re playing games with me?”
“You’re not that lucky. Say it.”
A long silence. Then the sheriff said, “Tell the truth and live, not tell and die.”
“But?”
“But you say you’ll find the truth anyway.”
“Count on it,” Bernie said. “In fact, we’re so close now we may not even need you. Get the implication?” He gave Earl Ford a long stare, again hardly looking like Bernie at all. But he still smelled exactly the same, so I was cool with it.
“Payment for work done,” the sheriff said.
“Which was?”
Another long silence.
“It’s over,” Bernie said. “Aren’t you smart enough to see that? I thought Les was the dumb one.” The sheriff ’s head moved, a kind of flinch. In the nation within the nation we had flinching, too. “But you’ve still got some wiggle room,” Bernie went on, “assuming two things. One, you didn’t murder anyone yourself. Two, you survive the night.”
“I didn’t murder anyone,” Earl Ford said.
“Who did?”
“All I know’s we got a strong case against those three guys— there’s a confession, for Christ’s sake.”
“There you go,” Bernie said, “hurting your chances on number two. Disco, Crash, Thurman—accessories after the fact at the most, more likely just frame-job saps. So, one more time, who did the killing?”
The sheriff took another deep breath, like he was going to say something important. And maybe he would have, but at that moment Bernie’s phone rang again.
“Cedric?” Bernie said. He listened for a moment and then said, “Not much.” More speaking from Cedric, nothing I could make out. “Lester?” Bernie said. “Interesting.” And then: “Wouldn’t hurt to look into Adelina’s will, whether she had a prenup, that kind of thing.” Cedric’s voice rose on the other end. “Why?” said Bernie. “Because your case is blowing up—that’s why.” He closed his phone, put it away.
The sheriff drove. Bernie had been asking all sorts of questions, but now he was silent. Fine with me: I hadn’t understood a thing. I concentrated on the smell of blood, most of it coming from Earl Ford, a little bit from Bernie.
The sheriff spoke first. “Something about my cousin Les, that call?”
Bernie turned to him, blinking a bit, as though he’d been lost in thought. I’d seen that happen, but not at times like this. “Missed that,” he said.
“The phone call,” Earl Ford said, sounding impatient, which made me like him even less. “Was it about my cousin Les?”
“The asking questions part of your life is in the past, Earl,” Bernie said. “From now on it’s answers only. Who did the killing? Adelina first.”
“You can believe me or not,” the sheriff said. “I don’t know— she was dead, too, by the time we got to Clauson’s Wells.”
“What made you go there?”
“Got a call about some trouble.”
“From who?”
“Anonymous.”
“Have to do better than that,” Bernie said. “You’re up against all that cash in the backseat.”
I placed my paw on the padded envelope.
“Came from the trainer.”
“Nance?”
“Yeah.”
“What did she say?”
“Been an accident. More like a suicide, actually.”
“Adelina shot herself—that’s the story?”
“Yeah.”
“The ballistics came in, Earl—you didn’t hear? Single shot to the forehead, thirty-ought-six.”
“It’s still possible.”
“Nope,” Bernie said. “Her arms weren’t long enough. Who killed her?”
“Not me,” said the sheriff. “That’s all I know.”
“And Suzie?”
“Don’t know that neither. Never even saw the body.”
“How come you know where she’s buried?”
“Les told me.”
Bernie peered at me over the headrest. “You okay?” Asking me that again? I was fine, couldn’t have been better, unless I’d been up front in the shotgun seat.
THIRTY
We drove along the empty main street of the ghost town. A rat skittered through the headlight beams, disappeared underneath a broken sidewalk board. Don’t like rats, not one little bit. They stink, simple as that, and something about those long skinny tails—maybe the thought of chewing on them—makes me queasy, if that’s the word for when you’re about to puke.
The sheriff parked in front of the saloon. Bernie pulled the keys from the ignition and put them in his pocket. “Flashlight?” he said. The sheriff pointed his chin at the glove box. Bernie opened it, found the flashlight, then looked more closely and took out a pair of steel handcuffs, the tiny key in the lock. The sheriff glanced at the handcuffs, didn’t look happy. We got out of the SUV, Bernie first, then Earl Ford, then me. I stayed right behind the sheriff in case he got up to any tricks. We stepped onto the sidewalk—the sheriff groaning a bit—and went through the swinging doors into the saloon.
Bernie switched on the flashlight, shone the beam around. The busted-up staircase; coyote turds—none fresh; the long bar with the cracked mirror behind it: nothing had changed. We followed the sheriff around to the other side of the bar. He pointed down to the floor, his finger, long and crooked, trembling slightly in the flashlight beam. Bernie shone the light on the floor. It glinted on a thick metal ring screwed into one of the wide floor planks. Then the beam rose slowly up to Earl Ford’s face, now all shiny with sweat. Sweat, human sweat, is a real interesting subject—something we know about only by observation in the nation within, one of the many reasons for being happy just the way I am—and I promise to go into it another time, but right now Bernie was talking.
“You put her down there?” I’d never heard his voice quite like this, so deep, harsh, unsteady.
“Not me, man,” said the sheriff, raising his hands like we had a gun on him. “I told you—it was Les.”
“But you stood right beside him.”
“That’s not true,” the sheriff said, a drop of sweat dripping off the end of his nose.
“Where were you?”
The sheriff didn’t answer, just stood there dripping sweat.
“Up in that cabin?” said Bernie. “Was that where Adelina got killed?”
“Not by me,” Earl Ford said.
Bernie shifted the beam slightly, settled it on the sheriff ’s wound: no bleeding that I could see, the dishrag strip still knotted tight. “Open up,” he said.
The sheriff reached down with his good arm, grasped the ring, and pulled. Nothing happened.
“Harder,” Bernie said.
Earl Ford tried again, grunting this time, with a sharp sound of pain at the end. But nothing happened.
“You’re not trying, “Bernie said.
“Best I can do—I’m right-handed. And I’m not feelin’ too good. Got a bullet in me, for Christ sake, and—”
“Shut up.”
Earl Ford shut up. Bernie glanced around, poking the light here and there. A rusty chain hung from the back of the bar. Bernie tugged on it, then said, “C’mere.”
“What for?” said the sheriff.
“Was that a question?” Bernie said.
The sheriff didn’t answer, stepped forward. Bernie clamped one handcuff around the sheriff ’s good wrist and the other to a link in the chain. Then he bent down, grasped the ring in the floor and yanked at it. A square section of the floor opened up, a small door, really; and it didn’t just open but got torn right off its hinges. That was Bernie. He tossed the door aside—trapdoor, was that the name? I had a faint memory from some DVD in our pile at home, back from a period where we’d gotten into horror movies, a brief period because they turned out to be too scary for both of us.
I went to the edge of the hole in the floor. Bernie shone the light down inside. I peered into a square hole with wooden walls and a wooden floor, not too deep or big, but plenty big enough for a human body. Wasn’t that what we were expecting? Suzie’s body? Maybe I hadn’t understood, because she wasn’t down there. All I saw was a rusted-out beer keg and a huge thick spiderweb with something shiny caught in it.
Bernie spun around, grabbed the sheriff by the scruff of his neck and jerked him over to the hole, stretching the chain out straight. Earl Ford gazed down.
“Christ Almighty.”
“That’s all you’ve got to say?”
“Les told me he dumped her there. That’s all I know.”
Their faces were very close together, the sheriff still sweating even though cool air was rising up from the hole; Bernie’s face dry. “You’re a liar,” Bernie said.
“Not about this.”
Very slowly, Bernie let go of the sheriff ’s neck. Then he crouched down, put one hand on the edge of the hole and dropped into it with a spinning, vaulting kind of move I had no idea he could do.
“No, boy,” he said, not even looking back up at me. How did he know I was just about to jump in, too?
Down in the hole, Bernie plucked the shiny thing out of the spiderweb. He held it up. Two things, actually, two shiny things on a tiny ring. Hey! I knew what those were, had two of my own.
“Princess’s tags,” Bernie said.
“News to me,” said the sheriff.
“Know what this tells me?” Bernie said. The sheriff was silent. “Tells me who the kidnappers were, two of them, anyway. Care to try your luck, Earl? Guess right and the prize is we don’t leave you here.”
“Here?”
“Meaning in the hole. All by yourself, trapdoor nailed down tight.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
Bernie pocketed Princess’s tags, pulled himself up. He unlocked the handcuff from the chain by the bar, jerked the sheriff toward the hole. “Hop in,” he said.
“Me and Les,” the sheriff said. “We did the snatch.”
“Let’s go pick him up,” Bernie said.
Earl Ford driving, his good arm now handcuffed to the wheel; Bernie riding shotgun; me in back, and the moon hanging low in the sky. The sight made me want to do some howling, no idea why, but I knew this wasn’t the time, and so sat absolutely still, except for a bit of picking at the seat upholstery.
“How much money’s in the envelope?” Bernie said.
“Didn’t finish counting,” the sheriff said.
“Humor’s tricky, Earl. I’d lay off it.”
Silence. I can feel things about humans sometimes. For example, whenever I’m with Bernie and Suzie I’m pretty sure they like each other a lot. And Bernie’s feelings for Charlie are huge, all good except for some sadness mixed in. Right now in the SUV I could feel hate, and plenty of it, going back and forth between Earl Ford and Bernie. Hadn’t often felt such powerful hate between men, and those times I did, violence broke out soon after. I shifted slightly, giving myself a clear shot through the space separating the two front seats.
“Seeing some patterns here,” Bernie said after a while.
“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
I was totally with the sheriff on that one. Patterns: I’d heard Bernie talking about them before, but what were they? Something you could see? I looked around, saw no patterns that I knew of.
“Here’s one pattern,” Bernie said. “This repetition of unexpected burials.”
“Don’t get you.”
“No? We dig up Suzie’s car and find Adelina. Then where you tell us Suzie’s supposed to be, we find Princess’s tags. There’s a pattern, kind of a sick one, so my guess is we’re looking for someone sick. See what I mean?”
“No.”
“Then maybe you weren’t much of a cop.”
“I am,” the sheriff said, his voice low. “I’m a good cop.”
“You’re not a cop,
Earl.”
The sheriff turned to Bernie and his voice rose. “I was, then, you bastard. I was a good cop.”
Did I like hearing people calling Bernie names? No. But I knew this was a kind of interview, and Bernie’s interviews were one of the best things we had going. Also I didn’t have a clear idea of what was bad about bastard.
“I accept that,” Bernie said. “You were a good cop. And then what happened?”
The sheriff didn’t answer. He faced front, eyes on the road, his face—the side of it I could see—green from the dash, with a deep groove in the cheek I hadn’t noticed before.
“Possible answer,” Bernie said. “Your cousin Les happened. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
The sheriff said nothing.
“Les came back from the army, dishonorably discharged and all fucked up,” Bernie said.
“He was already fucked up,” said Earl Ford.
“But you hired him anyway.”
“Military guys make good cops—you know that.”
“Not military guys like him.”
“Hindsight,” the sheriff said.
“Always this easy on yourself ?”
More silence. Soon lights appeared, the moon got dimmer, and we rolled into Nowhereville, the town quiet, no one around.
“You know Cedric Booker?” Bernie said.
“The Valley DA? Talked to him once or twice.”
“That was him on the phone, the call about Les. He’s done some digging—backs up that idea of yours.”
“What idea?”
“About Les being fucked up even before the service. Wouldn’t mind hearing the story in your own words.” The sheriff turned up a side street, a street with a few lamps at first and then none. “Talk,” Bernie said. “Chet and I are in a hurry.”
We were?
The houses got smaller and farther apart and soon we were in open country. The ground rose and the road began to curve, back and forth. Trees appeared. Eucalyptus: I could smell them— almost taste them, in fact, eucalyptus twigs being my favorite.