by Chuck Logan
“What was the weather like?” he asked.
“Stormed the day before, rained off and on all night,” Beeman said.
“Wind?”
“Dead still the day of the event, real thick ground fog all morning.”
“Humid, lot of moisture in the air,” Rane said, thinking out loud as he got up and studied the ground between where Beeman stood in the crime-scene square and the edge of the trees. The area was dotted with tall brush and saplings.
“Our best guess, from the angle of the wound, was a shot from that copse of trees up yonder, on that knoll,” Beeman pointed to the tree line on the left.
“That’s under a hundred yards,” Rane said.
“Ninety-four yards, we measured it,” Beeman said slowly, narrowing his eyes with interest.
“And you think the round you recovered is from an Enfield?”
“Yep.”
“You recall reading in Civil War history how the officers were always telling the troops to fire low, aim at their feet?” Rane asked.
Beeman squinted at him. “So? Large-caliber rifles in the hands of rookies tended to climb.”
“There’s another reason,” Rane said. “The baseline sight on a three-band Enfield was service-set for a hundred fifty yards at the factory in England.”
“Huh,” Beeman said.
“Off the record, you think it was Nickels, right?”
“Go on,” Beeman said slowly.
“He any good?”
“Shot competition with the Forrest Rifles. People who know say he once put three out of five shots in a can of Skoal, offhand at two hundred yards,” Beeman said.
“Iron sights or with a scope?”
“Original sights on an original Enfield with a re-rifled barrel by some fancy gunsmith up North. No expense spared. His father-in-law’s gun.”
“If that gun was here he didn’t shoot from ninety yards,” Rane mused. “The round would still be in trajectory at that range. He’d have to hold low for a serious chest shot. That’s leaving too much to chance. You’d want your sights dead on target.”
Beeman thought about it as Rane left him and walked back to the edge of the trees, where Beeman said the reenactors had emerged from the woods. Trying to reconstruct what happened, he spent twenty minutes picking along the tree line, then he took another ten minutes walking slowly toward, then past Beeman, moving serpentinely through the clumps of brush. Every few steps he looked past the copse of trees deeper into the woods at a low saddle of ground.
He stopped about fifty yards past where Beeman stood in the rectangle of tape. “Hey Beeman, come over here.”
Beeman joined him and Rane pointed to the branch of a frail scrub oak, no more than six feet tall. Beeman extended his hand and fingered a long wisp of frayed brown yarn wrapped by rain and wind around the slender branch. Virtually invisible.
“Like from a scarf, got snagged when somebody walked through? It was cold that morning when we got up. Some guys were wearing knit scarves,” Beeman speculated.
“Uh-huh,” Rane said. “Same guy walked through about fifty yards over there.” He pointed back toward the woods. “C’mon.”
Rane led Beeman through the field to another thicket, bent down, picked up a twig, and used it to lift a barely intact length of yarn fouled on a bush. A wad of dead leaves was loosely tied on the end.
“How the hell you think to look for shit in the bushes?” Beeman asked, now giving Rane his full attention.
Rane shrugged. “Ninety-eight percent of what I do is watching. About two percent involves pushing the button on a camera. I’ve covered black-powder shooting competitions where they hang pieces of cardboard from their spotting scopes on string so they can judge the wind.”
“Wind dangles,” Beeman said slowly. “Sonofabitch.” He raised his eyes to the copse on the knoll. And Rane, looking across the field, up the slope, was thinking he was looking at the last view Paul had seen. He turned away from Beeman, calling over his shoulder, “I’m going to have a look up in those woods.”
“I was all through that knoll with a half a dozen deputies and city cops…” Beeman said. Then he nodded. “Might as well…” Beeman’s cell phone rang; Rane heard him say, “You go ahead, I’ll be along directly,” as he flipped it open.
Rane continued to walk toward the trees, absorbing Paul’s death at every step. He saw Jenny’s eyes go wide with shock, saw Molly uncomprehending at first, then that first intimation of the vacancy, of something torn out at the root and gone forever.
Rane did the tricks, bore down, rinsed his eyes clear of distraction, and focused on the trees ahead, on the idea of the man who had crouched up there with his smug plan and confidence in his skills with his rifle. The man who took away Molly’s father.
As he walked, he instinctively figured angles, distances, and the roll of the ground. Didn’t want to shoot downhill. And you thought the wind would be a problem, so you came in here, set up your kill zone, strung the dangles. Figured you could monitor them with a spotting scope or a good pair of binoculars. The copse would put you in under a hundred yards but you’re good and you trust your sights. So you were deeper in the trees, more cover there, and you’d have a flatter shot. Wanted the round to fall exactly where your sights were placed.
He looked over his shoulder to confirm his direction and distance to the square of rippling yellow tape where Beeman leaned his head back, stretching his spine, still talking on the cell. He turned and snagged the toe of his Nikes on a root. Off-balance, he stopped, blinked, and looked at his sweaty hands. Christ, he was shaking.
And then, almost mechanically, by a process of elimination, he arrived at the possibility that feelings don’t emerge one at a time. The whole messy gob tumbles out. John Rane had lived his life through his eyes, instincts, and reflexes. So what’s this? Thawing out?
The tremor passed and he carefully approached a low saddle of ground secluded in the trees.
Five minutes later, Beeman joined him as he squatted above a leaf-matted depression behind a thick fallen oak. The hollow was screened by trees to the left and right, but they opened in front to give a view of the portion of the field with the yellow tape.
Carefully, he probed the decayed leaves with a stick and turned over a soggy cigarette butt. “You know anybody who smokes Pall Malls?”
Beeman studied the butt and said, “Fucking Darl Leets. But Darl was located down the field from me. Got witnesses…still,” he thought out loud.
Rane raised the stick and extended his arm, directing Beeman’s attention to frail wisps of fuzzy material snagged on a branch; bare remnants of the same yarn thread. Real fast, they’d reached a point where they were communicating pretty much with their eyes.
“I make the range at two hundred yards, maybe a little more,” Rane said, thinking out loud, hunkered down, forearms on knees, looking out at the field. “Game it out. He was shooting a low-velocity ball traveling maybe eight hundred feet a second at a little over two hundred yards. There’s a lot of moisture in the air and that could slow it down more. Do the math. The round takes almost a second to get there. That’s enough time for Paul to turn in front of you.” Rane stood up, dusted off his jeans, and then gently placed his fingertip on Beeman’s chest. “If he’s as good as you say, he didn’t miss.”
Beeman cocked his head. “Go on?”
“Things don’t jump in front of your target on the range, Beeman. And soon as he shot he was blind with the smoke.”
Beeman squinted. “You get that out of your book?”
Rane smiled blandly and shrugged. “You make certain assumptions you come up with a hypothesis.”
“Hy-poth-e-sis, huh?” Beeman said, enunciating carefully.
Rane leaned back, hoping he was coming across to the Southern cop as Just Plain Rane, a news guy long on bookish technique and short on experience.
“Sonofabitch,” Beeman breathed. “We didn’t look back here inside the trees that much, figured he’d be up on that knoll.
Leave this. Don’t touch anything. I’ll get somebody out here with an evidence kit and take some pictures.” He pulled a blue bandanna from his back pocket and tied it to a branch to identify the site. “C’mon,” he said. “I gotta get back to the sheriff’s office.”
They walked to the car without speaking. When they got there, Beeman casually pointed into the passenger seat. “Left your camera. Taking pictures was the last thing on your mind, huh John.” It was not a question.
Rane did not respond. Make a note: beneath his good old boy routine, Beeman’s a lot smarter than he looks.
36
THEY DROVE BACK TO TOWN NOT SAYING MUCH until Rane got out of the police car and Beeman admonished, “Don’t go ’way. Stay on your cell and we’ll hook up a little later.” After the cop drove off, Rane got in his Jeep, wiped sweat from his eyes, reached for a bottle of water, and drank half of it in one long gulp. Then, seeing a slight prickle of red on his forearms, he dug a tube of sunscreen from the glove compartment and massaged it into his arms, neck, and face. So far so good. Or was it? He didn’t quite trust how he and Beeman went from zero to sixty so fast.
In the meantime, he wanted to have a look at this Leets bunch. So he flipped open his cell and called Anne Payton, who answered on the third ring; apparently the last living American without voice mail.
“Anne, this is John Rane. Where can I find Darl Leets?”
“Wow,” Anne said, taking a deep breath. “That’s not exactly my neck of the woods. I believe you’ll have to go out old 45 into Tennessee. Right over the line on the left you’ll see the ruins of the old Shamrock Motel, where Buford Pusser shot Louise Hathcock, which is the same place, incidentally, where Louise shot her ex-husband, Jack. Or, by the alternative version, where Towhead White, Louise’s boyfriend, shot Jack. A little ways up the road from there on the right side you’ll see a sign for the XTC Lounge. The letters are a play on words, like ‘ecstasy.’ That’s Darl’s beer joint. Long as you’re out that way you might as well take a drive up New Hope Road. That’s where they ambushed Buford and killed his wife, Pauline.”
“Thanks,” Rane said, rolling his eyes at the information overload and jotting notes on his pad.
“And John…” Anne said.
“Yeah?”
“It can still get kind of wild and woolly up that way. I highly suggest you don’t go out there alone.”
“I hear you, thanks,” Rane said, ending the call. Then he drove to a station up on the highway and gassed the Jeep, went in, and asked directions. A cashier with frosted hair and tanning-booth skin produced a county map and marked it for him. “Hon,” she advised, “you picked the one place that is definitely not on the Civil War tour.” She nodded at the Jeep pulled up right next to the door. “I’d lose the Minnesota plates. And maybe get a voice implant.”
Rane thanked her, paid, got back in his Jeep, and headed north out of town. After one wrong turn, he found a sign that marked old 45, and took it across State Line Road into Tennessee.
Like Anne said, right over the state line he passed a pad of cracked asphalt on the left. He met a tan-and-white police car coming in the other lane, checked the rearview, and watched the cop car swing in a U-turn and fall in behind him. Moments later he spied a burned-out neon sign, from which most of the lights had been replaced by hand-lettered plywood: XTC.
The cop car continued on up the road as Rane turned right up a gravel access and found the one-story building tucked in brush next to a rusted chain-link fence in which caged, cannibalized auto chassis sprouted weeds. Three trucks were parked in the gravel lot. One of them, a muddy metallic gray Ram Charger, sported vanity plates that caught Rane’s eye: OJDIDIT. Another “gotcha” picture.
He got out, debating which set of reflexes to wear into this place. Take his camera bag and talk the story? Or play the wandering tourist soaking up the local color?
The camera won. He tucked it in the haversack, slung it over his shoulder, and walked into the bar that smelled of sawdust and smoke and beer. The interior was one long dark room with a glow of jukebox red and green in the back. Another light hung over the bright green felt of a pool table. A cue tapped a ball, the ball clicked on another ball. The second ball dropped in a pocket with a muted leather thump. The two men at the table chalked their cues and did not look up from their game. A third man sat behind the bar, reading a newspaper. He had a cup of coffee in front of him and a cigarette burning in an ashtray.
The fourth man in the room sat on a barstool, bent over a glass of beer, thickset and whiskered, in field-dirty flannel and denim. To the right of the bar, an office door was ajar, and from inside the room Rane heard the quiet static and squelch of a police-band radio. A trinity of framed Civil War paintings decorated the brown imitation-pine-paneled walls: Lee, Jackson, and Stuart.
He walked toward the bartender, keying on the red pack of Pall Mall cigarettes lying next to his ashtray. Maybe here was a chance to gall Beeman with another amateur-detective gambit?
As Rane sat down, the guy reading the newspaper looked up. He had a long torso sheathed in a tight blue T-shirt on which white letters read: GET-R-DONE. If this was Leets and that was his truck outside, he had a flair for punchy abbreviations. He had smallish vigorous hands and stubby muscular arms covered in bristly black hair. More of the coarse hair was combed straight back on his head. The porcine quality softened on the boyish features of his face. His dark brown eyes, however, were hard and alert.
“What can I get you?” he asked amiably, putting aside a copy of the Daily Corinthian.
Rane said offhand, “Whatever the locals prefer.” His voice and choice of language produced a barely perceptible waver in the smoky air as the three other men in the room shifted their eyes. One of the pool shooters casually exited the front door, returned a moment later, and whispered to the other guy at the pool table.
Minnesota plates.
The raggedy guy down the bar gave a phlegmy snort without raising his eyes from his glass. “Fetch’m a map, Darl, I think he missed his turn to Chicago.” A working odor of sweat, alcohol, and manure wafted off him.
The bartender ignored the comment. He said, “We got weak-ass Baptist Mississippi beer and we got Tennessee beer. Brands don’t count. The Tennessee beer’s got more alcohol by percent.”
“Bud. Tennessee,” Rane said, unslinging his bag and setting it on the countertop. The heavy Nikon and lens made a dense, expensive clunk next to the ashtray.
As the bartender bent to a cooler behind the bar, Rane shifted his bag away from the ashtray, plucking up a cigarette butt and dropping the hand to his lap. When the bartender brought up an opened bottle and a glass, Rane took the chilled brown bottle, held up his other hand, refusing the glass. Then he picked up the napkin the bartender set down next to the glass, palmed the cigarette butt into it, and slipped it in his jeans pocket. One smooth motion.
As he hoisted the beer to his lips, he noticed that the big guy had moved silently down the bar and now leaned, too close. “See you got a haversack there,” he said.
Rane sipped his beer, nodded.
“Haversack’s for food,” the guy said, knitting his brow.
“Camera,” Rane said, flipping open the flap and showing part of the Nikon.
“How much it worth?” the guy said, appraising the complex nomenclature with a grin from which two of the front teeth were missing.
“Back off, Sweet; give the man some air,” the bartender said, quietly in charge. The big guy leered, moving his face to within inches of Rane’s, then slowly retreated down the bar. “That ain’t no tourist camera, is it?” the bartender inquired with a smile.
Rane leaned forward, resting his forearms on the bar. “I’m a news photographer. I work for a paper in St. Paul, Minnesota.”
“Photographer, huh? You ever take any pictures for the National Geographic magazine?”
Rane smiled and shook his head. “Nope, never have.”
The bartender swiped at a smear on the bar counter with
a flourish of his bar rag. “What would you say if I told you that every National Geographic magazine published in the world from the sixties on was printed right down the road in Corinth, Mississippi?”
“No kidding,” Rane said.
“True fact, up until about a year and a half ago when they sold World Color. So what brings you down here?”
“The Minnesota guy who got killed at Kirby Creek. Figured I’d look around, take a few pictures. Ask a few questions.”
“What do people say?” the bartender asked, curious.
Rane shrugged. “Depends. Officially they tell me it was a freak accident. One theory is a piece of ramrod broke off. Another is somebody had a loaded musket and didn’t know it. They never found a bullet, so I don’t know…” He became aware of someone standing next to him; he turned his head and saw a lean, fox-faced man in a flowing Hawaiian shirt, one of the pool shooters.
“Go on the Internet, to AuthenticCampaigner.com. That’s a Web site for hardcore reenactors. There’s a big-ass debate going on about safety after Kirby Creek.” The guy bobbed his head.
Now the big guy down the bar chimed in, “Shouldn’t let these hardcore assholes spring rammers. Mainstream ain’t allowed. My cousin was at Perryville couple years back and this Yankee dickweed actually blasted a rammer across the field…”
“Oh yeah? What was that like?” the bartender asked.
The guy called Sweet giggled. “Well, I guess it wobbled about thirty yards and stuck in the ground.”
“Not exactly a lethal weapon,” the bartender said.
“Bullshit.” Now the other pool shooter had joined the discussion. “I read where at Petersburg the two sides got bored in the siege works and were shooting rammers back and forth at each other.”
“Bullshit is right,” said the bartender with a droll scowl. “I think what you got is a shooter.”
Rane lowered his beer bottle and studied the man behind the bar, who, he was pretty sure now, was Darl Leets.
