“The state knows about shadows?”
“Not officially, and ain’t nothin’ writ down on paper,” Waco said, “but a body don’t rise to top dog less’n he works his way up. It just don’t get talked about . . . officially or unofficially. I believe Elray even done give some of his pay to Cake, but I hain’t sure on thet. Wouldn’t surprise me none, though.”
The widow came over to them. It had been raining off and on since the funeral and the field was muddy. She carried two cups of coffee and handed them to the men.
“You’n not a G-man?” the woman said to Service.
“No, ma’am. I’m just along to see if I can help.”
“You want to hep, find him which murdered my husband,” she said. She held up a large cloth sack and Service looked inside. It was the horse headdress with the tall black plumes.
“Each a’ them feathers rep’sents a Spargo done fell in service to his country. Most of ’em was durin’ the wars—One, Two, Korea, Vietnam. Elray’s the first lawman in the clan, and he deserves his feather, but I cain’t put it in till we know justice’s been done. You get things took care of, you bring ’em back, and I’ll know.”
Grady Service tried to return the bag to her, but she pushed it back at him. “Let it remind you what it is you got to do,” she said.
Her sweet scent overwhelmed him, and all he could do was nod as she marched away to talk to others.
“What is that perfume?” Service asked.
“Plumgranny, not perfume,” Eddie Waco said after a theatrical sniff. “Bin around as a sweet scent since the time a’ Shakespeare, I hear.”
“Does she actually think I can do something about finding her husband’s killer?”
“Seems to me, you’n the one holdin’ the bag,” Eddie Waco said, grinning and looking down. “You done been made Elray Spargo’s champeen, and thet hain’t no little thing in these here parts.”
Service rolled his eyes and muttered, “Just great.”
15
WEST PLAINS, MISSOURI
MAY 26, 2004
The glassed-in lobby of the hospital in West Plains had the sharp angle of a ship’s bow. Service found Special Agent Tatie Monica in a single room, in bed, flat on her stomach.
She craned to look over her shoulder and glared. “They stole our body.”
“They?”
“Them, they, somebody. Our evidence is gone.”
She was a very unhappy fed. He said, “You mean the man’s family? They didn’t steal him, they buried him.”
“Some damn hillbilly sheriff carried it away in a helicopter,” she said. “Without authorization, which is tampering with and impeding a federal investigation.”
She wasn’t listening. “He did it for the family, and relax—I know where he is.”
“You know? You know! Jesus, why didn’t you stop them?” she asked.
Service got a chair, pulled it around so she could see him, and sat down with the back of the chair against his chest. “They have some pretty firm convictions about how and when they bury their dead.” He didn’t reveal Agent Eddie Waco’s role in what had happened.
She rolled her eyes and clenched her fists.
“You’ll heal faster if you stay calm,” Service said.
“I’m trying to find a murderer, some hillbilly sheriff ganks my evidence and . . . and now I’m getting health advice from a man who makes his living chasing people who chase animals!”
“Add fish, and that’s a pretty good job description,” he said.
The agent let loose a hiss of anguish. “I want out of this fucking place!”
“Who’s stopping you?”
“They had to do surgery.”
“I thought you said no cutting.”
“Bite me,” she shot at him.
“You brought it up.”
She looked at him through tight eyes. “No bull, you really know where the body is?”
“I was at the funeral.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t stop them,” she keened.
“I also met a man who saw the body right after the killing.”
Special Agent Monica sucked in a breath. “Don’t shit me,” she whispered, propping herself up on her elbows.
“Truth,” he said. “He was the dead man’s pine shadow.”
She rolled her eyes again. “English, Service. What the fuck is a pine shadow?”
“Down here it’s an unpaid volunteer partner to a conservation agent. Other places it’s probably the darkness behind and below a tree when the sun shines on it.”
She grimaced and switched on a professional tone. “This guy told you something?”
“Not yet.” Cake Culkin had been in no shape for cogent thought, much less a penetrating interview.
“But he will?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Jesus,” she complained. “Does the lead agent get to know this plan?”
“That’s why I’m here,” he said.
“Visitors are supposed to boost a patient’s spirits and confidence.”
“Real confidence comes from within,” he said.
“Are you pathologically objective?”
“When I need to be.”
“I don’t like how this is playing out,” Agent Monica said. “Two kills so close in time—that’s never happened before.”
“Maybe he’s in a hurry.”
“This guy doesn’t make mistakes: He’s unbelievable. We’re taught that the average murderer makes at least two dozen mistakes. This guy hasn’t made any so far . . . but it could be his psychosis is deepening,” she said, almost to herself.
“We’ve got a potential witness here and the kill site in Wisconsin. Those’re mistakes, and maybe there are more.”
“And?” she said impatiently.
“Wayno’s body was warm and wet. Thorkaldsson could have walked up on the killer, which means his timing was off, his source of information and calculations not what they’ve been, right? And he didn’t bother to collect the fishing gear, which led us to the kill site. There’s bound to be more if we look in the right place, and ask the right questions.”
She looked at him for a long time before covering her eyes with a forearm and moaning loud enough to concern him. “You want me to call a nurse?”
Tatie Monica struggled to sit up and hissed, “I want out of here. I’ve been after this asshole for three years, and now that he’s accelerating I am not going to lay here like of leg of ham.”
“Lamb,” Service said. “Leg of lamb, not ham.”
“Lamb, Spam,” she grumbled.
“Is that what happens in these cases—the killers speed up?”
“This one defies generalization,” she said. “I’ve insisted all along that man is an imperfect animal. Locard’s exchange principle tells us that when two things come in contact, each will leave something behind. There has to be something this guy is missing, has to be.” She looked at him. “What’s the plan?”
“Agent Waco is with the witness. When you’re ready to leave, we’ll go see them.”
She pointed at a wall locker. “My clothes are in there.”
“You were sorta short on clothes last time I saw you.”
“My people brought more stuff.”
He took out slacks, a blouse, and boots, and set them on the chair.
She managed to swing her legs down to the floor and sit up, but not without a lot of puffing and contorted faces. He pushed the chair down the side of the bed so that it was in front of her.
“You sure you want to do this?”
She said, “Stop gawking and get out.”
He stepped outside the room to find Special Agent Larry Gasparino carrying two Styrofoam cups. Service blocked the door. “She’s getting dressed.”
“They
’re kicking her loose?” the young agent asked.
“In a manner of speaking. You got off the river okay?
“We had to use chain saws and axes all the way down. How is she?”
“Testy,” Service said.
“Normal, then.”
“She thinks things are falling apart.”
Gasparino stared at him. “Optimism isn’t part of her genetic wiring.”
“Perfectionist?”
“Tendencies, but usually she knows when she goes too far.”
“Pressure’s getting to her,” Service said.
“The list is her safety valve,” the agent said.
List? “We all gotta believe in something,” Service said, “and a list is as good as anything.” What was Gasparino inadvertently disclosing?
“So far,” Gasparino said. “Not that it’s put us ahead of the game.”
A list of what? He knew he couldn’t ask directly. Gasparino had let something slip and didn’t seem to realize it. “Been with her long?”
“January,” the man said. “Fucking Wisconsin winters. We got people in our office who pray for thirty below for Packer games, and I’m talking, like, out-fucking-doors! They paint their man-boobs in Packer green and go to the frigging games shirtless. Is that supposed to be normal, or what?” The man shook his head.
“Monica good to work for?”
“Better than I thought she’d be,” Gasparino said.
Service saw a flash of panic in the man’s eyes. Rule one for feds: Never talk outside school.
He backed off and told himself he needed to know more about the list but didn’t want to spook the young agent.
“You talk to the agent holding down the site in Wisconsin?”
“Bobbi?” He shook his head again. “I’ve been too busy securing what we brought down the river. Then I slept like a dead man. I thought chain saws were supposed to make wood cutting fast and easy.”
Service nodded sympathetically. Were any of the agents focused on the big picture in this case? “That storm was bad.”
“I was in the city on 9/11,” Gasparino said. “Not near Ground Zero, but it was scary enough. This was worse.”
The disaster in New York City had become the standard for measuring the magnitude and meaning of all disasters and atrocities, Service thought. People who survived natural disasters had similar respect in the aftermath. Gasparino was young and seemed earnest, but he was also green. He had mentioned the list on the unwarranted assumption that Service was in the loop, and his gut told him he’d better quickly find a way into it.
Tatie Monica limped gingerly out of her room and started down the hall with the two men flanking her. “This turns out to be bullshit . . . ,” she muttered, not finishing her statement.
16
LEFT SHOULDER RIDGE, MISSOURI
MAY 26, 2004
Gasparino had a fairly new black Ford Expedition, and he helped Monica into the backseat so she could stretch out her legs. Service sat up front to navigate. Eddie Waco had shown him the road to Cake Culkin’s place during the trip to West Plains to drop him off. He told Gasparino to turn north along the border between Oregon and Ripley counties.
“Jesus, are we there yet?” Monica asked repeatedly, the first time less than two minutes outside the West Plains city limits.
“Chill,” Service said the first time she complained. “It’s about forty miles—and there’s no interstate.”
Gasparino reacted by speeding up, but when he fishtailed around a curve, Service told him to slow down. “We don’t want to end up in a ditch with the snakes,” he said. This reminded him that Nantz would have easily negotiated these roads, which were a lot more difficult than M-35. Not an accident, he told himself for the umpteenth time. What did he need to move the Troops off their conclusion and to reopen the investigation? More importantly, who would want to run her off the road?
“Goddammit, Larry, listen to the man!” Tatie Monica squawked from the backseat.
Cake Culkin lived about five miles from the Spargos’ place, in the rocky saddle and shadow of a razorback ridge called Left Shoulder. They parked on the main gravel road, and Service led them on foot down the edge of a rutted dirt-and-gravel track that served as the man’s driveway. The cabin was small and tidy, with a rickety carport and an older-model black Chevy pickup in front, the truck Eddie Waco had used to take him to West Plains. Service left the agents in the woods while he went to the house. The hood of the truck was cold. He stood to the side of the door, knocked, waited.
Eddie Waco answered the door, looked up, and nodded. “Back quicker’n I figgered,” he said, opening it. “Them feds lurkin’ out yonder?”
“Two of them.”
“Best fetch ’em on in.”
Service looked back and waved.
Waco led them into a small kitchen. Cake Culkin was sitting at a small round table, his hands folded in front of him, his leg up on a chair.
“Cake, these folks want ta talk at ya’ll some,” Waco said.
The man didn’t look up. “They feds?”
“Two of ’em,” Eddie Waco said.
“You can wait outside,” Tatie Monica said dismissively to the Missouri conservation agent.
“We both stay,” Service said.
The FBI agent glared.
“Waco saved your ass,” Service said. “Literally.”
Monica shrugged with resignation and rolled her eyes. She couldn’t communicate without facial punctuation, a lousy habit for a cop or a poker player. The more he saw, the greater his concern about her competence. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there were moments when she seemed almost desperate.
“You found Agent Spargo,” she began, a statement, not a question. Right to the point, no empathy for the man’s potential discomfort or anxieties.
“I reckon I seen ’im,” Cake said. “And run.” His voice cracked as he sucked in a breath.
The FBI agent seemed to realize something was wrong and she suddenly switched gears. “Your name’s Cake, right? I’m Tatie.” Off a beat and too late, Service thought. The man was going to turtle. Was it lack of skills on her part, or impatience?
Cake Culkin gave a pleading look to Eddie Waco, whose face remained impassive.
“Let’s start again,” Tatie Monica said. “I’m Tatie, Cake. You want anything?”
Too late, Service thought. Her initial directness had put the man on his heels, left him tight and withdrawn.
“I hain’t sick,” Culkin said.
“Cake,” Eddie Waco said, “these folks want to find who done Elray like thet.”
“I’ll talk ta you’n,” the man said. “And him,” he added with a nod to Service, “but I already done took all y’all through this afore.”
Service brushed Monica’s sleeve to let her know she should keep quiet. Apparently she got the hint.
“Memories kin be a might slippery sometimes,” Eddie Waco said. “’Member back whin you’n an’ Elray an’ me done chased thet ole boy kilt his wife over ta White Briar? Me an’ Elray was sure it were a blue truck, but it weren’t. Was black, jes like you said.”
“Had dirt all over it,” Cake Culkin said. “Coulda bin blue.”
“But it weren’t, and been just Elray and me, we’d a’ missed that ole boy, but havin’ you along made the case. That’s what we got here, Cake. More heads we got, better off we are, okay? We need to go over what you seen again.”
“Shoot,” Culkin said with a grin. “You been ta college and you got you a steel-trap mind.”
“The trap sometimes gets a mite rusty,” Waco said with a smile.
Service could feel Tatie Monica fidgeting and bumped her to settle her down.
“Seein’ Elray that way spooked us all,” Waco added.
“You boys din’t run,” Culkin said, running his h
ands through his hair and sucking in a deep breath. “Who you think wanna do somethin’ like that ta Elray?”
“Don’t know yet,” Waco said. “But you can help us ta help Fi and them young ’uns.”
Cake Culkin nodded emphatically. “I done said what I seen.”
“He had a meeting?” Waco asked.
Culkin nodded.
“Who did he meet, Cake?”
“Elray didn’t say.”
“You and him went way back. You knew him.”
“Nobody knew Elray. Well, mebbe Fi. He was differ’nt to differ’nt folks. Always told me he was a thespeen. What’s that mean?”
“Actor,” Service said.
Culkin grinned. “That was ole Elray.”
“You cain’t work all them years with a man and not know him,” Eddie Waco said.
“You agents is all the same. Nobody knows all y’all.”
Eddie Waco said, “I take yore pint, Cake, but the way it is, you don’t give us somethin’, we gon’ be plumb outta luck.”
“You mind if I ask a question, Cake?” Service asked.
“’Speck not.”
“You got good trout fishing around here?”
“Passable, I reckon.”
“You fish?”
The man said, “Whin I git the chance.”
“How do you know when the bite’s on?” Service asked.
Cake Culkin rolled his tongue inside his cheek. “I jes keep my eyes open.”
“Weather, maybe?”
“Wind tells a man a lot. Warm rain fallin’. An’ I kick the grass with my boots, see what might skitter about.”
“Spiderwebs under bridges?” Service asked.
Culkin grinned and raised an eyebrow. “I reckon you done some fishin’ yoreseff.”
“Some,” Service allowed. “What we have here, Cake, is an empty web, and we’re not kickin anything up in the grass. Did you and Elray plan to fish that night?”
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