Littlefield

by Scott Nicholson

  “Okay, then. I won’t check your images. I’ll trust you.”

  “Sheriff, you touch my camera and I promise I’ll pull every public-records request in the book and tie up your staff for the next two years on paperwork. Push your solve rate way down and kill your reelection bid.”

  Littlefield turned to Budget Bill. “And they say the liberal media has no heart these days.”

  Cindy clicked a few photos of the attendants struggling to ferry the corpse to the back of Hoyle’s station wagon, then Littlefield affected a somber study of the crime scene as Cindy took his picture. Bill Willard put his hand over his face when she pointed the camera at him.

  “So, what do you have, Sheriff?” she asked. “Hunting accident? Suicide? Maybe a crime of passion or a dispute with his boss?”

  “Hey!” Bill said, raising his voice enough to cause both the attendants and Morton to stop what they were doing and look. “I don’t give a hoot about your Green Party, Green Peace, lesbian-ecoterrorist act, because I’ve got a legal right to rip this mountain down to pebbles and sawdust if I want. But a smart little reporter like you surely knows slander and libel law.”

  She shrugged in feigned innocence. “I’m just generically speculating. Are you confirming that Mr. Carter was employed by you at the time of his demise?”

  Bill’s face twisted as if wanted to spit out whatever poison was sitting on his tongue. He moved over to inspect the bulldozer.

  Littlefield kept his face neutral, though half of him wanted to laugh despite the grimness of the death. The spilled blood had soaked into the mud and turned brown, and the next rain would erase it forever, drawing nutrients to the worms and beginning Carter’s slow return to dust. He focused on the footprints and realized what had troubled him.

  Judging from the way the body had fallen, the person in the sneakers—and Littlefield was leaning toward “kid” instead of “woman”—couldn’t have been the killer. The wound was from the front, and the sneaker prints were beside or behind Carter’s prints. They were slightly deeper and more smeared where the kid had apparently dashed toward the woods, possibly after the gunshot, though there was no easy way to tell if the sneaker prints had been made before or after Carter’s death.

  Cindy started to duck under the yellow tape, but Littlefield yelled at her. “We got evidence to collect still. This scene isn’t cleared.”

  “I can get a better picture of you standing over here.”

  Littlefield debated the value of giving her a little ground. Bill Willard was glaring at him as if promising to never contribute another dime to his campaign coffers, but with the low contribution thresholds, Willard’s money meant nothing. He faced more damage from an antagonistic reporter. Plus, despite his proclaimed devotion to bachelorhood, she was still way cuter than Budget Bill Willard.

  Morton came from the woods shaking his head, carefully circumventing the footprints. “Nothing out there I could find,” he said. “We can come back with a metal detector and go over it.”

  “Let Perry Hoyle dig around in the skull a little first. Sometimes bullets bounce around in there and do their damage without ever leaving. What do you think of these footprints? Maybe one of the kids you and Perriotte chased yesterday?”

  “We can go over to the Hole and make some plaster casts, assuming the footprints are still there. But lots of kids come up here to party, fool around, do all the things we did when we were kids.”

  Littlefield gave a terse nod toward Cindy. “That was off the record.”

  She gave her grave-robber smile. “Sure, Sheriff. Anything you say.”

  “Well, I know one of the kids. Dexter McAllister. His dad’s supposed to bring him by the office today for questioning.”

  “Be easy to run a match on his shoes, or pull a warrant and go clean out his closet.”

  “Nah. Even a homer judge like Bleucus needs a little more evidence than this to issue paper, especially with a juvenile suspect.”

  “So you already have a suspect?” Cindy asked. She’d eased closer, pretending to focus her camera, and Littlefield had seen through the ploy and let it slide. He was annoyed at himself for so obviously playing her game.

  “He’s only a person of interest at this point.”

  The attendants had loaded Carter into Hoyle’s big Chrysler station wagon, where the man would be taking his last ride until the undertakers came to drain him and dress him for his going-away party. Littlefield didn’t know the man, but a search of his pick-up had turned up a copy of “Guns & Ammo” under the front seat, a six-pack of RC cola, a box of clean and well-oiled tools, and a plastic crucifix hanging from the rear-view mirror. No drugs, no firearms, no pornography, nothing to suggest a seedy character that would have lots of enemies.

  Hoyle was right: Littlefield had a lousy record of serving up sensible corpses. At least this one had died from a bullet. Or so it seemed. This was Mulatto Mountain, and all bets were off.

  “I think I’ll take a walk over to the Hole,” Littlefield said.

  Morton was about to open his mouth and note the obvious, that the Hole was a quarter-mile from the crime scene and even without the trees and ridges in between, the shooter couldn’t have pegged a perfect forehead shot from such a distance. But Morton also realized this was Mulatto Mountain, and his eyes went to the leaf-covered floor of the forest.

  “What about my bulldozer?” Bill Willard said. “Can I run it tomorrow morning or are you going to keep the scene clean? Besides reporters mucking around in it, I mean?”

  “I thought you couldn’t find another dozer man.”

  “I can run it myself if I have to. I got a schedule and a heavy bank note. The interest is eating me alive and I have to get these lots sold before the damned Democrats get us in another recession.”

  “Maybe you should go back to photography,” Cindy said. “I’m sure the world could use another few hundred limited-edition prints featuring fallen-down barns and white farmhouses. Rural nostalgia for people who don’t want to leave their condominiums.”

  “As soon as the sheriff clears the scene, I’m asking him to arrest you for trespassing.”

  “Hold on, Bill,” Littlefield said. “You’ll get your roads carved soon enough, and it won’t hurt you to lose a nickel or two.”

  Hoyle called from beside his station wagon. “I’m getting this guy back to town before he gets stiff on me. Give me a call later this evening.”

  Littlefield waved and turned to Cindy, figuring he could defuse the situation by getting her away from Bill Willard. “Morton, you take over the scene. Cindy, you’re welcome to come with me and check out the Hole.”

  Morton’s mouth twitched as if he wanted to snicker at the unintended double entendre. But Littlefield’s warning glance reminded him this was serious business and that somebody might have lost a husband, father, brother, fellow parishioner. He ventured into the woods, Cindy right behind him.

  “So this is connected to the ‘Shots fired’ report from yesterday?” she said, struggling to keep up with his long, purposeful strides.

  “I never said that.”

  “Damn it, Sheriff, everything you say, you say you didn’t say. When are you going to dish me something straight?”

  “I’ll give you the incident report as required by public-records law. I’ll have a statement after the next-of-kin is informed.”

  “I could already write your statement, blindfolded and without fingers. Let me guess. It goes, ‘We are diligently pursuing every avenue to solve this incident and bring the suspect to justice. Since this is an ongoing investigation, I can make no further comment at this time.’”

  “Not bad. If we had the budget for a P.R. person, you’d be a natural.”

  “I couldn’t work P.R. I’d never be happy telling only one side of the story.”

  Littlefield held back a briar vine to allow Cindy to pass. He released it too soon and it tangled in her hair. He fumbled with it, not caring that the thorns pricked his fingers. Her hair was soft and
smelled like a summer meadow, and his heart felt funny, as if it had spooled loose from its arteries and was floating around the cage of his chest. By the time he’d freed her, the golden hair was streaked with his blood.

  “Sorry about that,” he said.

  “You got a soft touch for such a hard-ass,” she said.

  He swallowed, aware that she was playing him, working him over with a feminine magic spell so she could elicit enough inside information for a good scoop. But, like any man caught in a spell, being aware of it didn’t matter one damned bit. All he could do was gape and try not to drool.

  “Well, I’ve had some practice,” he said.

  “Sheila Story, right?”

  He felt the clouds collide and block the sunshine that no doubt had radiated from his face. “That was a long time ago.”

  “The newspaper’s records go back to the early 1900s. And urban legends have a way of hitting the Internet.”

  “None of that ever happened.”

  She started walking again, obviously aware of the Hole’s location, and Littlefield wondered how many times she’d trespassed onto Bill Willard’s property seeking environmental violations. Or ghosts.

  “Death by drowning, due to a car accident in which you were the driver,” she said. “Could have happened to anyone, right?”

  “There was way more to it than what made the papers.”

  “Isn’t there always?”

  He followed after her, tempted for a moment to tell her the whole truth about Archer McFall and the red church, but he wasn’t sure what the truth was. That was all in the past, the dead had made their peace the best way they knew how, and the living learned to forget. “Okay. There was nothing to it. I killed her. I should have faced manslaughter charges, or at least reckless endangerment.”

  “And your little brother? Dying in that tragic hanging accident?”

  Littlefield stopped and let her walk ahead, over a rise that would give them a view of the Hole. “What kind of a heartless bitch are you?” he said. “You enjoy other people’s pain?”

  She spun, kicking up leaves in her anger. “No, I just have a thing for the truth. And I have no respect for people who hide themselves away and sleepwalk through life. Especially when other people are counting on them.”

  “Like I don’t swallow my guilt every waking minute and get a double helping when I’m asleep? You think I haven’t noticed that people around me keep dying in weird ways? I can taste it. You don’t have to shove it down my throat.”

  Cindy looked down then her eyes flicked to the ridge. “Sorry, Sheriff. I guess I want to believe in something magical so much that I’ll even take ghosts and boogeymen if that’s the best I can get.”

  “Well, there’s always the Baptist Church.”

  “That’s not magical to me. Religion has little to do with spirituality.”

  Littlefield didn’t have an answer to that one. Two years ago, he’d started attending intermittent services again, though he felt nothing inside the church except the vibrations of the pipe organ and the heat of too many perfumed bodies crammed into such a small space. “You want to believe the Hole is haunted?”

  “I’ve read the clippings and I talked to Arvel down at the history society,” she said. “I’ve been in the cave with my tape recorder and digital camera and all I got was a sinus infection.”

  Littlefield considered telling her about the vanishing man he’d encountered the night before, but she would either laugh in his face or else make him remember every detail, and it was just another incident he was learning to forget. Besides, he had no proof that the man—“ghost,” if you want to call it that—had any connection to the Hole.

  For all he knew, Pickett County coughed up its dead on a regular basis, which only affirmed his plan to move to Florida after his retirement. He had no desire to be buried here because he didn’t know how permanent the eternal rest would be.

  “Well, let’s check it out and get you off Willard’s land before he has a stroke,” the sheriff said, continuing over the wooded rise. “Two deaths on Mulatto Mountain in one day would get people talking more than they already will.”

  “Don’t worry, Sheriff. I won’t play it up. I have to report the shooting death, but I’ll go oatmeal. But you have to promise me the scoop if there are any breaks. The Charlotte and Winston-Salem papers will be up here, maybe even the television vans, once the word trickles out.”

  “We’ve got the body scraped up, so there won’t be much for them to shoot. And I’ll give you the best quotes.”

  She moved ahead of him again, in better shape and scarcely breathing hard. The streak of his blood in her hair had dried to brown. She reached the ridge and stood among the laurels, looking through the trees. Littlefield was about to join her when he saw the pair of binoculars lying in a bed of waxy green galax.

  He slipped his shirt sleeve down over his fingers and picked them up. He peered through them. The field of vision was adjusted so that it was focused on the Hole. Somebody had been watching it.

  Littlefield looked around. The leaves had been ruffled but the forest carpet was too thick to yield footprints. That didn’t necessarily mean the binoculars had belonged to Carter’s killer, but it was too much of a coincidence to consider a coincidence. Since Perriotte’s mind-blowing experience of the day before, a lot of people had become interested in Mulatto Mountain. Littlefield looped the binoculars strap around his neck and headed for the Hole.

  Cindy grabbed his arm. “Hear that?”

  Littlefield tilted his head. He’d lost some of his high range and the doctors were threatening to plug him with hearing aids. He’d resisted them so far but soon he wouldn’t be able to pass his physical without them. Despite his aural limitations, he made out a hollow tapping from inside the cave.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. But somebody’s in there.”

  “You might have your scoop. But you better stay here.”

  Littlefield wasn’t sure why the killer would be dumb enough to hang around near the scene of the crime, but criminals were usually just plain stupid. That’s why gunmen held up the neighborhood liquor store, where they knew the lay of the land, instead of robbing a liquor store in the next town or state.

  He eased down the slope, hand on the butt of his sidearm. He wished he’d carried his radio so he could call Morton for back-up. It would be safer to scout the surrounding area in case the killer hadn’t acted alone, but Littlefield didn’t want to give the suspect a chance to slip away.

  Maybe this would solve a lot of mysteries, and that was worth a little risk. Littlefield was fed up with footprints ending in the middle of nowhere, raggedy men fading in the dead of night, and preachers who rose from the boneyard and led their dead congregations into the river. Even if it was a kid hiding out in there, an accidental killer, Littlefield would finally be able to wrap one up.

  He drew his revolver and eased across the clearing, the tapping sound swelling inside the cave and taking on a rhythmic beat. He scanned the woods and saw no movement, hoping Cindy was sharp enough to serve as sentinel.

  When he reached the mouth of the cave, he knelt by a jutting crag of granite and squinted into the shadowy opening.

  A man sat in the dirt, beating on a rock with a crooked stick. His movements were spastic and uncoordinated, elbow flying one way and wrist flexing another, but somehow the stick fell in a steady motion.

  The man’s hair was unkempt and he was pale, as if he’d spent most of his time indoors. He was wearing jean overalls, a farmer’s outfit. His mouth moved silently as if echoing the tapping of the stick.

  “Donnie,” Littlefield said.

  The man played on.

  “Donnie Eggers.”

  Littlefield didn’t like the scene that would play out once people learned Donnie was a murder suspect. Pickett County residents were civilized enough to be beyond lynching him, but plenty would grumble about the moron who should have been sent off to the state nu
thouse before “something like this happened, just like we knew it would.”

  “Hardy Eggers’s boy,” Cindy said from behind him, and Littlefield wasn’t even annoyed that she’d disobeyed his order to stay back.

  “This will plumb break Hardy’s heart,” Littlefield said. “And Pearl’s, too.”

  He called Donnie’s name several times, but the vacant-eyed man only swung the stick harder, rocking awkwardly back and forth, staring into the inky depths of the cave where the rockslide had sealed it shut.

  Littlefield bent and touched Donnie on the shoulder, flinching in expectation of sudden violence. But Donnie stood, swaying and quivering, still flailing the stick in the air like a stoned orchestra conductor.

  “Let’s go, Donnie,” the sheriff said.

  Donnie lifted a palsied hand to his forehead, touching his stringy hairline, and it took Littlefield a moment to realize Donnie was saluting.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Bobby expected to get his ass kicked, or at least endure a good, old-fashioned cussing, but Dad was as docile as a lamb when Bobby got home just before sundown. Dad was sitting on the couch, a small pile of empty cans at his feet, trash his dad often called “dead soldiers.” He stared blankly at the television as the clock ticked away “Sixty Minutes,” and Bobby knew something was wrong, because Dad was about as interested in current events as he was in the Dewey Decimal system. Even Mom’s high-pitched pestering barely roused him from his stupor.

  “Where you been?” Dad asked without looking at him.

  “Over at Vernon Ray’s.”

  Dad nodded and gulped his Bud.

  “Why don’t you try sipping for a change?” Mom said.

  Dad took another swig in response, glassy eyes fixed on Andy Rooney’s doughy face as Andy launched into another old-fart rant. Bobby tried to slip to his room, but Mom stepped in front of him in the kitchen.

  “You had any dinner?” she asked, moving close enough to sniff at him. She’d caught him raiding Dad’s beer stash over the summer, and since then she’d been on him like a bottlefly on fresh dookie. Luckily, she didn’t know what marijuana smelled like, so he could huff rope all day and she’d think it was dirty laundry. Not that he cared to get stoned at the moment. After watching the bulldozer guy get shot by the ghostly soldiers, he wasn’t sure he wanted to edge any further away from reality.