Till the Butchers Cut Him Down

by Marcia Muller

  “You say he’s an artist?”

  “Who else would build something like that? Don’t know if he actually works at it, but he pays his bills. Stays out there most of the time, only comes to town for groceries and his mail.”

  “Is he a friend of Brenda Walker?”

  Westerkamp thought. “Doubtful.”

  “What about T. J. Gordon? Did they ever have dealings?”

  “Not that I heard of, but the way Gordon wandered all over the place, he might’ve run across Leon.”

  “So what do you suppose Walker’s visit to Deck was about?”

  The deputy regarded me, eyes as bleak as when he’d talked about retiring. “Damned if I know, but that bad feeling I’ve been having lately is coming on strong.”

  Twelve

  A red-tailed hawk circled above me, its wings sketching perfect arcs against the desert sky. The light had a filtered quality at nine in the morning; the crunch and clatter of stones beneath my feet as I made my way along the wash to the bottle house shattered a heavy silence. Although the day promised to warm quickly, I could feel and smell autumn in the air. Autumn, and then a hard, cold winter.

  I was dressed in hiking clothes and had my old Nikkormat slung around my neck. I’d brought the camera from home in order to take some color shots of Tufa Lake, in hope of getting a good enough one to enlarge and hang in my front hall. Now I was using it as I often did: to appear a harmless tourist while actually on a surveillance. When I was some twenty yards from the bottle house I stopped, removed the lens cap, and sighted on the peculiar structure.

  By the light of day it looked wildly eccentric: rough mortar and odd-sized stones holding the circles of glass in their random arrangement. The peaked roof was of overlapping sheets of corrugated metal; a rusted stove chimney leaned lopsidedly. The door, which faced toward me, had been fashioned of clumsily nailed planks and crosspieces. The low stone wall surrounded the house, and protruding from the ground behind it were strangely shaped masses of the same materials as the house—free-form sculptures, perhaps. I pressed the shutter a few times and resumed walking. When I reached the wall I leaned over it and snapped one last shot of the largest of the sculptures.

  Sounds came from inside the house now: a wordless high-pitched singing. Some classical melody that I knew but couldn’t put a name to. The door opened and the singing grew louder, then cut off abruptly as a man peered out at me. He was so tall that he had to stoop to avoid hitting his head. His tank top and shorts revealed spindly legs and arms; dark matted curls fell well below his shoulder blades. He squinted into the sunlight, frowning.

  “Mr. Deck?” I called. “Leon Deck?”

  After an initial hesitation he nodded.

  “I’d like to talk with you about your house. May I come inside?”

  He nodded again.

  There was no opening in the wall, so I climbed over it. When I got closer to Deck I caught sight of his eyes: dark and curiously clouded. Drugs, I thought, if not now, too many at some point in his life.

  Deck continued to lean in the doorway, his vague eyes on my face. I could smell him now: not so much rank as musty, as if he needed an airing. After a moment he turned and motioned for me to follow him inside. Confusion and delayed reactions, more evidence of drug-induced damage.

  Once inside I felt as if I’d sunk to the bottom of a dirty fishbowl. Murky green and brown light shot by occasional crystalline flashes surrounded me. A flickering oil lamp sat on a makeshift table in the middle of the long room. I looked around, saw other furnishings that looked to be castoffs: a sprung armchair bleeding its stuffing; a scarred bureau with two missing drawers; a filthy and torn mattress with a ragged sleeping bag thrown over it. In one corner hulked a grease-encrusted woodstove; dirty pans and dishes sat on top of it. No electrical or phone service out here; no running water, either, although as I’d driven in, I’d spotted a clump of tamarisk trees that indicated a spring.

  Leon Deck had not yet spoken. He turned the flame of the oil lamp higher, went to the armchair, and sat. I spotted a broken-down wicker stool and moved it closer. As I sat, Deck watched me incuriously.

  I said, “I’m interested in your house, Mr. Deck. How long did it take you to build it?”

  It was a moment before he spoke. Then, in a voice as high-pitched as his singing, he said, “The bottoms of the bottles? They let in the light. The necks? They keep everything else out.”

  It wasn’t exactly an answer, but at least he’d said something. “You mean they keep out the cold? The heat?”

  He frowned, as if he found the question exceedingly stupid. “I see things, you know.”

  “Yes?”

  “They must not be allowed inside.”

  “What musn’t?”

  “Warping and distortion.”

  “What about it?”

  “It weakens their power.”

  “Whose power?”

  “I see things.”

  “Mr. Deck—”

  “I have secrets, you know.” Now his eyes were clearer, as if some relay switch in his consciousness had kicked in. They gleamed slyly.

  “What kinds of secrets?” I asked.

  He shook his head, a smile revealing gapped and broken teeth. “It is said that a thief in red will come to steal my secrets.”

  “Who says that?”

  He just kept smiling.

  “Who says—”

  “I have secrets.”

  “Mr. Deck—”

  “I know who you are, you know.”

  “And who am I?”

  “The thief in red.”

  I glanced down to assure myself that I actually was wearing my tan T-shirt. The conversation—if it could be called that—threatened to make me as loony as Leon Deck.

  “It is said that a thief in red will come.”

  “I’m not wearing red.”

  “Today.”

  “I’m not a thief.”

  “To steal them.”

  “Mr. Deck, I don’t want to steal—”

  “I am to guard against her.”

  “I’m not here to—”

  “You can’t have them!” He jumped up, agitated now, his breath becoming ragged.

  I stood quickly, braced against an attack. Deck’s hands were fisted; he was close to hyperventilating. “Keep your secrets, Mr. Deck,” I said. “Keep them.”

  The words failed to calm him. He came toward me, fists raised. I sidestepped and backed toward the door.

  “You’ll come again,” he panted. “In the night. Wearing red. For my secrets.”

  I pushed the door open, stepped outside. Leon Deck stopped a few feet away.

  “Food for the coyotes,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I see things, you know.”

  The crazy conversational loop was beginning again. “What do you see?”

  “I see things.”

  “What do you see?”

  “I see the coyotes feeding on the August man’s flesh and bones.”

  “Who—”

  Deck shut the door. From behind it I could hear him panting.

  * * *

  As I drove back to town I went over Deck’s ramblings again and again. Repeated them aloud, as if sound could impart meaning. And found that there was meaning of a sort—once I broke his crazy code and placed the information beside what facts I already knew.

  Back at the hotel I hurried up to my room and checked my notes on the turnaround. It had been completed and Suits had left here in September of last year. I put the notes in my bag, then went downstairs and asked at the desk for Marty McNear. The clerk directed me to the lounge, where I could see the hotel owner going over some invoices with the bartender. He poured me a cup of coffee, and I sat down at the same table we’d occupied the night before to wait till he finished.

  There were plenty of questions I could ask McNear, but as I waited I decided to move cautiously. Although the hotelier had seemed candid, he’d also admitted to having read my faxes
, and I had only his word that he’d been fond of the Gordons. Maybe he’d steered me to Brenda Walker because he knew she wouldn’t talk with me; maybe he was the one she’d been on the phone with before she paid her visit to Leon Deck. Farfetched reasoning? Probably. A touch of paranoia? Sure. Even so, I’d limit my questions.

  When McNear joined me, I asked him only one thing. “Do you recall exactly when Anna Gordon visited her husband?”

  He thought, shook his head. “Shortly before he left here.”

  “Would your guest register show the dates?”

  “No. We weren’t in operation yet, so neither she nor T.J. had to register.”

  “Was it in August, perhaps? September?”

  “August, I think. By the way, how’d you get on with Brenda Walker?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Oh?”

  “She refused to talk with me and sent me directly to Deputy Westerkamp.”

  It didn’t seem to surprise him. “What’d Westerkamp tell you?”

  “Not much, just gave me permission to investigate in his jurisdiction.”

  McNear nodded, and then we ran out of conversation. I thanked him and went upstairs to call for an appointment with Lost Hope’s town manager, Boyd Briggs. Briggs, an urban administrator who had been hired to ensure that Suits’s master plan didn’t go haywire, could see me in half an hour.

  * * *

  The swamp cooler on the roof above Byron Briggs’s office rattled and burbled. Briggs—a short, chubby, bald man with a funny nasal voice, who was a dead ringer for the cartoon character Elmer Fudd—kept glancing nervously at the ceiling. Suits’s files had said that he was one of the most talented city managers in the western states, and so far his responses to my preliminary questions about the turnaround had exhibited a keen intelligence, but I couldn’t get past the Fudd image and kept smiling inappropriately.

  “… remained stable for a year now. In another year I’ll be out of here.”

  I forced my attention back to what he was saying. “What about resentment among the townspeople who opposed the turnaround?”

  “That’s been tempered by steady paychecks.”

  “There must be some people who haven’t benefited.”

  “Well, of course, every town has its disaffected citizens, but they’re usually all talk and no action. I doubt any of ours could conceive an intricate plan of harassment such as you describe.”

  “Mr. Gordon gave me the names of three people who created serious disturbances during the turnaround.” I consulted my notes and read them off to him. “Have any of them left town in the past few months?”

  “Not to my knowledge. The first’s too busy running his Burger King franchise; the second’s campaigning for county office; the third’s applied for liquor and gaming licenses.”

  “Okay, I’d like to return to a year ago last August. Mr. Gordon’s wife came to visit.”

  He nodded. “Charming woman. A great loss—”

  “Yes. She was here for two weeks?”

  “Two and a half, actually. She’d planned to stay until Mr. Gordon was ready to leave for California, but she went home suddenly.”

  “Why?”

  “I wasn’t informed as to her reasons. She was here one day, and the next she was flying out on that Learjet of his.”

  “Was there some sort of trouble?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Do you recall the exact date of her departure?”

  “… No, but …” He pressed a button on his intercom; when his secretary answered he asked, “Will you check your files and see on what date last August Nevada Bell completed their installation of the new system?” To me he added, “I remember because Mr. Gordon needed to sign off on it, and he was out at the landing strip.”

  Briggs held the line for a moment, eyes dramatically raised toward the roof, where the swamp cooler had begun to wheeze and gargle. “August twenty-sixth? Thanks.” He looked at me and repeated, “August twenty-sixth was the day she left.”

  * * *

  The night before, I’d noticed a little branch library across the street from Joker’s tavern. I drove over there and asked about the local newspaper. The town had none, the librarian told me, only a weekly ad sheet aimed at tourists. The sheriff’s calls? They were printed in the Tonopah paper. I checked their microfilms for the dates surrounding August 26 of the previous year and found an interesting item.

  A woman had phoned the Lost Hope substation, claiming that a fugitive from justice who had been featured on a recent edition of Unsolved Mysteries was staying at the Aces and Eights Motel. Deputies investigated, but the man had apparently left town without paying his bill.

  I suspected who the woman caller was.

  * * *

  When I finally located Deputy Chuck Westerkamp at quarter to two, he was doing his laundry. He sat in a molded plastic chair at an establishment called Suds ‘n’ Duds, staring morosely at his clothes as they flopped in the dryer. I’d tracked him down through his neighbor, who said she’d seen him walking along the street “with a full pillowcase slung over his shoulder like a goddamn Santa Claus.” Westerkamp didn’t act particularly surprised to see me, just nodded and patted the chair next to his.

  “You do get around,” he said mildly.

  I sat. “You wouldn’t believe the half of it.”

  “Probably not. What d’you need?”

  “On August twenty-sixth of last year someone phoned in a tip to your substation about a fugitive staying at the Aces and Eights Motel. That would have been Brenda Walker?”

  “Yeah. We followed up, went to the Aces. He’d cleared out—sort of. Stuff was still there, so was his old van. Never did find him, though we searched real good.”

  “The van—”

  “Was stolen in Colorado. No fingerprints—wiped clean. So was his motel room.”

  “Odd. And the personal stuff?”

  “Is in our property room.”

  “May I see it?”

  “Why?”

  I hesitated.

  Westerkamp’s pale eyes regarded me with more than usual interest. He waited.

  I felt the same wariness as with Marty McNear. Westerkamp was a law officer, but I’d known enough crooked cops to realize that law-enforcement powers didn’t necessarily go hand in hand with a law-abiding attitude.

  “Okay, Ms. McCone,” he finally said. “Neither of us has taken the full measure of the other, but I sense you’ve been straight with me, and I hope you feel the same about my dealings with you. So—supposing I let you look at the stuff in my property room, and supposing it means something to you. What’re you gonna do then?”

  Good question.

  “You gonna tell me what it means, or you gonna leave me guessing?”

  If what I suspected was true, ethically I’d be bound to tell him. “I won’t leave you guessing.”

  “Then I’ll see you at the substation when I come on shift at four.”

  I looked impatiently at my watch.

  “That’s only two hours, give or take a minute,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll find some way to amuse yourself in the meantime.”

  * * *

  I decided to pass the time by finishing up the roll of film in my Nikkormat. I’d left my big camera bag and assorted lenses—bought back in the days when I’d fancied myself a budding professional photographer—at home and carried only the camera body itself, outfitted with a 28-millimeter wide-angle lens. The wide-angle suggested that I should try some panoramic shots of the town, so I drove into the hills on the road that led to Leon Deck’s place.

  As I drove, I thought back to the time when I’d taken my photography seriously. I’d enrolled in every course I could fit into my college schedule and, later on, in others at the U.C. Extension campus in the city; I’d toiled in the darkroom for what must have added up to years. And when I finally emerged for the last time from the chemical fumes and the glow of the safelight, I’d been forced to admit that my efforts were mer
ely competent. Competent, and somewhat trite.

  After that disappointment I put the Nikkormat away for a while, then brought it out to use in my surveillances. But one day, while photographing a kayaking insurance-company defrauder from a nearby sailboat, I realized that handling the camera still gave me a great deal of pleasure. Now, freed from my self-imposed standards of excellence, I produced commercially processed color photos that pleased me, and damned if they weren’t getting better and better. Soon the cracked walls of my front hallway would be covered with enlargements, and they would eventually spill over onto the walls of my sitting room.

  I reached a good vantage point, got out of the Land Rover, and set the camera on its hood. Removed the lens cap, adjusted the f-stop and shutter speed. The light meter needle behaved strangely—probably it needed a new battery. I focused, studied what was in the frame, then pressed the shutter.

  That would be a good shot; sometimes you just could tell. But given the erratic behavior of the light meter, shouldn’t I take one more? I altered the speed, thumbed the film-advance lever—

  Something wrong here.

  I pressed the shutter, thumbed the lever again. No resistance—slack, actually. As if there were no film in the camera …

  I repeated the process, tried to rewind the film. Still slack. Picked up the camera and pressed the catch to open its back. Empty. Someone had removed the film containing the shots I’d taken that morning at the bottle house.

  When? I thought back to where the Nikkormat had been since I’d taken those pictures. Around my neck as I talked with Leon Deck. Around my neck as I walked back to the Land Rover. Under the driver’s seat the rest of the time while I was inside the hotel, the town hall, the library, and the Suds ‘n’ Duds.

  Had I locked the Rover? Hard to say. Locking a car was a reflex action, conditioned by many years of city living. But the failure to perform such actions often went unnoticed.

  But who would have stolen my film? And why?