The Underground Lady

by JC Simmons

  Shack answered his phone on the first ring, and said he'd meet us at the sheriff's office. I took a quick shower, thinking that things were starting to happen.

  ***

  Shack was waiting when we arrived in Decatur at the sheriff's office. We all four walked inside together.

  The receptionist, a pleasant, middle-aged woman with silver hair, smiled at me, pointed back to Sheriff Adam's office. "He's expecting you."

  Sitting across from her, against a wall, were two females, both with hands cuffed behind their backs. One was an extremely young girl with wild black hair and a shape like an ironing board. Her dress might have been cut from old gunnysacks. Her eyes were like black gobs of axle grease. The other one was small with a shaved head and red-rimmed eyes sunken in dark circles of insomnia and suffering. Her gaze was vacant and desolate, an absolute emptiness born of pain and exhaustion and bitterness of one who knows the depths of the darkest nightmare ever imagined. She was eighteen or nineteen years old, but looked like a decrepit old woman. There were splotches of blood on her clothes. If human souls have weight – some vague but perceptible mass – then she was carrying an immense burden. A deputy walked in and said, "Let's go, girls." They both rose in unison and left with the deputy.

  "Sheriff John Quincy Adams, meet Sunny Pfeiffer, Hebrone Opshinsky, and Jack, "Shack," Runnels."

  "Shack Runnels, cattle rancher from up in Neshoba County, I knew your dad, fine man. Please, everybody sit. Anyone want coffee?"

  Nobody did.

  The office was Spartan. The furniture was well made from oak, but seemed hundreds of years old. There was a blowup of a black and white photograph behind his desk showing a dozen police officers armed with high-powered rifles and shotguns leading a black man out of a cornfield. The man had a scared look on his face, and was trying to cover with his hands what appeared to be several wounds that were oozing blood. I had seen the photo before. It depicted the capture of a bank robber who had killed an elderly teller during the heist. The killer was said to have had eleven gunshot wounds, but walked out of the woods of his own accord.

  "What's with the two sad cases out front?" I asked, watching Sunny stare at the photograph.

  "Crystal meth. Destroys more humans than cancer. It's a scourge on our society. The lure of rural areas to cook it is growing by leaps and bounds as the cities crack down on the drug trafficking. I feel like we're at war."

  "I hope you have a good battle plan."

  "We're working on it. Hebrone Opshinsky, now that name rings a bell. I'm a friend of William Wadell, Police Chief down in Biloxi. Seems the two of you have had some differences."

  Hebrone said nothing.

  "So, Miss Pfeiffer, you are looking into what happened to your mother twenty-five years ago. I'm afraid that is a cold case. We don't even have any paperwork on it. When Jay asked me to run the letter you received and the note with the threats through our crime lab, I was happy to do it. My daughter works there and expedited it for me."

  Sunny crossed her legs, smiled. "Thank you, Sheriff Adams. I appreciate your help."

  "What did you find out, John?"

  He slid two file folders across the desk. Tapping one with an index finger, he said, “This is Avis Shaw, he sent the letter to Miss Pfeiffer. He's an old man, now, and has lived here all of his life, no criminal record to amount to much. This one," he pointed to the other folder, “is Ralph Henderson. His prints were on the note nailed to your door. If you want to file criminal trespass charges, maybe add animal cruelty, we can pick him up."

  Shack suddenly stood up. Everything about him hardened into stone, his shoulders squared, fists clinched, turning forearms into iron. "I'll be a son-of-a-bitch. Jay, I've got to go. I'll be in touch later this afternoon. Good to see you again, sheriff." He walked out of the office.

  "Let's don't file any charges. Tell your daughter thanks for expediting the prints."

  "I don't know what you are planning, and I don't want to know, but if you do anything illegal, I won't have any choice. I wish you'd let my office handle it."

  "At the moment, it's an investigation into an old airplane crash. If we find any evidence of murder, we'll let you know."

  "Good. Mr. Opshinsky, a moment of your time, in private."

  "Now listen, John, Hebrone is here at my request, and I won't have…"

  "Shut up, Leicester, I don't need you fighting my battles."

  Sunny and I waited in the car.

  "Just how bad a guy is Hebrone?" She asked, with a look of amazement.

  "He was a soldier doing what he was trained to do, what his government asked him to do. There were some rough times after he was discharged, but he's gotten through them, and there's not a better friend on the planet."

  Fifteen minutes later, Hebrone walked out of the sheriff's office with a somber expression on his face, and got in the truck.

  "Well?"

  "Sheriff Adams was 'in-country.' We have a lot in common."

  "I did not know that."

  "There is a lot you don't know, Leicester." He had that deadly smile.

  "Let's ride on into Meridian. I know a bar with a live band that serves up some good barbecue. After lunch we can drive up Highway 19 and take a look at the retired airline pilot's house. It's on a lake, and has a dock and boathouse. I want to take a look inside of it."

  "I think your boy, Shack, knew one of the players. It seemed to upset him. He won't do anything stupid?"

  "No, but we'll know more of what's on his mind when we get back this afternoon."

  We parked in front of the bar that advertised live music and Memphis style barbecue, whatever that is. It was crowded and western music blared like the last wail of a dying frontier. A piano, loud and tinny, seemed straight out of the hotel in Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove. I could almost visualize Laurie-darling drinking whiskey and turning tricks, or as Gus was wont to say, "A poke." Four musicians, who had never been near a cow, were dressed in western garb, and sang country songs like rock and roll. A waitress showed us to a table. She had a friendly smile, and a body that looked as if it didn't know what to do with itself, even after years of practice.

  The barbecue was as good as the music was bad. Sunny kept eyeing Hebrone as if desperately trying to look into his past for some answers to his future. But she kept coming up empty. He ignored the looks, though I knew he was aware she was studying him.

  After lunch, we headed north toward Lake Okatibbe and Gerald VonHorner's house.

  Sunny sat in the small back seat of the extended cab of my truck "Why don't we just pay him another visit, let Hebrone meet the man?"

  "If we push him hard right now, he may pull back and not make any mistakes, assuming he's involved. I want a look inside that boathouse first."

  We drove slowly by in front of VonHorner's lake house, Hebrone taking in the lay of the land. I knew that brief look would imprint on his brain, and when we came back in the dark of night, the best way in and a good escape route would all be there, just like it had been in the lush, green jungles of North Vietnam.

  He looked at me. "Okay, it's not a problem. We can do it tonight, if you want."

  When we got back to the cottage, Shack was sitting in the cypress glider on the front porch. Rose sat next to him.

  "So what got into you at the sheriff's office?"

  "Ralph Henderson and I grew up together. Used to hunt and fish all over these woods. The man sucked the poison out of a wound he cut in my foot when a water moccasin bit me. If he's the one hung that coyote, I'm the one to deal with him."

  "You were gonna do this alone?"

  "I was going to let it play out however it was supposed to go. I went by his house, his wife said he was up on the Pearl River, won't be back for a few days."

  "Well, that's good for us. It'll give us some time to look again at the lawyer, banker, navy guy, and the retired airline pilot. Do you know Avis Shaw?"

  "I know of 'em. He's in his eighties, sickly, I think. Done nothing all his life but
cut pulp, run doziers and backhoes. Hard to believe he'd be involved in anything like murder."

  "That's what they said about that preacher ordered the killing of the three civil rights workers – hard to believe. We are going to pay Shaw a visit tomorrow. He wrote Sunny the letter. Sick, old, or dying, the man has some questions to answer. I want you along when we talk to him."

  "I want to be there when you talk to Avis," Rose said, getting up and walking to the north end of the porch. "I've known the man for forty years. He did some dozier work for me, built a berm on the upper end of a cow pond, and pushed up some old fences and buried the debris. Did good work."

  "We are getting ourselves quite a little group. Why don't we just call it Rose English's Investigative Services? Maybe open up a whorehouse and restaurant?"

  She turned and gave me a look she would a cur-dog barking at one of her cats. "You go screw yourself, Leicester. We're only trying to help. Shack and I know the country, we know the people, and we can get more out of 'em than some urbanite who moves to the woods and thinks he knows everything."

  Shack looked up at me from the glider, Hebrone laughed, and Sunny leaned against a cedar post, her green eyes sparkling with glee.

  Shack stood up, put a hand on my shoulder. "You know, Jay, I saw a woman in a field once who had been struck by lightning, the look on her face was not surprise, but irritation. You have that same look. A fool is one with the inability to take his own advice."

  I threw up my hands, they were right. "Okay, make the call, Rose. Set up a meeting with Avis Shaw. Just remember, the one who feeds the dog should also bury it."

  Walking inside the cottage, I wasn't even sure what I meant by that.

  Chapter Eleven

  Hebrone followed me inside the cottage. "You still want to look at that boathouse tonight? Since this friend of Shack's – what's his name – Ralph Henderson's fingerprints are on the note?"

  "Yes, I do. Someone probably hired Henderson to do the coyote thing. If it was VonHorner, there may be some clues left in that boathouse."

  "Don't you think the trapper would use his own rope? Why would he use some old hemp from another man's boathouse?"

  "Maybe someone wrote that note for him to nail on my door. Maybe the pack of four by nine cards and a pencil stub are in there, along with some old rope. I have a feeling about that boathouse. We're gonna take a look at it tonight."

  Hebrone stared hard at me, nodded, his face adjusting to my decision like a has-been boxer who had taken a lot of punishment and expected to have to take more because fighting was all that he knew.

  "I just don’t want to sit here and do nothing. We should be doing something."

  Hebrone cracked a wry smile. "Nothing wrong with sitting. I think it's an undervalued activity."

  "That sounds like something Smash would say. You've been around him too long. Maybe you should let Savage eat him. I would not want you turning into an ex-football jock with an uncontrollable temper and a penchant for inane witticisms."

  "As opposed to what I am now?"

  Shack walked in. "So what's the plan?"

  "We're going to Gerald VonHorner's place tonight, take a look around the boathouse, see if your boy Henderson may have left any clues there."

  "You think VonHorner hired him to hang the coyote?"

  "Jay has a strong intuition about the man and his boathouse."

  "Ralph is too young to have been directly involved with the Welch woman. Somebody had to put him up to it. Okay, I'll look after Rose and Sunny tonight."

  Rose came inside. "I'll call Avis and ask him if Shack and I can come by for a visit. I won't mention why, though he'll know when we all walk through the door."

  "That's good, Rose. Make it tomorrow afternoon. Hebrone and I have something to do tonight. Shack will be around for you and Sunny. Take B.W. home with you."

  Sunny said, from the door, “You're going to the boathouse tonight? I'm coming along."

  "It will be illegal and could be dangerous."

  "I'm going with you."

  "We'll pick you up at midnight. I suggest you get some rest."

  Everyone left. Hebrone and I sat on the porch in the cold air, looking across the brown grass of an open field. A flock of turkeys fed their way toward the pond and my 'back eighty' that had several spring-fed creeks and a hundred year old stand of timber, and maybe the remains of Hadley Welch and her little yellow Piper Super Cub.

  A strong breeze suddenly blew across the hill on which the cottage sat. We looked at the wind-tossed trees and sand blowing from the gravel road, a view shorn of anything comforting.

  Inside, we sat silently in front of the fireplace. Hebrone's eyes reflected the flickering flames and he had a mysterious smile. I wondered what was going on in his mind. "You want a drink?"

  He shook his head. "Not if we're going out tonight. The alcohol makes me lethargic."

  "What are you thinking about?"

  "Your friend Shack. What would he have done with his old venom-sucking buddy, Henderson, if he'd found him?"

  "I don't want to think about it."

  "I've known men like him. They are big, mean, and tough, suffer fools badly, but you'd never know it by merely being around them. A real man does not need to tell you that he's a man, does not brag about his sexual prowess, fights he's won, how much whiskey he can drink, or how big a hay bale he can pick up. Shack's the silent type, does what has to be done. He would have made a good 'in-country' soldier. I would've loved to have had him in my platoon."

  "He's a good man to have as a friend and neighbor. I did see him pick up a fourteen hundred pound round bale of hay one time, though."

  "Impossible, no human can lift fourteen hundred pounds."

  "He sat it up on end."

  "Big deal."

  "I tried it and couldn't do it."

  "Listen, it's important from now on that we be the hunter and not the hunted, this will keep us alive. This law is the same law as in the bush. Turn fear and panic into the sharp blade of survival. Keep your wits – your life hangs in the balance. It's time to act like the wolf, not the rabbit."

  "Yes, I realize that it is dangerous when what you hunt hunts you as well."

  We decided to lie down and rest until tonight.

  Instead of counting sheep, I made a mental list of several things. I counted the number of women I'd slept with, there weren't that many. I thought of the defensive teammates with the NFL Baltimore Colts that went to battle with me on the football field. A lot of their names I have forgotten, but not the faces and the physical toughness they all possessed. I made a list of the hunting rifles, shotguns, pistols, and military assault weapons I presently own. Then I went through the list of men with whom I had shared a cockpit and whose wings are now forever folded. There are thirty names and I remember each of them. Finally falling asleep, I dreamed of carrying a sack of cats out to the airport and teaching them to fly. At the end of that dream, there was a dawning sense that I had wasted my life chasing the wrong endings.

  Something touched my shoulder. It was Hebrone. "What time is it?"

  "Ten o'clock. Let's fix something to eat before we pick up the Pfeiffer woman."

  I got up and dressed, fearful the dream about the flying cats might disappear, letting any details fade. Dreams are deeply personal and live for the life of the dreamer only.

  Sunny Pfeiffer was standing in Rose's driveway waiting when we arrived. She was dressed all in black, even changed into dark-colored tennis shoes. I would have laughed if it hadn't been so dangerous for her to be out alone, especially in light of the direct threat on her life. I started to berate her when a set of headlights blinked on and off a quarter mile up the gravel road. I knew it was Shack, he'd been watching until we made the pickup.

  This even impressed Hebrone, who nodded, and said, "Good man to have on board."

  Sunny got in the truck. "What's with the flashing lights?"

  "Shack was keeping an eye on you while you were standing out here alone mak
ing a target for our enemies."

  "How you know it's him?"

  "If it was the one threatened you, you'd be dead."

  "Oh."

  "Yeah. Oh," Hebrone said. There was no inflection one way or the other in his voice.

  We were all silent until east of the town of Union. The air was cold, the sky sparkling as we turned south on Highway 19. I had the heater on in the truck. Traffic was nonexistent, which was unusual with the Indian casino up at Philadelphia. The wind was calm, the night so clear that the headlights seemed to reach forever, starkly etching the roadway markings.

  Hebrone turned, looked at Sunny. "How does it feel to be rich, to have more money than dirt?"

  It seemed an odd question.

  "No, I'm not rich, I am a poor girl with money, which is not the same thing. Our companies do quite well. I do not apologize for them making money. Capitalism is what made this country great. Money? I have found that it seems impossible for most people to learn the value of money without first having to waste it. Is that your problem, Mr. Opshinsky?"

  Hebrone took out the 40 caliber Glock automatic pistol he was carrying, ratcheted the slide back and forth, putting a round in the chamber.

  "My God, that's an ugly gun," Sunny muttered.

  "The ugly ones kill you just as dead as the pretty ones."

  "Why do you need a gun to look in someone's boathouse?"

  "We're going to trespass on a man's property. If he comes out with a shotgun, I want to be able to defend myself. Jesus Christ, women…"

  "Something bothering you, Hebrone?"

  "I don't like going into a situation where I don't know the enemy. I'm sorry for the abruptness, Miss Pfeiffer."

  "No, you're not, but I accept the apology anyway."

  It was the first time I'd ever heard Hebrone apologize – for anything.

  We parked on the street a quarter of a mile from Gerald VonHorner's house. Looking back at Sunny, I could see she was silent, not moving. Hebrone's abruptness seemed to have subdued her. Behind her head, out the back window of the truck, I could see the vague outline of nearby trees. Over them shone a single bright star, still, silent, and cold. I had seen her eyes when the wine had clouded them, and I could guess how they looked at the moment, glaucous, absent. She seemed as resigned and alone as the star winking outside in the night.