by Allen Kent
Lonnie turned quickly away, choking back what was left of a night of snacking on Coke and Cheetos in the guard shack. I dropped my beam to eye level. Bobby and I had seen a lot of death. But Lonnie had taken a job as a night watchman feeling pretty confident it wouldn’t expose him to any more mayhem than he got from his smash and crash chase movies.
“Let’s get back to the cars and get some masks and a kit. Bobby, you call Grace and Frankie and get them up. Tell them I need them over here as fast as they can make it. And ask them both to bring their pickups and a ladder if they have one. Then give Chase a call and tell him we need a coroner and his ambulance. Lonnie, you’d better call your boss. Let him know there’s a body. He might want to bring down some of his company people.”
We made our way back up through the gate to the patrol cars. Bobby called the other deputies while I pulled gloves, masks, and an evidence kit from the back of the Explorer. Then we waited for better light and a way to get our mystery man down from his roost.
Frankie lives up in the north part of the county, a good thirty minutes away. Grace has an apartment behind her parents’ place on the edge of town, though sometimes you’ll find her staying with her unfortunate choice of a boyfriend, Sal Beccera. She must have been at home because she beat Frankie to the dam site by fifteen minutes, driving her dad’s Tundra with ten and twelve-foot ladders jutting from the back of the bed.
“I was dressed,” she said as she climbed from the pickup. “I heard the boom and your call to Bobby. Figured you might want me coming in early.”
Grace is my chief deputy, a Latina known to most people around Crayton as Amazing Grace: partly because of her fearless police work, and partly because she’s the kind of woman you’d expect to see sitting beside a fire along the beach in some commercial for Corona Lite. Tall. Raven-haired. Dark eyes that give meaning to the word “smoldering” when she gets nettled about something. And a face that turns heads even among those who see her every day in town. And yes. There’s always a ripple of talk around Crayton about a single sheriff and a chief deputy who looks like Grace, even though she has a boyfriend who guards her like a sheepdog, has no place being a cop, and shouldn’t be trying to “rise above her raising’.”
Grace glanced about at the rock garden of a parking area and the broken roof of the guard shack, then back at the ladders in her truck. “We going to be climbing down into something?” she asked.
“Up,” I corrected. “Grab your evidence kit and one of the ladders and follow me.” I turned to Lonnie. “You better stay up here. Send Ritter and Chase Backman down as soon as they get here.” He didn’t object.
The late-June sun was just beginning to paint a glow across the eastern horizon as I led Grace and Bobby back down the road and into the trees along the lower creek. As we neared the body, Grace’s nose wrinkled, and she stopped to pull a cloth mask from her kit.
“Bobby didn’t say anything about a body,” she called after me. I stopped to wait for her to catch up.
“He didn’t want all the people around town with scanners to come racing over here. Asking you to bring a ladder won’t cause nearly the excitement we’d get if we said somebody’d been killed.” I pointed through the growing light at the body suspended from the oak.
“Madre de Dios,” Grace muttered, gazing up at the corpse. “What happened here?”
“Someone blew up the dam.”
She dropped the ladder she was carrying, turned to look at the banks of broken earth where the beginnings of the dam had been, then back at the body. “Do you think this was a result of the explosion?”
I stood the taller of the ladders up behind the dead man. “We’ll know when we get the body down. But from here, I’d say it’s pretty clear the person’s been dead a few days. My fear is that the body was buried in the dam and was thrown over here when it blew up.”
Grace moved her ladder to a position below the man’s head. We stood for a moment, looking grimly at each other.
I slipped on a mask and gloves. “Do you want to wait until Chase gets here? He can help me bring him down.”
Grace shook her head and pulled on her own mask, answering through the thick layers of material. “Chase is too old to be climbing up there to help you hoist that body over the limb. I’ll do it. We can lower him down to Bobby.”
Lule had been systematically working his way around the draped corpse, photographing it from below. He handed me the camera as I started up the ladder. “Get some from up close, then have Grace do the same,” he suggested. “Once we begin to move it, a lot of things might change.”
Up in the parking area, two other vehicles pulled into the lot. The coroner, I guessed, and our other day deputy, Frankie Ritter.
I climbed to where I could photograph the swollen legs and back, then handed the camera to Grace who grimaced behind the mask. “Everything’s covered with dirt,” she muttered. “I think you’re right about the body being buried. And . . . Oh, my God, Tate. This man’s been shot. Right in the middle of the forehead. Most of the back of his head’s gone.” She snapped a few more photos and lowered the camera to Bobby.
Chase Backman followed Frankie through the trees to the ladders, both mumbling something I couldn’t pick up as they stared up at the body. Chase is what folks around Crayton call our “provider of full-service dying.” In addition to being coroner, he owns and operates the ambulance service, runs the assisted living center, and is the town’s only funeral director. But nobody would want anyone else taking care of them during their final days and hours. Chase is one of those guys who, if he found your wallet on the sidewalk, would return it with an extra $20 tucked inside. He’s as caring and compassionate as Mother Teresa, and well enough acquainted with death that not much fazes the man. But I could tell from his mutterings that this was the first body he’d seen draped over an oak limb.
“We’ve got photos from every angle, Chase,” I called down to him. “Looks like the guy’s been shot. Anything else you want us to do before we move him?” It was becoming light enough that the men below could clearly see the body.
“Did you get a photo of that exposed chest area from the side?” he asked. “See how all the darker color is up along the back? The man was lying on his back for quite a while just after he died. Long enough to go through the rigor stages face-up. Any idea how he got up there?”
“Did you hear the boom?” I called down. Chase is as deaf as a post without his hearing aids.
“No. But I felt it. Woke me up. I was waiting for a call.”
“Well, someone blew up the dam. I think the body was buried in it and got thrown out by the blast. Landed in this tree.”
“Well, isn’t that just the damnedest thing,” he muttered. “Bring him on down. Let’s see what we can figure out.”
Grace winced and lifted the shoulders, pushing up as I grabbed the man’s belt and drew him toward me. “Better keep that head leaning forward,” she choked through the mask. “It looks like a real mess.”
I lowered the weight until Bobby and Frankie could grab legs and hips and ease the body carefully to the ground. Lonnie had warned the coroner to bring a body bag down to the creek, and Chase scraped an area clear of rocks and broken limbs. The three men stretched the corpse onto its back on the black plastic.
The man had a shock of thick, dark hair and a coarse mustache that turned around the corners of his purple lips. His pale skin had once been swarthy. Maybe Latino. Though the clothing had been torn and bunched as he tumbled through the tree’s upper branches, they were largely intact, including one shoe. His trousers were a heavy military olive drab, the shirt long-sleeved and a plain, lighter green. A single brown shoe clung to an ankle that bulged under a brown stocking.
I handed out assignments. “Grace, go through the man’s pockets and see if you can find anything that might identify him. Bobby, wait for the men from the construction company up by the gate, then look over the blast site. Find out everything you can about where they were with constru
ction, who’s been working at the site, how someone might have ended up buried in the dirt work, and who they think would have wanted to blow the thing up. And Frankie, start a back-and-forth on both sides of the creek. Look for anything that doesn’t belong, even if you think it’s creek trash. Stick a flag at each location and keep a numbered description of the items. See if you can find that other shoe.”
I turned to Chase who was kneeling beside the corpse. “Before you bag him, tell me what you see.”
He leaned back onto his haunches. “Well, for one thing, I agree that he was buried. And he’s definitely been shot. Something larger than a .22. Not a shotgun. As centered as the wound is on his forehead, I’d say this is an execution-style killing. Or he was hit by someone who was one hell of a marksman.” He leaned a little to the side. “I mentioned the livor mortis coloration. That tells me he was stretched out on his back for long enough that the blood pooled there and coagulated before the body was thrown into the tree. Can’t tell much else until we get him cleaned up. Even then, I’ll need help from the state crime lab.”
Grace had been through the pockets of the man’s tattered pants and was searching the broken brush and limbs around the base of the oak. “Got something here,” she called, holding up a round disk about the size of a thick poker chip, attached to a short leather lace. The surface was glazed ceramic with an indigo blue outer circle around concentric white and blue rings. At its center, a pea-sized dot of the same deep blue seemed to stare back at us.
“What have you got there?” Chase stood and took it from her as she brought it over, holding it up to catch the first glint of morning sun. “Did it fall from the body?”
Grace shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it. This mean anything to you, Tate?”
My mind had flown half a world away. I was again standing in the doorway of a mudbrick home in Iraq’s Anbar province, questioning a village elder. He insisted he knew nothing about Al Qaeda activity in his village, trembling as he spoke. He was shaking, not because he was lying, but because the squad of Marines that stood behind this American interpreter always brought trouble. Beside him, tacked to the doorframe with a rusted nail, was a woven, postcard-sized tapestry with tasseled edges. At its bottom hung an identical amulet.
“Ya Rab,” I murmured “Yes. It means something to me.” The subconscious mumbling of the Arabic phrase I’d heard so often from Adeena’s lips when she was disturbed by something brought my thoughts back to the body at my feet. “It’s what’s called a nazar in Arabic. It’s an amulet to protect against al-ayn, the evil eye.” If the amulet had fallen from this man, he wasn’t Latino. His roots were in the Middle East.
4
When school consolidation swept the county in the 1980s, leaving the high school and junior high side-by-side in the middle of a cornfield far enough from any town that none could claim them as their own, the Crayton city hall and police station moved into the abandoned high school two blocks off the square. The sheriff’s department waited until banks began to gobble each other up a decade later, then relocated to the old bank building when it was replaced by a branch of First Ozark out on the highway.
I was three years old at the time, riding into town on weekends on my mother’s lap in an old F-150 pickup that’s still in a little barn behind the house. So, I didn’t exactly have any say in the department’s move. But I’ve thought since that we got the better end of the deal. The old bank faces the courthouse across Adams, a short walk to pick up a county record or escort a prisoner to a hearing. What was once the vault has become a perfect evidence room, already supplied with metal shelving and secure lockboxes. Two back offices, intentionally built with thick, reinforced concrete walls and no windows, made a perfect jail. The one not-so-grand part of the move from a drafty metal building on the north edge of town was that the sheriff got the loan officer’s glass-sided cubicle as his office. We call it the fishbowl. It may have been a smart thing to be able to keep an eye on loan officers while they met with prospective borrowers. But it’s not always helpful to see who’s meeting with the sheriff. The temporary solution was pull-down accordion shades that soon became permanent, giving the impression something secret and sinister must be going on behind those blinds. I keep them raised unless something secret and sinister is going on.
Bobby Lule had stayed out at the site of the explosion until his shift ended at 8:00. The three day-deputies crowded into the fishbowl: Grace seated in her favorite corner chair where the window walls come together, Rocky D’Amico perched loosely on a folding chair in front of the desk, and Frankie leaning nervously against the doorframe. The shades were down.
We call Rocky our Jail Commander, charging him with keeping an eye on the rare prisoner we get, watching over the evidence room, and cruising the areas just beyond the city limits every few hours to show some presence of law and order. He’s in his late fifties, about sixty pounds on the heavy side, and as friendly as Fred Rogers. People around Crayton love him, but he’s slow on the hoof and a heart attack waiting to happen. I try to leave Rocky within spitting distance of the office.
Frankie’s a man who doesn’t sit easily. He’s thin, wiry, and weasel-eyed, with a pencil-thin mustache he constantly smooths with a thumb and index finger. Frankie’s in constant motion, bouncing a foot and nodding his head even when he’s supposed to be standing still. Though he’s never actually shot anyone, Grace is so convinced that he wants to that she refuses to back him up on a call when it looks like there might be any chance of gunplay. He was first to speak when we finally settled into the shrouded office.
“So, are you thinking what I’m thinking, Tate?” he asked, shifting nervously against the doorframe. Everyone in the county calls me Tate, even when we’re talking official business. I tried for a few months to get them to call me Sheriff, but gave up when Marti, who’s been the office assistant through three generations of sheriffs and three times as many deputies, reminded me that my predecessor had so sullied the title that people preferred to use something else. Plus, the Tate name carries some intimidation value in the county. All the Tates anyone can remember were a tough, ornery bunch who didn’t back away from a brawl and usually came away as the last men standing.
I kicked back in my swivel chair behind the desk and propped a legal pad on one knee. “Depends on what you’re thinking, Frankie. Are we talking about the body, or the dam being blown up?”
The deputy shrugged loosely. “Could be both, I guess. But I was thinking mainly about the dam.”
“The Greaves?” Grace guessed for the rest of us. “You’re thinking the Greaves blew the thing up?”
“Damn right,” Frankie nodded. I wondered fleetingly if anyone else was getting a chuckle out of all the unintended “dam” puns, but quickly let it go. I was the only one in the room who’d grown up fascinated by words and the mystery of different languages. I wasn’t the finest torchbearer for the old Tate mystique.
“They’ve refused to move out of the holler and won’t take the money that’s been offered ‘em,” Frankie argued. “Have a suit against the water company and claim their land is sovereign territory. Not subject to the laws of the county or of the U.S. of A. We’ve been told that if they don’t move, when they get ready to flood the valley, we’re going to have to go haul them out. Ain’t somethin’ I’m looking forward to, and I’d stake my reputation as a lawman that it was the Greaves blew up the dam.”
Grace and I avoided exchanging a quick glance, not wanting to risk an involuntary smirk. We both knew the other was thinking the same thing. Frankie’s reputation wasn’t much of a wager. Barney Fife putting his good name on the line. But we had also both reached the same conclusion. Everyone living in Blackjack Holler has been mad as hell about the eminent domain landgrab. A few half-heartedly fought back. But everyone except the Greaves eventually settled. The belligerent father and son continued to defy both the water company and the law. I’d pretty well reconciled myself to the fact that within a few mon
ths, we were going to have to go drag them out, surrounded by heavy backup.
“It would have been Verl,” Grace observed from her corner. “I hear LJ’s never really recovered from being shot by your state trooper friend. He’s pretty much confined to a chair.”
By “your state trooper friend,” Grace was talking to me. And she meant Officer Mara Joseph. The state investigator had left a 9 mm round in LJ Greaves’ side when he pulled a shotgun on her during a murder investigation. The Greaves hadn’t been the killers, but decided their sovereignty was being violated when we went into the holler to question them about who might have suffocated the old woman who lived on the adjoining property. I had to agree with Frankie. Going back wasn’t something I looked forward to.
I jotted the Greaves names on my pad. “Whoever did it used something pretty powerful. It took more than a few sticks of dynamite to create that crater and throw the body that far.”
“We found quite an arsenal in that rathole of a building they call home,” Grace noted. She had joined a team from the state patrol that had searched the corrugated barn the men live in after Joseph and I had found the place packed floor-to-ceiling with every imaginable piece of junk. Both entrances had been boobytrapped.
“All firearms,” I reminded her. “No explosives.”
Her shrug showed that she wasn’t convinced. “We didn’t get into those piles. Just emptied the cabinet that was beside the back door. Who knows what else they have hidden in there. And they’re the kind of men who have connections to heavy stuff if they decided they need some.”
“Well, you’re likely to see Joseph again,” I said, keeping my eyes away from Grace. “I called troop headquarters in Springfield on the way back into town and told them we’d need help with this one. We don’t have the tools or manpower to do the kind of investigation this is going to take.”
