Nights of the Red Moon

by Milton T. Burton

  “Yes, ma’am, I have,” I said. “I went to that den of iniquity this very morning in pursuance of my duties as sheriff of this county. As I have told you before, a lawman can’t get much useful information at the church house. Did she leave her name?”

  She looked down at the card in her hand. “Patty French. She said she needed to talk to you bad, and that it had something to do with the Amanda Twiller murder.”

  “Hey! That sounds hopeful. Did you get her number?”

  She shook her head. “She was on her way to see Dr. Fletcher, and said that she’d come by about noon, right after her appointment. She also mentioned that Parker Raynes told her to call you. Do you know Parker Raynes?”

  I nodded sagely. “She’s the bartender at the Sawmill. In fact, I been sparkin’ her right heavy here lately, and I’m getting ready to pop the question any day now.”

  “I know that’s a load of bull, but you could do worse. She’s not the bartender, though. She owns the place, and it’s a moneymaker.”

  “How come you know so much about the lady, Maylene?”

  “She goes to my church.”

  “Say what?” I asked in disbelief.

  “Well, it’s a legal occupation, Bo. Besides, they don’t serve anything but beer, anyhow. Heck, I’ve been known to drink a little beer myself.” She pointed an accusing finger at my desk. “It’s the hard stuff like you keep in that drawer there that’s the devil’s spawn.” With that definitive statement, she wheeled around and left my office.

  “Imagine that,” I muttered to myself. “Baptists drinking beer.” Just when you think you have it all figured out, you get buried under your own ignorance.

  I leaned back and stared at my phone for at least a couple of minutes. Muldoon and Hotchkiss weren’t aware of it, but their boss, Mack Reynolds, was an old and valued friend of mine. Mack was the special agent in charge of the Bureau’s Houston office, and I knew he would tell me what I wanted to know. We’d helped each other numerous times in the past, but the question was, did I need to know why the Bureau was keeping tabs on Emmet Zorn badly enough to call on him again? I wanted to find Amanda Twiller’s killer, or killers, as the case might be, but I didn’t want to let the investigation snowball beyond that. In the end I decided to postpone phoning him.

  I was just about to get back on the computer and start working my fall budget when County Commissioner Charlie Morton strolled in like he owned the place and pushed the door shut behind him. A couple of years shy of forty, Charlie was big and beefy and red-faced and full of hustle and bustle and alpha male aggressiveness. He was also one of the main wheelhorses in the local chamber of commerce and a successful real estate broker who’d acquired a number of rental houses and a small motel. I was glad he’d dropped by because I had a little something on my mind I’d been meaning to talk over with him, anyway. I leaned back in my chair and got comfortable in order to savor the moment.

  “What brings you here, Charlie?” I asked.

  “Money.”

  “Goody! How much you got for me?”

  “Why do you always have to be such a smart-ass, Bo?”

  “I reckon it’s in my genes.” We stared at each other for a few seconds, then I said, “Spit it out, Charlie. What’s on your mind?”

  “That autopsy you ordered this morning on Amanda Twiller.”

  “What about it?”

  “Do you realize that it costs this county thirteen hundred dollars more to have an autopsy done locally than it does to do it down in Houston?”

  “No, I didn’t realize that. Does your wife realize that you’ve been screwing that cute little Mexican waitress at Poncho’s Cantina in Nacogdoches for the last couple of months?”

  Ever see a man break out in a cold sweat on a hot day? It can be very gratifying.

  “Bo…” He looked sick.

  “Thought you were being real careful, didn’t you?”

  “How on earth…”

  “I had one of my deputies keeping you under surveillance.”

  “That’s misuse of public resources.”

  I nodded. “That contention could certainly be made. So you just bring the matter before the commissioners court at the next meeting if you want to make it. I will counter with the argument that every intelligence service in the world has known for centuries that the sexual habits of an elected official have considerable bearing on his ability to do his job, especially when he’s entrusted with public funds like you are. Governments have fallen because of such hanky-panky. Ever hear of John Profumo and the Christine Keeler scandal in England back in the sixties?”

  The name Profumo didn’t seem to ring any bells with Charlie. I don’t think he had much interest in Christine Keeler, either. He just stared straight ahead like he was looking down a long, dark tunnel that had no end.

  “Bo, my wife and I are already on thin ice, and if—”

  “I know where you’re going with this, Charlie,” I said. “You’re gonna tell me that if you wind up in divorce court Judge MacGregor will recuse himself because he’s close to both of you. Then the case will go to Judge Wilson down in Lufkin, a lady who is known to be an ardent feminist and is suspected by some of being a man-hating lesbian, as well. And when it comes time to divide the property, she will, just as she always does in cases of philandering husbands, ram it up your ass so hard it splinters, and then break it off well below the surface.”

  “Bo, please…”

  “She raped ole Bobby Wells, may he rest in peace. You remember Bobby, I’m sure. With him it was that cute little blond desk clerk at the Fredonia hotel. I was there in court the day it happened, and Judge Wilson barely left him with the clothes he was wearing. He’d gone in there that morning right prosperous too. You remember what happened to him after that, don’t you?

  “Bo…”

  “Bobby never got it back together. The little blond wasn’t interested in a poor boy, so she dropped him and took up with some hotshot young salesman who came through. The judge had frozen all his assets six months before the divorce, and he had to max out his credit cards to live on. That ruined his credit rating, which meant he didn’t have any latitude to get his business going again. So about a year later he took that old Winchester pump duck gun of his, stuck the muzzle in his mouth, and—”

  He raised his head and looked at me like he’d never seen me before. “Bo, surely you wouldn’t…”

  I just treated him to a happy smile and we sat and said nothing while he mopped his face with his handkerchief. Finally he gave me a tiny nod. “What do I have to do?”

  “I need an advocate on the commissioners court. That’s all. I haven’t had one since Billy Cochran died. I’ve never asked for anything I didn’t really need to do my job, and I’m damned tired of getting turned down. For one thing, you people are way behind on giving my deputies a raise. And while you’re at it, Maylene could use a little more money too. This county never has paid her what she’s worth. I think the JPs could stand a boost as well.”

  “Is that all?”

  I shook my head. “No. There’ll be more in the future. When I said I needed an advocate I was thinking in terms of a nice long partnership. Now get on out of here. I’ve got work to do.”

  He rose to his feet and nodded. “Okay, Bo. I’ll give it my best.”

  “I know you will, Charlie, because I’ll be at every one of the meetings to make sure you do. And I’ll never ask you to do anything illegal. Rest easy on that score.”

  He nodded and stopped at the door and turned back. Nothing unusual about that. Everybody stops at my door and turns back. It’s like some kind of lodge ritual and I’m the only nonmember in town. “Something else, Charlie?” I asked.

  “You know, I never expected anything like this to happen to me,” he said, his voice tinged with wonder. “I just thought—”

  “That you’d get a little nooky on the side, and nobody would be the wiser. It probably would have worked if you hadn’t been in public office. Look at it as penan
ce, Charlie. And if you’re smart, you’ll break it off with that waitress and patch things up with your wife. She’s a good woman.”

  He nodded his head sadly, then he left and I leaned back and put my feet up on my desk. I laughed and wondered how agents Muldoon and Hotchkiss would have reacted to that little exchange. They probably thought political hardball was confined to the big cities.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  For lunch I had a glass of milk and a couple of slices of rat cheese and a few saltine crackers out of the break room pantry on the second floor. A little after noon, Maylene knocked on the door and ushered Patty French into my office. She was a pretty girl in her late twenties with blue eyes, blond hair, and a very red nose. I stood and got her seated.

  “Summer cold?” I asked.

  “You better believe it,” she said with a nod.

  “Would you like some coffee or something? We’ve got hot water, and my secretary has some tea bags.”

  “Gosh, no. Hot stuff just makes your nose run worse. Don’t you know that?”

  It was one of those bumbling moments men often have when they’ve demonstrated some deep and profound ignorance in front of a female. “My mistake,” I said. “Could I offer you anything else?”

  She shook her head. “No, I just want to tell you what I have to say and go home and get in bed.”

  “Then I’m going to record this, and if we need to have you sign a statement, we can cobble it up from what’s on the tape and I’ll have a deputy bring it by your house later. That way you won’t have to wait around.”

  “Sure.”

  I quickly set up the recorder and read the day and time and our names onto the tape. “Go ahead,” I said.

  “Well, when I called in sick today Parker told me about you coming by. See, me and a couple of the other girls got to talking and clowning around and having fun after we closed last night, and I didn’t leave until a little after two.”

  “When you say leave, you mean you didn’t start home until then?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Here in Sequoya. My address is three-oh-three State Street over on the north side of town.”

  “You left by yourself or did someone go with you?”

  “Just me.”

  “And you drove straight home?”

  “Yes,” she said and nodded and blew her nose on what seemed to be her last, disintegrating tissue. I got up and rooted around in my desk drawer until I found a box of Kleenex and set them in front of her. “Thank you,” she said and scrabbled a few out of the box.

  “Go ahead with your story,” I said.

  “Anyway, when I came by the Pak-a-Sak the light was on inside. Doyle’s car was parked out front and so was Emmet Zorn’s.”

  “Doyle who, ma’am? You need to be specific about that for the record.”

  “Doyle Raynes. And that preacher’s wife was standing beside it looking for something in her purse.”

  “You mean Amanda Twiller?”

  “Yes, she’s the one. I forgot her name for a second there.”

  “Are you sure it was her?”

  She nodded. “Oh yes. She’s been in and out of the Sawmill for a week or so, and Emmet Zorn told everybody who she was.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I stopped at the red light there by the store and just happened to see that Doyle and Emmet Zorn were coming out. Doyle had a bottle in his hand.”

  “And?”

  “Zorn locked the door to the store and took off in his Lexus. As I passed by, Doyle and Mrs. Twiller were getting in his car.”

  “And this was what time?”

  “Close to two-thirty.”

  “Did they go in different directions, or did they follow Zorn?”

  “He went on up Main toward the north side of town, and they left going west.”

  “Anything else?”

  She shook her head. “I got home about two-forty and crawled right in bed. Then I woke up about four hours later with this cold.”

  “Are you certain of the identity of these three people? And I mean absolutely certain?”

  “There’s not a doubt in my mind, Sheriff. I know all three of them well.”

  Just then the door opened and Maylene stuck her head in and said, “Sheila is out here, and she says she needs to see you now. Claims it can’t wait.”

  I excused myself and went through the outer office and steered Sheila out into the hallway. “You’re not going to believe this, Bo,” she said excitedly.

  “Lay it on me.”

  “Tommy Twiller saw the car. Or at least I think it’s the car. The kid had to get up to go to the bathroom. He said he knew it was right before sunup because it was beginning to get light outside. He heard some kind of commotion, and looked out the window and saw an old car right in front of the house. And then it took off.”

  “Did he see his mother’s body?”

  “Bo, this is the awful part. He said he thought he saw someone lying on the grass, but he just went back to bed and went to sleep. I think he saw her and knew who it was and just couldn’t deal with it.”

  I grimaced. I’ve always held the opinion that the term “in denial” is psychobabble that doesn’t mean much, but I was beginning to have a whole new respect for the concept.

  “Did he give you any description of the car?” I asked.

  “Only that it was old-looking, and that one front fender was a different color from the rest of the body.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Thirty minutes later I had an arrest warrant for Doyle Raynes along with a search warrant for his home and car. Before I went upstairs to see Judge MacGregor, I’d told Maylene to have the dispatcher call Toby and tell him to come to the office. I also had her call two experienced deputies in from patrol—Billy Don Smith and Otis Tremmel—both steady men with several years on the force. Toby arrived first.

  “What about my autopsy report?” I asked him.

  “Linda said they’re going to fax it over as soon as it’s official, but he put the time of death at sometime between three and six this morning.”

  “Well, hell,” I said in exasperation. “I could have told him that. She was seen alive at two-thirty and found dead at about six. How about the bullets?”

  “Already filed in the evidence locker.”

  “Good. We’ll get those two Bureau boys on that tomorrow. What we’ve got on our plate right now is more important.”

  Soon Smith and Tremmel arrived, and I got everybody clustered around my desk. “Toby and I are going to take the front,” I said. “I want you two guys to take the unmarked car and make sure the kid is at home. He might have flown the coop or just be out or something, and there’s no point in mounting an assault on an empty house. If his car is there, then there’s every reason to think he will be too.”

  “What kind of car is it?” Billy Don asked.

  “An Olds Cutlass, maybe ten or fifteen years old. Tan with a gray front fender. If it’s there, go ahead and get your flak jackets on and park down the street a few yards from his drive where he can’t spot you. When you see us pull up behind you, drive around to the rear and get up behind that garage. Now does anybody know the layout of this place?”

  “I do,” Tremmel said. “It has a long flight of stairs on the side that go up to the apartment. There’s no way to get to the landing without passing the windows.”

  That description rang a bell with me. “Does this happen to be Matt Jones’s old place, by any chance?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Smith said. “I think it is.”

  “Then nobody, and I mean nobody, is going up those damn stairs. About twenty years ago the DPS narcotics people were pulling a bust on that very same apartment, and a young officer got a belly full of squirrel shot on that stairway. The boy wound up with a colostomy bag, and he still isn’t healthy. So we’ll either use the bullhorn or I’ll call him on the phone. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try tear gas. Hell, I’ll burn him out be
fore I’ll let one of my people go up that stairway. Now is that clear to everybody?”

  They nodded. I motioned to Smith and Tremmel. “You two get rolling.”

  Ten minutes later Billy Don Smith called on his cell phone with the information that Raynes’s car was in the drive right in front of the apartment. Maylene checked the phone book and found a number listed under the kid’s name at the right address. I jotted it down, and then had Toby get a tear gas gun and three canisters out of the armory. We both grabbed Remington 870 riot guns and loaded them with number-four buckshot. Then we were on our way without a hitch. Or so I thought until I got out in the hall and saw Sheila.

  “Bo,” she said.

  “Sheila, don’t ask.”

  “That’s not fair, Bo. After all, I’m the one who talked to Tommy.”

  I sighed deeply. She was right about that. And she had always given me help in the past when I’d asked for it and asked little in return. Which brought to mind that verse in the Bible about not binding the mouths of the oxen that tread the grain. “Will you do exactly what I tell you to do?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  I made a snap decision that the commissioners wouldn’t have approved of. Not that I cared. “Come on, then.”

  * * *

  The garage apartment was behind a frame bungalow in a part of town that had been developed in the 1920s. Originally a solidly middle class neighborhood, now it was a little seedy and weather-worn and occupied mostly by young, low-end blue-collar families and marginal retirees.

  We’d taken the department’s big black Chevy Suburban. When Smith and Tremmel saw us turn onto the street they drove around the block toward the rear. Toby and I got out of the truck and donned our flak gear. I parked Sheila across the street with an admonition to stay put until I called her. A couple of minutes later my cell phone buzzed. It was Billy Don Smith telling me they were coming up the lane behind the garage. Toby and I climbed back into the Suburban and wheeled into the driveway. He stopped well back from the garage and cut the engine, and we piled out and got behind our vehicle.