The air was fiercely hot around us, and the world seemed silent as the afternoon sun beat down relentlessly. I felt a fine dew of sweat on my forehead, and it wasn’t just from the heat. I’d seen situations like this go bad and end up with people dead because of nothing more than a misspoken word.
I took out the card on which I’d scribbled the boy’s phone number. I punched the number into my cell phone, and he answered on the third ring. “Doyle Raynes?” I asked.
“Yeah?” he answered.
“This is Sheriff Bo Handel, and I need you to come downstairs and talk to me.”
“What for?”
“I’ve got a warrant here for your arrest.”
“I didn’t kill anybody,” he said.
I rolled my eyes and silently called on the good Lord for help. It was clear to me that this boy was never going to be admitted to MIT. But it was also clear that he was just dumb enough with just enough fear in his voice that he might decide to fight it out if he was armed. Time for diplomacy.
“We didn’t say you did, son,” I said, my voice as pleasant as I could make it. “Besides, this whole thing is a long way from the courtroom. What we need to do is just talk things over and see if we can’t take care of business.”
For several seconds he said nothing, and I could tell he was weighing the options he didn’t have. He appeared at the window for a moment, the phone at his ear, then vanished once again back inside.
“You still there?” I asked.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Then don’t do anything silly. We’re armed to the teeth down here, and you haven’t got a chance if you get cute. You come on down and we’ll treat you decent. No rough stuff. I give you my word.”
“But I didn’t do anything.”
“It’s just a warrant, Doyle. That’s all. You’ll get a free lawyer if you need one and plenty of time to prove you’re innocent if you are. And son, the new jail is air conditioned and the food’s pretty good. They tell me it beats the hospital. I know for a fact that it beats being in the graveyard.”
There was another long pause during which I barely breathed. “What do you want me to do?” he asked at last.
“Just come out on the landing with your hands on the top of your head. Then walk slowly down the stairs. Don’t make any quick moves.”
“Okay, just let me get my shoes on.”
I didn’t like that business about giving him time to get his shoes, but I didn’t have any choice in the matter. I turned to Toby. “If he comes out shooting, or even with a gun in his hand, aim low and get his legs. If that doesn’t take the fight out of him, cash his check.”
“Okay, boss.”
But such precautions proved unnecessary. Doyle Raynes appeared on the landing, skinny and shirtless, his hands above his head, and made his way slowly down the rickety stairs. Up close he didn’t look like much—watery brown eyes and a wisp of a goatee and stringy hair that had been cut in a pageboy. As soon as he was cuffed I read him his Miranda warning and then served the search warrants.
“You’re going to search my car and my apartment too?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
“Can I be here when you do the apartment? I don’t like people going through my stuff.”
“No,” I said. “But we’ll be careful and not damage anything.”
I turned and saw Sheila standing at the end of the driveway and motioned her to come on back. She pulled a digital camera out of her purse and started snapping away. I was just about to say something to her when Toby called me over to Raynes’s car.
“Look inside,” he said. “And take a sniff too.”
I peeked into the interior of the Cutlass, then examined the outside once again. The car’s body was dusty and covered in road film, but the interior had been vacuumed and washed and was as neat as a pin. Or at least it was as neat as an old junker belonging to a dopehead could ever be.
“What do you smell?” Toby asked.
“Lysol,” I said.
“Right. Somebody went to some real trouble to clean up the interior of this thing.”
I stood back and looked at the car for a minute, thinking. Then I said, “Toby, get in there and pull that backseat out of its socket and see what you find behind it.”
A few seconds later the seat had been wrestled a few inches forward and Toby was shining his penlight into the crevice behind it. Then he stuck his hand in and said, “Blood. And some of it’s still tacky, even in this heat. How did you know?”
“The Twiller kid said he heard a commotion, so that means there must have been at least two of them. It just made sense to me they would have hauled the body in the backseat. Call the Department of Public Safety. We’re going to need a whole forensics team on this. We’ll hold up on the search until they get here. I want them to help with the apartment too.”
I turned to Raynes. “Are you going to talk this afternoon, or are you going to lawyer up on me?” I asked.
“I think I better get one, Sheriff. Don’t you?”
“I can’t answer that question for you, but you need to realize it may be tomorrow before the judge can appoint somebody. I’m guessing you want a court-provided attorney. Do you have any money for one on your own?”
“No, I’m pretty broke.”
“I thought so.” I pecked my knuckles on the primer-painted fender of the old car and shook my head. “You know, son, this car probably wouldn’t bring fifteen hundred dollars on a good day. If you’d taken it out in the country and torched it you might have skated on this thing.”
“I couldn’t do that, Sheriff. It’s my baby. I’m restoring it.”
A friend of mine says the most important thing about a person is not how much money he has, or what he owns, or how he looks, or even what he’s accomplished, but what he wants out of life and hasn’t gotten yet. I looked at Doyle Raynes’s old heap with its sagging springs and wheezy engine and torn upholstery, and I saw him getting that front fender in a wrecking yard somewhere. I saw him lovingly bolting it in place and dreaming of the day his baby would sport a fancy new paint job. When I saw all that, I felt a stab of sick pity deep in my heart and shook my head sadly.
“Take him on to the jailhouse, Billy Don,” I said, turning away. “He’s got a killing to answer for.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Toby and Sheila and I went back to the courthouse while Billy Don hauled Doyle Raynes out to the jail for booking. Otis Tremmel had more forensics training than anybody else on the force, myself included. I had him stay on the scene to meet the DPS team.
Caddo County had built a new jail the year before on the north side of town, but we hadn’t finished moving our whole operation into our new offices. When Amanda Twiller was murdered, the sheriff’s department itself was still housed in the basement of the courthouse, just as it had been for decades. Until the previous May, the jail had also been in the basement, but it had long ago become inadequate.
There had been an advantage to having the jail close to the courthouse because the sheriff is responsible for delivering prisoners to the court for arraignments and trials. Since there was no suitable place downtown to build a new “detention facility,” as they are now called, the county located it on the edge of town and bought a van to transport prisoners. Before the end of the year, my office was scheduled to be moved to the new building, but even this was not the best of all possible arrangements. I was expected to provide security for the court. In view of the number of courthouse shootings in the last few years, this was not an unreasonable requirement. The problem was that I didn’t have enough deputies to station two at the courthouse during office hours and still have the manpower I needed to do everything else I was expected to do.
The air was hot and oppressive when we got out of the Suburban, and the whole square looked like it needed a bath. Most of the cars parked around the square held a fine layer of dust, and the windows of the stores across the street were greasy and dull.
“I’m going
to the library to write and file my story about the arrest,” Sheila said. “Do you still want me to come by tonight, or have I worn out my welcome?”
“Yeah, but I may be a little late. Still got your key?”
“Sure.”
“Good. If I’m not there, you just go on in and make yourself at home. Fix yourself a sandwich or something, and have a drink.”
I washed my hands and face and went upstairs and got more cheese and crackers and a Coke. Somewhere along the way I was going to need to get something more substantial to eat, but that could wait. I’d had plenty of practice missing meals in almost thirty years on this job. As I came through the outer office I motioned Toby into my inner sanctum and shut the door. I took a long pull of my Coke and kicked my boots off my tired feet and flopped down in my big desk chair. Sighing, I looked up longingly at my Browning Superposed hanging in the gun rack and remembered that I’d rolled out of bed that morning planning to go out to the gun club for a couple rounds of sporting clays this afternoon.
“What now?” Toby asked.
“Call Billy Don and tell him that when he gets done at the jail I want the two of you to go get Emmet Zorn and bring him down here. I want to know what he was doing with that Raynes kid last night.”
“Okay,” he said with a grin. “That sounds like fun.”
* * *
Mercifully, after Toby left I managed to get in some time on the computer working on my budget and other paperwork. I was interrupted when he knocked on the door to announce that he and Billy Don had their quarry outside.
Zorn came through the door and I motioned for him to take a seat across from my desk. I noticed that he had a new toothpick installed in his mouth, this one red. He’d also changed his tie. The current one was dark gray with a clasp of faux gold with a big piece of green plastic that was meant to pass for jade but didn’t. He was also a bit more subdued than he had been that morning. A sheriff’s office can have that effect on a man.
“Then I guess you want me to make that statement we talked about earlier,” he said.
I shook my head. “Not right now. At the moment I need a couple of answers.”
“What?”
“A little while ago we arrested a boy named Doyle Raynes for Amanda Twiller’s murder.”
That seemed to surprise him. “That’s a shame,” he said. “I always thought Doyle was a good kid. Do you really think he did it?”
“At this point it sure looks like it. And you and I have a problem.”
“Yeah? What?”
“I have a reliable witness who saw you and Doyle with Mrs. Twiller at the Pak-a-Sak about two-thirty last night.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t say anything about that without a lawyer.”
“That’s certainly your right, but if you were to tell me what the three of you did after you left the store we might be able to clear this up without involving any attorneys.”
He thought it over for a few seconds. “Okay. I pulled something stupid. I may have committed a liquor violation. It was after legal hours, and Doyle wanted to buy a bottle of whisky. So I went in the store and got it for him, but I wouldn’t let him pay me. I just gave it to him. Is that a violation?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” I said. “It would have been if you sold it, but it really makes no difference since I’m more interested in the Twiller murder than hanging some chickenshit misdemeanor on you. How did you get to the store? I thought you told me earlier you left the Sawmill with some other people.”
“I did,” he said. “They dropped me off at home. My car was there.”
“I don’t guess you’d mind giving me their names, then?”
“It was a buddy of mine named Wayne Pierce and his girlfriend. He lives in Henderson.”
“The girlfriend’s name?”
“Chelsea something or other. I don’t remember. Wayne runs a landscaping company up there. You can find him without any trouble.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’ve got you at home by eleven or so. How did you come to be back at the Pak-a-Sak at two-thirty?”
“Doyle called about two and wanted a bottle. He said he’d come by and pick me up. Instead I told him I’d meet him at the store.”
“So you claim you got out of bed or whatever and came down here to break the law in the early hours of the morning to accommodate a screwup like Doyle Raynes? I’m not sure that makes much sense to me.”
“Like I told you, I thought he was a good kid. He helps me out around the store some, and I kinda took an interest in him. Besides, I was still up, anyway.”
“There’s one little problem with that. Doyle’s aunt told me that he borrowed twenty bucks from her right before he left at ten. He said he wanted it to buy some whisky with, but you claim he didn’t call you until two. What were they doing all that time?”
“Man, I don’t have any idea. Maybe over to somebody’s house or something. I wasn’t with them.”
“Okay, do you know where they went when they left?”
“Beats me,” he said. “Some place to fuck, probably.”
I felt my face harden. I don’t like the word, and I certainly didn’t like to hear it used in reference to a woman who had just been murdered. “Oh? What makes you say that?”
“Doyle had some pills, and she’d do anybody for a few pills. She’d gotten that bad.”
I’d had enough of him for the moment. “You can go,” I said.
“I need somebody to take me home.”
“In a minute. Just wait in the outer office.”
Toby pushed the door shut behind him. “Now what do you make of that?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “What’s your take on him?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t got one yet. What do you want to do with the man?”
I rose and put my hat on my head. “Take him on home. We’ve got nothing to hold him on. And send somebody up to Henderson in the morning and ask this Wayne Pierce guy about Zorn’s story. You might run Pierce through the DPS computer too. And have somebody check him out with the cops up there in Rusk County.”
“Tonight?” Toby asked. “We’re shorthanded this evening.”
“Just leave a note on Maylene’s desk and tell her to have somebody do it in the morning.”
“Anything else?”
I shook my head. “Now I got to go eat or drop.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
My father died of a heart attack in the middle of my senior year in college, leaving me with an invalid mother suffering from multiple sclerosis to support. I came back home and took over the family timber business and then got married soon afterward. Although commerce wasn’t my first choice as an occupation, I had a knack for it, and at one time I owned two sawmills and a lumberyard. A little more than a decade later, Caddo County’s longtime sheriff, John Nightwalker, a giant man of one quarter Cherokee blood, came down with the cancer that killed him a couple of years later. He resigned a few weeks after he got the diagnosis, and for reasons known only to him he talked the commissioners court into appointing me to fill out the two remaining years of his unexpired term. I liked the job and ran for the office in the next election. I’ve been running ever since, the last two times without an opponent.
Besides patience, my years as sheriff have taught me just how comforting the old rituals and patterns of small-town life really are, and I know that one reason I’ve thrived in law enforcement was that it lets me feel more involved with my people than I did peddling two-by-fours and plywood slabs across a sales counter. I also liked walking that fine line between force and diplomacy that a country sheriff has to walk, and I’ve often found myself in the amusing position of having to arrest some of my strongest supporters and do it in such a way that I could still expect to get their votes when the next election rolled around.
I live in the house where I was raised, a Queen Anne Victorian on South Main Street five blocks down from the courthouse that was built by my great-grandfather in the closing years
of the Gilded Age. It’s two stories, with four bedrooms upstairs and five rooms plus a huge kitchen downstairs, along with a three-bay carriage house in the rear that I use as a garage.
Sheila’s Datsun was parked out front. I wheeled into the carriage house, walked up the flagstone pathway I’d laid down years before, crossed the screened-in porch and unlocked the kitchen door. As soon as I stepped inside I heard piano music coming hesitantly from the front room. I tossed my hat on a peg and took the time to wash my hands and face in the kitchen sink.
She’d left a bottle of V.O. on the cabinet. I threw a few ice cubes into a glass and poured myself about three ounces of whiskey. Then I pulled off my boots and socks, relishing the cool feel of the kitchen tiles beneath my tired, hot feet. I quickly drank about half my drink, refilled the glass, and then made my way up the hall toward the living room to find her sitting at my Baldwin baby grand pecking out “Chopsticks.” She turned and smiled at me and said, “I’m not much good, am I?”
“I’m not either anymore.”
“You sound a whole lot better than I do.” She looked around. “This is such a beautiful room. I remember Grandma always called it the parlor.”
I laughed, but it was a laugh that sounded sad and without conviction in my own ears. “Now it’s Beauregard Handel’s Museum of Faded Dreams. I think you know something about faded dreams too, don’t you?”
She gave me a wry smile and nodded. “I grew up knowing you were majoring in music before you had to quit and come home to take care of Grandma,” she said. “I’ve always wondered if you’ve regretted it.”
“Sometimes I do. But like Dad always said, what might have been won’t pay the rent or put a dime’s worth of groceries on the table. I did what I had to do.”
She smiled at me again. “Play something for me, Bo.”
“You know I only like to play when I’ve had enough to drink that I don’t care how bad I sound.”
“Come on … do it for me.”
Nights of the Red Moon Page 5
