"That son of a bitch,” Landrum said. “Now you can do something, right? He says he's gonna burn my house down!"
We were in his living room this time. It was a large space, the walls lined with dusty old deer mounts and cedar planking. It occurred to me that there'd be a lot of material to feed a fire. And there damn sure weren't any hydrants nearby. Not out here in the sticks.
"Your name never came up,” I said. “Same as last time. He asked a question, that's all. Wasn't necessarily a threat to it."
Landrum's face was pink with anger. “Of course there's a threat to it! Why else would he come see you?"
I could hear someone banging around in the kitchen. Carol Ann, most likely, in there making dinner. Creating a lot more noise than was necessary, if you asked me.
"Just keep your eyes and ears open,” I said. “That's my advice. And call us if you need us."
* * * *
Landrum took a step closer and spoke softly but urgently. “Christ, I'm turning into a prisoner in my own house, Bobby. This situation's long past tolerable. Carol Ann's ‘bout had enough. She ain't much of a homebody, know what I mean?"
Which was putting it mildly. Carol Ann could drink more than any three Blanco County cedar-choppers put together. She'd danced on her share of tables, and it was a wonder she hadn't moved to Austin and turned pro. Then again, when you've got a sugar daddy like Frank Landrum, why bother?
"My hands are tied, Frank."
Landrum became a ghost again, coming into town occasionally for groceries, but that was about it. Then one afternoon he called me, excited, and said, “Jeremy Miller said Danny Ray was at the Exxon, filling up five cans of gas. Lot of people saw it too."
"And?"
"That's all you're gonna say?"
"I'm not sure what you want from me."
He replied with that old standby, and his voice was so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear: “I pay your damn salary, you hear? Now I want you to do something about that boy! That's what I want!"
I waited a few seconds for him to calm down, then I said, “You got a lawyer, Frank?"
"What? Hell yeah, I got a lawyer. A couple of ‘em. Why?"
"If either of your lawyers can tell me what law Danny Ray's breaking, I'd be happy to bring him in."
He slammed the phone down.
* * * *
I guess he wanted to prove he wasn't scared because he drove in the next morning and made himself visible all over town. Stopped at the diner, the feed store, the post office.
I was waiting for Danny Ray this time, and he didn't disappoint. Showed up that very afternoon.
"Sheriff,” he said, “is it a felony to shoot a man's cows? And if you shot the entire herd, would they file it as one crime, or one count for each cow?"
I stood up, closed my office door, then returned to my seat. “You've had your fun, Danny Ray. But enough is enough."
He gave me his poker face. “What're you talking about?"
"I know exactly what you're doing, and damn if it ain't working. Frank Landrum is a basket case, and Carol Ann's going stir crazy. Ain't that enough for you? Besides, you really think this is the way to win her back?"
I wish he would've given in because that would've been the end of it, but he didn't. He said, “Maybe a fellow should just shoot one cow at a time and see what happens."
* * * *
I told Landrum about it, of course, and his reaction was about what I expected. He shouted and hollered and threatened to take my job. I said he was welcome to it because I felt like a schoolmarm trying to separate two brats during recess.
Our local game warden came by the next day and said he saw Landrum parked in his lower pasture, guarding his cattle. The fool had been out there all night with a Q-Beam and a deer rifle.
Six days later, this soap opera reached its sorry conclusion, and I got a call out to Landrum's place. I drove over there, learned what had happened, then went directly to the auto shop.
Danny Ray saw me in the parking lot and came out to meet me. “Mornin', Sheriff.” He was all smiles and good cheer.
"Danny Ray."
"Something I can do for you? Need an oil change?"
"Carol Ann moved to Dallas,” I said. “And because of that, Frank Landrum killed himself. Stuck a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger."
I've never seen a smile evaporate so quick. Danny Ray looked puzzled, and he didn't say anything for the longest time.
"Satisfied with yourself?” I asked.
He brought his eyes up to mine. The man was in genuine pain. “Jesus, I didn't ... I never meant..."
"What did you think would happen? You screw around with a man's life like that, how'd you think it would end?"
"Oh sweet Jesus."
"You might as well've shot him yourself. In fact, I'm gonna talk to the county attorney and see if we can't charge you for this. In my opinion, you murdered the man."
Danny Ray's eyes were getting wet now, and there was a fear in there that told me he was through with his games. Finally.
Unlike Danny Ray, I knew when to call it quits.
So I signaled Frank Landrum, and he came driving around the corner of the building. I wish I'd had a camera because Danny Ray went from confusion to relief to total joy in about three seconds. Frank Landrum was alive, and Danny Ray couldn't have been happier about it. He actually gave Landrum a hug when he got out of his truck.
It was a mean trick, I know, but I had to do it because the part about Carol Ann was true. When I learned she'd hightailed it, which was never Danny Ray's intent, I figured he'd be more hellbent on revenge than ever. Landrum, for his part, had had his fill of Carol Ann and was ready to put this nasty business behind him. What I needed was something to keep Danny Ray in line for good.
So I reached into his own bag of tricks. Turned out he didn't mind.
Copyright (c) 2008 Ben Rehder
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Fiction: MURDER IN THE HOLD by Joan Druett
Linda Weatherly
* * * *
Captain Smith lifted his hat, scratched the top of his head, put the hat back again, then finally swiveled his chair to look directly at the lad he was about to charge with murder.
Smith was a Nantucketer to the bone. Like most whaling masters on board their ships at sea, he didn't look like a captain at all, being too young, too shabby, and too poor. His old brown suit was patched and stained in many places. He'd outgrown it since he bought it, or it had been made for another man, because the sagging waistband showed a portion of red flannel drawers, and there was a good margin of thick woolen sock between the hems of the trousers and his rough, sturdy shoes. To the eye of an outsider, the only sign of his calling, apart from his distinct stench of old oil, was the ring made of the tooth of a sperm whale, which fastened the rusty black neckerchief around his throat.
Those on board his ship were well aware, however, that Captain Smith was a real professional. He could spy a spout five miles away and tell what kind of whale it was in an instant. When in charge of the chase, he could direct four whaleboats unerringly to the prey; he was famous for his courage and the efficient thrust of his lance. He had shipped first at the age of fourteen, and had the brawny round shoulders of a man who had spent countless hours heaving at an oar. His little blue eyes had the unfocused, pale stare of a man who was accustomed to studying the far horizon.
Taken altogether, he was the typical figure of a young man who had risen from the forecastle to the cabin in recommended Nantucket style, with a fine career ahead of him, given luck in the way of catching whales. Right now, though, he was uncomfortable and unhappy.
Not for the first time he wished he'd never signed up for this confounded voyage. When Smith had first boarded the Paths of Duty in Nantucket five months earlier, it had been as first officer, a busy and important job because he was the second-in-charge, but with the comfort of knowing that another man was going to make all the crucial decisions. First one captai
n and then his replacement had dropped dead, propelling him into the command, and various other deaths, mostly violent, had marked the voyage since then. There had been too much death altogether on the old Paths of Duty, most of it connected in some way with the young savage who stood before him.
The trouble was that the savage, though young, was the most promising seaman in the forecastle, and he was going to be very sorry to lose him. The thought made him feel angrier than ever. He barked, “Have you any notion what trouble you're in, boy?"
There had been too much death altogether on the Paths of Duty, most of it connected in some way with the young savage.
Having become tired of waiting for the skipper to speak, Wiki Coffin had been surreptitiously studying the captain's cabin. It was unfamiliar territory, as he was the youngest of the twenty-seven men of the crew, and far too inferior to be invited into these quarters. In fact, the closest he had been to it was on the day he had shipped in Nantucket, when he had signed his name on the ship's articles in the officers’ messroom, on the other side of the door. This, the private domain of the captain, was an important place, being the drawing room where visitors were received; it was the office, the chartroom, and the supreme court of the ship, where offenders were summoned for trial and punishment. However, it was not nearly as magnificent as Wiki had expected, being nothing more than a narrow corridor that ran across the transom. A great chart desk was crammed against the forward bulkhead, and a heavy settee thrust under the three little portholes in the stern, leaving very little room for the captain, who was leaning back in his chair. The captain's brother, the first officer—who was called “Mr. Starbuck” to avoid confusion—was slouched on the settee.
Both men, Wiki noted now, were staring at him with deep disappointment mingled with condemnation writ all over their mahogany-tanned faces. Up until this moment, he'd assumed he had been summoned to describe his discovery of the murdered corpse of Alfonso Gomes, but now it looked very much as if he'd been called aft for trial and punishment. But, if so, punishment for what?
Wiki shifted uneasily under the double stare, searching his conscience. Had they found out somehow that he had considered jumping ship? But, if so, he was certainly not the only one. Whalemen were paid in shares of the profits from whale oil, not in wages like ordinary seamen, and the old Paths of Duty had been so unlucky in the matter of catching whales that it was obvious to all that anyone who survived the voyage would leave the ship in a state of debt. In both forecastle and steerage the men had openly muttered about taking the traditional whaleman's way of getting quit of a bad bargain—by jumping ship at the first good chance.
That first good opportunity had come after the Paths of Duty had been brought aback by a sudden squall in the southern Atlantic. The old whaleship came out of it with the mainmast warped so badly that Captain Smith was forced to put into Rio de Janeiro for repairs, and over the three weeks in port, seven men had beaten a furtive retreat. One, understandably, had been the man whose trick at the helm it had been when the ship was caught aback, and who was flogged for his inattention. Even more unluckily for him, he had gotten drunk and boastful in a taberna, and the proprietor of the tavern had turned him in. The tavern owner had been given a reward of money by Captain Smith, and the deserter had been rewarded too, with another dozen lashes.
Three more had been caught in various ways, so that of the seven absconders only three men had made good their escape, these being the second mate and two harpooners, all of whom had been shipped in the Azores just a couple of months before. Having the advantage of being Portuguese, and indistinguishable from the locals, they had disappeared without trace. This had left Captain Smith with three berths to fill, which was the reason Alfonso had been shipped, along with his much older brother, Miguel. It was the first time either of the two Brazilians had been to sea on a proper ship, so they couldn't take the places of the officer or the two harpooners. However, even greenhands who couldn't comprehend a word of English were considered better than nothing.
Wiki thought now that he could have easily gotten away with deserting in Rio. Most of the populace was as black haired and brown skinned as he was, and he spoke fluent Portuguese, having learned it from an Azorean shipmate, so it would have been child's play to vanish into the alleys off the bustling market at Rua Ouvidor. However, he had decided to wait until the Paths of Duty had arrived in the Pacific. After his Salem shipmaster father had abandoned him in New England, he'd made up his mind to get back to his mother and his whanau—his folks—in New Zealand, and joining the crew of a whaler had seemed the best way to do it.
This morning, though, after discovering Alfonso's corpse, Wiki had wondered if he had made the wrong decision when he'd opted not to desert—a feeling that was intensified by the expression on the captain's hard Nantucket face. Very cautiously, he said, “Sir?"
Captain Smith growled, “I've no choice but to put you in irons and take you back to Rio, and hand you over to the U. S. Consul—who will put you on board the first ship bound for the States, where you'll go on trial and swing for it, boy."
"Swing?"
"They'll hang you for murder, understand? It might be the regular thing for folks to club each other to death in the barbaric place you come from, boy, but in the United States murder's a capital crime."
Wiki cried, “Murder?"
"The foul murder of Alfonso Gomes! Why the hell else do you think you were summoned to this cabin, boy?"
Wiki winced, and then muttered, “I thought maybe the theft of the mirror?"
* * * *
When the skipper had returned from his first jaunt on shore in Rio de Janeiro with a fancy gilt-edged mirror tucked under his arm, it had been considered an eccentricity. Then when he hung it up in the hurricane house which sheltered the stern, just beside the door that led down to the cabin, and was observed to check his appearance every time he came on deck, just about every foremast hand thought Captain Smith had gone quite mad. However, as always in the close confines of a crowded whaleship, the truth emerged. The third mate, who had accompanied the captain on his third trip into the city, confided to his boat's crew that their skipper had fallen in love.
The object of this sudden adoration was the daughter of the local ships’ agent who organized the repair of the ship and a certain amount of reprovisioning. The agent got a hefty fee for this, and commission from the merchants who supplied the goods and services, too, which accounted for the warm welcome Captain Smith received from the agent's family. However, he had been fool enough to assume it was reciprocated affection. All the crew who weren't busy deserting had enjoyed the comical sight of their skipper preening before the mirror before he took his boat on shore, and when the agent and his wife and daughter had come on board, it had been even funnier to watch him bow and scrape in his best shore-going suit.
Wiki, who'd been as amused as the rest of them, had greatly admired the girl, who had a bouncing mass of midnight curls and a knowing sparkle in her huge black eyes. At the same time, though, he hoped that the romance would fall through. Not only would Captain Smith's wedding to a Rio girl annoy the Nantucket owners of the ship, who much preferred their shipmasters to be safely married to sedate Nantucket women who would make sure their husbands brought the owners’ property home, but if he dragged her away from the excitement of Rio de Janeiro, the lass would be very unhappy in staid Nantucket while her captain was off on four-year voyages.
There was no need to worry. Captain Smith's proposal of marriage was turned down—because the agent's daughter had her eye on a much better prospect, or so the third mate told his men. Wiki wondered now if the disappointment were the reason the captain had jumped to this terrible conclusion that he, Wiki, was responsible for Alfonso's brutal death. Or perhaps the skipper really had gone mad?
"Mirror?” Captain Smith exclaimed, looking baffled. “What the hell are you talking about?"
"That mirror you put up by the companionway door has vanished. It was there last night, but this
morning it was gone. Someone's stolen it. Unless you took it down yourself,” Wiki amended.
Obviously, that wasn't the case, because the captain said more blankly still, “My looking glass is gone?” Then he looked furious as the news sank in, perhaps because the mirror was the last memento of his doomed romance. He turned to his brother and snapped, “Get a search of the fo'c'sle underway the instant we have this murderer here safely under lock and key."
Murderer. Wiki was on the verge of panic. He backed off a step, protesting, “You can't believe that I'm guilty, sir, not when you've not even examined the case."
"What else can I damn well believe? Alfonso was in solitary confinement in the forehold for his crimes, and no one opened up the hatch before you did. It's obvious you're the fellow who killed him!"
"Alfonso was dead when I arrived in the hold!"
"But who else could have done it?” demanded the first mate, barging into the cross-examination. “A phantom? A ghost? It had to be you! The cook swears Alfonso was alive last night when he unlocked the hatch and went down into the hold with his supper. Then, when he came back topsides, he lowered the hatch and secured it tight, and I know it, because I checked the bolt myself. I could hear Alfonso hollering hell and damnation in Portugee, carryin’ on like the mad dog he was, so we know for sure that he was alive at the time. That hatch wasn't opened again until four-thirty this morning, at one bell in the morning watch—and the whole bloody crew can attest to it. You were the first man to draw the bolt and go down there—so you were the last to see him alive."
"How can you be sure that no one went down in the night?"
"Because the men who were on watch can swear to it, boy!"
Wiki thought uneasily that this looked ominous indeed. There had been just an anchor watch kept—an officer and three men, four hours at a time—because the Paths of Duty was not out in the open sea, but moored in a secluded cove south of Cape Frio while Captain Smith dickered with ranchholders on shore for the provisions that had been too expensive to buy in Rio de Janeiro. However, even though each watch had been short-manned, the deck had never once been deserted. Wiki himself had turned out for one of those four-hour watches, and he distinctly remembered how the square hatch was in plain view in the moonlight, with no concealing shadows. If someone had drawn the bolt and lifted the cover, it was certain that one of the watchkeepers would have seen him.
AHMM, July-August 2008 Page 19
