by Scott Pratt
Leon Bates had come to the hospital late in the afternoon to check on Jack, but he had stayed so long that I suspected he was also there to keep an eye on me. When Charlie accepted my offer of a ride home, Leon had volunteered to follow us in her truck and ride back with me. I was trying to keep the conversation light with Charlie. She, too, had been through a terrifying experience. Two of the bullets Clyde Dalton fired had narrowly missed her and had lodged themselves in the wall behind her desk. I’d heard her tell the police that she had crawled beneath her desk and was waiting for Clyde to walk in and kill her when I walked out of my office and distracted him.
“So tell me more about this uncle I’ve heard you talk about,” I said.
“He’s different,” Charlie said. “Eccentric is probably a good word.”
“Eccentric how?”
“Do you know anything about Irish wolfhounds?”
“Just that they’re huge.”
“Jasper loves Irish wolfhounds. He’s had four of them that I can remember. They don’t live long, anywhere from five to seven years. He names them all Biscuit. The dog he has rides in his truck with him all the time and hangs his head out the passenger window. It’s a sight to see. He’s also a master taxidermist. He looks at what he does as a kind of post-mortem fountain of youth. He says he preserves beauty. He takes a lot of pride in it.”
“How does he do it?” I asked. “I’ve never been around a taxidermist. I have no idea how they do what they do.”
“Jasper is secretive about it, won’t let anybody set foot in his shop. But from what I’ve heard him say, the most important part is skinning the animal perfectly and preserving the hide perfectly. He tans the hides different ways – salt baths and chemicals he’s developed over the years. He incinerates the bones and the internal organs, and then takes the hides and mounts them on mannequins.”
“Mannequins? They have deer mannequins?”
“Yeah, and bear and squirrel and fish and everything else. They make eyes and jaws and teeth and noses, even tongues. I’ve actually heard him ordering tongues over the telephone. I think he basically skins the animal and then reconstructs it using all these artificial parts. I’ve seen some of his finished work. He’s an artist, really. I heard him threaten to skin a man and mount him on a mannequin not too long ago. I’ll bet he could do it, too, and make whoever he mounted look as good, or even better, than they did when they were alive.”
“That’s a little creepy, Charlie.”
“I’m not saying he would, but he could.”
Joe dropped Charlie off just before dark. The last thing he said before she got out of his truck was not to worry, that the police would have Clyde Dalton in custody before morning. Jasper was walking out of his shop when they pulled in. He walked over to Charlie as she stood next to her truck and watched Dillard drive away.
“Who was that, Peanut?”
“My boss.”
“Everything all right? You look a little washed out.”
“Let’s go inside.”
While Charlie heated some leftover lasagna and Jasper made a salad, she told him about the day’s events. He received the bizarre news quietly, asking few questions and making no comments. When they sat down to eat, Charlie said, “Joe told me at the hospital that he thinks maybe I should leave until they catch Clyde Dalton.”
Jasper considered this briefly. He nodded.
“Fine idea,” he said. “Get you out of harm’s way until somebody can deal with this crazy man. You reckon he might show up here?”
“I don’t know. After what happened today, it wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Wouldn’t be healthy for him.”
“Do you really think I should go away? I hate the thought of letting anybody chase me out of my own life.”
“It’ll just be temporary, Peanut. Better safe than sorry, right?”
“Why don’t you come with me?”
Jasper shook his head. “You know better than that. Besides, who would take care of your horse and Biscuit?”
“We could board them.”
“Thanks, but I reckon I’ll just stay right here. What are you gonna do about the rest of that gold up on the mountain?”
When Charlie told Jasper about the gold, she had drawn the map Roscoe gave her from memory. Jasper had hunted on Roscoe’s land for decades. He said he knew exactly where the hourglass rock was, but he’d never noticed the cave. Charlie had described it to him, the vast chambers, the stream at the bottom, the still. She’d offered to show him, but he declined.
“I don’t know, uncle,” she said. “I still have five bars in the barn, but I’m not sure what to do with it. I really don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“I been thinking about it a lot. It’s blood money, Peanut. Bad juju.”
“You aren’t the first person to say that.”
Jasper stuffed a fork full of lasagna into his mouth. “Zane Barnes is still looking for it, you can bet on that.”
“Doesn’t matter. He won’t find it.”
“You oughta just let him have it. If it’s cursed, let the curse fall on him.”
“Not going to happen, uncle. Roscoe didn’t want him to have a bit of it.”
“Then hire somebody to blow the mouth of the cave shut. Seal it off and be done with it once and for all.”
Charlie wasn’t really surprised by Jasper’s indifference to the gold. He’d never cared about wealth. He was satisfied with himself and the way he lived.
“Do you ever think about leaving here?” Charlie asked.
“Leaving? You mean for good?”
“Yeah, moving away somewhere and starting fresh.”
“Ain’t no such thing as starting fresh,” Jasper said. “You’ve already made your mark in this life. What’s past is past, but that don’t mean it’s gone. You can’t just wipe the board clean.”
“Maybe not, but—”
“Where would you go?” Jasper asked.
“I’m not sure. Someplace where the horizon is bigger. The mountains make me feel cut off sometimes, kind of closed in.”
“I love the mountains. They ain’t for everybody, but I love ‘em.”
“I know you do.”
“Wouldn’t leave ‘em for nothing. Speaking of leaving, where you gonna go on this little vacation of yours?”
“I’m not sure I’m going on vacation.”
“Go, Peanut. Tomorrow morning. Get in your truck or get on a plane or a train and go. Don’t even think about this place for a while.”
Charlie thought for a minute and smiled.
“If you aren’t going anywhere, then neither am I,” she said. “I’m not letting anybody run me off.”
Jasper washed the last bite of his lasagna down with a swig of sweet tea.
“Figured as much,” he said. “Reckon we’ll just stay here and if it comes to it, we’ll make our stand together.”
Chapter 37
JORDAN Scott heard heavy footsteps coming down the hallway, a key turning the lock on his cell door. He threw his feet over the side of his bunk and sat up. He didn’t know exactly what time it was, but it was late. Supper had been slid through the slot in the door hours ago. There was no good reason for a guard to be entering his cell.
Jordan was being held in a segregation unit “for his own protection,” according to the guards. The cell was forty-eight square feet with a stainless steel bunk, toilet and sink. He was not allowed to have a television or a radio. He was not allowed to purchase items from the commissary. Had it not been for his mother going to the newspaper and complaining, he wouldn’t even have the books she sent him. He wasn’t let out for exercise, so he did push-ups and sit-ups and ran in place in his cell. He wasn’t allowed to use the phone. His parents visited once a week for fifteen minutes. He talked to them through Plexiglas. He met with his lawyers when they came to the jail. He was served two meals a day, always cold and tasteless. He showered once a week. He’d lived this way since his arrest.
“
Get your clothes on,” the guard said.
The hallway was dimly lit and the cell was dark. Jordan didn’t recognize the guard’s voice or his shadowy form.
“What’s going on?”
“I said get your clothes on!”
Jordan’s striped jumpsuit was folded on the floor. He stood and put it on slowly.
“Turn around. Hands back.”
Jordan felt the cold steel of the handcuffs wrap around his wrists. He’d expected to be killed by a guard or an inmate since the day he was arrested. It looked like the time had come. The guard jerked his elbow, turned him toward the door, and stuck a nightstick into the small of his back.
“Walk.”
The cell block was silent except for the usual clinks and bangs in the old building. The regular guard wasn’t sitting behind the desk in the corridor. The man holding Jordan’s arm smelled of tobacco and cheap cologne. He guided Jordan out of the block, through a labyrinth of hallways and down three flights of steps into a dark room. He flipped on a flashlight and Jordan walked past a humming boiler. He climbed a short set of steps and was pushed through another door. Jordan felt the cool night air. The guard unlocked the handcuffs, stepped back.
“They’re planning to kill you,” the guard said. “I can’t let that happen.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Take this.” He held out a small cell phone. “It’s prepaid. Nobody can trace it. It’s already turned on. Get out of here. Hide in the woods back there and call somebody to come pick you up. Don’t let them find you.”
Jordan looked down at the phone, back up at the guard. He couldn’t see him very well in the darkness, but he could tell he was maybe thirty, average size, wearing the black uniform that all the guards wore, a black ball cap pulled down low on his forehead.
“No,” Jordan said, “take me back inside.”
“Didn’t you hear what I said? They’re planning to kill you before daylight. If you stay in this jail, you’re going to die.”
“How do I know you won’t shoot me if I run?”
“I’m not going to shoot you. How the hell would I explain you being out here in the first place? I’m trying to help you. If you want to live, run.”
The guard turned and walked back through the door, closing it behind him. Jordan reached for the doorknob. It was locked. He looked around frantically. There was no moon, no wind. It was absolutely still. He put his back against the door, felt the coolness of the metal through his jumpsuit. His eyes began to adjust to the darkness. He could make out a tree line, black and ominous against the night sky.
Hide in the woods back there and call somebody…
He was unshackled, no handcuffs, but he felt as though there was a bulls eye on his back. He ran for the trees, made it, and knelt next to an oak. He punched numbers into the cell phone with trembling fingers. His father’s sleepy voice came on the line.
“Pops, it’s me.”
“Jordan?”
“I’m out.”
“What do you mean, out?”
“A guard let me out. He said they were going to kill me tonight. Told me to run. I don’t know what’s going on, but please come get me, Pops. I’m scared.”
Chapter 38
JASPER turned out the light in his shop and stepped outside. The mountain air was cool and fresh, the stars sparkling above. The moon was full, a pale, white, small globe high in the sky. It was well after midnight. He didn’t usually work so late, but he’d been unable to sleep after hearing about Peanut’s scare earlier in the day. He’d waited until he had heard her steady breathing in her bedroom and had gone out to his shop. He’d spent the last few hours working on placing the antlers on a bull elk mount that he was doing for a rich horse rancher from Lexington, Kentucky. The rancher had shot the animal in Colorado, and as soon as he got it out of the field he had it frozen and shipped to Jasper. Jasper had been working on it for months. The rancher wanted the entire thing mounted, not just the head, and he wanted it mounted in a “natural” setting. It was a challenge, but Jasper was pleased with the way it was turning out. He’d have it finished in a few weeks.
He secured the padlock on the shop door and started walking toward the barn to check on Sadie before he turned in. Biscuit had spent the evening in the shop with him. The dog was a few steps ahead of Jasper, also headed toward the barn where he would bed down outside the stall near Sadie. Jasper had taken about ten steps when the dog froze. He lifted his nose to the breeze, his tail stiffened, and he started a quiet, threatening growl that Jasper didn’t hear often. Someone was nearby.
“Biscuit! No!” Jasper whispered the command sharply. He grabbed the nylon harness that he kept on the dog so he could control him when he needed to and started pulling him back toward the shop.
“No! Come!”
The dog was strong, but he was also obedient. He allowed himself to be pulled toward the shop, growling every step of the way. Jasper was certain someone was in the tree line near the back porch a couple of hundred feet away, and he believed it was Clyde Dalton. He’d kept his radio on during the evening, something he rarely did, and he knew Dalton hadn’t been arrested. He didn’t know exactly what Dalton looked like, all Peanut had told him was that the man was bald. He did know something about obsessive behavior, however, and he didn’t believe that Dalton would be able to stay away from Peanut.
Jasper pulled Biscuit into the shop and closed the door behind him. He had dozens of knives in there, nearly all of them sharp enough to shave hair from a wet frog, but the weapon he wanted was an old-fashioned, re-curve bow that he’d had since he was a boy. He had gone through spells of collecting bows – there were several of them in his bedroom – but the one he liked the best was the old re-curve. It was hanging on a rack above his work bench.
Jasper had been hunting all his life. He could hit a bullseye with an arrow from sixty yards. It was pitch black inside the shop, but Jasper knew it so well he didn’t need light. He took the bow down from its rack on the wall along with a quiver full of razor-sharp, broad head arrows. He slipped his arms through the quiver straps and walked to the back door of the shop. He unlocked two deadbolts and had to squeeze through the door to keep the dog from following. Clyde Dalton had used a gun when he tried to kill Peanut and had shot Joe Dillard’s son. Jasper wasn’t about to let the fool shoot his dog.
Jasper slipped into the trees and knelt beneath a laurel bush. All he knew about Clyde Dalton was what he had heard from Peanut, and based on what she’d told him, he was dealing with a crazy man, probably schizophrenic, definitely psychotically obsessed and extremely unstable. Jasper moved a little deeper into the trees and began to circle silently toward the house, stopping every few steps to watch and listen. There was a mild breeze, just enough to rustle the canopy above, and there was enough light from the moon and stars to enable him to make out shapes on the open ground. He was far enough away from the shop now that he could just barely make out Biscuit’s muffled whines. He sat down, leaned his back against a tree, and settled in to wait. A thought stuck him: “I’m stalking the stalker.”
A few minutes later, a dark shape came out of the tree line near the back porch, right where the dog had indicated earlier. Jasper felt his heart quicken as he watched the figure move slowly around the front of the house and disappear. Jasper moved to his right around the other side of the house, staying tight to the trees. If the man circled the house, Jasper would then be in front of him. He broke from the trees and jogged to Charlie’s old truck, which was sitting in the driveway about twenty feet from the northeast corner of the back porch. He leaned against the truck and raised the bow.
Only the kitchen light was on inside the house. It wasn’t much, but combined with the stars and moon, there was enough light so that Jasper could clearly make out the figure of a man wearing dark clothing and a floppy hat, crouched down, moving carefully along the side of the house. The man came out of the crouch and craned his neck to look in the kitchen window. Jasper could make ou
t the features on his face; they were unfamiliar. He pulled the bowstring back to the corner of his mouth, aimed for the man’s chest. He thought fleetingly of saying something, giving the man some command to stop, but when he saw a glint of light reflect off of a gun barrel and remembered the strain in Peanut’s voice when she was telling him about the bullets whizzing past her, he let the arrow fly without saying a word. The man grunted and staggered back a couple of steps, the pistol fell from his hand, and he dropped to his knees as Jasper pulled another arrow from the quiver and raised the bow again. The man fell forward on his face. Jasper moved around the pickup and kicked the gun away. He rolled the man over with his right foot. He was still alive, but had that far off look in his eye that told Jasper he would be dead soon. Jasper knelt next to him.
“You Dalton?”
There was no response. Blood was beginning to trickle from the man’s mouth. Jasper patted him, looking for some kind of identification. There was none. He pulled the floppy hat from the man’s head. He was completely bald. It was Dalton.
“I told Peanut it’d be unhealthy for you to show up here.”
Jasper stood, slung his bow across his back, reached down, grabbed Dalton by his feet, and starting dragging him toward the taxidermy shop.
The bull elk would have to wait. Jasper had more important work to do.
Chapter 39
I'D taken a frantic telephone call at 3:22 a.m. from Duane Scott, Jordan Scott’s father. Jordan had been let out through a back door of the jail, told he was about to be killed, given a cell phone, and instructed to run. Jordan was making his way through a wooded ravine and Duane was on his way to pick him up near the Sullivan County fairgrounds on the outskirts of Blountville. What should they do? Where should they go?
