The Taking of Libbie, SD

by David Housewright

  “As a matter of fact, I could use some hydrogen peroxide, an eyedropper, and a thermometer.”

  The owner of the only hardware store within fifty miles said he was selling out.

  “Business has been falling off for years,” he said. “Now this. I never ran for city council, you know. I was appointed when Manny DeVine quit. He was the pharmacist over at Spiess Drugs, and one day he decided to hell with it and left town. Old man Miller thought I’d make a reliable rubber stamp, so he appointed me—our charter let him do it. Councilman George Humphrey, I kind of liked the sound of that. Now—now they’re going to blame me for everything that’s happened, for losing the money. Me and Bizek. I don’t need that shit.”

  “Why blame you?”

  “I was a true believer. I thought it was a great idea, the mall, and I talked it up, talked it up even when guys like Chuck Munoz and Ronny Radosevich said it would ruin business in downtown, when Jon Kampa said we should be more careful. Now all that money’s gone. You know what? I’m not even going to the next meeting. Screw it.”

  Humphrey rang up my purchases—an acetone-based paint solvent, a roll of electrical tape, rubber gloves, and a pair of protective goggles—and put them into a brown bag printed with the name of his store.

  “Anything else?” he said.

  “Did you have any dealings with Rush outside of the city council?” I asked.

  “A lot of dealings. I told you, I drank the Kool-Aid. I believed every word that bastard said, even put up fifty thousand of my own for a spot in the mall. That hurt, let me tell you. That’s it, though. I’m done. Kaput. Fini. I’m cutting my losses. I’m selling the store to the first chump who comes along with money in his jeans. Hell, I might not even wait for a chump. I might just shutter the doors and walk away.”

  “That’ll leave your friends and neighbors in a tough spot, won’t it, since you have the only hardware store around?”

  “McKenzie, you’re not listening. I don’t give a shit.”

  There were two cars and a pickup parked in the lot of Schooley’s Auto Repair. The front ends of all three were smashed in.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Schooley tapped the hood of the first car.

  “This one ran into a tree,” he said. “Can you believe it? There are like three dozen trees in all of Perkins County and the kid finds one. Got his license like two weeks before the accident. Old man is fit to be tied. This one”—he pointed at the pickup—“I don’t know what happened here. Owner comes in and says fix it. He’s going to pay out of his own pocket; says he’s not going to bother his insurance company. I don’t know what that means, but it can’t be good, can it?”

  “Probably not.”

  “This one hit a deer.”

  Schooley stopped next to a very nice 2009 Nissan Altima Rogue S—at least it used to be nice before the deer smashed its front right quarter panel all to hell. The passenger side fender had collapsed against the tire, shredding it as well. From the look of the damaged rim, I guessed that the owner had tried to drive it for a few miles anyway. The windshield was also broken. Lines like a spiderweb flowed from a single impact crater on the passenger side. Some of the glass at the point of impact was stained with what I strongly suspected was blood.

  “It belongs to the banker,” Schooley said. “He’s really angry, and I don’t blame him. Had me tow it in Wednesday a week ago and told me to fix it, but I can’t fix it until I get the parts, can I? I used to work with a guy who was pretty reliable at getting me what I needed, only he went bankrupt. Now I need to go through these other parts guys, except they only ship up here once a week to keep costs down, and I missed the last shipment. Wasted a week. It’s harder and harder to do business, I’m here to tell ya. I should get the parts tomorrow, but that doesn’t make Kampa any happier. I don’t suppose you need any work done.”

  “Sorry.”

  “What do you need?”

  “I need some battery acid.”

  Schooley glanced at my car.

  “Not for the Audi,” he said. There was alarm in his voice.

  “No, no, no. Something else.”

  “Are you going to do some tanning?”

  Tanning? my inner voice said. What the hell is tanning?

  “I thought I’d give it a try,” I said aloud.

  “Yeah, a lot of people around here come in looking for the sulfuric acid they put in batteries for their projects. What kind of fur?”

  “I thought I’d start small.”

  “Goat?”

  Why not?

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I hear you,” Schooley said. “If you don’t know what you’re doing, just starting out, it’s always best to go with something inexpensive. I knew a guy, ruined a perfectly good antelope. Now, if you tan the deer that Kampa killed…”

  “Maybe I should. What happened to it?”

  “Hell if I know. Probably still in the ditch up on White Buffalo Road. So, tell me, what recipe are you using? Pickle tan?”

  “That’s what was recommended to me.”

  “Gotta be careful with that. Sulfuric acid works fine if you keep it to about eight ounces per two gallons of water. The salt—that’s what you gotta watch out for. What kind of salt are you using? Rock salt?”

  “That’s what was recommended.”

  “I wouldn’t risk it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Rock salt doesn’t dissolve all that well. It’s gonna be rough, gonna tear up your fur. Want my advice?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Use about two pounds of nonionized salt. It dissolves much better in water; it’ll treat the fur a lot less harshly, I’m here to tell ya.”

  “That’s good advice,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

  “No extra charge. I’ll be right with ya.”

  Schooley went inside his shop to retrieve my acid, which confirmed a theory that I’ve believed since I was a kid—if you speak and act confidently, you can get away with the most amazing bullshit.

  The final city council member I wanted to see shut down his riding mower when he saw me walking toward him across his enormous lawn.

  “Lookin’ for someone?” he said.

  “I’m McKenzie.”

  “The real deal this time, huh? I’m Len Hudalla.”

  He offered his hand, and I leaned across the riding mower to shake it.

  “I heard you were making the rounds,” Hudalla said. “Figured it was only a matter of time before you got to me. Learn anything interesting?”

  “One or two things.”

  “Old man Miller says to cooperate, so I’ll cooperate. I gotta tell ya, though—I don’t know squat.”

  I asked him a few questions anyway. Turned out he was right.

  “T’ be honest,” Hudalla said, “I kinda hope you don’t find the money. It’ll give us an excuse to fire that asshole Gustafson.”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Sonuvabitch arrested my kid Friday night.”

  “For what?”

  “DUI. Sonuvabitch was waiting outside the Tall Moon Tavern. Kid comes out after closing, gets in his car, starts it up, drives fifty yards, and the chief’s all over his ass. He was just hiding down the road in the dark, lookin’ to bust someone, and he gets my son. Fuckin’ two thirty and I have to go down to the jail and bail the kid out. Wayne’s there, pleadin’ the kid’s case, sayin’ he didn’t pour ’im more than two drinks. Gustafson didn’t care. I didn’t even get home until nearly five. What kind of law enforcement is that?”

  “Beats the hell out of me,” I said.

  In South Dakota it was legal to buy hard alcohol in a grocery store, and Ed Bizek took advantage of the law. His cart held a case of bottled beer, and he was intent on selecting whiskey from a surprisingly broad assortment of brands when I came upon him.

  “Looks like you’re a boilermaker man,” I said.

  Bizek glanced at the basket I held in my hand and smirked. The basket contain
ed two large plastic jugs filled with distilled water. In self-defense, I said, “You’re supposed to drink eight glasses of water a day.”

  “If you say so.”

  I wanted to see how he would react to the news, so I was blunt when I delivered it.

  “I saw Dawn and Perry Neske at breakfast this morning. They were behaving like newlyweds.”

  “I hope they’re very happy together,” Bizek said. There was no emotion in his voice. He set a bottle of whiskey in his cart and moved toward the front of the store. I followed.

  “I take it Dawn’s gone back to her husband,” I said.

  “Is this any of your business, McKenzie?”

  “No, but I have questions that still need answering.”

  “No one cares,” he said, meaning he didn’t.

  “Tracie Blake cared.”

  That stopped him.

  “Tracie.” He said the name as if it were an act of devotion, his head down, his eyes closed. When he opened his eyes again, he said, “What kind of town is this? What have we become? First the Imposter and then Tracie and Mike and now the Dannes. Who lives in a town like this?”

  “People,” I said. “Just people the same as everywhere else, I guess.”

  “I used to like this town. I used to love this town.”

  “Tracie said it was a fine place to live if you had someone to grow old with.”

  “Tracie said that?”

  “It was pretty much the last words she spoke to me.”

  Bizek took a few moments to consider Tracie’s theory. From the expression on his face, I guessed that he believed it, too. Finally he said, “What do you want, McKenzie?”

  “You knew the password to the bank account—”

  “Not that again.”

  “Did you ever tell anyone about the money in the account—”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever tell anyone the password—”

  “No. I’m not stupid, McKenzie. Besides, I’m lousy about things like that. I can never remember passwords or account numbers. I have to write that stuff down and keep it in my wallet. Tell me something? Are you any closer to finding the Imposter and the money?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Can you be sure by, say, Thursday?”

  “What happens Thursday?”

  “That’s when the next city council meeting is scheduled. That’s when we have to ’fess up about how much money Libbie has lost, although, hell, I think most people are starting to figure it out already.”

  “George Humphrey said he won’t be there. He said he’s leaving town.”

  “That figures. Dawn will probably leave, too.”

  “Did she say so?”

  “Not in so many words. The last time we were together…”

  I could see the pain reaching Bizek’s eyes, and I was afraid that he might break down. I didn’t have time for that, so I prompted him to keep talking.

  “What did she say?” I said.

  “She said that she wanted to give her marriage another chance. She said—”

  “When was this?” I said.

  “Friday night, about—it was early. Perry works the second shift, gets off at two in the morning, so usually she stays later, only this time, after we—after we—she got dressed and she said it wasn’t going to work out.”

  The tears began to flow silently down Bizek’s cheeks, and I wondered, what did he think was going to happen? Men and women cheat on their spouses all the time, yet they seldom leave them. It’s the ones who get cheated on that do the leaving, and the cheaters are nearly always surprised when they do.

  I left him standing there and went to the checkout in the front of the store.

  I had parked my Audi on the shoulder of the county road and was emptying the distilled water out of the plastic jugs into the ditch when my cell phone started playing “Summertime.”

  “Hello, Chief,” I said. “I was just talking about you.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “A guy named Hudalla wants to stick a knife in your back.”

  “He can get in line. McKenzie, I finally got hold of the manager of the rental car company down in Rapid City. He’s still pissed off.”

  “About what?”

  “Seems they couldn’t start the Imposter’s rental.”

  “Why not?”

  “Someone opened the fuse panel under the hood and removed the fuses that controlled both the fuel pump and the ignition.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “You were wrong. The car didn’t break down. It looks like someone purposely stranded Rush at the lake.”

  I poured a quart of motor oil into each of the plastic jugs and then filled them to the brim with unleaded gasoline. After topping off the Audi’s tank, I went inside Miller Big Stop. The young man behind the cash register seemed surprised when I paid cash. I don’t know why. I had paid cash for everything I bought that day.

  “Hear about the excitement we had yesterday?” he asked.

  “What excitement?”

  He waved in the general direction of Mike Randisi’s place. “Man and woman got themselves shot just over to the farm over there.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Naked as jaybirds, they were. I heard they were in bed doin’ it when someone came in and shot them both.”

  “Does the sheriff have any suspects?”

  “Not that I heard, but if it was me, I’d be lookin’ to see who they were sleepin’ with besides each other, that’s what I would do.”

  I left as soon as he counted out my change. I might have told him to keep it—I’ve done it before—only I didn’t want to give him anything to remember me by.

  It was so quiet and the call so unexpected that I jumped when I heard the opening notes to “Summertime” again. I read the name on the display.

  “Hey, sweetie,” I said.

  “Hi, McKenzie,” Victoria Dunston replied.

  “How was the soccer tournament?”

  “We got our butts kicked.”

  “So basically your athletic career is following the same path as your father’s and mine.”

  “So far. McKenzie, I did what you asked. I looked for high school teams called the Raiders in Chicago and for about a hundred miles around Chicago. There are a bunch of them, including teams called Red Raiders and the Purple Raiders—Wells Academy, Robeson, Glenbard South, Ashton-Franklin, Grove, Bolingbrook. It’s a long list. Do you want me to recite the whole thing?”

  “No. I’ll have to get them later. I’m a little busy right now.”

  “Okay,” she said. “There’s something else, though. I checked. There’s a Taste of Chicago that’s just like Taste of Minnesota except much, much bigger. Guess where they hold it?”

  “Grant Park.”

  “Yep. Is that helpful?”

  “It is, but—can I get back to you later?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I hung up and resumed staring out the windshield of my car.

  Church lived in a small clapboard house on the wrong side of the tracks that divided Libbie in half, not far from the water treatment plant. The house needed work, and so did the garage and lawn. On the other hand, the Ford F150 pickup parked in the driveway was gleaming, its black body newly washed and waxed. Even the tires sparkled in the hard sunlight. I watched the house from a safe distance through a pair of binoculars that I kept along with my guns under the false bottom of the Audi’s trunk. I had removed and loaded a 9 mm Beretta as well. It was sitting on the seat next to me. Even so, my inner voice pleaded with me—Let’s keep our crimes to a minimum, shall we?

  I agreed to that request. Yet I refused to listen when my inner voice told me that what I was about to do was wrong.

  This isn’t justice, it’s revenge.

  So?

  It’s illegal. It’s against the law.

  The law doesn’t work out here.

  You’re not that person.

  Yeah, I am.

  I set the binoculars aside a
nd gripped the steering wheel. My hands were icy cold, yet sweating at the same time—go figure. According to my expensive watch, which, among other things, had a timer, Paulie arrived at exactly 8:13 p.m. He parked his battered Dodge Stratus on the street and walked across the spotty lawn to the front door of the house. He walked in without knocking. At 8:42 he and Church emerged from the house. Church carefully cradled a small brown paper bag in one arm as if he were afraid of dropping it as he walked to the pickup. In his free hand he carried a twelve-gauge double-barrel shotgun. Paulie moved toward the Stratus. Church called to him. Paulie paused and pointed at the bag. Church laughed at him. Finally they both boarded Church’s F150; Church set the bag on the seat and placed the gun on a rack attached to his rear window. They drove away without coming anywhere near me.

  I sat and listened to the quietness, straining to hear any sound resembling a truck engine or human voices. I heard only the sound of the never-ceasing wind. I waited fifteen minutes, partly to make sure Church didn’t return for something he forgot and partly to give the sun time to set—this was the kind of thing best done in darkness, I told myself. While I waited, I patted the double-A batteries in my pocket. For safety’s sake, I had removed them from the kitchen timers. I would return them when I was ready to set the bombs.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I parked in the lot of the Tall Moon Tavern as far away from Church’s F150 as I could get. So far, everything had gone according to plan. Even the traffic had obeyed my will. No one had driven past the Audi that I left on the shoulder of the county road earlier while I made my way in the dark through the drainage ditch to the parking lot. No one entered or left the tavern as I opened the door to the pickup and placed my package on the floor, or as I retreated back to the Audi. As for the contents of the brown paper bag that Church left on his front seat, even that worked to my advantage. My only fear now was that Chief Gustafson had decided to take Sunday night off, that he wasn’t waiting in his usual spot down the road in hopes of nabbing a DUI violator.

  I pressed a button on the side of my watch, and a blue light flared. I watched the second hand sweep around the dial. The timer told me there were twelve minutes to go.