by Gary Gusick
“How bad is it?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” said Cill. “I ain’t ever been cut before, except that once in my armpits when I was shaving and the razor slipped.”
“Are you still bleeding?”
“Not that I can tell. I tore off me a piece of my T-shirt and put it in where the bleeding was and it ain’t getting any redder.”
“Can you climb down, Cill?” Darla asked.
“I should have known not to wear those cowboy boots,” said Cill, “but in them westerns I saw on the cowboy channel, the cowboys is always running all over creation in cowboy boots and never falling.”
Rita had her Glock drawn and was keeping a lookout.
“Are you saying you can’t climb down?” asked Darla.
“Put it this way,” said Cill. “My ankles was never my best feature. I was a roller derby girl when I was younger, on one of them banked tracks, and I kind of bummed them up then.”
“My daddy used to talk about her type,” said Rita. “Ask them what time it is and they tell you how to build a watch.”
“I twisted my left ankle getting up here,” said Cill. “It’s about the size of a grapefruit, the kind you get in the fruit of the month basket. So, I don’t think I’m going to be doing the Texas two-step tonight.”
“For God’s sake, Cill, answer the question,” said Darla. “Are you coming down?”
“Well, I guess I’d have to answer in the negative,” said Cill. “My legs went stiff, once I made it up here.”
“Okay. Stay put. I’m coming up for you.” Darla called the troopers and gave them her GPS coordinates. “Get over here now,” she said, imagining a gun sight trained on her from the surrounding woods.
“I can go up if you like. I’m a good climber,” said Rita. “At the climbing wall over in Ridgeland, nobody beats me to the top.”
“No, take cover,” said Darla. “We don’t want Caulder to find us before I can get Cill down.”
“What if—?” Rita began.
“Just do as I say,” said Darla, as she began her ascent up the metal rungs. Up above, she saw Cill, one arm wrapped around the trunk and the other over the wound in her side.
Halfway up, Darla looked down to check on her partner. Rita was climbing the tree.
“I told you to stay on the ground,” said Darla.
“I’ll have a better shot from here,” said Rita.
Darla surveyed the surroundings. Rita was right. Shooting down was always easier than shooting up, assuming you could manage to hang on to a metal rung above your head with one hand and shoot with the other. Trouble was, just now all three women were easy targets.
Three-quarters of the way up, Darla said, “Okay, Rita. This time listen and do as I say. Stay right where you are. You can see whatever you need to from there. We need to create some separation between us. If Caulder fires I don’t want him missing me and hitting you. Understood?”
“I guess that’s why you get the big bucks,” said Rita.
“It’s the guy that’s going to be shooting at us that gets the big bucks,” said Darla as she continued her climb.
When Darla was six rungs away from the stand, Cill started singing “Love Me Tender.”
“Cill, please,” said Darla.
“It gives me courage,” Cill said. “Makes me think of Tommy.”
“There’s a man out there with a gun who’s going to hear you,” said Darla as she continued climbing, one rung over the other.
Cill had gotten to the last verse, and now sang under her breath “For my darling I love you. And I always will,” drawing out the last two words, the way Tommy used to.
Darla was now perched directly in front of Cill, two rungs down. Rita was stationed halfway down the tree, maybe twenty feet from the ground, Glock drawn, free hand around a rung.
There was no risk-free way down the tree. It was clear Cill couldn’t put much pressure on her leg. Darla’s first thought was to do a fireman’s carry, but she didn’t think she could get Cill on her back without one or both of them falling. Her second idea seemed more workable. “Okay, Cill, here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll lean back so there’s space between the tree trunk and me. And you’ll ease yourself down into that space. You put your hands around my waist and grab hold of me as you let your feet rest on mine, but put your weight on your good foot.”
“Kind of like at weddings,” said Cill, “when you see the toddler girl with her feet on her daddy and he’s doing the waltz.”
“Only a little more dangerous,” said Darla. “But that’s the general idea. All you have to do is hang on to my waist and move your feet with mine and I’ll get us down.”
It was one step, followed by a rest, and then another careful step. And another breather. Fortunately, Cill, for all her curves, was not very heavy, and Darla’s body had been strengthened by years of resistance training in the gym.
A quarter of the way down, Darla heard a twig snap below.
“Well, well, what have we got here?” said a man’s voice.
With her face and body facing the tree trunk, Darla couldn’t see who it was, but she knew anyway.
“It’s Caulder,” said Rita. “He’s got a shotgun of some sort. Couldn’t say what kind.”
“How’s the bobblehead business, J.B.?” asked Darla.
“I got me three polecats in the same tree,” he said, chuckling. He was somewhere just outside the clearing.
“You’re the polecat, Caulder,” said Cill. “Lawyer McClure told me all about your criminal ways this morning and how you murdered my Tommy ’cause he wanted to keep this land pure for Elvis.”
“My man Marks just gave him what he had coming to him,” said Caulder. “Your boyfriend was a damn fool and you’re an even bigger one.”
“Says who?” said Cill.
“And he was the worst Elvis impersonator I ever heard,” said Caulder.
“You’re just mad because he stole your girlfriend in high school,” said Cill. “He told me all about that, too.”
“Shut up. Both of you,” said Darla. After a second of silence, Darla continued. “Jerry Bob Caulder, you’re under arrest for the murder of Detective Tommy Reylander.”
“Drop that weapon,” said Rita, her Glock trained on Caulder.
“You practice that a lot, do you?” Caulder said to Rita. “One-handed shooting while hanging on to a tree trunk with the other hand? You best be careful, young lady, you’ll fall and break your neck. Why don’t you be a good girl and throw your gun down and I won’t have to shoot the three of you?”
“Last warning,” said Rita.
Darla heard Caulder load his shotgun. Immediately after, she heard the sound of Rita’s Glock. Three shots.
Cill flinched, her feet slipped off Darla’s, and she began to slip. But she grabbed Darla around the waist and lifted herself up and regained her footing.
“You okay?” Darla called down to Rita. She heard Rita hit the ground with a thud. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Rita spring back to her feet and race into the trees.
“I got him,” Rita yelled back a few seconds later. “He’s dead.”
Darla struggled to stay focused. “How many more rungs do I have?” she asked.
Rita counted from below. “Ten.”
Two troopers came running through the trees. “Jump if you need to, Detective!” yelled one of the troopers. “We’ll catch you!”
“We can do another ten, can’t we, Cill?” asked Darla.
“Just like dancing at a wedding,” said Cill.
Chapter 32
A Three-Course Meal
Shelby decided they’d celebrate. His two favorite detectives had brought honor and recognition to the Central Office of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, via another front-page story in the Jackson Crier. This one with an above-the-fold photo of Darla and Rita flanking their boss. OFFICER ELVIS MURDER AVENGED, the headline read. Despite his general distaste for public relations, Shelby had penned the press release himself, quoting himself sa
ying that he had personally requested the MBI be assigned to the Reylander murder, as Tommy had worked under Shelby when Shelby was with the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department. “I told Detective Cavannah this was like Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. When your partner is murdered, you’re obliged to do something about it. And we did.”
The celebration amounted to dinner on the reservoir on Shelby’s paddleboat. Shelby, Darla, Rita, and Uther Pendragon Johnson were invited to dine on a regional delicacy, meaning a crawfish boil, nice and spicy, Cajun-style. The rule of thumb on crawfish is ten pounds per person. Shelby had forty pounds of the red-orange mudbugs spread out on newspapers on the deck’s fold-up table. Mixed in among the crawfish were new potatoes, ears of corn, and deer sausage.
“You could interpret this as a three-course meal,” said Shelby. “The deer sausage is an hors d’oeuvre, with the ears of corn as an appetizer, and the crawfish and new potatoes as the main course.”
“Spoken like a true Mississippian,” said Uther, who saluted Shelby with a bottle of Lazy Magnolia Summer Pecan Beer.
“You mean spoken like a true Mississippi politician,” said Darla.
“Now that you mention it,” said Shelby, “I’m strongly considering running for the vacated seat in Congress. That is, if I can figure out how to mask my general indifference to most of the political issues that are on the hearts and minds of the people of this great state.” Shelby smiled broadly, a man who appreciated his own brand of humor. “What about you, Miss Darla? You got any big plans for yourself?”
“Now that the case is behind us,” said Darla, “I thought I might bring home a bottle of wine, tell Stephen to put on one of the Elvis CDs Rita gave me, and see what happens.” She looked at Rita and shrugged her shoulders. “Well, who’d you think I was going to listen to, Sting?”
“Sooner or later, Elvis gets to every woman,” Rita said triumphantly.
“You’re next, Detective Gibbons,” said Shelby. “What are you going to do now that you’re back in the detective end of things?”
“I’m fixing to go on over to Bass Pro,” said Rita, “and pick myself out one of those six-shot .380 Tauruses like the detective wears. Only I think I’ll get a pink one.”
“That leaves you, Mr. Pendragon Johnson,” said Shelby.
“I don’t as a rule discuss personal matters,” said Uther, “but since everyone is being so candid, I am proud to announce that I have initiated a courtship with a certain young lady.”
“And I’m the certain young lady,” said Rita.
“Big surprise there,” said Darla.
“Well,” said Shelby, raising his bottle of Lazy Magnolia. “Here’s to the late detective Tommy Reylander, even though he wasn’t much of an officer, and wasn’t much of an Elvis.”
“Maybe not,” said Darla, raising her bottle. “But he was our Officer Elvis.”
PHOTO: NICOLE STOWE
GARY GUSICK is the author of Officer Elvis and The Last Clinic, the first of the Darla Cavannah mysteries, and is at work on the next novel in the series. He currently divides his time between Mississippi and New Orleans.
Facebook.com/GaryGusickAuthor
@GaryGusick
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