ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE
Page 14
It is always in the wee hours in a place like this that I wonder why I wanted to be a private investigator. The air was close and damp, and smelled of stale beer. The establishment had one window air conditioner stuffed through a hole at the end of the bar, where it chugged away; condensation ran down the wall and disappeared through a crack in the floor. I had ridden here on a 1969 Shovelhead Harley-Davidson that my granddaddy had bought new, and I was wearing an old leather flight jacket over a black T-shirt. But that was as far as my biker cover went. I didn't have a single tattoo and would have been more at home in a Polo shirt and golf shorts. I was beginning to doubt the wisdom of leaving the old Colt semiauto in the saddlebag.
I was put on the trail of one Delbert Fish by his maiden aunt, Miss Etta Mae Fish, who had been my Sunday-school teacher twenty-five years ago. Delbert was wanted in connection with a rape and assault that had occurred down by Fort Smith. According to the news reports, it was a brutal crime, and the victim was in a coma. Miss Etta Mae was certain that her nephew was not capable of such abominations. She had come to see me in the back-room office that I occasionally used at the Fayetteville, Arkansas, law firm of Gantry and Grizzell, a couple of fraternity brothers of mine.
"It is inconceivable that little Delbert could have done those—those horrible things." She sat upright and prim in a captain's chair across from my desk. She wore a light-blue, floral-print dress that she had probably made herself and clutched a big black purse with both hands. "I'm not familiar with what a private eye charges," she said, opening the purse. "I can give you two hundred dollars." She pulled out a wad of fives and ones that I knew had come from piano lessons she'd given over the years.
"Miss Etta Mae," I began, wondering how I was going to get out of this. "I've got other cases right now . . ."
"Young man," she interrupted. "Don't you tell a story to me! That nice woman out front told me that you needed the work."
"Now Miss Etta . . ."
"Bradley Carter, you listen to me. Half the law-enforcement officers in the state are looking for Delbert down in the delta. If they find him, they will shoot him. Now I'm coming to you because I want you to find him first, so he can turn himself in. Besides, he's not in the delta."
"How do you know that?" I asked.
"Don't you take that tone with me." She gave me a look of reprimand. I was suddenly back in the basement of the old brick church on Sycamore Street. "Delbert spent the night at my home last Friday."
I was incredulous. Miss Etta Mae Fish was aiding and abetting a fugitive? My mouth was open, but no words were coming out.
"I had no idea at the time that he was wanted by the law. I haven't watched the news since David Brinkley retired, but I turned on the radio after Delbert left, and there it was."
"You didn't go to the police?"
"Of course not! Delbert couldn't have done those things."
I was leaning over my desk, doodling on a yellow legal pad. I had seen little Delbert's picture on the news and heard the story. He certainly looked like he was guilty. He had black tattoos running up his neck, his nose was askew, and he had a puckered scar running from the corner of his mouth up to his left eye. He had already done time in the Cummins Unit of the Arkansas Correctional System.
"Bradley, you just have to find Delbert before the police do."
I just stared at her.
"They will kill him!"
What she was asking me to do was like crawling into a cave full of rattlesnakes.
"The radio also said that the girl's father has offered a ten-thousand-dollar reward." She pursed her lips defiantly, causing her bifocals to shrug up on her nose.
Ten thousand dollars.
My demeanor must have changed, because she took out a pen and paper from the purse and said, "Let me show you where he went."
And now here I was, shooting pool with Delbert's "associate," Tiny Buckman; the two fellows became fast friends while awaiting trial in the Washington County Jail on drug charges a few years back. Although it was tempting, I did not clear the table after Tiny's lame attempt at a break. No one else had put any money on the table, so I let him win the first game. It cost me twenty bucks, but it would be cheap if I could find the location of his family's notorious still back in the mountains. That may sound strange, but this is Arkansas. We have a number of dry counties, and moonshiners continue to ply their trade back in the hills. Etta Mae was convinced that Delbert was headed to the Buckman still to hide out until the search cooled off. I did not even ask how she knew where to look for the place.
Seven beers and three games of eight ball later, Tiny looked no more drunk or talkative than he had been to start with. In fact, he seemed to get surlier as the night went on. I had been dropping hints about how some of the Benton County high rollers had developed a taste for good moonshine, and how I intended to cash in on that trend if I could find a supply of quality product. He showed absolutely no interest until I finally came out and asked if his grandpap still made shine up in the hills. That got his attention, but not the way I had hoped. He picked up his cue in midshot and turned it around, backing me up against the bar. I jerked a leg up to protect myself as he swung the cue at my ribs. The cue stick hit my knee with a loud crack, and fell to the floor in pieces. That was going to hurt when the adrenaline wore off. Before I could slither away and run, Tiny had a forearm across my neck, bending me backwards over the bar. His hairy arm was up under my chin, and he was bellowing obscenities as he attempted to crush my windpipe. He only succeeded in propelling me down the bar on my back. My T-shirt was soaking up spilled beer as glasses went crashing to the floor.
Just when I thought I was going to pass out, I heard a loud crack, like when Albert Pujols knocks one deep into left-center, and the pressure on my neck was released. As my vision cleared I saw Tiny's eyes roll up into his head. The bearded, sweaty, slobbering face of Tiny Buckman went blank as he fell away to the floor. I coughed and massaged my throat as I slid off the bar and steadied myself against it.
Standing before me was a small woman with stringy black hair holding the narrow end of a pool cue. She calmly set the cue down on the table and looked at me. She wore a black Jack Daniels T-shirt cut off short, revealing twin dragon tattoos peeking out of her low-riding jeans on either side of her navel. She had a square jaw and coarse chin. "Can you give me a ride home?" she asked. "I don't think Tiny's up to it."
I looked at Tiny lying facedown on the floor. He was already starting to snore. "Boyfriend?" I asked.
"Husband," she said.
It was well after midnight when I started up the old motorcycle. The woman looked skeletal in the blue mercury-vapor light in the parking lot. She was older than I had thought; she had fine wrinkles around her mouth and eyes like a chronic smoker. She stared off at the darkness when she spoke; her eyes were glassy and dark with a bovine emptiness.
"It's a ways out there. Got plenty of gas?" she asked.
"I think we can make it," I said.
The bike had the original buddy seat on it, so she climbed on behind me with practiced ease. I pulled away slowly, while she lit up a cigarette. I kept the pace slow since I didn't know the road and she was giving directions.
We had passed a closed liquor store half an hour before. That was just before we hit the gravel roads. I figured the store was on the county line, and we were now in one of the dry counties. The night was so dark it seemed to swallow the feeble light the old bike put out. I hadn't seen a dusk-to-dawn light for a good fifteen minutes when a battered house-trailer loomed into the sweep of my headlight.
The place looked deserted, but as I turned off the bike, the bark and howl of a coon dog announced our arrival. I could hear the dog's chain dragging against the skirting of the trailer. No lights came on, but I heard a screen door open and could make out the silhouette of a child as the woman reached the front door.
"Momma?"
"Go back to bed," she scolded.
"But I'm hungry . . ."
"I ai
n't got nothing for you. Now, get to bed!"
She turned my way. I could barely see her as my eyes tried to adjust. "Thanks for the ride," she said.
"Will I get lost getting out of here?" I asked.
"Ain't but one road out," she said. "Don't stop till you get to the county road. They let them dogs run loose at night."
"Coonhounds?" I asked.
"Hell no, they's part pit bull or somethin'. You best get out of here."
She didn't have to tell me again. I found myself taking the rutted two-track road a lot faster than I normally would have. Summer was about gone but the air was thick with humidity and, if anything, the night had gotten darker. A flash of lightning illuminated the surrounding hills as I came to the county-maintained road. Thunder rumbled across the valley before me as I rolled on the throttle; I did not want to get caught in a storm at night in the Ozark Mountains.
The sky in the east was streaked with red and orange as the sun pushed away the early-morning mist. The sky to the north was gunmetal gray as thunder echoed down the valley. I spotted the little store that I had seen coming in with its beer and liquor signs now muted by the coming daylight. The place had gas pumps, the old kind with number wheels and bells, not the kind where you can swipe your card and go. I pulled up to a pump and shut off the ignition. Without the noise of the bike, I could hear the rushing of a stream as it gushed past the little store and shot under the highway bridge. The violence of the water attested to the heavy rains that were falling farther up the valley.
"Need some gas?"
I managed not to jump. I hadn't heard the man come up behind me.
"Hell of a storm up top," he said, pointing his chin up the valley. He was thin with longish gray hair and a Gabby Hayes beard.
"Yes, sir," I said. "I need gas all right. How about coffee?"
"It'll be done, time you get your gas," he said, turning to go back inside. "I'll turn the pump on."
After I filled the bike, I walked past a minnow tank under an open shed. Aerators bubbled and hissed, and the shed smelled like a sardine can. The little store was homey, with a long wooden table and handmade benches around it. The old man talked as he turned on the lights in coolers and display cases. His blue-gray flannel shirt was thin enough to see through on the elbows. I poured myself a cup of coffee.
"You must've got up early this morning," he said. "Fishin's gonna be off with all that rain up high."
"That's okay," I said. "I'm actually just here to scout out a hunting spot for deer season this fall." I stood looking at a map on the wall. It was made of pages out of an atlas taped together, and it showed the surrounding valley with spots marked along the creeks in red felt-tip. "What do you fish for around here?"
"Smallmouth bass. Good fishing most of the time."
He kept talking while I looked at the map. I was trying to get my bearings, retracing my route from last night. "Who owns this up in here?" I asked, pointing a finger.
"Oh God," he said, shaking his head. "You don't want to go in there. Them dang bikers hole up in there. I could tell right away you wasn't one of them. They're worthless as hell. Want some bacon?" He was peeling off strips into a big frying pan on an old gas stove.
"Sure, bacon's good," I replied. "So they wouldn't want to lease me some hunting ground?"
"God no! You don't even ask them boys. I had to run 'em off with old Bessie here. Pumped gas and didn't pay." He reached behind the counter and patted a double-barreled shotgun with all the bluing worn off. "Rock salt on the left, double-ought buck on the right. Gave it all to 'em."
"What about this place?" I pointed to the adjoining property on the map.
"Well now, that would be a good place to hunt," he said. The bacon hissed and popped as he flipped it over with a fork. "But you can't get up there. There ain't no road."
"What about that?" I pointed to what looked like a trail up a creek that ran on the north side of the place.
He squinted at the map. "You can go up the creek with a four-wheeler, but you can't get past the bluffs. Steep as hell."
"Where could I rent a four-wheeler?"
"Nowheres I know of. You want some eggs?"
"Over easy," I said. The old man looked like a hillbilly, and I'm sure he was, but he wasn't a fool. He was answering my questions just enough to keep me asking more. "How do you get around to all these fishing spots?" I asked.
He gave a little laugh as he broke eggs and dropped them into the hot grease. "A sure-footed old mule named Abner."
Abner was a jewel. He plodded on through the brushy, slick trails that I guess he knew were there; I surely couldn't see them. I had left the Harley, of course, after assuring the old man that it was worth at least the value of the mule. I was avoiding thinking about how I was going to get Delbert out, if I happened to find him, but I would think of something. The saddle was an ancient, high-backed thing. The old fellow had bragged on it. "My pap brought it all the way from Kansas City back in the twenties; that's a genuine Shipley." The mule was big for a riding mule; he was a sorrel going to gray around the muzzle. The rain had finally come down to meet me, and the cheap poncho that I had purchased at the store was leaking badly where it had snagged on tree branches. When I got to the steep part of the trail, I let Abner do his own navigating. He went up slopes that looked impossible. All I could do was hold on; he was like a cat climbing a tree.
The rain stopped as we topped a ridge, and the sun peeked through the clouds. I smelled wood smoke. I looked through the army-surplus binoculars the old fellow had loaned me and checked out the head of the valley before me. The smoke was rising from a cabin not more than a quarter-mile away. It was still early morning, and men were already moving about. This was not going to be easy.
I dismounted and pulled off the poncho, tying it to the saddle. My back was wet, and I shivered as I tied off the mule. I'm not a bounty hunter; in fact, most of my work involves a computer and digging through courthouse files for my lawyer buddies. But ten thousand dollars is a lot of money, and a one-man private-investigating business is not all that lucrative. The offers that I had received from the big agencies, with their health-insurance coverage and paid vacation time, were looking awfully good as my clammy wet jeans clung to my legs.
As I approached the buildings, I was aware of a chemical smell besides the wood smoke. The old man at the station had told me that "Pappy" Buckman had been dead for years, and that his infamous still hadn't been used for decades. I ducked behind some cedars as a man came out of one of the cabins carrying two five-gallon buckets and dumped them into the clearing. The grass and brush were already dead from previous dumping. The air held a tang of acid and sulfur, the telltale signs of a meth lab.
There were two guys moving in and out of what looked like an old smokehouse. One wore bibbed overalls with no shirt, his long hair tied in a ponytail. The other had a buzz cut and wore some kind of rubber apron. They both wore rubber gauntlets and busied themselves scrubbing glassware and buckets with water dipped from a small, stone-lined spring. The spring was probably the original reason the still was placed here. I made my way to the back side of a lean-to shed where I could still see the cabin. The grass, as well as the underbrush, was dead all down the hillside as chemicals leached out of a pile of containers for drain cleaner and muriatic acid. Some of the stuff was partially burned; I wouldn't have wanted to be downwind of that fire.
"Hey!" The voice was so close that I reached behind my belt for the old Colt pistol I had brought with me. "Where can a guy take a dump around here?"
I had ducked back into the shed when I heard another one of them answer. "Yonder next to the shed. Take a roll of paper with you, but don't leave it in the privy; the rats'll shred it." I sank deeper into the darkness behind an old high-wheeled grain wagon that had probably hauled corn for the mash. A door slammed, ringing hollow in the low pressure of the cloud cover. The weathered boards of the shed had shrunk over the years and allowed me to watch the approaching man through the cracks.
A dark green Honda four-wheeler was parked in front of the cabin, and I could see a path back across the clearing. I was hoping for a pickup or Jeep, something I could throw a disabled Fish into and hightail it out of the area. The trail was only wide enough for the four-wheeler. If I could get Fish down the hill quietly, I could work us back around to where Abner was tied and go out that way. There was no way they could follow the mule on a four-wheeler.
"You tie them dogs up?" It was Fish yelling from inside the outhouse. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. I hadn't thought about a dog.
"Rosie's tied up," came the reply. I heard a chain dragging somewhere on the other side of the cabin as the dog heard her name.
"That damn dog don't like me," said Fish.
"That old bitch don't like nobody."
I couldn't imagine a better chance of getting Fish than now, but I was going to need a diversion. I left the shed and ran in a crouch up to the back of the smokehouse. There was only one door into the building, and it was on the side facing the cabin. A pungent odor wafted from the old building; inside I could hear something bubbling away. Several of the boards on the back side were warped and loose. I pulled gently on one. Other than the slight hiss of a nail pulling free, it made no noise as I removed it. The hole wasn't big enough to get through, but now I had a good look inside, where a rack of gallon metal cans lined one wall. The cans were puffed up like they were about to explode. White plastic buckets sat around on the floor bubbling and hissing. One corner was full of flattened empty boxes from cold tablets. A propane stove sat in the center of everything. My eyes followed the black rubber hose that led back to a silver propane cylinder next to the wall where my hole was. I reached in blindly, pressing my face against the boards. I could feel the hose with my fingertips. Stretching as much as I could, I got my hand around the hose and pulled it toward me.