The Best American Mystery Stories 1998

by Otto Penzler

  When Magruder was on his third cigarette, there was a low, guttural grunt from the dark, and off to the side water sloshed as something ponderous moved. Carver looked down and saw the water around his knees rippling. He tried swallowing his terror, tried desperately to think, but fear was like sand in the machinery of his mind.

  The tall black grass stirred, and something low and long emerged. Carver knew immediately what it was.

  The huge ’gator slithered out into plain view in the moonlight, sloshed around until it was at a slight angle to him, and regarded him with a bright, primitive eye.

  “Sure is a big ’un!” Magruder said, obviously amused.

  The ’gator switched its tail, churning the water. Carver’s heart went cold. He wielded the casting rod like a weapon, as if that might help him.

  And it might.

  He made himself stop trembling, turned his body, and leaned hard against the post, setting his good leg tight to it.

  The ’gator gave its fearsome, guttural grunt again.

  “Hungry!” Magruder commented, looking from Carver to the ’gator with a sadist’s keen anticipation.

  Carver raised the casting rod, whipping it backward then forward. The line whirred out and fell across Magruder’s shoulder. Carver reeled fast as Magruder reached for the thin but strong line.

  It simply played through his fingers, cutting them. He yanked his hand away and Carver gave the rod a sharp backward tug, feeling the Oh Buggie! with its many barbed hooks set deep in the side of Magruder’s neck.

  Magruder yelped and jumped up in surprise, the shotgun dropping to the ground. He reached down for the shotgun but Carver yanked hard on the rod, pulling him off balance and making him yelp again in pain. He’d stumbled a few steps toward Carver, and now he couldn’t get back to the gun.

  Carver began reeling him in.

  Magruder didn’t want to come. He tried to work the lure loose from where it clung like a large insect to the side of his neck, but each time Carver would yank the rod and pain would jolt through him. The alligator was still and watching with what seemed mild interest.

  Carver had Magruder stumbling steadily toward him now, led by excruciating pain. Magruder raised his right hand and tried frantically to loosen the barbed hooks, but found he couldn’t withdraw the hand. It was hooked now too, held fast to the side of his neck. Blood ran in a black trickle down his wrist. With his free hand he removed the cigarette stuck to his lower lip and tried to hold the ember to the fishing line to burn through it. Carver yanked harder on the rod, and the cigarette dropped to the water. Magruder was splashing around now, falling, struggling to his feet, fighting to pull away.

  And something else was splashing.

  Carver looked over and saw the massive low form of the alligator gliding toward him.

  Magruder was still fifty feet away.

  The alligator was about the same distance away but closing fast, cutting a wake with its ugly blunt snout, its impassive gaze trained on Carver.

  Carver began screaming as he worked frantically with the reel. In the back of his mind was the idea that noise might discourage the alligator. And Magruder was screaming now, thrashing panic-stricken in the shallow water.

  The alligator hissed and slapped the water with its tail, sending spray high enough to drum down for a few seconds like rain.

  Carver and Magruder screamed louder.

  *

  The dented black pickup truck approached slowly and parked in the moonlight beside the still water.

  I.C. and Peevy climbed down from the cab and slammed the doors shut behind them almost in unison. They stood carrying their shotguns slung beneath their right arms.

  *‘Been paid a visit here,” Peevy said, motioning with his head toward the two lower legs and boots jutting up from the bloody water. It was obvious from the shallow depth of the water and the angle of the legs that they were attached to nothing. Other than the right leg, with the padlock and chain around its booted ankle.

  “Magruder!” Peevy called.

  “Will you look at that!” I.C. said. He pointed with his shotgun toward the huge alligator near the water’s edge, its jaws gaping.

  Neither man said anything for at least a minute, standing and staring at the alligator, their shotguns trained on it.

  “Ain’t movin’,” Peevy said after a while.

  I.C. dragged the back of his forearm across his mouth. “C’mon.”

  “Don’t like it,” Peevy said, advancing a few steps behind I.C. toward the motionless alligator.

  “Nothin’ here to like,” I.C. said.

  When they were ten feet away from the alligator they saw the black glistening holes in the side of its head, from the lead slugs Magruder used in his shotgun rounds.

  Then they saw something else. The alligator’s jaws were gaping because they were propped open with something — a stick or branch?

  No, a cane! A broken half of a cane!

  I.C. whirled and looked again at the booted legs jutting from the bloody surface of the barely stirred water.

  “Them boots got laces!” he said. “Crippled man didn’t have no laces in his boots! He musta somehow got Magruder’s keys off n him, then his gun!”

  He and Peevy turned in the direction of a slight metallic click in the blackness near the edge of the pond, a sound not natural to the swamp. Together they raised their shotguns toward their shoulders to aim them at the source of the sound.

  But Carver already had them in his sights. He squeezed the trigger over and over until the shotgun’s magazine was empty.

  In the vibrating silence after the explosion of gunshots, he heard only the beating of wings as startled, nested birds took flight into the black sky. They might have been the departing souls of I.C. and Peevy, only they were going in the wrong direction.

  Using the empty shotgun for a cane, Carver limped out of the swamp.

  Prayer for Judgment

  from Shoveling Smoke

  Certain smells take you back in time as quickly as any period song. One whiff of Evening in Paris and I am a child again, watching my mother get dressed up. The smell of woodsmoke, bacon, newly turned dirt, a damp kitten, shoe polish, Krispy Kreme doughnuts — each evokes anew its own long sequence of memories . . . like gardenias on a summer night.

  The late June evening was so hot and humid, and the air was so still, that the heavy fragrance of gardenias was held close to the earth like layers of sweet-scented chiffon. I floated on my back at the end of the pool and breathed in the rich sensuous aroma of Aunt Zell’s forty-year-old bushes. '

  More than magnolias, gardenias are the smell of summer in central North Carolina and their scent unlocks memories and images we never think of when the weather’s cool and crisp.

  Blurred stars twinkled in the hazy night sky, an occasional plane passed far overhead and lightning bugs drifted lazily through the evening stillness. Drifting with them, unshackled by gravity, I seemed to float not on water but on the thick sweet air itself, half of my senses disoriented, the other half too wholly relaxed to care whether a particular point of light was insect, human or extraterrestrial.

  The house is only a few blocks from the center of Dobbs, but our sidewalks roll up at nine on a week night, and there was nothing to break the smail town silence except light traffic or the occasional bark of a dog. When I heard the back screen door slam, I assumed it was Aunt Zell or Uncle Ash coming out to say goodnight, but the

  man silhouetted against the house lights was too big and bulky. One of my brothers?

  “Deb’rah?” Dwight Bryant moved cautiously down the path and along the edge of the pool, as if his eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the darkness.

  “Watch out you don’t fall in,” I told him. “Unless you mean to.”

  I didn’t reckon he did because my night vision was good enough to see that he had on his new sports jacket. As chief of detectives for the Colleton County Sheriff s Department, Dwight seldom wears a uniform unless he wants to look particula
rly official.

  He followed my voice and came over to squat down on the coping and dip a hand in the water.

  “Not very cool, is it?”

  “Feels good though. Come on in.”

  “No suit,” he said regretfully, “and Mr. Ash is so skinny, I couldn’t get into one of his.”

  “Oh, you don’t need a bathing suit,” I teased. “Not dark as it is tonight. Besides, we’re just home folks here.”

  Dwight snorted. Growing up, he was in and out of our farmhouse so much that he really could have been one more brother, but my brothers never went skinny-dipping if I were around. (Correction: not if they knew I was around. Kid sisters don’t always announce their presence.)

  “You’re working late,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “A young woman over in Black Creek got herself shot dead this morning. They didn’t find her till nearly six this evening.”

  “Shot? You mean murdered?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Someone we know?”

  “Chastity Barefoot? Everybody called her Chass.”

  Rang no bells with me.

  “She and her husband both grew up in Harnett County. His name’s Edward Barefoot.”

  “Now that sounds familiar for some reason.” I stood up — the lap pool’s only four feet deep — and Dwight reached down his big hand to haul me out beside him. I came up dripping and wrapped a towel around me as I tried to think where I’d heard that name recently. “They any kin to the Cotton Grove Barefoots?”

  “Not that he said.”

  I finished drying off and slipped on my flip-flops and an oversized tee-shirt and we walked back to the patio to sit and talk. Aunt Zell came out with a pitcher of iced tea and said she and Uncle Ash were going upstairs to watch the news in bed so if I’d lock up after Dwight left, she’d tell us goodnight now.

  I gave her a hug and Dwight did, too, and after she’d gone inside and we were sipping the strong cold tea, I said, “This Edward Barefoot. He do the shooting?”

  “Don’t see how he could’ve,” said Dwight. “Specially since you’re his alibi.”

  “Come again?”

  “He says he spent all morning in your courtroom. Says you let him off with a prayer for judgment.”

  “I did?”

  Monday morning traffic court is such a cattle call that it’s easy for the faces to blur and if Dwight had waited a week to ask me, I might not have remembered. As it was, it took me a minute to sort out which one had been Edward Barefoot.

  As a district court judge, I had been presented with minor assaults, drug possession, worthless checks and a dozen other misdemeanor categories; but on the whole, traffic violations had made up the bulk of the day’s calendar. Seated on the side benches had been uniformed state troopers and officers from both the town’s police department and the county sheriff’s department, each prepared to testify why he had ticketed and/or arrested his share of the two hundred and five individuals named on my docket today. Tracy Johnson, the prosecuting ADA, had efficiently whittled at least thirty-five names from that docket and she spent the midmorning break period processing the rest of those who planned to plead guilty without an attorney.

  At least 85 percent were male and younger than thirty. There doesn’t seem to be a sexual pattern on who will come up with phony registrations, improper plates or expired inspection stickers, but most sessions have one young lead-footed female and one older female alcoholic who’s blown more than the legal point-oh-eight. Yeah, and every week I get at least one middle-aged man who thinks it’s his God-given right to keep driving even though his license has been so thoroughly revoked that for the rest of his life it’ll barely be legal for him to get behind the steering wheel of a bumper car at the State Fair. *

  As I poured Dwight a second glass of tea, I remembered seeing Edward Barefoot come up to the defense table. I had wondered whether he was a first-time speeder or someone on the edge of getting his license revoked. His preppie haircut was so fresh that there was a half-inch band of white around the back edges where his hair had kept his neck from tanning, and his neat charcoal gray suit bespoke a young businessman somewhat embarrassed at finding himself in traffic court and eager to make a good impression. His pin-striped shirt and sober tie said, “I’m an upstanding taxpayer and solid citizen of the community,” but his edgy good looks would have been more appropriate on one of our tight-jeaned speed jockeys.

  Tracy had withdrawn the charge of driving without a valid license, but Barefoot was still left with a 78 in a 65 speed zone.

  I nodded to the spit-polished highway patrolman and said, “Tell me about it.”

  It was the same old same old with a slight variation. Late one evening, about a week earlier, defendant got himself pulled for excessive speed on the interstate that bisects Colleton County. According to the trooper, Mr. Barefoot had been cooperative when asked to step out of the car, but there was an odor of an impairing substance about him and he didn’t have his wallet or license.

  “Mr. Barefoot stated that his wife was usually their designated driver, so he often left his wallet at home when they went out like that. Just put some cash in his pocket. Mrs. Barefoot was in the vehicle and she did possess a valid license, but she stated that they’d been to a party over in Raleigh and she got into the piria coladas right heavy so they felt like it’d be safer for him to drive.”

  “Did he blow for you?” I asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. He registered a point-oh-five, three points below the legal limit. And there was nothing out of the way about his speech or appearance, other than the speeding. He stated that was because they’d promised the babysitter they’d be home before midnight and they were late. The vehicle was registered in both their names and Mr. Barefoot showed me his license before court took in this morning.”

  When it was his turn to speak, Barefoot freely acknowledged that he’d been driving way too fast, said he was sorry, and requested a prayer for judgment.

  “Any previous violations?” I asked the trooper.

  “I believe he has one speeding violation. About three years ago. Sixty-four in a fifty-five zone.”

  “Only one?” That surprised me because this Edward Barefoot sure looked like a racehorse.

  ‘Just one, your honor,” the trooper had said.

  “Another week and his only violation would have been neutralized,” I told Dwight now as I refilled my glass of iced tea, “so I let him off. Phyllis Raynor was clerking for me this morning and she or Tracy might have a better fix on the time, but I’d say he was out of there by eleven-thirty. ”

  “That late, hmm?”

  “You’d like for it to be earlier?”

  “Well, we think she was killed sometime mid-morning and that would give us someplace to start. Not that we’ve heard of any trouble between them, but you know how it is — husbands and boyfriends, we always look hard at them first. Barefoot says he got a chicken biscuit at Bojangles on his way out of town, and then drove straight to work. If he got to his job when he says he did, he didn’t have enough time to drive home first. That’s almost fifty miles. And if he really was in court from nine till eleven-thirty — ?”

  “Tracy could probably tell you,” I said again.

  According to Dwight, Chastity Barefoot had dropped her young daughter off at a day care there in Black Creek at nine-thirty that morning and then returned to the little starter home she and her husband had bought the year before in one of the many subdivisions that have sprung up since the new interstate opened and made our cheap land and low taxes attractive to people working around Raleigh. She was a part-time receptionist for a dentist in Black Creek and wasn’t due in till noon; her husband worked for one of the big pharmaceuticals in the Research Triangle Park.

  When she didn’t turn up at work on time, the office manager had first called and then driven out to the house on her lunch hour because “And I quote,” said Dwight, “‘Whatever else Chass did, she never left you hanging.’”


  “Whatever else?” I asked.

  “Yeah, she did sort of hint that Miz Barefoot might’ve had hinges on her heels.”

  “So there was trouble between the Barefoots.”

  “Not according to the office manager.” Dwight slapped at a mosquito buzzing around his ears. “She says the poor bastard didn’t have a clue. Thought Chass hung the moon just for him. Anyhow, Chass’s car was there, but the house was locked and no one answered the door, so she left again.”

  He brushed away another mosquito, drained his tea glass and stood up to go. “I’ll speak to Tracy and Phyllis and we’ll check every inch of Barefoot’s alibi, but I have a feeling we’re going to be hunting the boyfriend on this one.”

  That would have been the end of it as far as I was concerned except that Chastity Barefoot’s grandmother was a friend of Aunt Zell’s, so Aunt Zell felt she ought to attend the visitation on Wednesday evening. The only trouble was that Uncle Ash had to be out of town and she doesn’t like to drive that far alone at night.

  ‘You sure you don’t mind?” she asked me that morning.

  On a hot Wednesday night, I had planned nothing more exciting than reading briefs in front of the air conditioner in my sitting room.

  I had originally moved in with Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash because I couldn’t afford a place of my own when I first came back to Colleton County and there was no way I’d have gone back to the farm at that point. I use the self-contained efficiency apartment they fixed for Uncle Ash’s mother while she was still alive, with its own separate entrance and relative privacy. We’re comfortable together — too comfortable say some of my sisters-in-law who worry that I may never get married — but Uncle Ash has to be away so much, my being there gives everybody peace of mind.

  No big deal to drive to the funeral home over in Harnett County, I told her.

  It was still daylight, another airless, humid evening and even in a thin cotton dress and barefoot sandals, I had to keep the air conditioner on high most of the way. As we drove, Aunt Zell reminisced about her friend, Retha Minshew, and how sad it was that her little great-granddaughter would probably grow up without any memory of her mother.