by Stuart Woods
“Yeah, I guess they need a message sent pretty often.”
“I think Skeeter got the message,” Billy said as he turned back toward Delano.
13
TUCKER turned from Broad into Main Street and moved slowly down the block with the traffic. He caught sight of his new recruit, Gene Legg, fresh from the Marine Corps, walking among the Christmas shoppers. He thought the boy would work out well, after some training and experience.
“I’m a little surprised you didn’t hire a black officer,” said John Howell, who rode in the passenger seat. The reporter was, as part of his magazine piece, spending a working day with Tucker.
“That might come after a while,” Tucker replied. “But I needed a man, and a qualified applicant presented himself, so I hired him. Next time I need a man, if a qualified black applicant turns up, I’ll hire him.” Tucker knew very well that the next man he hired would be black, even if he had to kidnap him from another police force.
“What do you think about the civil rights movement, about the changes that are happening?”
“I think the changes are long overdue. As for the movement, it has my sympathy, but I don’t regard myself as an active part of it, even though I’m the first black to hold a job formerly held only by white men.” Tucker knew he would never have been considered for the job except for the civil rights movement.
“What will you do if you’re required, in the line of duty, to become involved? Locally, I mean.”
“I’ll do my job, I hope. I tend to divide what happens in the world by what is a police problem and what is not. If something happens in Delano that becomes a police problem, I’ll involve myself to the extent necessary to achieve a satisfactory solution.”
“You don’t see a larger role for yourself, both as a policeman and a black man? You aren’t willing to step over the line drawn by your duty in order to influence events?”
“That line is always very fuzzy for a policeman. A cop makes those decisions all the time. Should he make an arrest or just issue a warning? At what point does a domestic argument escalate from a family quarrel to a criminal act? When does a peaceful demonstration become a threat to the community? I hope I’ve developed a sense of judgment in those areas, and I hope it’ll stand me in good stead in the future.”
“Do you think your family relationship to Jesse Cole might cause problems for you in Delano?”
Tucker could not hide his surprise. “Did Billy Lee tell you about that?”
“No, I heard about it from… another source. I’ve discussed it with Billy, though, and it doesn’t seem to bother him. There certainly seems to be no question of any involvement on your part in helping Willie escape.”
Tucker shrugged. “I’m not aware that he was escaping from anything. He certainly had nothing to do with the governor’s daddy’s death. He just happened to be there, the way I heard it.”
“He broke jail.”
“Yes, I suppose he did, but you say, yourself, that there’s no question of my being involved. He was just my cousin, and I didn’t know he had broken jail until he was dead.”
“To get back to my question, do you think the relationship will cause you any problems here?”
“Why should it? Are you going to print it?”
“Would you be uncomfortable if I did?”
“I don’t know. It all happened so long ago, I don’t see what it has to do with what’s happening in Delano today.”
“Just history, I suppose. Also, I get the impression that certain political opponents would like to find a way to use it to embarrass Governor Lee. It might be better if it were mentioned in passing in my piece than for it to come out under circumstances of those people’s choosing.”
“If you say so. I don’t see how it can hurt him, anyway.”
“You still have an aunt here in Delano. Jesse Cole’s wife.”
“Yes.”
“Do you see her often?”
“She comes to Sunday dinner. She’s my only living relative, and she and my wife get along well.” Tucker felt a trickle of sweat run down the small of his back. “We don’t have a lot of friends here. We’re kind of neither one thing nor the other. It’s nice for my wife to have her to talk to.”
“In reading over the announcement of your appointment in the Delano Messenger, I noticed there was no mention of your aunt. Small-town newspapers normally bring that in… you know, Watts is the nephew of… etcetera, etcetera.”
“I didn’t write the announcement. I suppose they extracted their information from a résumé that covered my career in the army. My aunt isn’t a part of my military career. The announcement didn’t mention I was black, either, but then I guess that wasn’t in the résumé.”
Howell grinned and mused over his notes. Tucker fought the urge to change the subject; then Howell did it for him. “Tell me about this guy Sonny Butts, who used to be Chief.”
“You probably know as much about him as I do.”
“He really just disappeared, did he?”
“Apparently so. And with the department’s motorcycle.”
“Strange.”
“Yeah, it was.” Tucker paused for a moment. Why not? This guy needed entertaining, and he liked this subject better than the one they had just been talking about. “Come on back to the station, and I’ll show you something interesting—something to do with Butts.”
As they were entering the station, they brushed past a drunk black man who was being booked in the squad room. Tucker directed Howell to his office and went to the bank of file cabinets. From behind him a voice came, questioningly.
“Willie?”
Tucker froze for just a moment, but prevented himself from turning. He flipped through the files rapidly.
“Willie!”
Tucker extracted a file from the cabinet and turned toward his office.
“Don’t you know me?”
Tucker turned to Bartlett. “What’s this?”
“This, Chief, is Walter Johnson, a regular customer.”
“Willie, it’s Pieback. You know me, boy.” The man leaned drunkenly over the counter and stuck his hand out.
Tucker looked at him in disbelief. He had not laid eyes on Pieback Johnson since they had played at hitching rides in the railroad switching yard when they were, what—thirteen, fourteen? And Pieback, stone drunk, had made him as if it had been yesterday.
“Sorry, Johnson, wrong fellow. You better go take a nap.” He joined Howell at the door of his office and ushered him in. Tucker was badly shaken. He busied himself pouring them both a cup of coffee and rattling on about Sonny Butts. Howell looked at him curiously, but said nothing.
“Sonny Butts,” Tucker said, tossing the file on his desk, “was a real hell raiser. He or one of his officers shot a black prisoner in the jail while they were allegedly beating him up. There was a local movement against him, but he wasn’t even indicted. Then he beat up a man out at the fairgrounds, and the city council voted to fire him because of that, on the same day that the grand jury met and failed to indict him for the killing. Before he heard the results of either meeting he left this station in a hurry on the police motorcycle, and nobody ever saw him again, dead or alive.” Tucker sat down and sipped his coffee. “The theory was he thought he would be indicted, so he ran.” Tucker took a sip of his coffee. “But it doesn’t add up.”
“Why not?” Howell asked.
“Because at the last minute, a new witness turned up at the grand jury hearing and cleared him. A witness he would have to have known about.”
“So he knew he would be cleared?”
“I think so.”
“Maybe he couldn’t face being fired by the city council.”
“Maybe. I doubt it. I think he thought he could still save himself.”
“Then why did he run?”
Tucker sat back and took another sip of his coffee. “John, this has to be between you and me.”
“For how long?”
“Maybe always. Un
til I can make something of it. But if you write about this before I say so, I’ll never make anything of it.”
“Okay, but you have to tell me everything.”
“All right.” he opened the file on his desk. “I don’t think Sonny Butts ran.”
Thirty minutes later the two men sat and stared at each other. “This is crazy, you know that, don’t you?” Howell laughed.
“Maybe,” said Tucker. “Do you have another explanation?” Tucker tapped the last of the missing-persons bulletins in Sonny’s file. “Look at the date on this. The boy was last seen less than a week before Sonny disappeared. Considering the time it took to print and mail the bulletins, this might very well have arrived in the mail the morning Sonny vanished—the morning he hopped on his motorcycle and tore out of here.”
“Did the disappearances continue after Sonny disappeared?”
“I’ve had a man going through the files of the years since to see if there are any missing persons that fit this mold.”
“And?”
“It’s taking him one hell of a long time. The files are all scrambled as a result of a fire here a few years back, and he can only work on it when he has nothing else to do, and that isn’t often. So far, he’s found nothing between 1946 and 1958; one since ‘58.”
“So the pattern doesn’t continue. At least, as far as you know. One doesn’t make a pattern.”
Tucker shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. Something could turn up, though.”
“Do you have a suspect?”
“You’ve seen everything I have. What do you think?”
“Is this guy Funderburke still alive?”
“Very much so.”
“But how could he have gotten away with it for so long?”
“He’s been lucky. Chief Lee apparently suspected him, but he was killed. There was no reason for him to ever have mentioned his suspicions to anybody else, until Sonny caught on.”
“And then when Sonny caught on, Funderburke took him out?”
“You said that, I didn’t. At the moment, that’s libel, and don’t you forget it.”
“Right. So what’s your next step?”
Tucker leaned back in his chair and grinned. “Ol’ Foxy doesn’t like colored folks much. Why don’t we see how he likes newspaper reporters?”
Tucker walked Howell to his car and gave him directions to Foxy’s place.
“What’s my excuse for going to see him?” Howell asked.
“You’ve got a choice of two subject matters: guns or dogs. He’s apparently got a big weapons collection, and he raises Labrador retrievers. Take your pick.”
“What should I look for?”
“See if you can find a reason to walk around the back of the place. There’s a burnt-out kudzu patch back there. If he lets you into the house… well, just look at everything you can, see what you can learn about the way he lives. And John—”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t let him think for a moment that you just happened by there, that nobody knows where you are.” Tucker grinned. “You’re not at all unlike the boys in those missing-persons bulletins, you know. Older, but young looking.”
“Gee, thanks a lot. That does a lot for my confidence.” Howell stopped short, getting into the car. “That’s why you want me to go up there, isn’t it? You think he’ll like me, don’t you?”
Tucker laughed aloud. “Of course not, John. I’m just calling on your finely honed powers of observation, your reportorial instincts.” He pushed the reporter into the car and closed the door after him. “Tell him one of my cops suggested you go see him.”
Howell looked at him for a long moment, then started the car. “Right,” he said, and put the car into gear.
Tucker watched the reporter drive away; then he walked back into the station, thinking, not about Foxy Funderburke, but about Pieback Johnson. As he entered the squad room Buddy Bartlett was hanging up the phone.
“Hey, Chief, did you hear our former colleague Bobby Patrick is going into politics?”
“What?” Tucker was only half listening.
“Yeah, Sheriff Stimson over in Talbot County, he’s been sick for a long time, cancer I think. Well, he resigned, and they’re holding a special election next month. Ol’ Bobby’s running. He just called.”
“In Talbot County?”
“Yep, he lives in Woodland, that’s over the line, so he’s eligible. He figures with his sterling law-enforcement background he’s a shoo-in.”
“Well, God help Talbot County,” Tucker said.
“Chief, you mind if I run out to the house for a few minutes? My TV’s broken, and there’s nobody to let the repairman in. Shouldn’t take more than half an hour.”
“Sure, Buddy, go ahead. I’ll cover for you.”
The policeman departed, and Tucker was left alone in the jail. He stood quietly in the squad room for a moment, thinking. Then he took the cell keys from Buddy Bartlett’s desk and walked back to the lockup. Through the bars he could see Pieback on a cell cot and hear him snoring. He was the only prisoner in the jail. He unlocked the outer door and walked back to the cells. Still Pieback snored. He unlocked the cell door and stood next to the bunk. A stench of cheap wine and vomit rose from the sleeping derelict. It would take only a few seconds, Tucker thought. He would never know anything. He just wouldn’t wake up. Pieback would be written off as an habitual drunkard in poor health who died in his sleep in a jail cell. Tucker picked up a pillow from the opposite bunk.
14
TUCKER was in the toilet when Buddy Bartlett returned from his errand, sitting on the closed john, his head between his knees, holding a wet paper towel to his face, trying not to be sick.
“Chief?”
The voice jolted him, made him sit upright, take hold of himself. “Yeah,” he called back. “I’m in here.” He stood up and looked at himself in the mirror. He saw a frightened man looking back at him. He walked quickly from the toilet to his office, calling over his shoulder, “All quiet; the phone didn’t even ring.” He closed the door behind him and sat down at his desk. Rummaging in a drawer, he found a dozen Librium in a bottle and swallowed one quickly, without water. An army doctor had given them to him a year before, at a time when he had been working too hard and getting edgy. He sat back and waited for the tranquilizer to take effect. By the time John Howell returned, more than an hour after his departure, Tucker felt better, more in control.
Howell knocked and stuck his head in. “I’ve brought a witness.” He pushed the door open and held up a puppy. “Isn’t she terrific?”
Tucker laughed. “I didn’t send you out there to fall in love.”
“Well, I guess I did. I picked dogs over guns as my reason for calling, and I got carried away.”
“All right, tell me from the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.”
Howell settled in a chair. “The first thing I noticed was the neatness, the symmetry, just like the doctor said it would be in his report. As I drove up to the house, the flower beds, the shrubs, everything was laid out symmetrically. The house, too, the windows and shutters. I stopped at the corner of the house and started to go to the front door, when he came around from the back and asked me what the hell I wanted.”
“In those words?”
“No, but in that tone. I said that Bartlett had told me he raised Labs, and I was interested in them. He asked me my name again—I’d already told him once—and seemed to be making an effort to remember it; then he softened a bit and took me around to the back, where the kennels are.”
“You got a good look at the back of the place then.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t see much of anything. There’s a garage and the kennels and the burnt patch, like you said. He told me about the kudzu; he didn’t get it all, apparently, in spite of the fire, and he’s worried about it coming back next spring. He showed me the dogs, and that’s when I got hooked on the puppy. I wasn’t expecting puppies, somehow.”
“What was his attitude by th
is time?”
“Softer, like I said, but still… wary, I guess. I wanted to get into the house, but I felt a little shaky using the guns as an excuse—I don’t know anything about guns—so I just commented on how attractive the place was, said I’d never seen a log cabin before. He said that he’d built most of it himself, so I jumped in and asked if he’d mind if I had a look inside. He said okay, but probably because he couldn’t think of an excuse fast enough; so we went inside.
“What’s it like? I’ve never been inside.”
“Living room, bedroom, a bath, kitchen. That’s it. Rooms are good sized, though. Everything neat as a pin. Not homey, though; almost sterile. Guns all over one wall in the living room. He was just starting to warm up a little, talking about this gun and that, when I mentioned that a guy I once worked on a paper with was a collector, and he brought me up short and asked me if I worked for a newspaper.”
“Why would that bother him?”
“I don’t know, but he switched off like a light bulb. Couldn’t get me out of there fast enough. I don’t guess I was there for more than twenty minutes.”
“So what do you think?”
Howell shook his head. “Well, Tucker, this is real thin, what you’re going on here. I tell you, I wish he was the guy; he’s perfect casting—the eccentric recluse and all that—it’d make a great story, maybe even a book—but I saw nothing, nothing, that would make the guy for a string of disappearances, including a motorcycle cop. I don’t see how you could even get a search warrant.”
“I didn’t expect you to find a body on the living room couch, you know. I just wanted your impression. He won’t even talk to me, because I’m the wrong color. You’re right about the warrant, though. His place is outside the city limits and just over the line in Talbot County, so he isn’t even in my jurisdiction. But the thing fascinates me.”
“I can see how it would. God knows the atmosphere out there is eerie—it’s so neat—that’s almost scary by itself. Something else, a feeling I got when I was in the kitchen.”
“What kind of feeling?”
“It reminded me of something—I couldn’t get it at first, I thought maybe of a hospital—but then I remembered. It was the floor. It’s an unusual kitchen floor—glazed tile, and it slants into a drain in the middle of the kitchen, under the table.”
