EQMM, May 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Twenty-two ninety-eight."

  "For seven drinks? I need to move to Walker County."

  "The bartender said he got an owner-employee discount."

  "You mean Crocker is one of the bar owners?"

  "I don't know. Let me do some checking."

  Clive Johnston spent the rest of the day in the Mulletville Records Office. Not only was Sheriff Crocker part owner of Magnolia Spring Country Club, his wife was listed as the owner of the Magnolia Spring Club Bar, a separate LLC. Johnston called his editor again.

  "I did some checking on this side,” his editor said. “Looks like our sheriff is in violation of Florida statute 561.25, which prohibits any sheriff from being employed, directly or indirectly, by any business that sells alcohol, or from owning stock or interest in such a business. If he's guilty, the sheriff would automatically be removed from office."

  And all of this was printed on the front page of the Capitol City Observer.

  * * * *

  "They want change? I am change!"

  Crocker stomped back and forth in his living room, glaring at Marshall Getty, across the room. “Forty years ago there was no law enforcement. No court system. Every law in the book was broken—from moonshiners to domestic violence, to drug dealing and dumping and hunting and fishing violations. As long as you didn't rob their house or murder their wife, nobody cared what you did. I brought law to Walker County. I built a prison. I busted the ring of methamphetamine manufacturers. I brought in ecotourism. I brought in the solar-power plant. There's not one family in Walker County—not one—I haven't helped out. I've given my life to these people. Why do they hate me?"

  "You've been a good sheriff,” Getty mumbled, placatingly. “I suggest we try to settle this out of court."

  "She's lying! I barely tapped her. It's bullshit!"

  "The jury pool is mostly people who work in Capitol City, mostly Democrats. You will not win in court. Zeke Fullerton knows that. That's why he's asking for two hundred thousand."

  "What a snake."

  "I want to offer him fifty. I think he'll recommend to the family they take it."

  "And if they don't?"

  "Then we'll offer more."

  "This is crazy! There's nothing wrong with that woman."

  "That woman? A jury will feel they have to send a message—that no one is above the law."

  "It's all about the election. You know that, don't you? The Capitol City Observer, all those people on the Internet—they all supported Sam Sweeney. They're exploiting this to try to get me out."

  "You won by forty votes. You can see how there might be some resentment there."

  "I won, goddamnit! Fair and square."

  "Are you sure?"

  "It's not my fault if I have enthusiastic supporters."

  "They intimidated people, they stole Sweeney's campaign signs, they threatened to boycott businesses that displayed Sweeney posters, your deputies gave tickets to people with Sweeney bumper stickers, a bag of ballots went missing for twenty-four hours, and in the last half-hour of voting ten cars filled with your supporters came to vote. They were drunk."

  "I'm supposed to stop people from campaigning for me?"

  "Look, I'm not fighting you. I'm your lawyer. I'm on your side. I'm just saying that there might be a reason some people might question the election."

  "They set me up. They'll do anything to throw me out."

  "Now you're being paranoid."

  "Paranoid! Someone dumps a dead boar on my doorstep for my wife to find and I'm being paranoid? Screw you!"

  "Bill, stop!"

  "I won't stop. I made this place, and now those retired Jewish transplants are trying to take it away from me."

  "You're being irrational. A lot of locals voted for Sam Sweeney, Bill."

  "Screw you!"

  * * * *

  The next day, Palmer Tharpe's office charged Crocker with leaving the scene of a crash, a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to sixty days in jail and a $500 fine, and cited him for careless driving, a $146 fine. Arraignment was set for Thursday.

  That morning there was a lot of excitement outside the courthouse. Dozens of spectators arrived, pouring out of battered trucks, hopping off motorcycles, dressed in jeans and boots. Even one or two RVs pulled up. The local television station arrived with a van and cameraman.

  Bill and his lawyer arrived in Getty's Mercedes, slowly pushing through the crowd. A middle-aged woman in jeans was handing out green T-shirts that read “Crocker is my Sheriff!” left over from the election campaign. She wore her gray hair in a ponytail and ordered people to put away their beer cans and pick up signs, some of which were misspelled—"I Love My Sherrif!” “Transplants go home!” “Crocker Won, Sorry Loosers Suck!"

  Bill smiled. It was Debra Sue Dobson, looking good. Now that's loyalty. He waved, but she didn't glance up. He walked up the courthouse steps to sporadic but enthusiastic cheering. It made Bill feel better.

  "It'll look more impressive on TV,” Getty said. “I had my assistant make some calls. She did the best she could. Lots of these folk don't have e-mail."

  "Oh,” said Bill, disappointed.

  Getty led him to a small room on the first floor. He had no intention of seeing the inside of the courtroom upstairs.

  Judge Warren, who was in a particularly good mood and started the pretrial conference bragging about the twenty-six-inch redfish he'd caught that weekend, accepted a plea deal. For the charge of leaving the scene of a crash, Crocker was sentenced to three months of administrative probation, during which time he had to abstain from alcohol. He had to write a public letter of apology to the crash victims, pay $350 in court costs, pay to have both vehicles fixed, and pay a $146 ticket for the careless-driving citation. The judge withheld adjudication of guilt, which meant that “technically” Sheriff Crocker was not convicted of the offense.

  The verdict appeased no one.

  * * * *

  The reporters were relentless. Each day something new was published in the Capital City Observer about Sheriff Crocker's “imperial rule” over Walker County. Then a posse of ball-busting auditors and monitors descended on him. The State Tax Assessor was questioning the low tax assessment on dozens of his properties. The Florida Legal Ethics Board was questioning his dismissal of sheriff's deputies who campaigned for Sam Sweeney in the previous election. The Board of County Commissioners called for an audit of the sheriff's department. Then Walker County Bank filed a lawsuit seeking foreclosure on Magnolia Spring Country Club for failure to make mortgage payments and to pay taxes. His own cousin, bank vice-president Gary Curtis, signed for the plaintiff.

  Everyone was turning against him. Even Meredith suggested he retire. There had to be a way out. If only he could explain himself.

  He called Clive Johnston and said he would give him an exclusive. Marshall Getty put a stop to that. “You need to stay out of the limelight, Bill. Take a vacation. Just cool it. It'll die down."

  But he didn't want to cool it. He waited until Sunday afternoon. Then made the call.

  "I'm ready,” he said. He hadn't talked to Donald Mayes since the accident. “How do we start?"

  "What are you talking about?” Mayes seemed preoccupied.

  "I'm ready to run for state representative."

  There was silence on the other end of the line. “You have another three and a half years as sheriff, Bill. A lot can happen in that time."

  "But the election for state rep is next year."

  Another pause. He could almost hear Mayes thinking. “Look, Bill, I've got to be frank with you. You've lost a lot of support. I'm not sure you could win."

  "Sure I can. The people here love me. We're family. They'll come around."

  "I don't think so."

  "Sure they will."

  Again silence. “I've talked to Sam Sweeney. We've started a fund-raising plan."

  "Sweeney's a Democrat!"

  "Nobody cares about parties anymore, Bill. They vote for the man. And
he's a good man."

  "And I'm not?"

  "You're damaged goods."

  * * * *

  Bill found Summer in her garden, dressed in jeans and a man's sleeveless undershirt, pruning her fig tree. He loved how tan and strong she was. He loved her long blond braid, how it swung back and forth as her muscled arms squeezed the clippers.

  He took her by the hand and made her sit down on the stone bench beside the roses. “Belize,” he said, watching her blue eyes brighten as he made his proposal. “I'll raise horses, you can do your photography. I'll sell everything. I'll have my pension, plus Social Security. Down there we'll be rich. You can sell this place or not—whatever you want. But come with me. I beg you."

  Summer looked at him, his face flushed, eyes watery, shining with passion, his smile—tentative, anguished—almost a grimace, the pores on his nose oozing oils. He looked like a man on the edge of losing control.

  "There's everything you like down there,” he continued. “Wildlife, beautiful beaches and jungle, great food. Will you come with me?"

  Summer felt a chill of excitement. Escape. Change. Two things she longed for. To a country she often dreamed of. She imagined for a moment living with him, two expatriates, thrown together in an intensely coupled way. Living every day with him. Watching him get old. Taking care of him.

  Suddenly she found him oppressive; her nostrils pinched from the smell of onions and shrimp on him. His hands were clammy, and under his armpits, dark crescent moons of sweat. He was pathetic, repulsive. Even his perfect helmet of gray hair was mussed and greasy.

  "I'm sorry, Bill,” she said. “I can't."

  He took her hand, desperate, pulling her to him. “It'll be wonderful. Sun all year long. Complete freedom to do whatever we want."

  "No,” she said, pushing away. “I don't want to."

  "You have to,” he said. He grabbed her hands and kissed her palms, his hands sliding up her forearms, clutching hard, diving in for a kiss, mashing his lips on hers, cutting her with his teeth. “I don't have to,” she yelled. She staggered back, her weight thrown against a potting table made from a door on sawhorses. The table crashed to the ground, tools flying, clay pots smashing everywhere. Still he came, seizing her hands, pushing her down on top of the door, clinging to her like a drowning man, probing under her shirt, ripping the buttons, grinding his pelvis into her, then yanking down her zipper and pulling her pants off her hips. “Get off me! You disgust me!” she cried, flailing against him.

  He placed his hands around her neck, his thumbs on her windpipe, his face inches from hers, red as if his skin had been stripped off, his bloody facial muscles exposed. He pressed down with his thumbs until she gurgled, her hands slapping his hands, feet kicking.

  Suddenly he stopped, as if seeing something in her face that surprised him—her disgust, her contemptuous lips, her taunting eyes, daring him to kill her.

  He stood up, dazed, his erection fading. He watched her cough and roll to her side, her hands fluttering around her bruised neck.

  He turned and lurched out of the yard.

  * * * *

  You don't expect it to end like this, sitting in a 1946 Dodge truck, rusty springs digging into your back. You never think that your last view of life will be through the jagged edges of a broken windshield, your last smell that of dust, rat shit, and jasmine. You don't expect it to happen when you are sixty-two.

  He sat with a Colt .45 in his hand, listening. A truck sped away behind a wall of slash pines. A twig snapped as a rattlesnake glided under a dry palmetto. A crenellated woodpecker jackhammered a dead oak.

  Turkey vultures circled above.

  It was hot. The air pressed in on him, pushing down on his chest. He could hardly breathe. This must be how it feels to be in a traffic accident, he thought, sheet metal bent like crinkled tinfoil around your body, pressing your internal organs together, cutting off air and blood. Nothing real pressed in on him—no airbag or dashboard or dented roof—only this thick, wet, crushing heaviness.

  He looked at the gun in his hand, its handsome, black-matte finish. He had never fired it on the job. He had always hoped he'd never have to use it, his insurance policy, carrying it just in case, always in his car even when he was off duty. Even to church.

  Was there really no other way?

  He thought of Debra Sue Dobson—It all started with her, didn't it?—kneeling deep in the forest picking up worms while her husband rubs a stick in the ground like a caveman starting a fire, her fingers sifting through pine needles as streaks of sunlight shine between the slash pines. Some guy from California made a video about them, and now Debra Sue and her husband were all over the Internet like that frumpy English woman who could sing like a lark. They had become folk heroes, interviewed by People magazineand Good Morning America. An apparel manufacturer was designing a jeans line named after them, and they were in negotiations with a brewery to put their picture on a new label called Worm Gruntin’ Beer.

  The worm grunters were going to be rich. He'd heard that they had bid on the twenty-nine-thousand-dollar tax lien on Magnolia Spring Country Club. So now he owed them money.

  Debra Sue Dobson, sixteen, offering to sleep with him, her cutoff jeans partly unzipped to accommodate her bulging belly.

  He began to laugh. Until tears fell down his face. Then he stopped.

  The air was still. Cicadas wheezed in the grasses around him.

  The gun was warm now—from the sun coming in through the cracked windshield, and from his sweaty palm. He put the barrel in his mouth. He pulled the trigger.

  He didn't hear the shot, but felt warmth pour over his body, like the tepid gulf water in July during scalloping season, opening day, he, his brother Danny, and Dad, motoring to the grass flats around Grey Mare Rock with dozens of other boats, families in snorkel gear frolicking in the three-foot water, chasing after the scallops, which dart away, snapping their shells in annoyance, propelling themselves through the grasses like in a Disney cartoon, and on the boat, Danny squealing as he jumps in the water, Dad chugging a beer, and he burst out of the water with a furious spitting scallop in each hand, laughing, victorious.

  Copyright © 2010 Ruth Francisco

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Reviews: THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Expanding previously published short stories into novels—cannibalizing as Raymond Chandler called it—has a long history in crime and mystery fiction, and some of the best writers in the field have practiced it. Still, it can be a tricky proposition.

  *** Loren D. Estleman: Alone, Forge, $24.99. The second novel about UCLA film detective and wannabe movie theater operator Valentino is based on the short story “Garbo Writes” (EQMM, February 2007). The well-honed basic plot, concerning lost letters of Greta Garbo, is the same, so obviously a good deal of filler was necessary to get it to 250 pages. Such fine prose, witty dialogue, and movie-buff nuggets make up the filler, along with a couple of romantic subplots, that readers like me who admire Estleman's style and share his enthusiasm for vintage cinema won't mind a bit. Sixteen pages of provocatively annotated bibliography and filmography are appended. (But he's too dismissive of Louise Brooks and Ricardo Cortez. The former was more than a geek's screensaver, and the latter, as well as being Garbo's first leading man and the first movie Sam Spade, was the best of the 1930s Perry Masons.)

  *** Barbara Hamilton: The Ninth Daughter, Berkley, $14. In the first of a projected series, Abigail Adams investigates murder during the run-up to the Boston Tea Party. Paul Revere is on hand, and John Adams appears as supportive spouse, but the most interesting historical figure in the cast is cousin Sam Adams, a righteous rabble-rouser. The writing, the mystery, and the period details (political, religious, social, and domestic) are all well-handled. Hamilton is the thinly disguised pseudonym of prolific historical novelist Barbara Hambly.

  *** Rhodi Hawk: A Twisted Ladder, Forge, $14.99. Is the New Orleans family of psychologist
Madeleine LeBlanc haunted by schizophrenia, river devils, or a combination of the two? Its action shifting between early 20th Century and the present, this Southern Gothic saga combines mystery and horror to fine effect. One of the more unusual trial scenes in fictional annals finds Madeleine trying to hold the family curse at bay to help to convict a murderer. (While an invisible demon wandering around the courtroom is perfectly believable, an attorney unnecessarily asking to treat as hostile a witness under cross-examination is not.)

  *** Sharon Fiffer: Scary Stuff, Minotaur, $24.95. Jane Wheel, finder of oddball collectibles and sometime private eye, encounters two mysteries on a visit to California: Why are hostile strangers confronting her brother Michael (he looks like somebody but his eyes are different) and is he somehow involved in an Internet auction scam? Back in Illinois, the plot thickens to include Jane's plainspoken mother (a great role for the late Thelma Ritter), a reputedly haunted house elaborately decorated for Halloween, subtle and overt romantic complications, and, inevitably, murder. This is a prime example of the extended-family cozy, with strong writing, an unusual background, ingenious plot twists, and a nicely foreshadowed final escape ploy.

  *** Al Roker and Dick Lochte: The Morning Show Murders, Delacorte, $26. Billy Blessing, Manhattan res-taurateur and TV chef who fills various roles on Wake Up America!, tells his story in humorous first person, and it's easy to picture Roker in the role. Savvy readers of celebrity mysteries always check out the professional collaborator, not always credited on the title page as here. Lochte, who has previously worked with Bill Shoemaker and Christopher Darden, besides writing the celebrated Sleeping Dog and several other novels, is one of the best. Though a mysterious death in Afghanistan and a faceless assassin known as Felix the Cat (complete with cartoon calling card) suggest an international thriller, this is a generously clued multi-twist whodunit at heart, expertly written and plotted.

  *** Mark Coggins: The Big Wake-Up, Bleak House, $24.95 hardcover, $14.95 paperback. The fifth case for San Francisco private eye August Riordan begins with a stunning action scene of murder by cable car and proceeds to unveil a wildly unlikely and utterly entertaining pulp-magazine plot, in-cluding a sinister female villain known as Isis. The Maltese Falcon-style treasure hunt has a most intriguing MacGuffin which I will not reveal, though the overly informative blurb writer does. The author's photographs from cemeteries enliven, so to speak, the chapter headings. Coggins continues to favor Chandler's recipe for saving a scene: the sudden appearance of a man with a gun.