Blanco County 03 - Flat Crazy

by Rehder, Ben

  The phone rang, and this time, the game warden answered.

  Duke used his friendliest voice, the one he usually reserved for rich customers. “Hey, John, this is Duke Waldrip.”

  “You talk to one of the deputies yet, Duke?”

  Duke’s heart thumped. “No, sir. About what?”

  “Just need to ask you a few things.”

  “Shoot,” Duke said, trying to sound nonchalant. He had three balls up in the air—the Searcy fiasco, the shooting of the sheriff, and the accident with Kyle—and it was damn near impossible to gauge what the cops knew about any of them. All Duke could go by was what the deputies, and Marlin, asked him.

  “Any idea where Kyle Dawson is?”

  Oh Christ! Had Cheri finally called it in? If she had, why weren’t deputies pounding on Duke’s door? But if she hadn’t called, why the hell were Marlin and the deputies looking for Kyle? “No, sir, I haven’t talked to him since—let’s see—I guess it was yesterday.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Tell me something: Did Kyle ever meet Oliver Searcy?” Marlin asked.

  Jesus, what a perfect question! The entire purpose of Duke’s call was to point Marlin in that direction—to make Kyle a suspect. Now Duke didn’t have to plant that seed at all, because Marlin was already heading down that road. And that’s why the cops were looking for Kyle.

  “Funny,” Duke said, straining to keep his voice even. “That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. You asked me to call if I remembered anything that might be useful…”

  “And?”

  Duke knew he had to play this just right. Not too over-the-top. He started out slowly. “I kinda feel like a snitch, since Kyle is my friend and everything, but I started thinking about my conversations with Oliver Searcy.…” Duke intentionally took a long pause, just like the game warden sometimes did. See how he liked it.

  “What’d you remember, Duke?”

  “I think I might’ve mentioned Kyle’s name to him, or at least the name of the ranch.”

  Duke let that lie there for a second, too.

  Marlin said, “So you’re thinking Searcy might’ve called Kyle direct and set up a hunt that way?”

  Duke tried a laugh. “It wouldn’t be the first time a hunter went around me to the ranch owner. Some of ’em decide they don’t really need a guide and figure they can save a little money by cutting me out of the deal.”

  “But you don’t know for sure?”

  “No, I really couldn’t tell you. I’d say it’s a possibility. But it’s probably nothing. Even if Searcy did hunt out there, there’s no way Kyle killed him. He ain’t got it in him to do something like that.”

  Duke could almost hear the game warden’s gears spinning as he pondered this new information.

  Marlin said, “Has he said anything lately about leaving town? Maybe taking a vacation?”

  Leaving town? Could the cops have already discovered Kyle’s car at the Houston airport? That would have been fast fucking work, especially for these yokels. But if they were that far along—Duke was really getting excited now—maybe they had even discovered the lock Duke had planted in the garage.

  “Not that I remember,” Duke said. “But if he was going anywhere, he woulda taken his Lotus. He only uses the truck around the ranch. Was the Lotus gone?”

  Instead of answering, the game warden asked another question. “Does he allow anyone else to guide out on his ranch, as far as you know?”

  “Kyle’s friendly with a lot of guides and hunters all over the county, so there’s no telling who’s been out there. He hasn’t mentioned anyone, though.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Hello?” Duke said.

  “I’m here,” Marlin answered.

  Damn it, those pauses made Duke jumpy. He wished the game warden would just ask his questions and get it over with.

  “What kind of animals do y’all hunt out there?” Marlin asked.

  Duke had been regaining his composure, but now he started to sweat again. “Whitetails mostly. Some turkey and hog. Why?”

  “You ever hunt any type of exotics out there?”

  He played it coy. “You mean axis, fallow, like that? Yeah, sometimes.” Those were the most common imported deer in Texas. All perfectly legal.

  Again, the game warden didn’t respond right away. It made Duke want to scream.

  “If you talk to Kyle, have him call me.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  As soon as Marlin hung up, the phone rang. It was Trey Sweeney, out of breath.

  “John, I made a cast of its paws. They don’t match.”

  “What paws?”

  “The jackal’s!”

  “They don’t match the tracks from Flat Creek?”

  “Not even close.”

  Marlin knew what Sweeney was thinking: The tracks they’d found were made by some other exotic animal from Kyle Dawson’s stable. Marlin knew it was a possibility.

  “How long before the lab can identify those samples?” Sweeney asked.

  “Couple of weeks.”

  Trey laughed. “Well, I’d say we better keep our eyes open for something weird.”

  Marlin’s call waiting beeped.

  “Gotta go, Trey.”

  Darrell Bridges, the night dispatcher for the sheriff’s department, was on the other line. “Sorry, John, I know you’re trying to go ten-seven.” Marlin had called Darrell before going to bed, asking him to hold any calls that weren’t urgent. “But we’ve got trespassing calls coming in all over the county. Some of these landowners are pretty pissed off.”

  Just what Marlin had expected. Thrill-seekers were out looking for the chupacabra. Marlin got some addresses from Darrell and told him he’d respond.

  He went to grab his gun belt, when the phone rang yet again.

  “It’s me,” Darrell said. “Forget those trespassing calls for now. We just got a call from a lady on Flat Creek. Said she was attacked by some kind of strange animal.”

  21

  THE SET THAT was used in most of Marty Hoffenhauser’s films was really just an old airplane hangar on Marty’s property. One half of the hangar housed a wide variety of furniture, clothing, and other props. Depending on the script, the small crew could slap together a bedroom one morning, then have a restaurant standing in the same spot that afternoon. Just outside the hangar was a travel trailer that the cast used as a dressing room between shots.

  Marty asked Mike Hung to meet him at the hangar Saturday morning. Just the two of them, with no distractions. Shooting was on hold for the time being, while Marty tried to solve this delicate problem. This particular morning, the crew was prepared to return to the set on a moment’s notice.

  “So how’s it going, Mike?” Marty asked, handing the star a glass of orange juice. He wanted to approach this topic just right. Casual, not worried. Concerned, but not in a panic. They both took a seat.

  “Aw, so-so,” Mike replied. He appeared downright depressed. It broke Marty’s heart to see this once-proud dwarf with such a hangdog expression.

  “You been getting plenty of sleep?”

  Hung nodded, but he stared into his glass.

  “Yeah, well, that’s good. Plenty of sleep can do you a world of good. I gotta have eight hours every night myself.”

  Mike was not exactly bubbling with conversation.

  So Marty continued. “I’ve been thinking about something, Mike. Something that could be the answer to our small … issue.” Marty shifted in his chair. “From what I understand—in your country—when a man isn’t feeling quite as … masculine as he would like, there are certain items that can give him a … boost. Is that right?”

  Mike made eye contact, but appeared confused. The language barrier was sometimes a problem.

  “You know—aphrodisiacs?” Marty said.

  Mike didn’t appear to know that word. Marty didn’t know how to say it in Chinese.

  “For instance”—Marty had done some resear
ch on the Internet—“the penis from a horse? Bear gallbladder? Moth larvae?”

  Mike began to grin. “Yes, yes, velly good stuff.” He frowned. “But not available here.”

  “No, no, they’re not,” Marty replied. He leaned over and opened a brown grocery bag. “But there is something we have here that can do the trick.”

  Marty pulled the items out of the bag. Two matching antlers, four points on each. Junior Barstow had been kind enough to lop the antlers off what he had called a “basket rack eight.”

  Marty watched Hung’s face, and was pleased to see that he appeared interested.

  “You ever use these?” Marty asked.

  Hung shook his head. “But I hear they much powaful.” The little guy used a voice—a whisper, really—that one would normally reserve for talking about a saint.

  Marty laughed. “Damn right they are! They’ll make you more virile than you’ve ever been before!” Then Marty wondered if he was overdoing it. He sounded like a cheesy late-night infomercial for a Viagra knockoff. And besides—judging from Hung’s expression—he didn’t need to be sold. According to many different Web sites, deer antlers were one of the leading Chinese aphrodisiacs, their potency coming solely from the fact that they were considered phallic in design. The theory was, if you ingested something that had phallic qualities, your own phallus would be affected.

  “I use it all the time,” Marty lied. He knew that in reality the antlers worked the same way as a placebo. Mind over … well, in this case, penis. If Hung thought the antlers would make him a raging sex fiend, that’s exactly what they would do.

  A smile spread across Mike’s face.

  “And here…” Marty opened a large plastic Save Mart bag and withdrew a blender, still in its box. He’d purchased the most durable high-performance model available. Then he pulled a heavy-duty saber saw out of the bag. (Marty had received a strange stare when he had asked the salesgirl if the saw would cut through bone. “Yeah, I guess so,” the young lady had replied, then quickly scurried down the aisle, leaving Marty standing there.)

  Antlers were generally ground up into a powder, then sprinkled over food or into a drink. Marty decided the best way to grind them would be to cut them into small slivers and puree them in the blender. Probably not the way the Chinese did it, but Marty didn’t think that really mattered.

  Marty said, “Now, see, this blender has several different speeds. You just—”

  But Hung wasn’t listening. He was scooping the blender and saw into his arms, the antlers riding on top of the pile. “Thank you,” he said, even going so far as to bow. “Thank you velly much.”

  Then he dashed to the travel trailer, the door slamming behind him.

  * * *

  Marlin pulled into the parking lot of the sheriff’s department at five minutes before ten o’clock. After responding to Darrell’s call last night, and then chasing trespassing calls all over the county, Marlin had managed to get to bed at five in the morning and get four solid hours of sleep. Then Bill Tatum had called at nine o’clock, wanting to set up a meeting. “I’d like to get everybody together,” the deputy had said. “We’ve got some new developments, and I want to talk ’em through.”

  Inside the office, Marlin grabbed a cup of coffee and made his way to the small conference room. Already seated around the table were Bill Tatum, Rachel Cowan, and Ernie Turpin.

  Marlin took a chair while Tatum finished up a conversation on the phone. When he hung up, the chief deputy rubbed his hands together and said, “Okay, things are moving damn fast and we need to get a handle on it all.” He sat at the head of the table. “Let me bring you up to speed real quick, John. Kyle Dawson’s house. The three of us finished the search about four this morning—and the short version is, we didn’t find squat outside of that lock. No prints on it, by the way. We did find a pretty good stash of cocaine—about eleven grams. We didn’t find any kind of travel documents—but Dawson had a computer, and we’re sorting through it to see if he bought plane tickets on-line. If he did buy tickets”—Tatum slid a small item across the table to Marlin—“he’s not going far.”

  Marlin glanced down and saw a passport. He thumbed through it and saw a photo of Kyle Dawson. “Maybe he forgot it,” Marlin said.

  Tatum shook his head. “Doubtful. We busted a few chops at the Houston airport, got them to hustle up some video from one of their cameras.”

  There was a laptop computer in the center of the table, and Tatum swung it around to face Marlin.

  Rachel Cowan ran her fingertips along the computer’s mouse pad. The young deputy was the unofficial high-tech guru for the department. She had set up a new computer system there the previous summer.

  “They e-mailed this clip late last night, while we were at Dawson’s place.” She clicked on a file and a grainy black-and-white video began to play. It was a wide shot, showing a long row of vehicles in a parking lot lit by vapor lights. Behind the cars was a high chain-link fence and then a busy boulevard.

  “Resolution’s bad because each camera has to cover such a big area,” Cowan explained.

  Looking at the far end of the row of cars, Marlin saw a low-slung sports car—Kyle Dawson’s car, presumably—pull into an empty spot at least forty yards from the camera. Bad luck. If the car had been closer, they would have gotten a much better look. When Dawson got out of the car, though, he would likely walk right past the camera on his way into the airport. After a few seconds, a figure climbed out of the car. The quality of the video made it impossible to make out any of the man’s features. He was wearing a dark jacket … or maybe a long-sleeved shirt. Even details as simple as that couldn’t be ascertained. It was all too blurry.

  The man appeared to glance around, then leaned back into the car.

  “We think he wiped away prints,” Tatum said. “Houston didn’t find any on the driver’s side or the mirrors.”

  The man in the video reemerged from the car, carrying something bulky.

  “What do you think, John?” Tatum asked. “Is that the deer mount from Searcy’s house?”

  It was impossible to tell. The man’s body partially shielded the object, and if there were antlers protruding from it, the video was just too poor to make them out.

  “Could be,” Marlin said, but he knew he sounded uncertain.

  Now the man proceeded to walk away from the camera.

  Marlin started to state the obvious. “But—”

  “Yes,” Tatum said, “the airport is behind the camera.”

  Marlin watched dejectedly as the man walked out of the frame. Cowan paused the video. “The employees in the ticket booths never saw him. We think he climbed the fence.”

  “None of the other cameras picked him up?” Marlin asked.

  Cowan shook her head.

  “So Dawson didn’t fly out?”

  Tatum spoke again. “Hell, we can’t even be sure that’s him. We checked with all the airlines, and Kyle Dawson wasn’t booked on any of them. At least not under his real name. He could’ve used a fake passport, but that doesn’t seem likely.”

  Cowan said, “I’m checking with a few people to see if the video can be cleaned up a little, maybe give us a better look, but I’m not holding my breath.” She leaned toward the computer. “Here’s the next clip….”

  This segment of video showed a man from behind as he walked down the same row of cars. He stopped at the sports car, as if admiring it, then leaned over and peered into the window. He nonchalantly opened the door, climbed in, and drove away. It all transpired in about fifteen seconds.

  “Terry Hobbs?” Marlin asked.

  “Righto,” Tatum said.

  Cowan ran the clips again, but it wasn’t much help. There simply was no way of determining whether it was or wasn’t Kyle Dawson.

  “What about the gun from the glove compartment?” Marlin asked.

  “Registered to Dawson,” Tatum said. “It wasn’t the one Bobby got shot with. Wrong caliber.”

  As evidence, in its pr
esent state, the video wasn’t worth much.

  Now Tatum slid a large manila envelope across the table. “Early this morning, we got an overnight package from one of the nurses that worked for Oliver Searcy. She found this in Searcy’s files, under the last name of ‘Deer.’”

  Marlin opened the envelope and pulled out an X ray. The item on the film was instantly recognizable. A deer mount, complete with antlers.

  What Marlin noticed first were the bolts threaded upward into the base of each antler. Marlin had seen this type of work before, done by cheaters trying to win big-buck contests. The antlers were probably “sheds,” meaning they had fallen naturally from a buck’s skull, as they do every year. It was a fairly simple job to take a pair of sheds, attach them to a skullcap from another deer, and then cover it all with deer hide, making it more difficult to spot the fraud. Officials for some of the larger contests, however, had begun the practice of x-raying questionable entries. Marlin didn’t need to explain any of this to the deputies. As natives of Texas, the state with the largest deer population in the country, they were more than familiar with this type of scam.

  What Marlin noticed second was the long drop tine dipping down from the left antler. Drop tines were a fairly uncommon and therefore highly prized characteristic of a trophy buck.

  “Is this actual size?” Marlin asked, holding the X ray.

  The deputies glanced at one another. “I guess so. Aren’t most X rays?” Ernie Turpin said.

  “Because, damn, if this sucker wasn’t a fake, it would score about one eighty.”

  “What’s a buck like that go for nowadays?” Tatum asked.