by Thomas, Lee
“Yes, who is this?”
“This is Mort Grant from the Ranger’s Lodge. You have to get over here.”
“What’s the problem, Mort? Who’s making all that racket?”
“It’s another boy,” Mort said. “Here at the lodge, we got us another dead boy.”
The phone began to shake in Tom’s hand, so he pressed it tightly to his head to keep the tremors from showing and to keep the plastic cup from rattling against his ear. “At the lodge?” Tom asked, because he could think of nothing else to say.
“Hurry,” Mort insisted. The woman screamed again to punctuate the demand.
Tom slammed the phone down and leapt to his feet. “Rex, get the evidence kit.” Then he shouted into the station, “Gilbert, you find Doc Randolph and have him meet us at the Ranger’s Lodge as soon you can get him there.”
He ran around the side of his desk, through the station and into the street. The Ranger’s Lodge was a minute’s run from the sheriff’s office, and he poured on all of his steam in an attempt to cut that time in half.
~ ~ ~
Thirty years ago, Theodore Bixby, then mayor of Barnard, had visited his sister in Boston. At the invitation of her husband, Bixby had joined his brother-in-law at a men’s club near the harbor. There he found white-haired men in crisp suits lounging in wingback chairs, smoking cigars and pipes, while colored men brought them cocktails on silver trays. Bixby had so enjoyed his time in this establishment that he’d thought to bring the idea with him back to Barnard. Still a man of the West, Bixby had insisted the club speak to the rich culture of Texas, and as a result the lodge owed as much to an old Houston saloon as it did to an Edwardian parlor. A polished walnut bar ran across the back of the room. Three card tables occupied the polished oak flooring on the left of the door and to the right were a number of high-backed leather chairs, which formed a series of conversation areas, leading to a stone hearth against the far wall. Over the years, the membership had remained exclusive and the lodge was frequented mostly by the male heirs of those few men who’d chipped in to have the club built. Mort Grant was not one of those heirs, but his father had managed the Ranger’s Lodge for twenty-five years before a heart attack had taken him home to Jesus. His son, who’d apprenticed under his father for eighteen of those years, had assumed the mantle.
Now Mort Grant stood in front of the lodge in his white shirt and black vest. Tom spotted him the moment he took the corner.
He wanted to believe that Mort had made a mistake. He ran with all of his might, but it was an eagerness to refute what the barman had suggested, not confirm it, that drove him.
“This way,” Mort said, waving the sheriff to the open front door.
Tom hopped onto the sidewalk and took two steps under the eaves before stopping in his tracks. The room beyond the threshold was dark and Tom was momentarily shadow blind. He blinked and the shape hanging in the middle of the room began to develop and come into focus.
A pudgy young man hung by his neck from a slender rope affixed to one of the ceiling beams. Except for a single black sock, he was naked. The boy wore the same dazed and tense death expression Harold Ashton had worn. His plump tongue stuck from between his lips like a bruised slug. Worse still, Tom knew this boy; he had spoken to his men about him less than an hour ago.
“That’s David Williams,” he muttered. “Jesus, that’s Deke’s boy.”
“Yes sir,” Mort said at his shoulder. “We found him there when we were opening the lodge for the evening.”
Once his initial shock at seeing the hanged body receded to a thudding discomfort at his temples, Tom stepped into the lodge. He took a deep breath and then instantly regretted it. The coiled scents of shit and piss stung his nostrils, and though he felt some gratitude that the stench of rot was not similarly entwined with those of waste, it came as minor consolation. Tom took further solace in noting that David hadn’t been opened up the way Harold had, but again his sense of relief amounted to a drop of dye in a rushing river. He crossed to the body, which hung high, so that David’s privates were at the level of Tom’s face.
Rex arrived with the evidence kit and cursed up a storm upon seeing the dead boy’s body. He set the kit down and stomped in a circle like a thug who’d lost a bet. Mort Grant remained outside. There was no sign of the woman who’d been screaming so frantically in the background of his call.
“Fuck. Fuck,” Rex barked.
“That’s enough,” Tom said. “Let’s get as much information as we can and then get that boy down. I want you to keep that front door closed so we don’t put on a show for the whole town, and tell Mort to stick around for questioning. He lives out back doesn’t he?”
“Yeah, he and Maggie live in an apartment behind the lodge.”
Maggie must have been the source of the screaming, Tom reasoned.
“Okay, have Mort wait for us back there, and make sure he stays away from his phone. We don’t want him telling anyone anything until we’ve had a chance to go through this place. Did Gil get Doc Randolph on the phone?”
“Didn’t stick around to find out,” Rex said.
“Fair enough. You go on and get Mort settled.”
Rex didn’t move from his place by the door. He dropped his head and spoke toward the floor. “You think it’s the same guy that killed Harold?”
“Don’t know,” Tom replied. He hoped to God not.
~ ~ ~
Tom turned on the overhead lights, bathing the room and the corpse in illumination. He checked the beam above and noted the looping rope and thick knot that secured the cord. This struck him as important. The killer hadn’t hauled David into the air, using the beam like a pulley, but rather had prepared the noose and somehow managed to get the boy into it – probably at gunpoint. Tom’s gaze swung toward the polished walnut bar, and he began to get an impression of what had happened: the killer had made his gallows and then forced the Williams boy onto the bar. He put the rope around the kid’s neck and then pushed him off. Gravity and hemp had done the rest.
Satisfied with this explanation, Tom moved through the room, searched for evidence. Except for the waste that had escaped from the corpse, the floor and the bar were spotless, a testament to Mort Grant’s dedication to the lodge. The sheriff went to the front door and checked the locks, opening the door only wide enough to get some idea of the jamb’s condition. It appeared undamaged, and the locks were in good working order. He continued to the service entrance off of the lodge’s kitchen and found the jamb splintered and the hinges bent.
Tom stepped into the sweltering alley. The reek of heated garbage accosted him as he slowly walked between the wood-sided buildings, back to front and back again. He continued on past the building’s extension – Mort and Maggie’s apartment – and through the alley between Rainey’s Tack and Saddle and Purcel’s Boots to find himself standing on Santa Anna Avenue. Tom checked both directions, noting the German-owned businesses across the street. There were only two – Gerta’s Café, where Tom had on occasion stopped for lunch, and Weigle’s Butcher Shop next door.
He returned to the lodge and found Doc Randolph standing beside the hanged boy. Gilbert, who looked about as sick as any man could, stood by the door with a pad and pencil in his hand. Doc Randolph was dictating his observations.
“Both bowel and bladder voided at death,” he said calmly. “Which means the hanging was not post mortem – this is further confirmed by the discoloration of the victim’s face and the swelling of his tongue. No secondary abrasions about the throat in partner with no signs of restraint at the wrists seem to indicate the victim did not struggle. This could be attributed to a broken neck, or to other factors that may have left the victim incapacitated. Further, this could indicate the victim had no will to struggle.” The doctor turned toward Tom and said, “This may be nothing more than a suicide.”
The possibility had not occurred to Tom. He took the news as encouraging and then struggled with his sense of relief.
“He came
in through the back,” Tom said, checking on Gil to make sure the deputy wrote that bit down. “The door is jimmied.”
“Why did you think this was connected to the Ashton boy?” Doc Randolph asked, still circling the body, peering upward at the boy’s head.
“Two young men dead,” Tom said reluctantly. “I didn’t know the circumstances when I sent Gil after you.”
Doc Randolph nodded and stepped away from the corpse. “I’ve seen all I can see for now. We best cut him down so I can take a closer look.”
Tom looked around the lodge and found what he needed on a tabletop across the room. He went to the table and yanked the cloth from it, then returned to the center of the room. “Gil, bring your knife.”
Standing on a chair, with the cloth wrapped around the boy’s torso and hips, Tom held tight while Gil, standing on a table, worked his blade through the rope. David Williams crashed down, sending Tom and the chair toppling. He struck his head on the polished planks and the dead boy’s weight pinned him until his momentary daze passed. Then he rolled the corpse off, sending it face down on the floor. Doc Randolph didn’t pay any mind to Tom, who climbed to his feet, holding the back of his head and gasping for breath. Instead, the doctor focused his attention on the cloth-wrapped body.
Doc Randolph made some humming sounds and grunted twice. He knelt down and, using a slender metal rod like an empty pen, poked and prodded the back of the Williams boy’s head. He hummed again, and then looked at Tom.
“So much for suicide,” the doctor said.
“I don’t follow.”
“The victim took multiple blows to the back of the cranium. I noticed the blood on the rope, but assumed it was from abrasion. It’s not. Someone knocked the boy out with a blunt instrument, likely before bringing him here. The damage might have been severe enough to explain why the victim didn’t struggle.”
“You’ve mentioned that before. What struggle are you talking about?” Tom asked.
“Yes,” the doctor said heavily as if disappointed. “What would your natural reaction be should someone decide to hang you? Would you just dangle there and think what a shame it was you wouldn’t get to finish that Hemingway novel you were reading, or would you do everything in your power to save yourself?” The doctor cocked his head to the side and twisted his face as if strangling. “If you chose the latter, as most rational folks would, you’d attack that thing responsible for your impending death, which is to say, the rope, and the only part of the rope you’d have access to is that bit around your throat.” He made scratching motions at his neck, to illustrate his point. “I’ll look closer, but I saw no marks to indicate he struggled, and since his hands weren’t bound and he had every opportunity to do so, I’m forced to believe he was otherwise incapable, which a severe trauma to the head might explain.”
“Okay,” Tom said. A blush of embarrassment rose on his cheeks, and he checked on Gil to see if the young deputy had noticed. Gil seemed too involved with what he was writing on his notepad. “So, we are dealing with a murder, but it doesn’t look like the same situation we had with the Ashton boy.”
“Not exactly true,” Doc Randolph said.
“Because the killer didn’t murder his victim outright,” Tom said quickly.
This seemed to impress the doctor who nodded his head. “In both cases, the killer made a definite effort to place the bodies. He didn’t hide his victims or let them fall where he found them.”
“He put them where he knew they would be found,” Tom said, his heart sinking at what he knew would come next.
“I suggest we check the boy’s mouth.”
And there, they found another lacquered snuffbox. And inside that, they found another note.
~ ~ ~
Tom helped load the body into Doc Randolph’s car, and Gil rode with the doctor the six blocks to his office. After helping get the body inside, Gil was to proceed out to Brett Fletcher’s place with the latest note to have it translated. Meanwhile, Tom went to the apartment in back of the lodge and had a long talk with Mort Grant. Rex stood in the corner of the room silently as Tom questioned the lodge manager, and Mrs. Grant hovered around the edges of the conversation, a perpetual sheen of tears covering her red eyes. At times she would interject, but it was only to repeat something her husband had said, and then she’d cry and flit from the living area to the kitchen and back again. The interview was productive only in establishing a window of opportunity for the killer. Mort assured Tom that he checked the locks on the doors and the shutters every night, because the lodge had expensive whiskeys and vintage wines. Further, he had closed the lodge at the stroke of eleven as demanded in the bylaws – except in the event of a special occasion – and he and his wife had set about the business of sweeping and mopping and polishing. Mort restocked the liquor and reset the room. This took the couple until just after midnight. Maggie exited through the back, but Mort followed his father’s ritual, which meant walking around the property. He did this to be sure none of the lodge’s members had over imbibed, putting themselves in a less than honorable condition near the lodge. Because of the Fourth of July Celebration, Mort and Maggie had not opened the lodge at four in the afternoon as was customary, but rather waited until just before six – at the request of the city’s mayor – to assure “men spent an appropriate amount of time with their families before seeking the intellectual stimulation of the lodge” (the mayor’s words as reported by Mort). Upon entering the lodge, Mort discovered the hanged body of David Williams. Unfortunately, his wife also witnessed the dreadful thing. He’d called the sheriff’s office, and Tom knew the rest.
The sheriff asked Mort to repeat his story twice, and then he asked the manager to accompany him and Rex back to the office to repeat it a third time for an official report. Mort insisted his wife come along, afraid to leave her alone.
Gil called the station from the Fletcher house and read the translation of the note:
One less gun against the Reich.
Four executed for crimes against the Fatherland.
I will have them all in time.
Happy Independence Day, you stupid fucks.
The young deputy had found himself unable to say the last word until Tom had threatened him with disciplinary action. Then he’d stuttered it out as quickly as his naïve tongue would allow him.
Tom ordered Gil back to the station. He slammed down the phone and fell back in his chair. Across the desk from him, Rex – looking simultaneously sad and furious – pounded a fist into his palm as if eager to hurt someone.
The ledger on the desk between them only served to remind Tom that time was wasting as they waited for their only witness. Lily Reeves had reported a prowler outside of the Williams house late the previous night, and Tom had been trying to track her down since returning to the station.
“Where is she?” Tom asked.
“I sent Dick and Walter out to the lake to see if she’s there. I’m calling her house every ten minutes, and I’ve tried reaching her daughters but so far no luck. My guess is she went to the celebration with her family and then out to the lake for the nighttime festivities. It is tradition.”
“What about Deke Williams?”
“His boss at the paper mill said he was in Monroe, Louisiana on a buying trip. He’s been gone since day before yesterday. He’s not scheduled to be back for a few days yet, but I’ll put Gil on tracking down hotels in the area when he gets back from Brett’s place.”
“So what does that leave us?” Tom asked.
“A pile of horseshit,” Rex replied. “We’ll get the patrol out in the morning to question all the businesses in the area. Maybe one of the shop owners was out late and saw something we can use.”
“The city was all but closed down today,” Tom reminded. “The murderer could have just as easily gone into the Ranger Lodge at noon to finish up his work.”
“Well then, maybe someone saw that,” Rex said. “I don’t know.”
“That makes two of us,” Tom said.<
br />
His sour stomach rolled, sending acid to the back of his throat, and he swallowed hard against it. He thought about the description Lilly Reeves had given – a man in a Stetson and a duster – and he tried to picture the man, wondering why a German would adopt such a uniquely American costume. He certainly couldn’t think it would help him blend in, not in a city like Barnard.
So what was he after, this cowboy? What was he trying to say?
Eleven: Tim Randall
After word got out about the second boy’s killing, the city coiled in shock. I say coiled because even in those first few days you could feel something building – a tension woven into the hot, dry air – and it was only a matter of time before the dumbfounded citizens lashed out. A second note had been found, also written in German, and the paper had run a drawing of the killer, but it only showed a faceless man dressed in a Stetson and duster. The Register had taken to referring to the murderer as the “Gray Cowboy” or “Cowboy” for short. I felt particularly bad. David Williams wasn’t a close friend of mine, but he was closer to my age than Harold Ashton had been, and I’d seen him in school for a number of years. All I knew of Harold Ashton’s persona had been second hand information. David I’d known, and I’d liked him, so his death cut deeper. We hadn’t gone to Harold Ashton’s funeral, but Ma insisted I put on my suit and together we walked to the Baptist Church on Bennington for David’s services. I heard a lot of angry talk in the vestibule. Even the women spoke of finding the killer and stringing him up. Some even used profanity, which surprised me, particularly there in the church’s lobby. Carl Baker and his family appeared in the doorway of the church, all properly dressed for the services and coming to pay their respects for Mr. Williams’ loss, but a crowd of men gathered, blocking the family’s entrance and ushering them onto the front lawn. Ma held onto my shoulder, keeping me from racing outside to see what was being said. In the end, the Bakers walked away and the men, all old and weathered and fearsome looking, stomped back to the church. The services seemed to go on for a very long time, and I became drowsy in the over-hot room. Ma cried and held my hand tightly, and I tried to sit up straight as I’d been taught, but it became harder and harder to keep my eyes open. After the service, we returned home so Ma could pick up the pie she’d baked for Mr. Williams. I stood at the window and looked across the street at Ernst Lang’s house and squinted against the shadows on his porch to see if there was any movement, but it was midday and the German was probably working on a chair. When we arrived at the Williams house, Polly Davenport, Mr. Williams’ sister, took the pie from my mother and gave her a light hug, before leading us both back to the kitchen. The counters were covered in Dutch ovens and skillets and ceramic bowls. Silver spoon handles jutted from many of the containers and the smells went straight to my belly. I felt suddenly ravenous as if I could eat every bit of food Mr. Williams’ friends had brought for him, but before Ma fixed us plates we walked through the house, which brimmed with solemn people, all dressed so nicely but appearing hunched as if broken by David Williams’ death, until we found Mr. Williams in the backyard, sitting on a wooden bench, surrounded by a dozen people I didn’t recognize. Ma told Mr. Williams how sorry she was for his loss, and I said, “David was a good guy,” which brought a hard smile from Mr. Williams. Back inside, Ma put little portions of food on a plate for me, and I wolfed them down. That night, Ma stayed home from work for the third night in a row. I sat at the window, staring at the house across the street, hoping to catch a glimpse of my neighbor.
