The Killer in the Woods

by Rick Van Etten

  I had to laugh at that. And yes, although I was eager to get started, I could afford to wait another 12 or 14 hours or so. Even if I got the information tonight, there wasn’t much I could do with it immediately, and it wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted on my mind when I went to bed.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll probably be out myself for a couple hours in the morning; why don’t you call me at, say, 11:00.” I planned to take Preacher for a short hunt and figured that would give me time to knock down a bird or two for her and get back home.

  “Sounds good,” James Collins said. “I’ll talk to you then.”

  “Sounds good,” I echoed, and disconnected.

  I headed back inside and returned to the office. I turned off the burner and dropped it on the table and picked up the box I’d placed there a few minutes earlier. It was an Amazon shipping box, about the size a large hardcover book might ship in, but a little deeper. It was also a lot heavier than most hardcover books.

  I opened the top flaps and withdrew the .357 Colt Python that A.C. had placed inside, wrapped in grease paper.

  With its satin stainless finish and black grips, it was a beautiful piece of hardware. I’d used its twin—correction, twins—several times before and knew it to be a formidable firearm. Although Colt discontinued the line in 2005, the company had just recently reintroduced the Python in an updated version. I’m no expert on handguns, but I knew by its black grips this was one of the early model “snake guns”—the new model has walnut grips.

  Not as punishing to shoot as the larger calibers—yes, I’ve shot a Smith & Wesson Model 29, the .44 magnum made famous by Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry movies, and it’s no picnic—the .357 still packed a hell of a wallop, more than adequate for my purpose. A number of prominent gun writers, including several of my colleagues, have called the Colt Python the finest revolver ever made.

  I pushed the lever that allowed the cylinder to swing free. I flicked the cylinder with its empty chambers and it spun noiselessly. I snapped the cylinder back into place and gently replaced the revolver in its grease paper bed inside the Amazon box.

  It pained me a bit to think that in just a few more days, this gun would quite possibly suffer the same fate as others before it—disassembled quickly and the pieces tossed in different directions off a bridge and into a river, the deeper the better. I knew that if the revolver had come with legitimate provenance, it would have been worth at least three or four times more to a collector than what I’d paid A.C. for it.

  But I couldn’t let that sway my thinking. Once used, it would have to be disposed of immediately.

  Rule Number 3.

  Chapter 17

  Rain thwarted my plans to take Preacher out for a short hunt the next morning.

  My itinerary follows a well-established pattern on those mornings when we hunt. I get up, let Preacher outside, start a pot of coffee, get dressed and pull together my gear. By the time I’m done loading the SUV—under Preacher’s watchful eye, of course—the coffee has finished brewing and I fill a thermos, load Preacher and head over to Hardee’s for breakfast.

  I usually have either the biscuits and gravy with a side of hash rounds or the low-carb breakfast bowl, again with a side of hash rounds. Preacher is used to the 15- or 20-minute delay while I’m inside eating, and during hunting season it’s usually cool enough that I don’t have to worry about leaving her confined in the vehicle and getting overheated.

  If it’s warm enough to be a concern, I don’t stop at Hardee’s but opt for doughnuts or a couple of slices of breakfast pizza from Casey’s instead—food that can be eaten while driving, in other words. Not exactly the breakfast of champions, but I’ve never been a cold cereal fan.

  But on this Saturday in late November I woke to heavy rain that showed no signs of ending anytime soon. When I was younger I’d have donned rain gear and gone out anyway, but I’m getting picky—OK, lazy—in my old age. I don’t enjoy hunting in miserable weather, slogging through wet, heavy cover, and I especially dislike getting my gun soaked, requiring a complete stripping, drying and thorough cleaning and oiling after the hunt.

  Or to rationalize it another way, I feel like I’ve reached the age where I no longer have anything to prove and can afford to stay home when the weather is disagreeable.

  So I made an executive decision to hole up for the morning and wait for the call from James Collins. I settled in at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and Michael Connelly’s latest Harry Bosch novel and tried to concentrate on the book rather than my upcoming trip to Illinois and the task that awaited me there.

  I didn’t have much luck. Connelly is one of my favorite authors but my mind kept wandering. And wondering. I couldn’t help speculating about the information James Collins had turned up on Charlie Flanagan and Carlyle Wilson. He’d told me the night before that it didn’t amount to a whole lot, so I wasn’t overly optimistic. But as I’d told him, anything was more than I had, so I was hopeful there’d be something that I could use to start putting together a plan.

  The phone rang at 9:15, an hour and 45 minutes earlier than the time we’d agreed on. I grabbed it in the kitchen, one of the old landline extensions that doesn’t have a caller ID window. As I picked it up I realized this couldn’t be James Collins, as he didn’t have my home number and could only call my burner.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Rob? It’s Mike.” It was Mike Stevenson, a good friend and hunting buddy. There was a catch in his voice, almost like he was trying to hold back a sob.

  “Hey,” I said. “What’s up?” I knew there was something serious going on.

  “Oh, man,” he said. “It’s Beaver. He died last night.”

  “What?” I said. Beaver was Mike’s chocolate Labrador. “What happened?”

  “He fell asleep last night on the living room rug while we were watching TV. When I got up to let him outside before bedtime, he didn’t get up. He died in his sleep while we were all right there. He didn’t make a sound or do anything, just passed away while he was sleeping. I had no idea there was anything wrong.”

  “Oh, man, I’m really sorry to hear that. How are Janice and the kids?”

  “Torn up. Like me.”

  “I’m sure. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Not really. I’ve already taken him to the vet to be cremated…in fact, I just got back. I just wanted to let you know what happened.”

  “I appreciate that. And again, I’m really sorry. Tell Janice and the kids I’m thinking of them. I know how much they loved him.”

  “I’ll tell them. We’re all kind of in shock this morning. We keep expecting to see him or hear him, you know, like he’ll come walking in from the next room or something.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “Yeah, and I imagine that will continue for some time.”

  “Probably. How old was he?”

  “He just turned eleven a few weeks ago. We got him as a pup for Christmas when Jessica was two.” Jessica was Mike and Janice’s oldest daughter.

  “I remember that. He looked like a little brown bear cub.”

  “That’s right.” His voice broke and I realized I might have just put my foot in my mouth with my bear cub remark. Mike probably didn’t need to be reminded right now of how cute Beaver had been as a puppy.

  “Well, again, let me know if there’s anything I can do,” I said. Thinking, could I sound any more lame?

  “Thanks. Will do.” Mike hung up and I knew he and his family were in for a rough day. A rough several days, in fact. Probably weeks.

  Losing a loved dog—and I’ve lost several over my lifetime—is unquestionably one of life’s biggest heartaches. Anyone who would counter this claim with the comment, “But it was just a dog,” is deserving of…well, maybe not the kind of retribution I occasionally mete out, but a serious ass-kicking, at the very least.

  I walked into the dining room that doubles as my library—the walls are lined with bookshelves—and pulled a
volume of Rudyard Kipling’s poetry off the shelf. I checked the table of contents and turned to “The Power of the Dog” on page 594. I re-read the six-stanza poem and found myself nodding along with the sentiment.

  In those six stanzas Kipling perfectly captured the feelings of heartbreak that accompany the loss of a devoted canine companion. His final rhetorical question—So why in Heaven (before we are there)/Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?—reminded me of another favorite quotation, this one by Robert Louis Stevenson.

  Stevenson wrote, You think there will not be dogs in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us.

  Amen, brother.

  I replaced the Kipling book on the shelf and looked at my watch. It was just past 9:30, so I still had almost an hour and a half to kill before James Collins called. I looked out the kitchen window and saw that the rain had slacked off to a slight drizzle.

  I didn’t have enough time to load up my gear and squeeze in a hunt, even if I was willing to get my gun wet and do the necessary stripping and cleaning afterwards. But I had more than enough time to take Preacher for a ramble out at the lake. I gave her a quick whistle to summon her off the sofa, then I headed down to the basement for my rain gear.

  She met me in the kitchen when I came back upstairs. “C’mon, dog,” I said. “We need some exercise so I can clear my head.” I shrugged into my hooded slicker and grabbed a cap off the rack behind the back door. Preacher stood wagging her tail, ready for whatever adventure I had in mind, regardless of the rain.

  Dogs are like that.

  Chapter 18

  I spent most of our time out at the lake reminiscing.

  With Preacher ranging through the wet cover ahead of me, I ambled along recalling many happy memories of Mike and Beaver. The four of us—Mike, Beaver, Preacher and I—had hunted together dozens of times. Although the dogs’ styles differed when hunting pheasants—Preacher was a pointing dog and Beaver was a flusher—they’d proven surprisingly compatible when hunted in the same cover.

  Mike and I had developed a system that worked well for all the players. Preacher was by nature the wider ranging of the two dogs, often hunting a hundred yards or more out in front of the guns. But like all well-trained flushing dogs, Beaver never ventured beyond gun range; he was more meticulous in his search than Preacher was in hers, and with his sturdier build he was inclined to cover less ground anyway.

  Or to put it another way, Beaver would thoroughly sift through the cover that Preacher often skirted or breezed past on her way to a distant objective—say, a fence line or shelterbelt. If Beaver put up a rooster in front of either Mike or me, one of us would shoot it and he’d make the retrieve.

  If, on the other hand, Preacher pointed a bird at some distance, I’d call “Point!” and Mike would call Beaver to heel. The three of us would advance to where Preacher had the bird pinned and then, depending on which way it flushed, Mike or I would take the shot and I’d send Preacher for the retrieve…that is, if we managed to down the bird.

  Worked in this manner, both dogs got their share of bird encounters and retrieves, and neither seemed inclined toward jealousy. After the first couple seasons, they worked together as smoothly in the uplands as Mike and I did ourselves.

  We also hunted waterfowl together, and that was where Beaver really shone. Preacher was an adequate duck dog—German wirehairs were developed as all-purpose hunters and were expected to retrieve from water as well as on land—but she wasn’t in Beaver’s league when it came to marking long falls, handling diving cripples or taking a line for a lengthy blind retrieve across rough water, where Beaver was truly in his element.

  As we did in the uplands, Mike and I endeavored to alternate retrieves between the two dogs as much as was feasible, sending one to make the retrieve while the other dog remained in the blind, honoring. But sometimes we changed up the order depending on where the ducks fell; Beaver was the dog we always sent for the long falls while Preacher got most of the easy ones we dropped close.

  All in all, it was about as ideal a partnership, both human and canine, as anyone could hope for. I hadn’t loved Beaver like Mike and his family did, of course, but I’d liked him as a buddy and hunting companion, and I was going to miss him.

  I was pretty sure Preacher would too.

  We made a big circuit through a field of switchgrass, following a wide path that the caretakers kept mowed for hikers throughout the spring, summer and fall…that is, I stuck to the path while Preacher quartered through the grass. We saw four deer standing along the edge of a patch of woods, a big-bodied eight-point buck and three does.

  Seeing the buck reminded me of Frank Reynolds and the buck he’d been preparing to shoot when I killed him. I glanced at my watch and noted it was 10:20. I called to Preacher and we swung back to the graveled turnout where I’d parked. We loaded up and headed home.

  It was 10:45 when I stepped into the kitchen. Preacher had already trotted downstairs to the old cloth sofa in the basement; this was her lair when she came in wet from the field. She’d already shaken most of the water out of her coat and she would finish rubbing herself dry on the sofa —no amount of scolding would prevent her from doing so—then curl up and nap for an hour or so. Her routine was well established.

  I took off my rain slicker and hung it over the back of a kitchen chair. I poured a cup of cold coffee and stuck it in the microwave to reheat. I glanced at the clock again, willing the phone to ring.

  It did so at 10:55. James Collins was prompt. I picked up the phone and said hello.

  “Hey,” he said. “I know I’m a few minutes early but I hope that’s OK. I know you want this information so you can…uh…start working on a plan.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I’ve been waiting.”

  “OK. Well, like I said last night, it’s pretty basic stuff. I don’t know if it’s going to be helpful but I’ll give you what we got.”

  “Sounds good. Shoot.”

  He laughed. I halfway expected him to make some sort of joking remark or a pun, maybe, but he didn’t. “All right,” he said. “For starters, Carlyle Wilson and Charlie Flanagan both grew up in Rushville and they’re the same age, 32. They graduated from Rushville High School—they’re called the Rushville Rockets, by the way—in 2005. Neither one of them was an honor student, but they both played football. Flanagan was a tackle and Wilson was a tailback.”

  I was making notes on my legal pad as James Collins talked. “Hold on a sec,” I said. “You’re getting ahead of me.” I jotted down the positions then said, “OK, go ahead.”

  “Well, that’s all I know about their academic and athletic careers,” he said. “It doesn’t look like either one of them went to college anywhere, and neither of them served in the military. Wilson now works at the Pella Window factory in Macomb, and Flanagan is—you’ll love this—a guard at the men’s prison in Mt. Sterling.”

  I laughed. “So Flanagan is a screw,” I said. “Why are we not surprised.”

  “Right,” James Collins replied. “And that’s the only employment we could find any record of for him, so he’s apparently worked there for quite some time. Oh, and he was married for three years to a woman named Jolene Mitchell—one of their classmates—but they’re divorced. No kids.”

  “OK,” I said. “What about Wilson?”

  “Never married, the best we can tell.”

  “All right,” I said. “And they both still live in Rushville?”

  “Yes. Macomb, where Wilson works, is about 30 miles away, and Mt. Sterling, where the prison is where Flanagan’s a guard, is about 20 miles in the opposite direction.”

  “What about family?”

  “Both of Flanagan’s parents are dead. We managed to turn up an old obituary…they were killed in a car accident eight years ago.”

  “Any siblings?”

  “None for Flanagan. He’s an only child. Carlyle Wilson has a sister named Heather; she’s married and lives in Iowa. Their mother is dead but their f
ather is still living; he lives there in Rushville also.”

  “His name?” You never knew what tidbit might be useful.

  “Benjamin Wilson.”

  “Got it. Anything else?”

  “That’s about it. There just isn’t a lot online about these guys. Oh yeah, one more thing—Carlyle Wilson has a Facebook page. Charlie Flanagan does not. Wilson’s page looks pretty typical—the usual bunch of friends, photos and so on, but I don’t know if there’s anything there you’d find useful. Sorry we couldn’t turn up more.”

  “No need to apologize,” I said. “This is actually pretty good. You’ve given me some stuff to work with, anyway. If nothing else, this gives me a little better idea of the kind of guys they both are, including the info about their families. That’s a big help.”

  “So what will you do now?” James Collins asked.

  I hesitated for a moment before answering. I’m always reluctant to tell clients too much about my actual plans; the old “loose lips sink ships” saying applies here. But James Collins had so far proven himself to be trustworthy—at least as far as our business transaction was concerned—so giving him a general idea probably wouldn’t hurt.

  “I’m going to be heading over there in a few days,” I said. “While I’m there I’ll check out the town, do a little scouting around and see if I can maybe bump into Charlie Flanagan. I’m hoping that will give me a better feel for what’s going on and why Flanagan claims Wilson confessed to him. Then it will just be a matter of figuring out how to best rectify the situation.”

  To his credit, James Collins didn’t ask me to elaborate.

  Chapter 19