by Thomas Scott
Conrad stood up, and the look on his face made Virgil think they had him. Like he was going to let it all spill out. His lower lip began to quiver, but then he got it under control. When he spoke, it was a simple statement of fact.
“I’m a farmer. That’s all there is to it.”
Virgil looked at Murton and got a shrug. They both stared at him for a few moments, then Murton said, “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Conrad. Right now, I’d like you to go ahead and leave the property. Do not speak with the other men until we’ve talked with them. And think about that lawyer.”
Conrad shoved his fists into his pockets, like maybe that was the only safe place for them at the moment. Virgil and Murton stared at him until he walked out the door.
13
They spent the rest of the morning speaking with the other farmers. The conversations were virtually identical…nobody knew nothin’ about nothin’ and everyone except for Cal Lipkins agreed that Lipkins was an asshole. “Even he was sort of on the fence about it,” Murton said when they were finished.
“This whole idea that Esser was putting a side deal together with Westlake…it all comes from Lipkins,” Virgil said. “Everyone else was unsure except him. He’s the only one who believed it. Why is that?”
“If you’ve got two guys and two stories, one of them is lying. If you’ve got six guys—I’m counting Westlake here because he does deny it—you’ve either got a conspiracy or just one guy is lying.”
“Lipkins.”
“Yep. I’m having trouble with the conspiracy. Most of them seem like regular guys, not criminal masterminds.”
Virgil nodded. “I agree. So, Lipkins. Let’s have Becky run some background on all of them, but start with Lipkins. Who knows? We might get lucky. Maybe there’s something lurking there that no one knows about. Let’s wrap it up with the sheriff and go feel out the Sunnydale guys.”
“That’s too bad about the medical examiner. His wife dying and all that,” Murton said.
Virgil shrugged it off. “Gotta do the job.” But the thought lurking at the back of his brain: Everything matters…
The Sunnydale people—there were only two of them, the owner, Carl Johnson, and a kid named Mike Grey—both said they’d already been felt out by the county cops. “Nothing to tell you that we haven’t told them,” Johnson said. They sat in Johnson’s office, a small, single-windowed shed that had been tacked on to the side of the barn. Carl Johnson was heavy and bald-headed with a white beard. He looked like an overweight Mr. Clean in dirty overalls.
“We’d just like to hear it ourselves,” Virgil said. “So, you were dropping off a load of beans or something?”
Johnson laughed at him, but in a friendly way. “Not beans. Feed corn. Couple of truck loads.”
“Tell him about the rats,” Grey said. He pushed himself off the side wall with his shoulder, his face all lit up.
Johnson tipped his head. “New kid,” he said, by way of an explanation. “And the rats don’t have anything to do with what we’re talking about.”
“What about the rats?” Murton said. He was interested.
Grey was a teenager who, Virgil thought, might actually be old enough to drive a semi sometime in the next three or four years. He had short orange, straw-like hair with a few unfortunate orange whiskers scattered around a receding chin. He held out his arms like he was telling a fish story. “Must have been about yay big. I didn’t actually see them, but man, you could hear them. Even Carl here, uh, Mr. Johnson, that is…sorry Mr. Johnson. Anyway, Mr. Johnson says they make ‘em as big as dogs around here and I believe him.” His eyes were wide and serious.
“Hey, Mike,” Johnson said, “how about you go check the temporary hog pen for me. I think the water line’s plugged up again.”
“You bet, Mr. Johnson.” He went out the door with a flurry of orange enthusiasm.
Johnson puffed out his cheeks. “He’s a good kid. A little—”
“Young?” Virgil said.
Johnson pinched a corner of his lip. “They start out young around here. Know what it means to work for a living. His old man died two winters ago…heart attack. I’m trying to help the family.” The statement wasn’t quite an insult at Virgil and Murton. “Anyway, I was gonna say slow. But even that’s not exactly right. He ain’t slow, slow. He just sort of rows his own boat, if you know what I mean. Hard worker, though.”
“Any reason you don’t want him in here while we talk?” Murton asked.
Johnson nodded. “Yeah. I’ve got work to do and the longer I talk to you boys the less time I have to do it. We wouldn’t get any talking done with him in here. He’s like a fly buzzing around your head when you’re trying to sleep. You can talk to him all you want. Won’t bother me a bit. You’ll just get an earful about rats and all the body parts out there in my hog pen, is all.” He waved at the door. “Have at it.”
Murton said he’d take care of it, and followed Grey outside. Virgil turned back to Johnson and said, “So take me through it, from the beginning.”
Johnson did—from the time he first called the co-op and asked about the availability of a silo until they dumped their loads and left.
“But when Esser’s truck passed you, you didn’t actually see him driving, is that right?”
Johnson closed his eyes and tipped his head back in thought. A moment later he opened them and shook his head. “It was just too damned dark. You sit up pretty high in the cab of the semi and we passed pretty close to each other so the angle was bad, so, no. I couldn’t see who it was. Safe to say it wasn’t Charlie, huh?”
“Looks that way,” Virgil said. “And no other vehicles around the co-op?”
“Nope. Just us.” Johnson fidgeted around in his seat for a few seconds. Then: “Listen, I gotta ask because no one’s come right out and said so, but it ain’t too awfully hard to do the math on this here, but me and Grey…we buried Charlie in that silo, didn’t we?”
“Were you friends?”
“Nope.” Johnson said it in such a matter-of-fact way that Virgil believed him. “I don’t keep with wife beaters. Neither does anyone else around here. Charlie was running short on friends the older he got. This was pure business. I needed the silo to rotate my stock. Simple as that. But business or not, friends or not, I don’t like to think that what we done killed him.”
Virgil tried to gloss over it by keeping the medical examiner’s statement to himself. “He’d been severely beaten, Mr. Johnson.”
Johnson was looking down in his lap. “I told Mike what he’d heard was rats. Hell, I thought it was rats. Charlie’d said number seven would be ready and it was. And we seen his truck leaving, so I didn’t think nothing of it. But we buried him, didn’t we? And when we emptied the silo, it cut him to pieces.”
“He was already gone by then. It’s not your fault, Mr. Johnson.”
“That don’t help much.”
Virgil stood and looked out the window. Four crime scene techs were combing through a hog pen, bagging parts of Charlie Esser, their white Tyvek suits stained brown with mud and pig shit. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”
“Are you going to get him? Whoever did this?”
Virgil didn’t hesitate. “Yeah. We’ll get him. Just need a place to start…a thread to pull on. That’s why we wanted to talk to you. If you could give me one name…if not someone who did it, then someone I can talk to who could tell me who did.”
Johnson let his chin fall to his chest and shook his head.
“What?”
“The one person I’d tell you to talk to is the one person who couldn’t have done it because she’s laid up in a hospital bed.”
“Martha Esser?”
“Exactly.”
Virgil found Murton chatting up one of the crime scene techs. “What’d you get from Grey?”
“He’s a smart ass, is what I got. Fifteen years old, says he’s been hauling corn around in a semi for two years. I told him to knock it off and he laughed at me, the little shit. He’s scare
d of rats, though. Wouldn’t shut up about them.”
“You tell him it wasn’t rats he heard?”
“No. I told him to check under his bed at night.” Then: “The little orange-headed shit.”
Virgil and Murton returned to the drill site, where Sheriff Holden gave them Martha Esser’s location. As it turned out, she’d been transferred to Methodist Hospital in Indy. “Probably what saved her,” Holden said.
“Okay, we’re going to check out the Esser residence before we head back to the city. Get me a copy of the crime scene report when the techs are finished, and a list of all the co-op employees…the mechanics, bookkeepers, everyone.”
“Will do,” Holden said.
“And Sheriff…?”
“Yeah?”
“Just the list, okay? Let me and Murt talk with them, if you don’t mind.”
The sheriff rolled his tongue around the inside of his cheek. “Fine by me. What about Westlake?”
“What about him?”
“He’s going to be breathing down my neck to resume operations here. I suspect you know that.”
“I’m not unsympathetic to your situation here, Sheriff,” Virgil said.
Holden turned and looked in the direction of the Flatrock’s dry creek bed. “Meaning what, exactly?”
Virgil was all business. “Meaning we were tasked by the governor to assist you in this matter and that’s exactly what we are going to do. But I suspect the matter at hand is a little bigger than the murder of your wife-beating friend over there. Whatever lies behind it is our job, not yours. When the crime scene people are finished you can let Westlake do whatever you think is best. My advice is to stall him as long as possible, but good luck with that. Keep us up to date with any new information on this end. We’ll interview Martha Esser and be in touch.”
“I’ll do just that. Thanks for all the help.”
“A return to civilization would be nice right about now,” Murton said.
Virgil stood and stared at the drill platforms and equipment that stood idle, ready and waiting to bring natural gas to the surface at the expense of clean water and thousands of acres of land which would no longer be fit to produce food of any kind that would be suitable for human consumption. “It sure would.”
Murton gave the sheriff an apologetic look and said, “That’s not exactly what I meant.”
Sandy kept trying to call Pam, and the result was the same every time. Straight to voice mail. Enough already, she thought. She’d go over to Pam’s and find out what was going on. But what about Jonas? She didn’t want to take him in case something was wrong, and she couldn’t leave him alone either. She ran through a mental list of who to call then picked up the phone. Less than an hour later Delroy and Jonas were playing cards together on the living room floor.
“Thank you, Delroy. I didn’t know who else to call.”
“Don’t you worry about it, you.”
Jonas looked at Delroy, then at Sandy. “He talks funny.”
Sandy tried to give him a stern look, but failed. “Jonas, that’s not polite. Delroy doesn’t talk funny. He has an accent, that’s all.”
Delroy laughed, then said, “Yeah little mon, I got an accent, me. You know what, you?”
“What?”
“So do you.” He looked at the cards he was holding. They were playing Go Fish. “Now…got any trees?”
Jonas gave him a funny look. “Trees?”
“Yeah, little mon. Trees.” He held up three fingers. “Trees. Day come right before da fours. How many you got, you?”
Jonas giggled at him. “You mean threes.”
“Ya, mon. What I just say?”
“You said trees, like trees that grow in the yard.”
“No, mon, I said trees.”
Jonas smacked his forehead with his palm. He thought for a moment then said, “What comes after thirty-two?”
“Tirty-tree.”
Jonas rolled over on his back and laughed.
“What so funny, you?”
“It sounded like you said dirty tree.”
Sandy knew she’d called the right person to watch Jonas. He was laughing like he didn’t have a care in the world. She leaned down, hugged them both and said she’d be back as soon as she could.
Delroy gave her a hard look and pointed his finger at her. “You be careful, you.”
Jonas giggled again and said, “Yeah…you be careful, you.”
They all laughed but there was no humor in Delroy’s eyes when he looked at Sandy. “I mean it.”
“You sound like Virgil.”
“And you sound like maybe you not listening so good.” Delroy stood up, took her by the elbow and led her into the kitchen. “How about I go see Pam and you stay here?”
“Delroy, it’s fine. I’m fine. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“You shouldn’t be out running around looking after everyone else. You should be here, looking out for yourself and dat baby of yours.”
Jonas shouted from the living room. “Come on, you. Go fish, you!”
“It’s okay, Delroy. Go on and play with Jonas. Besides, it sounds like you’re converting him.”
“Yeah, mon. Day be calling him Jamaican Joe by the time I’m done with him.”
She kissed him on the cheek and walked out the door.
14
Decker and his crew were off shift. When they got back to the barracks he ordered the men to stand down and report back in forty-eight hours for their next stint. Most left the barracks, and the few that remained spent their time on equipment cleanup. He entered the cage where the medical supplies were stored, found what he needed, then hopped in his car and headed out.
Busy day ahead.
Less than an hour later, he found the place he was looking for, and when he did, Decker thought: This is where it could all go to shit. He killed the engine, slid low in his seat and watched the house. He was about a half-block away on the opposite side of the street. He knew the owner wasn’t home, but he wasn’t sure if anyone else was inside. Only one way to find out. What was that saying? Fortune favors the bold…? Or some such shit. Whatever, he thought. Time to start kicking ass and taking names.
He walked up the front steps, knocked on the door and waited. If anyone answered, he’d make up some bullshit about being lost, ask for directions and go. Maybe. Because it wasn’t exactly ideal, and if anyone did answer, they’d see his face. Then what? He placed his hand on the butt of his gun, knocked again, a little harder this time. Still nothing. He was in a working class suburb and the nearby houses all looked quiet and empty. A typical workday in a midwestern lower middle-class neighborhood.
He stepped off the porch and walked back to his car, started the engine and drove away. So far, so good. He relaxed.
A little.
He circled the block a few times making random turns here and there before backing into the drive. He had a stolen license plate on the car, but still, backing in did two things: It limited his exposure and made for a quicker exit if it turned out he needed one. He pulled on a pair of clear surgical gloves to take care of the fingerprint problem. He’d still have to be careful about the DNA…couldn’t leave any traces.
He backed the car up close to the detached garage, closed the door, and went around the rear of the house like he owned the place. The backyard was enclosed by a privacy fence, so unless a neighbor just happened to be peering over the top of the fence he was good.
The back door itself had a double lock just below a set of window panes in the upper half of the door. He used his car key to press on the glass, slowly increasing the pressure until it cracked neatly across the bottom corner. He wiggled the smaller piece out first, then the larger one. Once the two pieces were out, he reached through, unlocked the door and stepped inside. He pulled a roll of clear tape from his pocket—this wasn’t his first break-in, after all—and taped the window glass back in place. If you didn’t look right at it, you’d never know it had been broken.
&n
bsp; Now…time to move. He’d start in the bedroom closet. Hopefully he’d find it there. He could practically see it in his mind, like he had some sort of ESP or something. It’d be sitting on the top shelf of the closet, in a case, cleaned, loaded, and ready to fire. The caliber didn’t matter…any gun could kill if you knew what you were doing, and Decker did. All he needed was the gun.
In the end, his ESP failed him, but he found the gun anyway. It was a .38 revolver, tucked neatly in a holster under the nightstand next to the bed. Decker appreciated the efficiency of the placement. The holster was screwed into the bottom of the table which hid the gun but left it within easy reach in the middle of the night. He appreciated the efficiency because he had the same exact setup himself. Should have looked there first.
ESP, my ass, he thought and let out a little chuckle. Nerves.
He placed the gun in a paper bag, then put the bag in his coat pocket. From another pocket he pulled out a plastic bag that contained a small amount of a brownish grainy substance that smelled, Decker thought, a little like corn flakes cereal that might have been on the shelf a little too long. He took a very small amount of the substance from the bag and dropped it inside a pair of shoes at the back of the closet. The rest was spread around behind the closet door, just a pinch or three. It was a spot, Decker noted, that didn’t get vacuumed very often.
Less than a minute later he was out of the house and driving away, his heart hammering inside his chest, the sound inside his head like that of a marching band drum pounding away behind his ears.
