by Allen Kent
I had been kicked back behind the desk, talking to Grace about where we might launch a search for Verl Greaves. Joseph had decided she would leave Galen Suskey to me and had driven back to Springfield to catch up on her own office work. Grace was beside the window in a wooden armchair, eliminating the choice that might have appealed most to the man. We both stood when he came in. I pulled one of two straight-backed wooden chairs over in front of the desk and he hoisted himself reluctantly up onto it, feet dangling a few inches from the floor.
I nodded toward Grace. “You met Officer Torres when you came in this morning. I’m Sheriff Tate.”
He ignored Grace. “Yeah. I remember you Tates. Lived up on the ridge. You must be one of Ed’s grandsons. Jack’s kid or Marvin’s?”
“Marvin’s.”
Suskey nodded his shaggy head. “I heard he got killed years back cutting timber.”
“Yes, he did. And I’m very sorry about the loss of your sister. I assume that’s what you wanted to meet with me about.”
His jaw bounced in a continuous chew of loose-fitting denture. “Yeah. What happened to her?” he asked, the teeth clicking loudly on the “to.”
“As I’m sure you’ve been told, she was murdered. It appears someone smothered her.”
The man’s sour expression didn’t change. “Robbed her place?”
I leaned back in my chair. “You must have heard about this, to be back in town asking. Who contacted you about it?” As far as I knew, no one had spoken publicly about Nettie’s house having been burglarized.
“I still know people around. They let me know what’s going on.”
“Told you she’d been killed and that it might have been a burglary?”
He cocked his head, his jaw tightening around the dentures. “Might ‘a told me that. I was just wondering what you think happened.”
“That’s all still under investigation. If someone did try to rob the place, what would they have been after? Nettie didn’t seem to have much of anything.”
“Beats the hell out of me. I haven’t seen her in over fifty years. But it ain’t right. Someone killing her like that.”
“And where have you been, this past fifty years, Mr. Suskey?”
He nodded toward the door. “Been livin’ over in Oklahoma. Worked the oil fields until I was too old and stoved up to handle the pipe. Since then, just been hangin’ on to life.”
“Where would that be in Oklahoma? You have an address?” Grace pulled a pad from a hip pocket, causing Suskey to swivel toward her on the chair.
“What do you need an address for? I’m the one here asking about Nettie.”
“We’re following up on everyone who might have had any connection with her,” I said.
The little man swung back toward me. “I just told you, I ain’t seen Nettie since I left this hellhole of a town fifty years ago.”
“Then giving us an address shouldn’t be a problem,” Grace said from the window.
Suskey shrugged. “I was workin’ in Bartlesville. Left there when I stopped and have a place over in Nowata.”
“Address?” Grace repeated. He gave her what sounded like an apartment number on West Wettack Avenue.
“So, you’ve come back to make arrangements for Nettie?”
His face crumpled into a puzzled frown. “I thought she’d be buried or cremated or something by now.”
I glanced over at Grace who arched a surprised brow.
“There had to be some forensic work because of the murder. She’s still up in Springfield at the morgue.”
Galen Suskey squirmed uncomfortably on the unforgiving chair. “I imagine she’ll have some friends and church people who will take care of putting her away,” he muttered. “We didn’t even know each other.”
Grace had been sitting back, pad and pen on her lap, and leaned forward with elbows on her knees. “Then, what are you here for, Mr. Suskey?” she asked acidly.
Without feet on the floor to brace him, the squat little body had to turn entirely at the waist to face her, a challenging feat for such a thick torso. He groaned a little as he turned, throwing his hips enough to be able to look at the deputy.
“I’m here for the farm,” he said bluntly. “Nobody really never gave it to her. She just kept living there when Ma and Pa died. I figure it’s as much mine as hers.”
Grace didn’t seem to want to let go of this one, now she had it coming her way. “That would all have to be decided by probate,” she said coolly. “We haven’t come across any documents that show your parents left the farm to Nettie, but that will all have to be checked out. The judge will assign someone to determine what happens to the estate.”
“What the hell is probate?” Suskey snarled. “That’s my farm, and ain’t nobody going to tell me it ain’t.”
Grace’s dark eyes cooled to icy coals. “I’m telling you it ain’t. At least, not yet. And you need to stay away from the place until Nettie’s will gets through probate, which means the court decides what happens to her property.”
The little man turned back toward me. “Who’s the sheriff around here anyway? You, or this pollo?”
I bolted up out of the chair and leaned toward him over the desk. “Alright, Mr. Suskey. We won’t have any of that kind of talk in this office. One more comment like that and you’re out of here. And Officer Torres is exactly right. You have no claim on that property until the judge says you do.”
“Ain’t just her property,” the gnome spit back. “That’s family property. My grandpappy settled there, and it’s been in the family ever since. And what’s this about a will? She forget she had a brother?”
“Seems most everyone forgot she had a brother,” I offered, lowering myself slowly back into the chair. “And Grace is also right that this is a discussion between you and the court. You might be smart to go visit with Able Pendergraft. Get some legal help.”
“Shit. I can’t afford no lawyer. And Able Pendergraft? Whose kid is he? We got a Tate for Sheriff, and some Pendergraft kid’s the lawyer?”
“Able’s not exactly a kid,” Grace snorted. “Must be in his upper sixties.”
Galen Suskey kept his eyes on me. He’d had enough turning in the chair. “I ain’t getting no lawyer. But I need to get claim to my farm before they flood the damn thing.”
It was my turn to arch a brow. “So you’re aware the holler’s going to be covered by the new reservoir. When did you learn this?”
Suskey slouched forward, glaring across the desk. “Like I said, I know people here. They tell me things.”
“Hmm,” I muttered. “How long have you known about the water project?”
“You mean the flooding? From about the time they said they was going to do it.”
“But you didn’t decide to come check on the place until you learned that Nettie was dead.”
“No reason to while she was living.”
“But I understood you to say that you believed the property to be as much yours as hers. Weren’t you concerned about what might happen to it?”
“Hell, yes! But I . . . I. . . ” He looked at his knees, stammering into the floor. “I figured if Nettie got paid for it, half of that would be mine too. Easier to split the money than the farm. I’d come after it then.”
I completed the thought for him. “When Nettie died, you mean?”
“No,” he barked. “I’d come claim my half when I knew she’d been paid off.”
“So you were going to wait until you heard from this friend that the property had sold. Is that the way it was going to work?”
He kept his eyes lowered. “Yup. That’s what I was plannin’.”
“And what are you thinking to do now?” Grace asked.
He shrugged. “Who do I see about getting this probate?”
I pushed out of the chair, inviting Grace to stand with me. “That would be Judge Werner. You’ll find his office over in the courthouse.”
Suskey tilted forward off of the chair. “Ain’t nobody going to steal m
y property from me,” he muttered, and stalked out of the office.
Grace walked over to join me as I circled the desk, both of us arriving too late to get the door for our visitor. We stood in silence until we heard the outer door bang shut.
“What a poor excuse for a human being,” she murmured. “The man isn’t even concerned about burying his own sister.”
I grunted in agreement. “The thing that surprised me was that he wasn’t at all concerned about what thieves might have been after. I’d think he’d be wondering what Nettie had that anyone would come kill her for.”
“I’ve wondered that myself,” Grace said. “The old lady didn’t seem to have two dimes to rub together. She had all that property. But there was no reason to tear up her house for that.”
For the first time since the whole murder thing began, I realized that the person who had been my major supporter and partner up to Joseph’s arrival was being shut out of some of the most important information related to this case. Was it really because I thought we needed to keep the gold out of the equation until Joseph and I knew more? And that I didn’t trust Grace to be discreet? No. If I was honest, I just liked having a little secret that I shared with Joseph. Pretty junior high, now that I thought about it. Pretty unfair to my Number Two, and definitely second-class law enforcement.
“Come with me,” I said, taking her by the elbow. “There’s something you need to know about that I should have shown you this morning.” I walked her back through the office toward the old vault. “And when I’ve shown you this, I need to have you find out everything you can about where Galen Suskey’s been the last few weeks and who’s been feeding him information.”
18
Joseph came to the office the next morning just after 9:00, refused one of the breakfast burritos Marti had ordered in from LeeAnn’s Café and Bakery on the south side of the square, and sat nervously while I passed out the morning’s assignments. Grace was still looking for Galen Suskey’s connection in Crayton. An abandoned pickup had been left half-submerged in a pond up off Highway MM and needed Deputy Ritter’s attention. Rocky D’Amico was going to make his rounds of shops in town, doing a little PR work and seeing if there was any useful speculation about who might have killed Nettie. Joseph and I went looking for Verl Greaves.
This time we didn’t stop on the Greaves’ drive to shout down the hill, just barreled full-tilt up to the front of their metal building, threw our doors open, and crouched behind them, weapons drawn. The pit bulls launched themselves against the wire of their pen, black lips curled and foaming.
“Verl, you in there?” I shouted over the snarling dogs. No answer. “Verl, we’re coming in. If you’re armed, lay down your weapon ‘cause I’m not going to warn you again. If your hands aren’t in plain sight when we come in, we’ll shoot.” Not a sound.
Joseph sprinted from behind her door to a stack of fifty-gallon drums that stood in knee-high weeds beside the engine hoist. With her in place, I zig-zagged to the building’s front corner, flattened against the side, and made my way to the edge of the smaller door. Joseph followed, pressing against the metal on the other side of the frame. A hand-painted sign beside the door warned in black, block letters, “KEEP OUT. TRESPASERS WILL BE SHOT.” I reached across and tried the handle. It moved freely.
“Verl, we’re coming in!” I gave him a silent three-count to reply, threw the door open, and flipped back out of the way. Joseph looked across at me, gestured that she would go in low, and mouthed “On three.” On the third bob of her head, we swung into the room, Joseph in a low squat, me sliding across the doorway with weapon extended.
The interior was one large room, divided only by piles of junk and garbage. One front corner, the floor strewn with discarded food packaging and empty cans, served as a kitchen. A propane stove was vented through the metal sidewall and a single length of insulated PVC pipe brought cold water in from an outside well. The plastic sink below it overflowed with crusted dishes. The whole interior smelled of spoiled food.
The front space opposite the kitchen was a jumble of sofas and chairs, some pushed into the background and stacked on top of each other as they split a seam or cracked across a vinyl cushion. The more serviceable seats formed a crude circle, grouped around a dozen coffee and end tables of every shape and height, each heaped with worn tools, machine parts, grease-covered clothing, and more torn food wrappers. A channel no wider than the men’s shoulders disappeared into the back between the nearest sofa and the mounds of kitchen rubble, cast in dim light by the open door.
“Verl?” I shouted into the dark interior, the sound instantly sucked up by the hoarder’s squalor. I started toward the gap, stopped short by a shout from Joseph.
“Wait.” She stepped forward, drawing an LED penlight from a pocket. She flashed it at the floor a yard into the passage. A fine strand of wire crossed the gap six inches above the bare concrete slab. I eased carefully over it, then knelt and tracked it beneath a sofa, up the back of a pick handle, and into a stack of slatted crates. Joseph handed her light over the wire and I peered between slats into the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun.
“We’re out of here,” I whispered. “There may be a bunch of these hidden around. We need a team that can take this place apart from front to back.” I stepped back over the wire and followed Joseph out into the sunlight. She nodded back at the misspelled sign beside the entrance and frowned cynically. “Can’t say we weren’t warned.”
“Do you think that covers them? If one of us got blown away?” I was feeling like a novice again.
Joseph shook her head. “Booby traps are illegal, even in your own house. We have a warrant. So the discovery is legal. We now have good grounds for arresting and holding Verl.”
“Do you think he was back in that heap somewhere?”
“No truck. And the dog’s bowls are empty. We probably should call Animal Rescue and get them picked up.”
The cell buzzed in my pocket. It was Grace. I listened, trying to shut out the earlier conversation with Joseph, thanked her, and hit the end button.
“Galen Suskey moved out of his rental in Nowata three weeks ago,” I repeated to Joseph. “The landlady didn’t have any idea where he went.”
“So, three missing weeks until he shows up here.”
“Grace is checking on that.”
“And on you,” she grinned. “That bit of news could have waited until she saw you later today.”
“Down here, we keep each other informed.”
Joseph raised a skeptical brow and slipped into the passenger side of the cruiser. “So—what’s next?”
“Let’s call Animal Rescue and get some of your state people down here to check this place out for more boobytraps—and put out an APB for Verl.”
“If the traps didn’t injure anyone, I’m not certain we have grounds for charges.”
“Maybe the shot that was taken at us. But we can at least try to find out where he went when they released him from jail. And I want to walk a stretch of the ridge road where the shot came from. Darnell said he didn’t hear the shot or anyone go by, but he was working on painting you into that hospital scene. He wouldn’t have noticed a dozer crashing through his studio. If we’re lucky, we’ll find a shell casing for a Marlin 336.”
I’d developed a theory about the shooting within minutes of Grace telling me Verl Greaves had been released. The way I saw it, he had passed the lane down to Nettie’s on his way back to his rathole, seen the squad car parked in front, then continued to look down into the holler as he’d driven along the ridgeline. Somewhere in a break in the trees, he’d seen the two of us edging our way along the rock shelf, stopped his pickup, and taken the shot at Joseph.
“He picked you,” I guessed as we drove slowly along the same stretch of road, looking for breaks in the trees, “because you were the one who shot LJ. If we hadn’t fallen back into the creek, I think he would have tried for both of us.”
We stopped at one of only two places we’d found wh
ere there was a good sightline to the bend in the stream.
“It would have taken a pretty good shot from here,” Joseph muttered as we climbed from the cruiser and peered down over the edge of the pavement.
“His rifle is scoped,” I reminded her, “and he may have just propped it in the open window of the pickup where he could keep it nice and steady.”
“In which case, a shell casing may have ejected into the truck.”
“May have. Depends on how he braced the thing in the window. Then again, he might have climbed out. He’d have been looking for us through the passenger window.”
We split up and walked the pavement in both directions looking for a spent cartridge, then eased down into the grassy verge, repeating the sweep until low enough we could no longer see the creek below.
“Nothing on my side,” Joseph called as she scrambled back up to the blacktop.
I raised my hands to show I’d had as little success. “Let’s walk back down to that other break and see if we have better luck.”
Fifty yards farther along the ridge, a narrower gap between oaks showed little more than the ten-foot stretch of ledge that had held the hidden coins. It was possible, I figured, that Verl had seen us through the first gap, slowed until he caught a glimpse through the second opening, and stopped to fire the shot from there. The tight break provided only one shooting position where thick lespedeza, our state highway department’s contribution to invasive flora, clogged the shoulder. Joseph dove in, parting the knee-high brush a square foot at a time. I moved five steps to her left and followed suit. She was two minutes into her search when she struck pay dirt.
“Got it,” she called, parting the brush with both hands. She broke a twig from a dry patch of the shrub, reached into the clump, and fished out a brass casing with the stick.
“Thirty-thirty?”
She turned it to look at the head stamp. “Yup. Winchester. Careless of him to leave it.”
