Hail Storme

by W L Ripley

  Could I have her and allow her to stay there? Better, could she allow me to live in the mountains? I wanted her near. So why was I here, sitting in a musty, broken-down house, waiting for somebody to either enlighten me or blow large holes in my body? She wanted me there, and I wanted to be there; with all my heart I wanted that. But here I stayed. We are complex creatures. Sometimes we don’t know what motivates us, pulls us to do the things we do. The things we are driven to do. Things we can’t stop. I should be there in Colorado with Sandy. Right now.

  Here I sat, though.

  I paced the floor. Didn’t remember getting up. Mr. Alert. They wouldn’t need guns, they could bulldoze the place. Not good. I came to a loose board lying in a pile of dirt and rubbish. I kicked at it and it clattered over to reveal a swarming, squirming mass of those tiny bugs that look like they have armor on. Roly-poly little bugs scurrying around in the dirt.

  I heard a door creak and shut at the rear of the house. A shiver ran along my neck. I moved to a spot at the left side of the door they would have to enter. If they had a gun and if they were right-handed, they would have to come all the way into the room to get a shot at me. If. If. If…

  Shoes scuffed the ancient boards, proceeding at a clip that couldn’t be described as stealthy. I pushed myself against the wall and raised the Browning. Slipped off the safety…

  I heard “Storme?” in a familiar, female voice. “You in here?” Jill Maxwell stepped into the room. “Where are—” She sucked in her breath and squealed when she saw me. Saw the gun. “Jesus. Don’t scare me like that.”

  I put the gun down, though shooting her wasn’t such a bad idea. “What are you doing here?” I said. “I thought you were on vacation. Or worse.”

  “Almost was. Worse, that is.” She rubbed her hands together. “After you and your friend came by, I got a call telling me to back off printing anything you told me or I’d find out what happened to little girls who didn’t do what they were told. You imagine that? ‘Little girls who don’t do what they’re told.’ Just like that.”

  “That’s the way it’d be, too. Just like that. Good thing you killed the story and took off.” I put the gun away.

  “I didn’t kill it. I turned it in. Marvin, the editor, wouldn’t print it. Said it was supposition and unsubstantiated. But he knows a good story. I watched him read it. He read it all. If it was like he said, he wouldn’t have bothered.”

  “You think they got to him?”

  “Marvin’s pretty tough. Korean vet. Even at a small-town paper there are people, influential people, who try to pressure him, but he hangs tough. Has a sincere belief in the First Amendment. Yeah, I think somebody got to him. But he wouldn’t be scared for himself. They probably threatened to get me.”

  There was a lot of pressure coming from all directions. Pressure to wrap up the murder case with a convenient suspect. Pressure for the highway patrol to leave town. Pressure for me and Chick to disappear.

  “How’d you know to come here?” I asked.

  “After the nasty call I told Marvin I was going on vacation, then I figured I’d be able to check on things without being bothered. Maybe they’d think I was scared. I listened to the tape over and over, trying to see if I could recognize the voice. No luck. He was disguising it. Then I got a break when he called again.”

  “Who is it?”

  “He’ll be here any minute. I’ll let him tell you himself.”

  Her answer didn’t please me. “Listen, I’ve been shot at, beaten up, and threatened by everyone in the Paradise County phone book. Now I’m sitting in a smelly house, ten blocks from anywhere, waiting for a guy I don’t know anything about. I want to know who it is, and I want to know now. So cut the Alfred Hitchcock junk.”

  “Come on,” she said. “Don’t you like some mystery in your life?”

  “Not even a little.”

  “He’s scared.”

  “He’s scared? And you think I’m not, right? You’re going to tell me. Who is it?”

  “What’re you going to do?” she said, with a bad-little-girl smile. “Beat me up?”

  “You’ve had worse ideas.”

  “Or maybe you could force yourself upon me,” she said. “I might not be able to stop you. May not even want to.” Just what I needed, a reporter with an overactive libido.

  “Get serious,” I said.

  “I am.”

  I waited.

  “Party pooper,” she said. She stuck out her lower lip in a mock pout. She was pretty, but annoying. “You sure you were a football player? Thought all you guys were the rutting stag type.”

  “Another myth disintegrates. We rutting stag types must occasionally rest from our life of ceaseless debauchery, or we get in a rut. Who’s meeting us, Jill?”

  Before she could answer, the rear door shut and I heard footsteps scuffle through the cluttered rooms. We waited. A man walked into the room with a gun in his hand. He pointed it at me.

  I recognized the face behind the gun.

  TWENTY

  The face belonged to Deputy Simmons. The deputy who’d helped Baxter arrest Chick. The deputy who didn’t look happy to go along with Baxter’s resisting-arrest story. Still, he had a gun pointed at my heart, and his hand was unwavering.

  “ ‘He’s scared,’ ” I said, mimicking Jill. Then, to Simmons I said, “Look. No need for the gun. We’re on the same side.” At least I hoped we were.

  “Put it away, Cal,” Jill said.

  “Not yet,” said Simmons. He was dressed in civvies. Light blue chamois shirt and jeans. Levi’s jacket with shearling lining and a blue cap with scrambled eggs, the military type, on the bill. The cap said Law Enforcement Academy on the crown.

  “Listen,” I said. “I’m tired of people threatening me. You’re not even the first one today. So put the gun away and let’s talk. You’re the one asked me here.” He kept the gun pointed at me. Pessimist. “Besides, if you don’t put it down you may get hurt, because right now there’s a gun pointed at you.”

  I didn’t see Chick. Hadn’t heard him come in. But I was willing to bet my Creedence Clearwater Revival collection he was zoning in on Simmons right now.

  Simmons chuckled. Scoffed, actually. Everybody’s a cynic anymore. “Oldest trick in the book,” he said.

  “But still effective,” said Chick, as he stepped into the room with his Colt pointed at the deputy’s head. “Traditions are always best. Like arriving in the nick of time.”

  “A couple of seconds after the nick of time,” I said.

  “Bitch, bitch, bitch,” said Chick. Then, to Simmons, he said, “How about you coming down with a mild attack of good sense and putting the piece away. I hardly ever miss at this range, and I haven’t killed anything today and it’s already past noon.”

  Simmons let the gun relax to his side. “You guys DEA? Or FBI?”

  “I’m a Methodist,” Chick said. “And Wyatt here’s a Baptist and a Bob Dylan fan, and that’s about it as far as affiliation goes.”

  Simmons looked crestfallen. “Then everything I’ve done has been a waste of time.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I started to sit on the wooden chair, remembered my manners, and offered it to Jill. She declined with a shake of her head. I sat, and then she sat on my lap. I frowned at her, but she smiled in triumph.

  “I’m the guy took the shots at you. That day in the field where the marijuana used to be. I had to do something after nothing came of you finding it. I thought you were working under cover.”

  “Oooh, undercover work,” cooed Jill. I ignored her.

  “Well,” I said. “You missed. How would shooting us solve anything?”

  “I wasn’t shooting at you. Just shooting. If I’d wanted to hit you, you wouldn’t be here. I was just trying to call attention to the field. Keep the investigation alive. They’re going to shuffle it under the rug. Killian didn’t kill the sheriff. He wasn’t man enough. And I don’t think Dexter shot Killian. I think someone spooked Dexter so he’
d run. Either that, or Dexter’s dead, too.”

  “So, if you don’t think Killian did it and you knew about the grass, why not investigate it yourself? Why make anonymous calls and meet me in this place?”

  He put his hands on his hips, then looked at the ceiling as if deciding something. It was embarrassing to talk to him with the girl on my lap, but I was afraid she’d make a big thing if I tried to stand up. Besides, it wasn’t exactly unpleasant. Maybe I needed to reconsider her offer.

  Simmons took a deep breath. “About three months ago,” he began, “Christa, that’s my sister, got into trouble over in Ford County. Got arrested with some friends on a possession charge. Marijuana and booze. She’s underage. Our parents are dead, so I’m her only family.” He chewed on his lower lip and shook his head. “A teenaged girl raised by an older brother who works sixty hours a week. Shit, law enforcement’s easier. She thinks I’m too strict because I make her have a curfew and won’t let her go out with certain guys. Guys that just want to get into her pants.” His face reddened. “Sorry, Jill,” he said.

  “It’s okay, Cal,” she said. She looped her arms around my neck as if we were going steady, enjoying herself. She was funny, if nothing else. Another time, different circumstances. Too late for that now. I had enough problems.

  Simmons said, “Anyway, they picked her up and took her to the courthouse. She didn’t want to call me. She’s a little spoiled. She was always Dad’s little girl. He sure loved her, but he’s gone now and it’s my job to watch after her.” I watched him struggle with his narrative. He was a cop, a young cop, but he was also an orphan with a teenaged sister to watch after and it weighed heavy on him. But he looked to be the type raised to accept trial. Or maybe he was beginning to accept his manhood and what went with it. I liked Deputy Simmons. “I guess she didn’t want to call me because she was scared I’d chew her out.”

  “It’s called respect,” Jill said.

  His eyes glistened. “Thanks,” he said. “So, instead of calling me she called Alan Winston, and he got her off. Pulled some strings. No bail, no record of the arrest. He covered it pretty good.”

  “You could’ve gotten the same things done yourself. Your badge would’ve helped.”

  “Maybe. I think I could’ve. Even told her that. They’re pretty good guys over there.” I remembered what I’d heard about Ford County and the rumored “arrangement” Ford County had with Willie Boy Roberts and his truck stop. I wondered if his sister was set up. Roberts could pull it off. But why? We needed to visit the Truck Hangar in the near future. Like maybe today. Simmons continued:

  “Now Winston has me and Christa over a barrel. Wouldn’t take money to represent her. Instead, he wanted a couple of”—he made a face as if he had something distasteful in his mouth —“ ‘favors,’ he called them”

  “Blackmail.”

  “Yeah. Like that. Wanted information about what Kennedy was doing. Little things, he said. Inside stuff. Didn’t want to get off any real criminals, he said, just some of the ‘good’ people of Paradise.”

  “Good people meaning the ones he selected.”

  “Yeah, but I told him to go piss up a rope. Then he said, be a shame if it got out the deputy sheriff’s little sister had been arrested. Might mess her up as far as scholarship money went. I can’t afford to send her, and Dad would like it if she got a college degree, so I had to give in.”

  “He ever mention Willie Boy Roberts?”

  “Not directly. But I’ll let you guys in on something. There ain’t nothing going down in this county that Roberts hasn’t got a part of. He’s a piece of shit in a five-hundred-dollar suit.”

  “So did you give Winston what he wanted?”

  “Little things. Things that didn’t amount to much. Couple inside tips on some liquor licenses, things like that. I didn’t give him anything big, but I had to play it up so he’d lay off Christa. Then he started pumping me about the sheriff. Wanted to know if he ever cut corners on things. Budget. Expenses. Wanted to know what investigations he was interested in.”

  “Did he cut corners?”

  “No way. Kennedy was the last of the straight shooters. A real man. Never did anything wrong his whole life. Came by the house himself after Dad and Mom were killed in the auto accident. Could tell it was hard on him. He could have sent a deputy, but he did it himself.” His voice became a little hoarse. “That’s why I don’t want the investigation to end. I want the bastard that killed him to pay up.”

  “Why didn’t you go to Kennedy when Winston started leaning on you?”

  He looked uncomfortable, rubbed his hands on his jeans. He was a good-looking kid. Square jaw, slim waist, big shoulders. He looked like a cop. But he also looked like the young man that he was. “I wanted to. I should have. But…shit…there’s something else. Something personal.” I waited. He looked around as if he wanted to avoid it, but he wasn’t the type and I couldn’t afford him that luxury anyway. Too much had happened.

  “Sheriff’s got a daughter. Elaine. Beautiful girl.” I remembered the photograph in Kennedy’s office. The cheerleader with the nice teeth. Also the daughter Winston had tried to put the move on. “Goes to the university. We used to go together.” He wouldn’t look at Jill when he said the next thing. “She got pregnant. I wanted to marry her. I loved her, but she said she wasn’t ready. She got an abortion. I tried to talk her out of it, but what can you do? Her dad didn’t know about it, and I couldn’t tell him because she said it would kill him if he found out. I didn’t want to tell him, anyway. Not after all he’d done for me. But somehow Baxter found out, and he and Winston have become big buddies since Les filed for sheriff.” There was an interesting statement. Now I had a link between Baxter and Winston, the defense attorney who hated Kennedy.

  “Baxter used it against me. Said I’d better go along with Winston or the sheriff would find out about our ‘little bundle of joy’ that never was.” Simmons was breathing hard now as he rid himself of the weight of guilty secrets too heavy for any man to bear, especially one as young as he was. The room was quiet.

  “That Baxter,” Chick said, breaking the silence. “He’s a peach, ain’t he?”

  “I was in a bad spot,” said Simmons. “So I played along.”

  “Anybody would’ve done the same.”

  “No way I could win. So I tried to get some leverage. Get Baxter and Winston, or at least one of them, off my back. Did some checking around. Found out who sold the dope to Christa and looked him up. A puke named Frankie Crisp. Sells a lot of grief to the teenagers around here. I punched him in the mouth to introduce myself. By then, I wanted to punch somebody and I couldn’t punch myself.

  “I asked Crisp where he got his stuff. He wouldn’t tell me, so I hit him again. Hurt my hand. He was scared of them, he said. Said if he narked they’d kill him. I kicked him then. Not proud of it.” He paused to look at us. “Not sorry, either. I felt like killing him for selling dope to my sister.” His jaw was set and his eyes narrowed as if defying us to disagree. We didn’t. Winston and Baxter made a mistake with Simmons. He wasn’t a good patsy. Too much backbone. “Finally, he said he didn’t know my sister was going to be one of the people he sold the grass to that night and that he’d never do it again. But he did say he’d been pointed in her direction by some big people. But that’s all he was going to tell me even if I beat the hide off him.”

  “You were set up,” I said. “They used your sister. Winston probably knew about it all the way. Baxter, too.”

  He nodded and chewed his lip. “Way I got it figured, too. Probably tipped off Ford County, too. But knowing it doesn’t do a thing for me.”

  “Whose marijuana is it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Just know Killian and some other guys tended it. See, I’d heard that Roberts was out of the pot business. That, and I think there’s more to it.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Chick.

  “Same reason I know Killian didn’t do the sheriff. Guy was a cinder. H
is brain was fried. He couldn’t run a big operation. The money end of it would be too much for him. He was a gofer and a user, not a player.”

  I looked at Chick, then at Simmons. “Where’s Crisp now?”

  “You can usually find him hanging out at Fast Eddie’s.”

  “That old drive-in on the main drag?” I’d seen it.

  “That’s it. Kids drive around there. Hang out. That’s where he makes most of his sales. We’ve arrested him before, but Winston gets him off.” It was interesting who was on Winston’s protected list.

  “Maybe we can help you,” I said.

  “How?” he asked. I pushed Jill off my lap and stood. She wiggled a little as she slid off. Chick had a big smile on his face.

  “I want to help, too,” she said.

  “You can,” I said. “By getting out of town until this thing is over. There’s too much going on, and you’ll be in the way.”

  “You sweet-talker, you,” Chick said.

  “I’m going to get this story,” she said, jutting her nice chin out and up. “You don’t tell me what to do.”

  “This time I do. When it’s over I’ll give you the whole thing. Things the police won’t. But you have to play it like I say or you get squat. All you’ll get is the press release like the other hacks. That is, you’ll get what they let you know and leave out the meat. You’re a better reporter than that or I’ve misjudged you. Nothing to me, though. Either way. You call it.”

  She crossed her arms and pursed her lips tightly. She looked as if she was struggling not to hit me. She didn’t respond well to being told what to do, regardless of its practicality. Simmons shuffled uncomfortably. Chick kept smiling, enjoying the scene, but I’d already decided what I was going to do. “Okay,” she said, finally. “But you stiff me and I’ll splash your name all over the paper.”

  I nodded. I turned to Simmons. “You just need to keep on like nothing happened. When we find something out, we’ll get in touch. But both of you stay clear for a couple of days.”

  “Why a couple of days?” she asked.