No Second Wind (The Sheriff Chick Charleston Mysteries Book 3) Page 18

  “You’re a damn good deputy.”

  “Sure. Sportin’ my badge around. Talkin’ big. Actin’ big. Throwin’ my weight. Showin’ up with a shotgun all the same like Bat Masterson.”

  “By showing up with it you gave Charleston the time he needed to calm down that mob.”

  “He would have made out without me. Hell, I know that. Me, the small-size showboat.”

  “Your reasons aren’t good enough. Not for me. What, for a fact, goes with you, Ike?”

  “Nothin’ except show off.”

  “You know I’ll help if I can.”

  “Resignations don’t need any help. That’s what I’m doing, right now.”

  “For God’s sake why, Ike? Tell me the truth.”

  Now his eyes lifted to mine. “Just say in my time I’ve hurt enough people. This is a hurting job, Jase, if you do it right.”

  “It hurts more if you don’t do it or do it wrong.”

  “Think so?” His words were more denial than question. His eyes were sad.

  “I do think so. Let the chips fall. That sounds harsh, but it has to be that way in law enforcement.”

  He tossed the empty coffee cup in the wastebasket almost as if he were throwing something precious away. His eyes lifted again, still sad, and he was slow in responding. “Maybe so. Maybe so. And bein’ so hell-bent on the law, you don’t hesitate about hurt. Let the chips fall, and even if they injure somebody that’s the way it is. I’m not built like that, Jase.” He wasn’t arguing. He was asking, even pleading.

  “I’m not unfeeling, Ike, but when you’re a deputy—and you’re a good one—you have to do a deputy’s job.”

  He sounded a long sigh. The strength seemed to have seeped out of him, and the spirit. I had leaned on him, and damn me for doing it. “Don’t rag me, Jase,” he said. “Here it is, and it’s all of it. Who misters everybody? Who misters you? Who misters me?”

  When at last I understood, I said, “Good God! the telephone caller. The tip about Cleaver’s death. Not him, Ike! Not him!”

  Doolittle was on his way to the door. “Concealing evidence. Add that to my list. I’m quitting.”

  I followed him out. He was asking Blanche Burton if she would type out what he said. I brushed on by, walked down the courthouse hall to the side door and let myself out, almost upsetting Charleston who was on the way in. He asked, “What’s the rush, Jase?”

  I pushed past him, saying, “Got to look down a gopher hole.” Then I called over my shoulder, “Don’t let Doolittle resign.”

  I knew his questioning eyes were on me as I walked to an officer car. A fine, respectful deputy I was, being brusque to my superior, to a man who had shown me nothing but kindness. Yeah, ever so grateful.

  The road to the Dutton place was long and wearisome. I closed my mind to all but the trip, though Anita kept slipping in. At least I would see her again.

  Omar Test was in a corral next to the barn, some distance away from the house. I pulled up there. In the corral with Omar was a cow and a calf that stood unsteady on legs just discovered and nuzzled at the cow’s flank. I stepped down from the car. The warm wind from the west had died, succeeded by a chill northern breeze. Omar had seen me. He said, grinning, “Early calf, Mr. Beard, but ain’t he a dandy?”

  “Can you leave him and come to the car, out of the wind?”

  “Sure thing.” He came through a gate and took a seat beside me.

  “Chuck Cleaver’s death,” I said. “Let’s talk about it.”

  “That was a shame. He wasn’t a bad man far as I know.”

  “Someone didn’t agree.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That’s just what I figger. Couldn’t be anything else, could it?”

  “Keep talking.”

  “What’s there to say, Mr. Beard?”

  “All that you know.”

  Test edged away from me. “No, sir, Mr. Beard. I couldn’t do that.”

  “We have evidence that points to you.”

  “Points how?”

  “As the one who killed Cleaver.”

  A look of slow comprehension came into his face. He might not have heard me say he was entitled to an attorney. His voice came out muted. “Me? I never shot a man in my whole life, just like I never took a drink. You know that, Mr. Beard.”

  “I’m sure you never took a drink. That’s all.”

  He put his big hands to his face. “I don’t want to talk no more. Please, Mr. Beard.”

  “It’s not enough to say you didn’t shoot Cleaver.”

  “But I never. I tell you I never.” One hand made a little gesture, indicating the end of the world.

  I asked, “Who did then?”

  “They been so good to me. All along they been so good.” The big cipher of a man wiped at his eyes, missing a tear.

  Words didn’t come to me, not at once. They pushed up, half-formed, to my mouth and stayed there. Mine was a hurting job and the hell with it, but there was the law. The truth had to come out. Let the hurtful chips fall.

  Omar said, “It ain’t fair, Mr. Beard. It ain’t right.”

  “Neither is killing a man.”

  “He didn’t know what he was doing. He ain’t to blame being what he is in the head. Can’t you forget it?”

  “Go on, Omar.”

  “Miss Anita, she takes peeks into his room, see if he’s all right. He wasn’t in his bed, so she come to me.”

  “I see,” I said, not wanting to.

  “He’s awful spry for an old man, but it was too much for him. I found him. He was halfway to comin’ back. Then he tuckered out and just lay down in the cold. I packed him home. He took sick then.”

  “Then you went back?”

  “Yes, sir. When I found him, I could make out a truck farther on. So I tromped out there, and you know what I found.”

  “Did he have a rifle with him?”

  “Yes, sir, he did.”

  “I thought that rifle was hidden.”

  “Way he pokes around, nothin’ stays hid very long.”

  “Why would he want to shoot Cleaver?”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. Mr. Beard. He didn’t want to. He mistook him for a wolf. He couldn’t see good at all.”

  I knew he couldn’t.

  I asked, “Did he have a little box with him, like you get music from?”

  “A tape, they call it. He had it tight in his hand.”

  “Why would he take that?”

  Omar had quit crying now that the worst was said, but his expression was mournful. “Hard tellin’, Mr. Beard. I savvy old folks pretty good. They got notions like kids, not so smart, though. He would take and hide things and forget where they were, like my jackknife once and Miss Anita’s necklace. And he liked noise. Got a cassette of his own, and he turned it up till the shingles shook until she made him lower it.”

  “She has the tape?”

  “She cached it away somewhere.”

  I drew a deep breath and said, “Thanks, Omar. You’ve been a big help.” He didn’t believe me. Neither did I.

  “I swore to keep mum,” he said mournfully. “I couldn’t put no blame on her if she gave me my time.”

  “She won’t fire you. Now stick around, Omar. We’ll want your statement. I’ll drive you to town and bring you back. I must talk to Miss Anita.”

  We both got out of the car. Omar returned to the corral. My legs were old. The calf acted frisky. I pointed myself in the direction of the house and made my legs take me.

  Anita answered the door, saying, “Yes?” and no more. Her face held not even a trace of a remembered smile.

  I took off my hat and said, “Anita, I’m sorry. I’ve been talking to Omar.”

  “You mean you made him talk.”

  “I suppose you could say that. I had to, Anita.” I couldn’t bring assurance into my voice.

  “I know,” she answered. “You kill weeds.” Her small jaw was square. I could see musc
les rippling at the hinge. She spoke with a tight mouth.

  “It’s my job, Anita. Please understand. And I’m just as sorry as can be.”

  “Sure. Your job. And you’ll take a sick old man in and jail him and try him and put him behind bars, when he doesn’t know what it’s all about. You know what you can do with your job, Mr. Beard.”

  “Now, no such thing,” I said, my voice rising in protest. “It won’t be like that. I’m not taking him in. If he has to go to town, it will be by ambulance when he is well again. And he won’t be tried. He’ll be put in good custodial care.”

  “Now shall we all recite the Lord’s Prayer?”

  I said, “It would make things easier for you.” It was a stupid remark.

  If ever I saw contempt on a face, it came on hers. “Thanks for relieving me of a great inconvenience.”

  In the jumble of my thoughts it occurred to me to ask how Grandfather was.

  “Just fine and dandy,” she replied. “He can’t wait for that good custodial care.”

  I said, “Anita, Anita,” and my voice trailed off. All I could say then was, “Do you have the tape?”

  She left without speaking, left me at the door without inviting me in. She returned and handed me the tape and said, “Good-bye, Mr. Beard,” and closed the door.

  I rounded up Omar and headed for town.

  23

  “When the spring quarter starts, I’m going back to school,” I told Charleston.

  We were alone in the office. It was late afternoon, but the days had lengthened, and a long sunbeam shone through one window and found some dust particles. It was misleading, for a north wind was blowing outside.

  “As long as I’m in office, you can always have a job here, now, later, whenever,” Charleston answered.

  I mumbled my thanks. We both went silent, each with his own thoughts. Charleston fingered the tape I had brought in, fingered it idly, not looking at it. I knew its label.

  Voices of the Wild

  WOLVES

  Omar Test had made his statement the day before. It jibed with what he had told me. A dismal business, listening to him again, but I had to be there to prompt him. Afterwards Tad Frazier had driven him back to the Dutton ranch, kindness of Charleston, who seemed to know I didn’t want to. The case against Mr. Dutton could wait.

  Now I said, “I’m glad Doolittle decided to stay on.”

  “I told him if he didn’t I’d charge him with obstructing justice. He knew I was joshing but still came around.”

  I wanted to get away from myself, so I said, “Tim Reagan would make a good deputy.”

  “Not so quick with the suggestions, Jase. Your mind is made up about school?”

  It was. I thought of kind people trying to spare others—Ike Doolittle, trying to protect me and Anita; Omar Test doing his best to fence off Anita and Grandpa; Anita keeping mum for the sake of the old man. And here I had come in the name of the law and torn that shielding away. To what end? To expose a dotty old gaffer as harmless now as a cradled baby. I had acted as a good officer should, as the law expected. Damn the law, and yet, and yet.

  “I’m stale on the job, Mr. Charleston. I need a change.”

  “Stale, is it, Jase? After good work?”

  It went against what I’d planned to say, but I said, “I feel kind of down, Mr. Charleston.”

  “I know, Jase. I know, boy,” he said slowly, with so much compassion in his voice, so much sympathy, that I dared not look at his face.

  He went on. “Choices, Jase. Choices. They come so damn hard, but a man has to make them, knowing or not knowing they’ll be trailed by regrets. I’m sorry, Jase. By God I’m sorry.”

  I heard him straighten in his chair. His tone changed. “All right. Do what seems best. Quit when it’s convenient. But you’re not resigning. I’m giving you a leave of absence.”

  I hardly had time to thank him before he was buzzed by the switchboard. The words came over. “A man to see you, Mr. Charleston.”

  Charleston looked at me, and I nodded to indicate our conversation was done. “Send him in,” he said.

  There entered one Kingston Tuttle, alias Henry David Thoreau. He was as thin as a string of jerky. His jacket hung loose. He had tucks in his pants. He advanced and stuck out his hand. “Remember me?” he asked in a voice rusty from disuse. “I’m the guy who shot himself in the foot and lied about it.”

  Charleston said, “We remember. Turned over a new leaf, huh?”

  “Leaves. Thoreau’s leaves. He wouldn’t have lied. I came to apologize and thank you for your help.”

  “I will be damned!” Charleston said.

  “I kept reading him and reading him and feeling guiltier with every word.”

  “You stayed in your camp? How’d you make out?”

  “Yeah, I stayed and made out pretty good. But Thoreau had an edge on me. There were fish in Walden Pond and he caught them and ate them. So, next time around, we’ll be even up.”

  “Guess how, Jase,” Charleston said.

  I didn’t feel like guessing.

  “You tell me then, Tuttle.”

  “I’ll fish in the summer and smoke what I catch.”

  “You’ll actually try it again?”

  “I will. A man deserves another chance. I’m just getting my second wind.”

  “Good luck,” Charleston said and looked at his watch. “Past supper time. My wife’s gone to the big town to shop. How about a square meal on me?”

  Tuttle burst out, “Oh, boy!”

  “Jase?”

  I knew Charleston aimed to divert me, but I begged off, saying my mother would have dinner ready.

  I walked in the chill wind and entered the Bar Star. Besides Bob Studebaker behind the bar only one man was there. He was Tony Coletti. I bought him a drink and drank with him—too much. Studebaker went from behind the bar, peeked through a front window and announced it was snowing outside.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Sheriff Chick Charleston Mysteries

  1

  “It’s not the rape that distresses me so much,” Madame Simone said to me. Her eyes were green, the shade of spring leaves.

  “No?”

  “She was a professional girl. She knew men. She had been there, if you see what I mean.”

  I didn’t feel easy here in the parlor of what an old-timer, being polite, would have called a sporting house. The room was all right—all right, that is, if you could accept upholstery of blushing pink and pink lampshades, an oversized, gilt-edged mirror on one wall and, beside it, a sideboard with an array of bottles. No girls waited in line. No one tried to hustle me.

  “It was still rape,” I said. “A violation of person, and that’s a serious crime.”

  “But to kill her! That gets me. Why did he have to do that?”

  She was dressed in a summer suit, cream-colored, with flecks of pink in it and might have just prepared for a visitor or for shopping or for a business session. I could see her sitting in a meeting of some board of directors. Not the ordinary madam, I thought, but a madam all the same no matter how she spelled it. The Simone must have been an invention.

  Seated in the chair she had assigned me, I said, “God knows why he killed her, but rape and murder sometimes go together.” My eyes went to a polished wooden stairway, but no one was coming down it. “Now the victim, this Laura Jane Smitson, tell me about her.”

  “I’ve answered the questions once, to a big, dumb deputy who came here before you.”

  I knew she referred to Halvor Amussen, who was big and brave but heavy-handed and hardly brilliant. I had studied his notes.

  “He may have missed something, or you overlooked something. Now about the girl?”

  The cradled phone at her side rang, and she answered, “Yes, Mr.—” Her gaze came to me. “I have arranged everything as you wished. See you then. Thank you.”

  “The girl?” I prompted.

  “She worked for the Overthrust Oil Company. A stenographer.”
>
  “She didn’t live here?”

  “Oh, no. I almost never have resident girls. She lived with her parents.”

  “Any residents here now?”

  “No again. I believe you are thinking of the old-fashioned whorehouse. Mine are respectable town girls. Most of them work during the day. I keep a list. We have nothing in common with those old houses.”

  Nothing, I thought, but the commodity.

  The time was midafternoon. Through a window at the side of the room I could see down a slope to the bridge over Muddy Creek. The creek was the dividing line between the two counties. The body of the girl had been found by two youngsters who were playing on the other side of the bridge.

  “I have a good list,” Madame Simone went on. “The pill has opened opportunities for the working girl. She adds to her income, and the men get what they want. Everyone’s satisfied. A first-class arrangement. Right?”

  I had never encountered such matter-of-fact cynicism. Instead of answering, I asked, “Did the girl have regular customers? Was she somebody’s favorite?”

  “That’s confidential. I’m a clam.”

  “I can have you subpoenaed.”

  She gave me a half-smile. “I doubt you’d want to do that. All the broken homes, the divorces, wives mad as hornets. Right in your town, too. Think of the ruined reputations.”

  “What about her immediate bosses? Were they her customers?”

  “Clients, we call them. I’ll answer that question, and the answer is no.”

  The telephone rang again. She said into it, “Yes, of course. I’ll see. Could you call me back later?”

  “You want to find the murderer, don’t you?” I said.

  “That’s a foolish question. Of course I do.”

  “Then you might help by telling me the names of her clients.”

  “Doctors have a right to confidential relationships. So do lawyers. I claim my right. What’s more, the names wouldn’t help you at all. I’m positive of that.”

  “You’re not being cooperative. Don’t you care?”

  “Why do you think I’m talking to you? Of course I care. You don’t know when a person’s hurting.” She flung out a hand. “So I talk to you. Talk is like a bandage over a sore. This give-and-take hides the wound.”