The Wilding Probate: A Bucky McCrae Adventure

by D. J. Butler

  “You know what drove my job satisfaction down, Bucky?” He squinted at me, and his mouth twitched a little at one corner.

  “Long hours?” I guessed.

  “I work longer hours here!” He snorted. “Nope, that was a job with great pay, full benefits, travel, respect, and excitement. There was just one thing wrong with it.”

  “They wouldn’t let you wear a hat?”

  “Damn fools wouldn’t ever let me shoot anybody. Not even just a tiny bit. Not even when they deserved it, which was most of the time.”

  I laughed out loud.

  “Look.” He leaned closer to me, and dropped his voice to just above a whisper. “I like catching bad guys. Even when I don’t get to knock holes in ’em. It’s what I do, it’s what I’m good at. Help me out here, huh? Tell me exactly what you saw.”

  I nodded. “I was in the office. It was dark. I heard three shots, then the door opened, and I saw the shooter in the doorway before he ran off.”

  “Still dark inside? So how good a look did you get?”

  I shook my head. “I could see he was wearing a deputy sheriff’s uniform. But I couldn’t see his face.”

  “But you must be pretty sure it wasn’t me, for instance.”

  “No offense, but…” I wished I had a better way to say it. “Your head is too big. Also, your hair is bristly, like a shoe brush. This guy had curlier hair, and more…combed.”

  Sheriff Sutherland laughed. “First time in my life I’m grateful to be told I have a big head.” He sipped the coffee again. “Okay, so at some point you picked up the gun.”

  “It was stupid,” I blurted.

  “It was certainly sub-optimal,” he agreed. “What were you thinking?”

  “It was an accident at first.” I tried to remember. I was tired, and the night’s events had moved so fast. “I’d come into the office to get papers for Dad, and the lights were off—the main breaker had flipped. I heard the shots, really close, in the same room with me, and then a sound that must have been the body falling, and then a sound that must have been the gun being dropped. I saw the…the deputy, and I tried to hide. My hand touched the gun in the darkness. I realized it was a gun, so I picked it up in case I needed it.”

  Sheriff Sutherland tilted his head back and forth like he was weighing the case. “It may have muddied some evidence,” he decided, “but I’m glad you took the gun. Better to have your fingerprints on a murder weapon than to confront a murderer unarmed.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Notice anything else about the shooter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did you see a car that might have been his? Or hear one?”

  “Nope.” Then I remembered my conversation with Michael Fellows from that afternoon, about serving court papers in the backcountry. “Not a horse, either.”

  Sutherland chuckled. “Fair enough. What time would you say you entered the office?”

  “Eleven-thirty?”

  “Anyone else with you? Anybody who can corroborate your story?”

  “Evil. I mean, Ronald Patten.”

  Sutherland harrumphed. “I know Evil.” There was no way the Pattens and the Sutherlands socialized, so I wondered how the sheriff knew Evil Patten. Must have busted him for something.

  “He came with me because…because I had to get some papers, and didn’t want to do it alone. Because earlier tonight, when I was locking up, I was harassed in the parking lot.”

  “By anybody in particular?”

  “By the guy who got shot in Dad’s office. And there was another guy. When we first got to the office, someone came charging out. Evil chased him. And then I went into the office.” Wow, this was really coming out in a jumble. “I didn’t get a good look at him.”

  The sheriff nodded. “So…you, Evil, a guy with no description who ran away, and one of my deputies, identity unknown. I think I’ve just about got my arms around this thing.”

  “And the bum,” I said.

  “Bum?”

  “The dead guy.”

  “Ah. The dead guy was Charlie Herbert. He was a queer old hippie, no doubt about it, but he wasn’t a bum. Worked for Aaron Wilding, apparently. Must have been a software programmer.”

  “He seemed…stoned.”

  “He might have been. I guess the coroner’ll tell us. Or he might have been upset because his boss just died and he was out of a job.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t really complain about my day.”

  “You’ve had it rough enough. Look, it’s too early to tell whether one of my deputies is really crooked. I’ll see who was on duty last night, and do some poking around. If it was one of my guys responding to a B and E and accidentally shooting Herbert, I would know it already. On the other hand, maybe the shooter was wearing something that only looked like one of our uniforms in the dark. I’ll do some digging, and what we do next will depend on what I find. Might be a line-up, see if you can identify the shooter. By the curliness of the hair on his tiny head.”

  “I have to tell Dad I’m okay.”

  “Let me do it,” Sutherland said. “I’ll tell him I’ve got you in protective custody, but I won’t tell him where…just in case. You stay here, and you stay inside. Got it?”

  “Got it,” I said, and then curiosity got the better of me. “Who got burgled?”

  The sheriff chuckled. “You’re not all that shaken up, I see. Well, since you’ll probably read about it in the Register day after tomorrow, I don’t mind telling you it was the District Court. Some jackass messed the place up. Judge Ybarra is going to be really irritated in an hour or two.”

  “Why would anyone break into the court?”

  “One thing you’ll see more clearly as you grow older,” Sheriff Sutherland said, creaking to his feet, “is that the world is full of dipshits. Every few years someone breaks into a bank somewhere ’cause he imagines if he burns the paper copy of his mortgage, he won’t owe any more money on his house. This is probably the same thing…some clown thinks that if he steals his folder out of Judge Ybarra’s filing cabinet, he won’t have a criminal record anymore.”

  “There’s a logic to that.”

  “Yep.” He picked up his hat. “But it’s the logic of morons. I figure I’ll start with recent meth convictions. I suppose I should be grateful the fool didn’t just light the place on fire.” He gestured at the ceiling with his hat. “We got a guest room upstairs. We keep it ready in case any of our daughters drops by unannounced, you should find it comfortable enough. It’s the room with the light on and the towels on the bed. I want you to plan on staying here at least through tomorrow, and keep upstairs so you’re out of sight. I know you’ve got a phone, so I want you to stay off MySpace or Twitter or wherever it is you kids play electronic footsie these days, and don’t tell anyone where you are. If it looks like you need to stay here past tomorrow, I’ll get you some changes of clothes. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Now you go get some sleep. I’ve got to make a few calls and maybe say a brief hello to my friend Jack Daniels before I get any shuteye myself. Most likely I won’t see you in the morning, but Carol or I’ll make sure there’s food upstairs for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Thank you. You did flee the scene of a crime, but you did the right thing, coming to me instead of running home or skipping town.”

  He disappeared into a doorway beneath a moose head, shutting the door behind him, and I went upstairs. The guest room must have been their youngest daughter’s, because it was still decorated like a teenager’s bedroom, though the pop idols on the walls were now five years out of fashion, as were the Vogues and Cosmos stacked in the corner. The room had its own bathroom, but I was too tired to wash my face or even get under the blankets. I threw myself onto a zebra-striped pillow and fell fast asleep, still in my boots and poncho.

  The room was still dark when my phone buzzed me awake with a text. It was from Dad: Don’t answer me, kiddo. Glad you’re okay.

/>   I drifted back asleep. When the phone buzzed again the cold gray light of morning shone through the window. Evil: Get out of there! Fast! You’re in danger!

  I stared at the phone for a few seconds, numb. It buzzed again.

  Rebecca, wake up! Are you there? Are you okay?

  I managed to thumb in a short message: What’s wrong?

  No time to explain. Get out of there!

  The words cut through the fog of my brain like a lighthouse beam. In my mind’s eye I saw the silhouetted deputy in the office door, and heard Sheriff Sutherland telling me not to go anywhere or talk to anyone. Was he keeping me safe…or keeping me prisoner?

  I sat up and looked at the door. It was shut, and I didn’t see light underneath it. I crept over to it and listened, grateful that the Sutherlands’ house was new enough that the floor didn’t creak.

  Nothing. The house was quiet. Maybe they were asleep.

  Or maybe Carol was standing guard at my door with a shotgun while the sheriff gathered his accomplices. Or dug a hole to hide my body in. But that was crazy, wasn’t it?

  The sheriff wasn’t the man with the smaller head and curly hair…but there had been a second man, a man I hadn’t seen. That could have been Doug Sutherland.

  Doug Sutherland, who had been anxious to explain to me that he wasn’t dirty, and who hadn’t wanted me to contact Dad.

  Rebecca!

  I shoved the phone into my pocket and sneaked over to the window. My feet ached from sleeping in my boots, and I could see that I’d soiled the guest bed’s quilt with dirt from my soles, but I was glad not to have to be lacing up my footgear now.

  The window slid up smoothly, with very little sound. Below, the narrow yard and the woods were still, blue-gray in the morning light. I could hear the river running back beyond the trees, but didn’t see or hear sign of any person, or of the Sutherlands’ dogs.

  I climbed out the window, easing myself softly onto the shingles covering the roof over the Sutherlands’ wraparound porch. I closed the window, wishing I could latch it. At least, I thought, if anyone came looking for me, they wouldn’t immediately guess I’d gone out this way.

  Which was a paranoid thought. But you can be paranoid and right.

  I took a moment to plan. If I went left, I’d pass in front of the Sutherlands’ bedroom window. The drop in front of me was a little higher than I was comfortable with. So I went right. Somewhere on the street in front of the house I heard the sound of car engines—people of Wood Duck Island driving off to their businesses or jobs. At the end of the building I found myself looking at the top of the Sutherlands’ Winnebago.

  Perfect. I stepped onto the roof of the RV—paused as the wimpy metal of the rooftop dimpled in and made a single loud poink!—then let myself down the ladder in the back, and I was standing on solid earth again. Or a poured concrete pad, anyway, that ran along the side of the garage and had hookups for the motor home. No dogs barked, and I started to breathe easier.

  Get out! my phone buzzed.

  I didn’t need the reminder. I checked the front yard to make sure no one was standing in it and no police cars were parked in front. All clear; the street’s big rambling houses were dark and quiet, their SUVs mostly still snoozing in their driveways. Then I walked up the street, away from the Sutherlands’ house at an angle I hoped would keep me out of view of the house’s windows.

  Though suddenly I remembered the cracking branch in the darkness of the jogging path, and wondered whether I was making a wise choice.

  And then I realized I’d left the pistol—both pistols—in the Sutherlands’ house.

  I stopped, feeling totally exposed in this neighborhood of million-dollar houses. I pressed myself against a scabby pine trunk and considered. I could still go back, I thought. I could climb up the RV, across the roof, and probably lever up the window.

  And then I couldn’t remember where I’d left the revolver. Carol had put the Beretta in the kitchen drawer, but had I left the .38 on the couch downstairs, or had I carried it up with me? I didn’t know. Did I dare creep around the house looking for it?

  My phone buzzed again, but before I could look to see what Evil was saying, the Sutherlands’ garage door rumbled into action.

  I turned and ran.

  The house next-door to the Sutherlands’ was fenced with wrought iron, but beyond that was a vacant lot, hard clay-filled dirt and pebbles but without the contractor debris of fast-food wrappers and beer bottles that you usually see on vacant lots around Howard. I turned left and skedaddled across the lot and into the woods.

  The jogging trail crossed the back of the lot, but I skipped right over it, thinking nervous thoughts about the night before and the possibility of still being followed. I crashed through a grove of pines and around a blackberry bramble before I stopped, crouching down beside a boulder and straining my ears to find out if I’d been followed.

  Birds chirping, and the low rumble of the river.

  Evil. I checked my phone. Tell whatever lie you need to, or sneak out if you can. Meet me at St. Matthew’s.

  St. Matthew’s was one of three Catholic churches in town; Howard County had a fair number of Catholics, what with the French and the Basque history of the area, and more recent immigration from Mexico and Central America. There were plenty of Hispanic kids at Howard High, and it wasn’t cool to ask what anybody’s immigration status was. Sometimes when they needed help with their paperwork, those kids and their families came to the Law Offices of James F. McCrae. And on Sundays, the ones who lived south of Howard, around the clump of warehouses, gas stations, and crumbling office park space sometimes called the Dog Ears after the two electric pylons straddling the highway there, they went to St. Matthew’s to pray and hear the good word from Father Rojas.

  Coming, I typed into the phone. Keep your pants on.

  Hat, I immediately thought. I should have typed hat. No need to encourage the poor guy in his delusions.

  It was a two-mile walk to Dog Ears. I was grateful for my boots, but the feet inside them felt like chicken breasts that had been pounded flat with a hammer and were now ready for breading and mozzarella cheese, so my walk started as a limp. I kept my hands under my poncho, holding my phone so I’d be sure to feel it when it buzzed. I also had the probably totally pointless hope that if anybody was thinking about attacking me, they’d wonder if I was holding a gun under the poncho and think twice.

  Crazy, right? But that’s where my head was.

  I followed the river. After Wood Duck Island the houses disappeared and I tramped through the tall yellow grass of late summer. Low bumps of earth, rises too small to be called hills, hid me from Howard as I hiked. Two miles would mean forty minutes of walking, even with me pushing myself, so I tried to focus and use the time to think.

  Three men had been in Dad’s office last night. I didn’t know whether they’d come there together or separately. I didn’t know why they’d come there at all. They’d have had to break in, so it couldn’t have been accident or coincidence. They wanted something from Dad. I didn’t know whether one of the men, or maybe two, were Howard County deputy sheriffs. I didn’t know why the one in uniform had shot the bum.

  Not the bum, I thought. Charlie Herbert, who worked for Aaron Wilding.

  But did I really know that? Sheriff Sutherland had told me that, but now I was terribly afraid I’d make a mistake confiding in the sheriff. He’d said he wasn’t dirty, he’d said he would investigate, but so what? Maybe he’d lied through his teeth the entire time. Maybe he was just waiting for a chance to get rid of me quietly. He couldn’t exactly shoot me in his own house, not without attracting a lot of attention, anyway. Except, of course, that I was in his house armed, with my fingerprints all over a gun that had already killed someone that same night.

  Or maybe the sheriff was dirty, but his wife wasn’t. I remembered her sending out the dogs and sitting watch over me, and found it hard to believe she would want to kill me. So he’d needed to wait until later to shoot
me, get rid of the witness who knew that one of his deputies had murdered a man. Shot him in the back, and maybe on the sheriff’s orders.

  I should tell someone else. Just in case.

  I typed in a text to Evil. The guy in Dad’s office last night. I think he was a deputy.

  Evil: The killer, you mean?

  Me: Yeah. Don’t tell anyone for now. My fingers were cold and numb, though the sun was inching above the Ups and I began to feel sweaty in my poncho. Just in case…I wanted someone to know.

  Evil: Jeepers. Be careful.

  Of course, Carol Sutherland might have been watching over me to make sure I didn’t escape.

  But what would Sheriff Sutherland or his deputies want from Dad that they couldn’t just ask for? And why kill Charlie Herbert, if that was his name? Was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time? I felt a twinge of guilt, thinking maybe the wild-eyed computer programmer had come back to the office to see me, and had been shot for his trouble.

  But maybe he’d just been wandering around stoned, or out of his mind, and got himself shot by accident. Bears and balloons, he’d said.

  I saw the electric poles first, poking up over the rise. I climbed out of the river behind Max’s, a gas station and rest stop popular with truckers. It had a shower and bunk facility inside; outside, the pavilion over its pumps was tall enough to accommodate a full-sized tractor-trailer, and a triple-sized parking lot held semis lined up neatly, waiting while their drivers were inside.

  I scanned for police cars once, and then kept my eyes on the ground. I crossed the parking lot and then Reservoir Road and then I was shuffling past one of Howard’s genuine trailer parks. With our almost nonexistent zoning, there were plenty of trailers, pre-fab houses, corrugated metal sheds and other low-end buildings around town, and Serendipity Gates wasn’t nearly the worst of it. Serendipity Gates had small lawns and big cottonwood trees, and as trailer parks go, it was pretty genteel. Genteel, and mostly Mexican. A kid at school named Antonio once told me an entire village in Oaxaca relocated to Serendipity Gates, and I don’t think he was exaggerating.