Nail's Crossing

by Kris Lackey

  “How can I help you, Officer? What were you saying to me from your car?”

  “Your name. Basile Trepanier.”

  “My name is Dr. David Woodley.”

  “The one from Tushka who lives in a house that’s been unoccupied for years?”

  “That’s an old address. When I moved to the city, I forgot my new address when I wend to the DMV the next time.”

  “You told the good people at Sun Ray that you lived in Tushka.”

  “I still have a little prayer meeting congregation there Wednesday nights. And I lige my privacy. I’m more lige an evangelist than a traditional pastor.”

  “How do you come to call yourself a doctor?”

  Trepanier tilted his head back a little. “I have a doctor of religious research in scatology from Christian Soldiers Seminary.”

  “A Christian seminary in the United States offers a degree in excremental studies?”

  Trepanier shook his head and smiled with pitying condescension. “No, Officer. Scatology—the end times as foretold in scripture.”

  “That would be eschatology. Are you pre-, post-, or amillennial?”

  “Pre,” Trepanier said neutrally.

  Maytubby said nothing for a few seconds. He wanted Trepanier to sweat his bluff. “What were you discussing with Sol Stoddard at his house just now?”

  “He asked me to pray with him before he began his busy day.”

  “Solomon Stoddard belongs to Frontier Baptist Church. He’s a bigwig there. That church has three assistant pastors. None of those men could minister to Mr. Stoddard?”

  “He asked for me, and I came.”

  “Did he ask you to pray with him at Boggy Depot State Park?”

  Trepanier stared at him.

  “And you know, what I can’t figure out is why Solomon Stoddard would go all the way to Jennings, Louisiana, three times, to defend you in court.”

  “You’re coo … razy.”

  “I know he has something on you—nothing that would ever really get in your way. I also know you have something on him—something that would ruin him.”

  Trepanier began to laugh. “You barkin’ up the wrong tree.”

  “What tree is that, Basile?”

  Trapanier shook his head in wonder. “That is the stupidest name I ever heard. The Lord have mercy on a man called that.”

  “And double down on a boy called ‘Mullet.’”

  For an instant, the insouciance drained out of Trepanier’s face. He tossed his keys in the air and caught them. The condescending smile snapped back in place. “I think your police work has got you mess up. I can answer your questions, Officer, but it won’t profit you.” He was juggling idioms and breaking some dishes.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Maytubby said. He didn’t want to go too far before Scrooby could be convinced to question him. “Thank you for your time.”

  He walked to the cruiser and heard Trepanier unlocking the door to his apartment. Before Maytubby reached the street, he heard a dead bolt hit its strike. Then another. Then another. Dr. Dave had been to the hardware store.

  And he wasn’t afraid of the Lighthorse Police. The neighborhood didn’t look menacing. He wasn’t the type to subscribe to a newspaper, but there was a TV dish on his roof, or he could mooch enough wireless to learn about the fires in Ada and Antlers, and the Ouachita shooter—if he hadn’t done those things himself. Basile Trepanier was looking more and more like a flight risk. Scrooby wouldn’t be in his office for another hour.

  Maytubby swung by the two motels again to see if he could turn up a clerk whom neither he nor Bond had interviewed. He immediately recognized the sagging green polo shirt of the Western Sky innkeeper, so he drove on to the Old Route 66. There he found a very young man, maybe eighteen, with a geyser of gelled black hair and a zirconium nose stud. He wore black nerd glasses and a faded brick-red T-shirt and was sorting a pile of room keys on numbered plastic paddles, left by departing guests.

  “Hi,” the young man said. “Help you?”

  Maytubby smiled and laid the photos of Stoddard and Tate beside the room keys. The young man cradled his chin on a palm. He tapped Stoddard’s picture. “I’ve seen him, wearing some weird hat and sunglasses, coming out of a room a few times. Always number fourteen or fifteen—the ones farthest from the street, back by the hedge. He must have got the room from the person on the night shift. I come on at six. He stared at Tate’s photo and bit his lip. “Nnnnn.” Maytubby slid the newspaper wig into place. The clerk’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, yeah,” he said, nodding. “She and this guy came out of the room at different times, but they got in the same car.”

  “Which was …?”

  “White compact. Chevy, maybe. Plain, like a rent-a-car.”

  “You mind Googling ‘2004 Chevy Cobalt’?” Maytubby bent his head toward the massive old cathode monitor on the desk.

  “Sure, but it might be Tuesday before it comes up.”

  He was right.

  A motorcycle roared by on the highway. Maytubby looked out the window and listened until the sound went away. The shadow that the motel’s saguaro sign threw on the street looked like a shot from a fifties sci-fi film: the shadow of the alien raising its stiff arms with clumsy menace.

  “That’s it,” the clerk said. He couldn’t find any record of the car or the license number Maytubby gave him.

  “When did they start coming here?”

  “I don’t know. I just started here mid-May, when classes ended. I saw them a few times this summer, not often. Not for the last couple of weeks.” He didn’t ask why Maytubby was asking. Either incurious or discreet. Maytubby was betting on discreet.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Gill Bowers.”

  Maytubby handed Bowers one of his cards. “Call me or e-mail me if you see or remember anything else.”

  “Will.”

  The Cobalt was still in Trepanier’s drive when Maytubby detoured through the Plaza District on his way to OSBI. He wished he could summon an officer to watch the place, tail Trepanier if he left.

  Early rush-hour traffic clotted I-44. At the I-235 interchange, excavators and dozers ripped out swaths of prairie blackjack oaks that had miraculously survived development on every side. The machines cut huge gashes in the red Permian soil for a nest of overpasses. The carcass of a young whitetail buck was splayed on the shoulder.

  At OSBI headquarters, Maytubby sat in a folding chair outside Scrooby’s office until he padded in just before eight. “Shew-ee, it’s hot out there!” He unlocked his door, then turned to face Maytubby. “Ugh.” He shook his head. “I can’t deal with this on what my wife made me eat for breakfast. You know what it cost me to get those ribs I was telling you about?” His hand chopped the air. “What did I have for breakfast? Oatmeal. With skim milk.” He unplugged his laptop and cradled it under his arm as he pointed out the door and shut it behind him. “Lord above, you can’t get your work done without real breakfast.”

  When they had settled into a booth at Classen Grill, Scrooby waved away a menu. “I know what I want.” Maytubby scanned his quickly and ordered Memphis French toast and fresh-squeezed orange juice. Scrooby ordered biscuit debris, cheese grits, and sausage. He drank coffee and looked around the dining room. “Place is not much to look at, but they put real food on the table.”

  “And chickens on the wall,” Maytubby said, looking at the gallery of rooster prints.

  Scrooby said nothing as he drummed his fingers on the table and watched a tattooed waitress refilling coffee mugs. Maytubby drained his several times because he badly needed sleep and Scrooby wouldn’t talk until he got food.

  When the plates came, Maytubby pushed his fried toast to the side and made short work of the bananas and peanut butter. Scrooby perspired as he trenched into the biscuits.

  “Now,” he said, pushing his shi
ny plate away and belching politely into his napkin. “What are you doing up here again? Doesn’t your nation need you?” He pulled a Swiss Army knife out of his pants pocket, winkled the plastic toothpick from its nook, and put it to work.

  “Those things have toothpicks?”

  “You think the Swiss Army lives on vegetables …” He looked at Maytubby’s plate. “Like you?”

  “Stoddard …”

  Scrooby threw up his hands, rolled his eyes. “Here we go. Like I said, isn’t your nation calling?”

  “Hannah Bond …”

  “Hannah? Now we’ve got Johnston County deputies on the case? You do realize, Bill, that my agency was created to assist people like you and Hannah, who have limited resources.”

  “Hannah Bond’s sister was raped and killed by her foster father. The Tate murder was committed in her county.”

  Scrooby frowned and looked out the window.

  “Hannah stuck a blond wig on Majesty Tate’s photo and found a caddy at OCCC who said he’d seen Tate sitting in a car in the club lot.”

  “Ever with Stoddard? No.”

  “No.”

  Scrooby turned up his palms.

  “Hannah showed the wig photo to the same motel clerks who didn’t recognize her earlier. This time, they did.”

  “Silver wig sucks up a lot of attention.” Scrooby thumbed his chin. “Don’t see the face under it so well. You might put a blond wig on Winston Churchill and they’d ID her.

  “One clerk we hadn’t talked to, the morning clerk at the Old Route Sixty-Six Motel, told me this morning that he saw Stoddard and Tate getting in the same car—a white 2004 Cobalt—several times over the summer. Not in the last two weeks, though. Tate always checked in, used aliases and fake tag numbers. Paid in fifties.”

  “You think this was Treepanty’s car before half its backseat went up in flames?”

  “I don’t know. I do know Trepanier drove a white oh-four Cobalt to Solomon Stoddard’s house at five thirty this morning and stayed half an hour. I followed him to his apartment on Blackwelder. He said Stoddard had asked him to pray with him before the start of his busy day.” Pious man that he is.

  Maytubby drank more coffee. Scrooby sighed and dragged his laptop across the table. He said nothing as it booted up. When he had finished typing, he looked up at Maytubby. “Where was the hottie wife while all this was going on?”

  “Stoddard has a two-car garage. Only his Lexus in there until Trepanier showed up.”

  Scrooby typed some more. He stopped suddenly and said, “Maybe you should e-mail all this to me.”

  “And here I was feeling so grateful for your assistance and resources.”

  Scrooby growled and shut the laptop.

  “Inside the Dairy Whistle / Sun Ray Gospel Fellowship, I found an order of service.”

  “You get a warrant?”

  “Place vacant, door ajar. Almost an attractive nuisance.”

  “Why, I’m surprised at you, Sergeant.” Scrooby raised one eyebrow.

  “I doubt that. One of the congregants listed on the order of service expressed great affection for ‘Dr. Dave,’ as the mission folks called him. He was folksy and had a wild accent. She asked if I knew what had happened to him. She couldn’t tell me where he got his doctorate or what it was in. Trepanier told me it was from an institution called Christian Soldiers Seminary.”

  “Online for-profit, right?”

  “On its website, credit card logos appear before the holy cross does. Accredited by God alone and, apparently, proud of it.”

  “Why would he still live so close to his church people? Seems risky.” A tattooed male server stiff-armed the kitchen door, and the smell of sage and frying meat drifted into the room.

  “I don’t know. He and Stoddard obviously need each other. And religious charlatans can always say, ‘God told me to leave this place and go to another place.’ God tells them to do anything they want to do.”

  “You think he’s the Ninja guy?”

  “Don’t know. So far, I haven’t seen that trapdoor in his eyes. Or any bikes around his apartment, which doesn’t have a garage. No tracks, either—and most of the grass burned off that lawn years ago. When I left Trepanier’s apartment, I heard him throwing a bunch of dead bolts.”

  “You think he’s scared?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Who do you think Treepanty might be afraid of?” Scrooby said.

  “If he’s not the Ninja guy, then him, for one. If he is the Ninja guy, he’s got enemies who won’t wear funny hats and ask him nice.”

  “If he hasn’t killed them all.”

  “He hasn’t killed Austin Love. Whether Trepanier is the Ninja guy or not, he should be afraid of Austin Love.”

  “How much longer can Pontotoc hold him on the parole violation?”

  Maytubby scrunched his face.

  “I’ll see if I can get a plain car over there.”

  Maytubby gave him Trepanier’s address and license plate.

  “That’s right, you can remember stuff.”

  Maytubby shrugged.

  Scrooby’s cell played a perky digital mix of “Final Countdown.” He looked at the screen, then took the call. Maytubby downed his orange juice. Scrooby said, “Really … Huh … Yeah … Thanks.” He put the phone in his pants pocket and said to Maytubby, “Wiley Bates, the Antlers charcoal briquette, bought a green Ninja three months ago. Davidson Kawasaki, in your nation’s capital.” Scrooby laid a twenty on the table, tucked his laptop under his arm, and stood up.

  “Somebody we already didn’t have to worry about.”

  Scrooby looked down at him. He shook his head, turned, and blew loud enough to make the passing waitress glance over at them.

  Chapter 27

  The deer carcass on the shoulder of I-44 was being scraped into a fill slide by a construction company front-end loader. The image rose up of the grisly buzzard in the crooked house, and Maytubby drove on past his exit. Instead of leaving the city, he went back to the Plaza District. The Cobalt was gone, as he knew it would be. He parked two blocks from Blackwelder so he could be a generic cop when he showed Tate’s photo to Trepanier’s neighbors.

  Maytubby scanned the block for houses that might belong to older retirees—Buick in the drive, (dead) tomato vines in the side yard, rain gauge on the fence, geraniums in pots, venetian blinds. The first door he knocked on even had a crocheted curtain behind its three little windows. A fresh-faced woman in her late twenties opened it. She held a blond toddler with brimming brown eyes. Maytubby was happy to be wrong. She would see better.

  He led with the wig. The woman swiveled her torso to calm her child. She said no to both the wigged and the nonwigged versions of Tate. “But I’m only here a few hours a day. I’ll get the lady who owns the house.” She walked toward the back of the house, the child staring soberly over her shoulder at Maytubby. Photographs of birds and flowers hung on all the walls, and some vases painted with more birds and flowers stood on the faux mantelpiece. The corduroy couch was festooned with doilies. He wanted to lie down on that couch and sleep around the clock.

  A very tall woman of about seventy walked into the room with long, slow strides like a wading bird. She covered the distance to Maytubby in three steps. Then she stood still, hands clasped, and peered down at him. Her eyes, behind half glasses, were kind and inquisitive, and she smiled faintly. He lifted toward her face the blonde version of Tate and asked if she had seen this young woman in the neighborhood. The woman tilted her head back to look through the half glasses. Farsighted was good.

  Maytubby took the wig away. The woman’s expression didn’t change much when she said, “Yes, Officer.” She beckoned him to follow her and took two steps to the picture window facing Blackwelder. He took four. On a sewing table near the sill, he noticed a pair of old, durable binoculars. Maybe military, mayb
e German. They looked heavy, but it was clear this person could manage them. Beside the glasses lay a worn copy of Birds of Oklahoma Field Guide. Its spine was duct-taped. This was better than the half glasses. Maytubby suddenly felt less sleepy.

  The woman opened the blinds about two inches and looked over the top of her glasses. “The birds don’t notice you so easily.” She turned to Maytubby. “And neither do the people.” She smiled, pointed to the window, and leaned forward. In the back of the house, the toddler laughed sharply. Maytubby stood on his toes to see what the woman was pointing to. Trepanier’s house with no car in the drive. “She was in and out of that house in the late spring and early summer. I haven’t seen her in several weeks. I can’t sleep anymore, you see. She often came home early in the morning, driving that little white car—or another one just like it. The guy who seems to own the car would take it and be gone for a long time, maybe a week. Sometimes, she took a cab; sometimes, another car picked her up.”

  Maytubby pulled out his phone and found a photo of a white Lexus ES of the correct year. He showed it to the woman.

  “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

  “The guy?”

  She shrugged. “Never spoke to me or anybody. Landlord mows his grass—when the grass is alive. I think the guy dyes his hair. And his eyes are wide apart. Like a little child’s, but wider even. Sundays when he’s here, he goes out with a Bible.”

  “Ever see anybody except the girl over there?”

  “Once in a while, a car at night. Couldn’t see the car, just the lights.”

  “No motorcycles?”

  “Don’t recall any.”

  Maytubby stood very still. “You’ve been most helpful, ma’am.”

  “It’s not out of the goodness of my heart. That little son of a bitch sits on his front porch and shoots songbirds with a pellet gun.”

  Maytubby handed her his card and wrote down her name and telephone number. “The State Police may contact you soon. I’m assisting them. They have limited resources.”

  “Has that man done something nasty?”