by Sean Black
The man spat a wad of tobacco onto the floor. “Can I help you?”
He didn’t look surprised to have found someone poking around in his barn. Not even a six-foot-four black guy with the frame of a linebacker. Ty assumed there was a reason for that.
“Sorry, I did knock. Thought you might be out here working or something.”
The guy wasn’t buying it. “Uh-huh.”
He peered at Ty’s hand on the butt of his gun, which was still holstered. Ty removed it, and extended his hand. “Don’t think we’ve had the pleasure,” he said. “Tyrone Johnson.”
The man shook, no reluctance or awkwardness in it, unlike the cook from the diner, but he didn’t give a name. “So how can I help you, Mr. Johnson?”
If this was the man who had left the note on the windshield, with good intent or evil, Ty knew he needed to handle him with care. Either way, the last thing that would work right now was confrontation. Ty could take that route in a few minutes if he had to.
As Ty spoke, he studied the man, measuring every gesture and shift in expression. “I’m with the young lady who’s in town investigating the Carole Chabon murder. She’s missing. I’m trying to locate her.”
He shrugged. “She ain’t here. I can tell you that. You’re more than welcome to look around if you’d like.”
The last part was classic deflection, along the lines of, I may or may not know where she is, but I know for a fact that she’s not here.
“It’s a pretty large property. Are you sure? I mean, you seem pretty certain, for a man who looks like he just woke up.” As Ty spoke he didn’t move his eyes from the guy, not even for a split second. He wanted him to know that he was observing his reaction, that he had him under a microscope.
He didn’t say anything. Not a bad strategy.
Silence descended. The atmosphere between them was charged, although Ty couldn’t pinpoint with what. It wasn’t impending violence, not exactly. It felt more like the start of a fight when two men are trying to feel each other out, moving without throwing for fear of being caught with a counter, except the next move could be words as easily as a punch.
Usually Ty would have let the quiet keep running, but it was doing him no favors. And, he reminded himself, he was on the clock. Time was not necessarily on his side. The quicker he found Cressida King, the better. At the same time he sensed that rushing things here wasn’t likely to get him anywhere.
The more he looked at the man with the long beard and the bruised eye, the more he got a sense of someone who wanted to talk but didn’t know quite how to get started. In other words, he seemed like a man with a lot on his mind.
“How long you had ’gators?” Ty asked, with a nod to the three carcasses hanging from the chains.
“Those ones are wild,” the man said. “I go out hunting them.”
“Didn’t realize that was legal,” said Ty, keeping his tone conversational. “Thought they were a protected species.”
“No one’s going to make a fuss about a couple dead ’gators,” the man said.
“That’s probably true,” said Ty, looking down at the floor. “So you haven’t seen anyone?”
The man stared at him for a long moment, again like he had a big decision to make. He shook his head. “Nope. Sorry.”
“What about last night? We were supposed to meet someone right around here. Someone who wanted to talk about who might have killed Carole Chabon.”
No response.
“I was thinking maybe you saw someone. Heard something. It was that little dead-end road just past those ponds of yours. Maybe you saw someone drive down there.”
Another shake of the head. “I was sleeping.”
“That how you got the black eye?” said Ty. “Sleeping?”
The guy shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Ty tried to establish eye contact with him, but the guy kept looking away, a sure sign of avoidance and discomfort. He was edging into confrontation and he wasn’t sure if it was doing him any good, or just closing the man down.
“Something like that,” he answered.
Ty decided to give empathy, and an appeal to common decency, one last throw. “Look, she’s a reporter, but she’s only twenty-seven. A kid, really. You know what I’m saying? She might have come down here all guns blazing, and upset people who just want the past to be left there, but that’s it. It’s not something anyone deserves to get hurt over.”
The guy looked beyond Ty to the three dead ’gators. “They’re pretty good parents, alligators. You wouldn’t think it, right? But they are. Especially the mamas. They don’t let those eggs out of their sight. Same when they hatch. They put them in their mouth, real gentle like, take them down to the water. You go near them and, man, watch out. They’ll die for their young.”
“RJ!” A woman’s voice. It seemed familiar to Ty. “RJ! You out there? Someone’s here.”
RJ turned away from Ty and walked to the barn door. “I know. I got it.”
The waitress from the diner, the same woman who’d served them dinner last night, walked in. She stopped when she saw Ty, her surprise matching his. “Oh,” she said.
“I’m sorry to bother you so early, ma’am,” said Ty. “I was just asking your husband if he’d seen the young lady I was with.”
If her husband was deadpan, Sue Ann was far from it. Her gaze kept shuttling back and forth to her husband, like she was trying to guess what he might already have said. Ty decided to barrel on, and not give them the time to get their collective bearings.
“She’s missing,” Ty continued. “I’m concerned that something may have happened to her. I need to find her, and I thought that, seeing as she was due to meet someone here last night, you might be able to help me.”
“She was meeting someone here?” Sue Ann asked, pointing to the ground.
“A little ways down the road, but, yes.”
“Over on the road behind the ponds,” the guy corrected, looking at his wife rather than Ty.
“Okay,” said Sue Ann. She sounded relieved. “Well, I’m sorry, but we haven’t seen her.”
Ty bit down on his lower lip. He wanted to give the impression of being resigned to not having found her, and taking them at their word. “That’s too bad. It would have saved a world of trouble if you’d known where I might find her.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t be more helpful,” said the guy.
“If we do see her, or hear anything, we’ll be sure and let you know.”
“I appreciate that,” said Ty. He pulled a business card from his wallet. He handed it to RJ. “Here. My cell phone is on there. If you do see her, call me.”
The man took it, making a point of examining it. “Private security?”
“Yeah,” said Ty, with a shrug. “But I think I’m going to have to hand this one over to the Feds.”
“The FBI?” said Sue Ann.
In truth, Ty doubted that the FBI would get involved in a missing-person’s case, even one like this. Not without more concrete evidence of wrongdoing. They would likely refer him to local law enforcement first. But these people weren’t to know that.
He needed a bluff. And he needed to make it convincing.
He was as sure as he could be that the couple in front of him knew more than they were letting on. He also sensed that at least one of them wanted to talk. All they needed was a nudge.
“Yeah,” said Ty. “One reporter goes missing while looking into a race murder, well, might be bad luck. Who knows, right? But two? I don’t believe in coincidences like that, especially after everything I’ve found out since I’ve been here.”
He walked to the barn door. “I’d say there are going to be a lot of nervous people around here over the next few weeks.”
Now the pair were trading glances. Ty had them, and they knew it as well as he did.
He turned back, and pointed to his business card, still pinched between the man’s fingers. “Don’t lose that number. Oh, and maybe get some ice on that eye. Kind of makes
you look suspicious.”
* * *
They didn’t come chasing after Ty to ask him what he meant about looking suspicious. They weren’t going to either. Their reaction told him that. They were hiding something. He’d have bet his life on it. The question wasn’t even what. The question now was how much. How much were they not saying?
He got into the Ford and started the engine. They still hadn’t come out of the barn by the time he rolled back out onto the road.
He pulled out his cell phone. The FBI might not give him the time of day, but he could still rattle some cages.
He dialed 911 and asked to be transferred to the local sheriff’s department or nearest local law enforcement. After a few moments his call was picked up by a second dispatcher.
He explained the absolute bare bones of the situation, sparing them the full story of why Cressida King was there. He said he had been accompanying her. He’d had to leave. When he’d got back her car was missing and she was nowhere to be found. He was concerned for her safety.
He continued. There had been a note left on their windshield. He lied and said it had contained a threat.
“Sir, do you have any idea who left the note?” the female dispatcher asked.
He gave them the address of the alligator ranch and told them he didn’t have an exact name, but explained about recognizing the truck and how the driver seemed to have been stalking them.
“And what about where you saw her last?” the dispatcher asked.
He was sure she wasn’t at Adelson’s, so there was no point giving that address. He needed to throw a rock into the hornet’s nest so he lied for a second time.
49
Mimsy hurried down the stairs still in her robe. Exhausted from the previous night, she had gotten home, taken a shower and lain down on her bed to take a nap. She must have fallen into a deep sleep because next thing she knew someone was banging at her front door loud enough to wake the dead.
Her shotgun, the one that been a gift from her daddy, was propped in a corner of the hallway right next to the door. Just in case. It was better to be safe than sorry.
The black guy who’d been with that smartass young girl was still around, so she’d heard. Well, she said to herself, if it was him, he’d get both barrels.
At the bottom of the stairs, she took a moment to compose herself. The banging on the door continued. The lack of manners, these days, was breathtaking. She couldn’t have imagined someone thumping their fist against their front door when her daddy was still alive. They wouldn’t have dared.
“Hold your horses,” she called. She wasn’t going to open the door without checking who it was first, and having her shotgun ready, if need be. “Who is it?” she said.
“Miss Murray, it’s Deputy Carnes. I’m here with Deputy McGraw. We’d like to speak with you, if we can.”
Her stomach did a back flip. She only vaguely recognized the names. They were from the County Sheriff’s Department rather than the town’s Police Department. Although “Department” was a rather grand description for the two officers they had in Darling who rarely did much more than issue parking tickets. Those two wouldn’t have dared to appear at her door like this. But the county had just elected a new sheriff, an outsider from Chicago, or somewhere equally horrendous. She’d met him briefly at the town hall and taken an instant dislike to him.
She left the shotgun where it was and opened the door. “There’s really no need to break the door down. I was asleep upstairs.”
The two deputies stood on the porch. One was tall and gangly and looked like he’d barely graduated high school. The other, Carnes, was a heavyset man in his forties with a mustache and badly dyed hair.
“We’re sorry to disturb you, Miss Murray, but we’ve had a report of a missing person, and this was the last place she was seen.”
Instantly, she knew who they were talking about, and her stomach did another flip. She tried to compose herself.
They couldn’t know. They couldn’t know she had helped run Cressida King off the road and into the swamp, then left her there to die. If they knew, they wouldn’t be here asking. If they knew, she wouldn’t be missing.
She quickly decided on a strategy. She wouldn’t lie. She wouldn’t deny the reporter had been here last night. Or, if they probed, that things had gotten heated. But she wouldn’t offer them anything more than that.
The reporter and her pal, or whatever he was, had come to dinner. It had been tense. They had left. That was as much as she knew. The only people who could say otherwise were Lyle and RJ. There was no way Lyle would say anything, and she was confident they had put the fear of something into RJ.
Her only concern was Lyle. He got nervous with things like this. He could slip up without even knowing. She’d call him once she’d dealt with them. Make sure he had his story straight about where he’d been.
RJ knew where this would end if he gave up their secrets. In jail, with Sue Ann left to fend for herself. Mimsy had put down what had happened in the last day or so to a temporary bout of insanity on his part. Once he’d faced a loaded shotgun, and, more troubling, the reality of Sue Ann growing old on her own in worse poverty than she was now, with only a bunch of ’gators for company, he’d sobered up real fast. She expected that now he’d stay that way.
This was routine. That was all it was. What kind of a County Sheriff’s Department would it be if the deputies didn’t ask some questions of one of the last people to see someone who had gone missing?
“You wouldn’t know where she is, Miss Murray, would you?”
“No, I have no idea. I thought they were going back to Adelson Shaw’s. That’s where they told me they were staying.”
She watched their reaction, but they gave nothing away.
“But she and Mr. Johnson were here last night?”
“Yes, they were here for dinner, but then they left together, and that’s all I know, really.”
“So you didn’t see her after that?” the deputy asked, his expression a little more loaded with skepticism, like somehow he knew the answer.
Stay calm, Mimsy, she told herself. Don’t let your imagination run away with you. If they knew, they wouldn’t be here. Not like this anyway, standing politely on the porch.
“No, I didn’t. I’m sorry I can’t be of more assistance.”
Blank cop faces stared back at her. They were looking for her to keep talking so she shut up, and smiled instead.
Carnes, the older one with the mustache, peered beyond her. Her blood chilled as she remembered the muddy boots she had pulled off when she had gotten back and thrown into the corner of the hallway. Without turning, she could sense that was what he was looking at.
“You’ve been asleep this whole time?”
“This whole time?” she repeated after him.
“I mean since they left.”
Yes, he’d seen the boots. That was what lay behind the question. She couldn’t get defensive. That would only serve to make him more suspicious.
“Yes, although there was something after they left.”
She had told herself to keep to the bare bones, not to embellish. But she needed to give him some explanation as to why she might have a muddy pair of boots in her otherwise pristine hallway.
Maybe she could turn this little hiccup to her advantage.
“Oh, yes?” said McGraw, the tall gangly deputy, like he didn’t believe her.
“Yes,” she said firmly. “Maybe a half-hour after, I heard a noise. I put some boots on and went out to investigate.”
“By yourself?” McGraw asked.
“I was the only one here. Lyle and Sue Ann had both left at that point.”
“Lyle?” asked Carnes.
Mimsy felt her face flush. Now she’d done it. She’d gone and given them details she hadn’t needed to.
“Lyle Kincaid. He works at the diner—he was cooking for me. And Sue Ann, she was waiting on us.”
“Must be nice to have staff,” said Carnes, with
a smile that managed to be warm. “If you run into her, just don’t tell my wife you can do that.”
Mimsy forced a smile in return.
“Okay, well, that’s great,” Carnes added. He turned to his partner. “Guess we can stop for breakfast after all. That diner’s pretty good.”
She thought now of Sue Ann. They’d let RJ go home, but his wife would have had questions. The idea of the two deputies speaking to her about the previous evening filled Mimsy with foreboding. She could feel everything spinning out of control.
“Thanks for your time, Miss Murray,” said Carnes.
Both men tipped their hats, turned and walked to their patrol car. Mimsy closed the door. She stared at the muddy boots sitting a few feet away. It would have taken her less than a minute to put them away. But she had been so exhausted by everything.
She guessed there was no point cleaning them now. Not when they were going to get dirty again.
50
“So you don’t know anything about any note that was left on her car?”
Over the deputy’s shoulders, RJ could see Curious George lying by the pond, staring at the patrol car parked next to the fence. He had crawled out of the water when it had arrived and stayed there, watching it, seemingly fascinated, living up to his nickname.
“RJ?” the deputy prompted.
RJ snapped out of his reverie about the big ’gator. “I already said, didn’t I? I don’t know about any note. I already had the guy who came over here earlier asking me.”
“Well, now we’re asking you,” said the taller of the two.
“And now I’m telling you what I told him. I didn’t see any note, I don’t know about any note, and I sure as heck didn’t leave any note.”
“Okay,” said the heavier one. “You see the car? It’s a Honda.”
“Nope. Ain’t seen it,” RJ lied.
Of course he had seen it. He’d watched as it sank halfway into the swamp, her with it. It was another picture he would take to his grave with him, along with all the others he had of cutting down Carole Chabon, taking her body out to Devil’s Pond and dumping it in the deep water.