Ain’t science grand?
“Tell me something,” I said. “Where did Turk get the automatic weapons?”
“What you mean, army guns?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Army guns.”
“He bought them from a guy he knows. I think the guy stole them from a National Guard … What’s that place where the army keeps guns? An, arm …”
“A National Guard armory?”
“Yeah, that’s it. And Turk got bullets and things, too.”
“Any still around here?”
She went to look. While she was gone, the water boiled. As it did, it turned muddy brown from the debris in the pot. It was an effort to stay hungry.
When Thunder Thighs returned, she put a box of .223 ammo and an empty M16 magazine on the kitchen table: “Is this the stuff?” she said.
“That’s it. Wait here.” I took the ammunition and the magazine into the living room and showed them to Cowboy.
“Whoo-ee,” he said. “And here I used to think bikers fought with ball bats and chains.”
“Me, too, but those weren’t hornets buzzing around last night.”
“Wish I’d known this before,” he said. “I’d have charged you more.”
“Too late now. You want chili or beans for lunch?”
“Chili, I guess, long as what’s-her-pussy don’t cook it.”
“Stand by for the blue-plate special.”
There weren’t any plates, blue or otherwise, but I found three spoons not quite ready for condemnation. I held them under the hot water for a long time. Then I burned my fingers sawing the cans open with a beer opener.
Thunder Thighs wanted chili, but she settled for beans and gingerly carried the hot can to her nest in front of the TV.
I found a six-pack of Lone Star in the refrigerator and lugged the beer and chili into the living room. Cowboy and I leaned against the window frame, eating chili from the cans with bent spoons. A TV quiz show yammered away in the background.
Ever wonder why the next generation isn’t flocking into the private investigation business?
After lunch, I dozed awhile, relieved Cowboy at 1:00, and wondered when—and if— Turk and Smokey Joe would come back. I made it through my watch without a smoke, but I wasn’t smiling much when Cowboy came on again at 3:00.
I was tired, bored, grubby, and beginning to think we had been skunked. And I was irritated at myself for wanting my nicotine so badly.
For something to do, I phoned my office and talked to the girl on duty at the answering service. Marge Mollison had called four times. She wanted me to get back to her as soon as possible.
Marge answered the phone on the second ring. She was wound up tight. Her voice had a bright, frantic edge to it.
“Where have you been?” she said. “We’ve waited for hours!”
“I’m out of town. Good news, though. We—”
“Uh oh,” Cowboy said. “Trouble coming.”
“Got to go, Marge. I’ll call you back.” I heard her howl as I dropped the phone on the cradle.
“Well, how about that,” I said to Cowboy. “The bad guys finally got here, did they?”
“Worse,” he said. “It’s the good guys.”
Chapter 27
There were three blue Dalton County sheriff’s cars in the front yard and two more on the road. A tall red-faced man in a tan Stetson stood behind one of the cars and yelled into a bullhorn. He had his mouth too close to the microphone, so the words came out muffled, but basically it was the same come-out-with-your-hands-up speech you hear every night on the late movie.
“Hope your client knows a bail bondsman,” Cowboy grumbled.
“Look on the bright side,” I said. “At least they don’t have M16s.”
“Got everything else, though. You ever see so many cops with riot guns? Three of ’em just ran around back. And look at that jerk over there, behind the tree. Man, don’t he look like he wants to be a hero?”
Thunder Thighs looked over our shoulders, ran into the back bedroom, and slammed the door. Cowboy and I dropped our guns out the living room window, laced our fingers on top of our heads, and walked outside.
They let us look down riot gun barrels while they frisked us. Then they cuffed our hands behind our backs and tucked us into the rear seats of separate cruisers.
Three deputies stormed the house. They came out with Thunder Thighs. She held her hands over her head, which made the T-shirt ride high on her hips. A toothy deputy whistled and called to a friend of his. “Hey, Jack! She taking yer picture, hoss!”
The red-faced man bellowed at Thunder Thighs. “Lucille Billings, if your pappy could see you … Put those arms down! Hawkins, get her back inside. She must have somethin’ else to wear. Then bring her in!”
I stuck my head out the window and asked Toothy, “That the sheriff?”
“A.K. Edson, finest sherf in North Texas,” he said proudly.
Sheriff Edson was six-six, at least, and no more than two inches of that came from the high heels on his tooled leather boots. He wore tan twill, like his deputies, and a black leather gunbelt with a heavy revolver on the right side. His Stetson was centered an inch above white eyebrows, and he had a straight nose and a firm jaw. Edson was made for his job. He looked like a sheriff.
Remember, though, in Texas people elect their county sheriffs. Dressing up can be helpful image-wise, as they say around the courthouse.
Edson scowled at me and then at Cowboy. It was a pure John Wayne gotcha look. He folded himself into the passenger seat of an empty cruiser and waited impassively. A gray-haired deputy jumped behind the wheel.
It was time to go; Sheriff Edson’s cruiser first, then mine, then Cowboy’s, and finally my Mustang, driven by a pimply deputy who was perhaps only five years older than the car.
Toothy rode in the back seat beside me. The driver was a redhead with long sideburns.
“If you guys want to stop for a beer,” I said, “I’ll buy the first round.”
“Shut up,” said Toothy in a neutral voice.
“Funny thing,” I said. “A fellow can really get the wrong idea from watching television. Why, you might think cops have to tell you what the charge is, read you your rights, things like that.”
Toothy folded his arms and didn’t say anything.
“I’ve thought about it,” I said, “and I’ve decided you guys would have more friends if you’d stop that incessant jabbering.”
When we got to the Dalton County Courthouse, they parked in a ten-space lot at the back and kept us in the cars. A gaggle of kids on BMX bikes rode past, grinning and pointing. Hawkins entered the building through a metal door marked Sheriff’s Officers Only. Ten minutes later, he stuck his head out the same door and beckoned to the deputies waiting with us. We all went inside that time.
Edson’s office was bright and airy, with light wood paneling. Edson sat in a leather chair behind a tidy blond desk. Hawkins and Toothy marched us up to the desk, then retreated to stand against the wall. Edson tapped his forefinger on his blotter and said, “Empty your pockets, boys. Pile it all right here.”
I took my investigator’s license out of my wallet and laid it on top of the polaroids of Vivian and the bikers. I put the rest of my pocket junk in a separate pile.
“Those pictures are evidence in a pending criminal case, Sheriff. Lieutenant Edward Durkee in Dallas is waiting for them.”
Cowboy unloaded, too. He grinned savagely as he took a gigantic folding knife from his left boot and ever-so-gently put it on top of his pile.
Edson looked at the knife and shot Hawkins a glance that threatened to amend the night-time roster for the next three months.
Up close, Edson didn’t look quite so heroic. He had a bald spot. His lips were a touch too thin and his ruddy complexion seemed to owe more to empty bottles than the Texas Sun.
Edson put Cowboy’s knife in a desk drawer. He handed my license to Hawkins with a sour look. “Check that out.”
He slowly and car
efully examined our personal gear, then quickly leafed through the amateur porno pictures.
Finally, he leaned back in his chair, folded his hands on his stomach, and scowled at me.
“Okay, Mister Big Shot Private Detective from Dallas, I want to hear how you manage to get into so much trouble so fast. You been in my county for three days. So far, I got a motel burned down, with a barbecued body in what used to be your room. I got Bart Dolan’s kid shooting off his mouth about motorcycle gangs. I got a prominent businessman shot full of .22s and I find you two holed up with enough firepower to—”
“Excuse me, Sheriff. What’s that about someone shot with a .22?”
“You’re really making my day, city boy. I suppose you’re going to pretend you don’t know nothing about that.”
“I don’t.”
“You spent most of yesterday hanging around his office, you just got caught in a house he owns, and you’re telling me you didn’t know T. J. MacCready got himself killed this morning?”
“Hoo-boy,” said Cowboy.
“Well, Sheriff,” I said, “let’s talk about that.”
Chapter 28
Sheriff Edson put his photogenic chin down on his chest and looked up through his white eyebrows while I told him about Vivian Mollison and her sale to the bikers. After the first five minutes, he opened a desk drawer and took four seconds too long to bring his hand out with a long cigar in it.
He unwrapped the cigar, he rolled it around in the flame from a kitchen match, he inhaled deeply, and he let a blue cloud of smoke drift across the desk top.
It smelled wonderful.
I said, “So, I had the old reports that mentioned Conover as either a name or a town, Sheriff. When I heard about a shooting at a Dallas beer joint and found out the bikes involved had plates stolen in Dalton County, it seemed logical to come out here. You’d have done the same thing.”
Edson sucked his cigar and silently rejected my offer to compare investigative techniques. Hawkins came in with my license and whispered in Edson’s ear.
“I identified myself to your dispatcher on Monday,” I said, “when I got Billy Dolan’s name as the owner of the stolen plate.”
Edson waved his cigar at Hawkins. Hawkins left the office again.
“I also had to check out the responses from a newspaper ad asking for information about biker activity. Maybe you saw it. The ad had my Dallas phone number in it.” I told him about Arbetha Fullylove and how MacCready used the bikers to pressure her.
“Seems to me, you’re working up an excuse for killing MacCready,” Edson said.
“Wrong, Sheriff. I’m telling you why we wanted to talk to him. We couldn’t find him. So we cruised the area looking for bikers. Saw a big Harley leaving that farmhouse where you found us, but he got away on a back road. Then—after they tried to french-fry us at the motel—we went to the farmhouse looking for them. Well, they weren’t there, of course, only the girl. We found those pictures, though, which proved we had the right place. So we waited for them to come back. You came instead.”
“That’s it,” Edson said around the cigar.
“Sure. What more would there be?”
“Oh, I dunno, exactly. Maybe there could be part about how you ran MacCready off the road near the motel, took him to his office and killed him when he wouldn’t tell you what you wanted to hear. Or maybe you shot him out of pure cussedness. You tell me.”
“What time was that supposed to have happened?”
Edson blew smoke at the ceiling. “Eight o’clock, give or take,” he said. “That’s only preliminary, of course. Doc might fine it down some later.”
“No problem,” I said. “Talk to the waitress at that cafe across from the Ford place outside Conover. We ate breakfast there. And Thun—uh, the girl at the biker place can tell you when we got there. It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes after we left the cafe.”
“Time of death could be off a mite,” Edson said. “Maybe you shot MacCready, then went to eat.”
“You’re smarter than that, Sheriff. Hell, it’s staring you in the face. You said MacCready was killed with a .22. I bet that’s not quite right. I bet they were .223 slugs. From military M16s. Neither of us carries anything even close to that caliber. You might find some buried in the motel woodwork though, if the damage wasn’t complete. And the bikers left a box of M16 ammo at the house. The girl showed me.”
“And you don’t know these bikers by name?”
“No idea, Sheriff. I should have thought to ask the girl.”
Hawkins came back into the office. He nodded at Edson.
The sheriff puffed on that glorious cigar for a few minutes. “Gonna take a while to check out all this bullshit, you know.”
“Fine,” I said. “Take your time. Your jail food any good?”
“Ain't won no awards lately, but it won’t kill you. Hawkins.”
Hawkins front-and-centred, fishing jail keys out of his pocket.
“Lock ’em up,” Edson said. He removed two dollars from my wallet and handed them to Hawkins. “And get Rafferty some cigarettes. He’s gonna hurt his insides, sucking up second-hand smoke like that.”
“Won’t kill you, my ass,” Cowboy said. He put his half-eaten plate of rice and beans on the concrete floor outside our cell and settled back on the lower bunk. He sipped from the cup of green Kool-Aid that completed the two-course dinner at the county jail Hilton.
Edson’s jail wasn’t so bad, as county jails go. It was clean, the bunks had mattresses on them, and the disinfectant smell was a shade below overpowering. And it certainly wasn’t crowded. We were the only occupants in the cell block.
Cowboy was right about the food, though.
“Look,” I said, “we’ll be out of here soon. If Edson was seriously fitting us out for the MacCready killing, he’d have had us strip-searched, booked, and sprayed, all those welcome home gestures.”
“Maybe,” said Cowboy. “On the other hand, there were a few holes in that story you told him.”
“I didn’t hear you come up with anything better.”
Cowboy shrugged. “You did all right, I guess. I wonder how they found MacCready.”
“The bikers or the cops?”
“Either.”
“Beats me,” I said. I lit another cigarette. That was my third in five years. They tasted funny and they were unsatisfying after pipe tobacco. They didn’t last very long, either.
But they didn’t go out all the time.
“Maybe the bikers went home,” Cowboy said. “The girl coulda lied about that. And if MacCready found himself a phone, he might have called them.”
“Maybe. Sheriff said MacCready got it in his office. He could have called the bikers in to chew them out.”
“And they did the chewing?” Cowboy said.
“It’s possible. If so, they know we’re not dead.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But it won’t take many more meals like that one.”
The lights went out at 10:00. At 10:40, they came on again. Hawkins unlocked the cell door and led us back to Edson’s office.
The sheriff looked harried. He scratched his bald spot and growled around another cigar, “Anything you want to add to that cock-and-bull story you told me?”
“No.”
“Tell me again. I must be getting old. I forget the good parts.”
I went through it again, and ended with, “Play back the tape in your drawer, Sheriff. See if it doesn’t sound the same.”
“Smart bastard.” He didn’t look like an election poster sheriff now; he looked like a tired old man.
“All right,” he said. “Here’s the way she shapes up. You boys were in the cafe. ’Bout half of Conover saw you, I’d say. As to when you got to the Prescott place, I wouldn’t believe that Billings kid if she swore it was daylight at noon, but Wiley Lanier was plowing this morning. He seen you two show up when you said you did.”
“I hate to say I told you so, Sheriff, but—”
Eds
on waved his hand angrily and choked on his cigar.
When he could talk again, he said, “Watch your smart mouth, Rafferty. I can find something to put you away for, if … Aw hell, forget it. Thing is, a feller working on the pump at Reservoir Three picked up MacCready. Gave him a ride into town and dropped him at his office at exactly 7:15. On top of all that, Hawkins found a silly old bitch who lives behind MacCready’s office. She says she heard shots about eight, but thought it was kids setting off firecrackers, for cryin’ in an old bucket!”
Edson used his cigar to jab at the air between us. “You boys might not have shot MacCready, but that sure as hell don’t make us old pals. You attract trouble like a cowpat draws flies. I want you back here for the inquest, course, but until then, I want you out of my face! Now, you two high-binders get your guns and your pocket stuff from the deputy on the counter; you get into that beat-up car out back and you get your lucky asses out of my county!”
Rafferty’s Rule Thirty-three: Always obey your friend the policeman.
We got our lucky asses out of Edson’s county.
Chapter 29
“I think they’re gone,” I told Hilda and Fran over breakfast. “Split. Vamoosed. Cut out for Canada or Mexico or Williamsburg, Virginia.”
“Williamsburg, Virginia?” Fran said. She speared an egg yolk with a toast triangle.
“Well, gone, anyway.”
Hilda topped up my coffee and said, “You look terrible, big guy.”
“I feel worse than that. We got back about three. Cowboy went home. He’s still worried about a new foal. I would have slept in, except I wanted to get over here and see my girls.”
Hilda smiled. “One of your girls has a new job.”
Fran grinned hugely. “How about that? Two-twenty a week and I don’t have to take off my clothes or hustle drinks or anything.”
“Congratulations,” I said. “When do you start?”
“Monday. Which reminds me. It’s time for me to move out of here.”
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