Fifteen Coffins

by Tony J. Forder

  A rap of knuckles beat a rapid tattoo on the doorframe. Deputy Isaac Solomon’s bulk virtually filled the entire space usually taken up by the door. Six-four and built like the proverbial outhouse, time in the gym had added muscle and strength to an already impressive physique. Precisely the kind of lawman Benton enjoyed having around. He motioned Isaac in with a flutter of his fingers.

  ‘I got a set of car keys for you,’ Isaac told him, twirling them in circles by the fob. ‘By the way, you seem to have put a scare into Sam.’

  ‘Not enough to have him do as I asked, apparently. He’s supposed to be fetching me coffee.’

  ‘I can get a cup for you if you like.’

  Benton shook his head. ‘No, but thanks. Come on inside and close the door behind you, Isaac. Something I want to run by you.’

  The big man was his go-to guy when it came to receptive listening and plain speaking. Benton had no time for nine-to-fivers counting down the days to paycheque time, avoiding any kind of responsibility or discussion during which an opinion was called for. As the Tuolumne County Sheriff, Benton took his job seriously and made himself accountable for every decision acted upon by any of his deputies – whether he agreed with them or not. In return, all he asked for was some professional discipline and integrity.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said after Isaac had squeezed himself down into the room’s only other chair, which happened to come with arms attached and so appeared to ensnare the deputy around the waist, ‘what did you make of Dexter Muller’s claims regarding his son?’

  ‘You mean the statement you had me read a few weeks back?’

  ‘That’s the one, yes.’

  Isaac’s barge-like chest rose and fell, practically popping a button on his uniform shirt. He scratched the back of his head. ‘It came across as a desperate theory put forward by a desperate and genuinely grieving father. That’s what I made of it.’

  Benton nodded. ‘I hear you. But did you also think it was feasible? Let me be clear, I’m asking if at any point you considered that theory as being possible.’

  The deputy twisted his lips as he chewed that one over. His forehead creased as he replied, ‘Fact is, Benton, I have to say I never once stopped to think about it. I mean, I read it. I understood what he was trying to say. And it’s not that I gave his theory even a little credence, either. I gave it no thought at all.’

  ‘So you dismissed the suggestion out of hand. Mainly because of the source, am I right?’

  ‘Sure. The source and the fact that our town was still in mourning and I probably shut myself down to the man. Closed mind, I guess you’d have to say. I don’t like thinking about that day, and our part in it.’

  ‘Well, if you were considering beating yourself up about that, Isaac, don’t. I did exactly the same thing. Heard the man out, wrote it all down because I had to. Then I told him to be on his way and turned my mind to other things.’

  Benton shifted as the big man’s eyes fell on him. ‘Something to say?’ he asked.

  ‘Is this about Sydney Merlot?’

  And there it was. The question he had been trying to steer clear of asking himself. He had come into the Sonora office to discuss the case with Isaac, and to ponder Muller’s theory, believing it was the right thing to do. But he had to wonder if he had done so mainly because of Sydney.

  ‘I’d like to think not,’ he answered. He coughed into his fist. ‘But I admit it’s a real possibility. What does that say about me, Deputy Solomon?’

  ‘That you’re a human being as well as our sheriff, Sheriff.’

  Closing his eyes for a moment, Benton gave it some more thought. His deputy and friend was right, of course. Nothing wrong with being human. Except, where had that same humanity been hiding away on the day Dexter Muller came calling? When his eyes popped open again, he found Isaac staring at him. The big man had rolled in from Reno six years ago, adding experience and integrity to the team. Benton had learned to value Isaac’s opinion, and he waited because there was more to come.

  ‘Now that you mention it,’ Isaac said. ‘For some reason I can’t fully explain, Muller’s theory is as clear in my mind today as it was when I first read his statement.’

  ‘And?’

  Isaac nodded. ‘It’s not impossible.’

  Benton Lowe both nodded and shook his head at the same time. ‘That’s what I was afraid you would say.’

  Twenty-One

  ‘My husband’s not home,’ Suzie Copping told them.

  The way she said it, Sydney sensed the fretful-looking woman with sunken eyes and busy hands couldn’t imagine anyone turning up on her doorstep and wanting to speak with her. A mass of unchecked brown curls lapped over her shoulders and fell halfway down her back. She wore no makeup, making it hard to estimate her age. Although broad-shouldered, Mrs Copping was slight, with pale, freckled skin stretched tight over the skull. A homemaker rather than a farmer, with all the tired wariness of a beaten dog.

  ‘Actually, it’s your son, Mitchell, we’ve come to talk to,’ Sydney said. She produced her FBI credentials and flashed a perfunctory smile. ‘Nothing to be alarmed about, though, Mrs Copping. We are following up on a few details in the wake of events at your son’s school.’

  ‘What’s any of that got to do with my Mitch?’ Copping asked. The cloth in her hands shifted between each more hurriedly, but she did not immediately step aside to let them in.

  ‘We’re speaking with every student who was there that day, ma’am. A few general questions about the school, the kind of training they went through to prepare for what happened. An insight into the Muller boy, too, if possible.’

  ‘I think it’d be best if you called back when my husband is home. He don’t like strangers inside the house, ‘specially people from the government.’

  ‘This would be Michael Copping, yes?’ Sydney affected a sigh. ‘Thing is, we have a schedule to keep and a lot of young folk to talk to. If we don’t find time to come back out here, then we’d have to ask you to come to us. I wouldn’t want to put you out by having you drive all the way up to Sacramento. I doubt your husband would be best pleased, either, especially as we have the opportunity to get it over with today.’

  Sydney finished with another smile, but the idea of Michael Copping being unhappy with his wife over this was something she had deliberately put out there. A woman as anxious as Suzie Copping appeared to be would not willingly allow a conflict with her husband to occur if it could be avoided. There was risk involved, because the man was likely to be averse to the FBI, but Sydney was counting on the woman taking a gamble on quietly getting rid of them.

  A moment later, the farmer’s wife pulled the front door fully open and allowed her two visitors to enter the cabin. The modest dairy farm included fifty acres of woodland, in which stood the Copping family home. As it had gradually emerged into view through the corridor of pines, Sydney had noticed the house was more of a lodge constructed of logs and stone. A sizeable property, on a significant piece of land. She wondered then what the interior would look like.

  It had been Baxter’s idea to accompany Sydney. He insisted it would be better if he did because, as someone who had taught Mitchell, there was every chance his presence would make the discussion less intimidating for both mother and son. She saw the sense in his explanation, yet had the distinct feeling that he was holding something back. Sydney decided not to press him on it, though the thought stuck in her head.

  Although the two of them had earlier discussed talking to the boys when they were alone, it was Baxter who suggested visiting the Copping residence when the father was most likely to be working. The way he told it, Mitchell wasn’t one for hanging around town when not in school, so this appeared to be their best opportunity.

  Sydney looked around as they entered. There wasn’t much in the way of creature comforts. Few frills, no decorative flourishes. The room they stepped into was functional, with a vast pot-bellied stove on a raised stone plinth in one corner, cords of wood stacked neatly either si
de of it. Natural wood seating with plump cushions took up the centre of the open plan layout, standing on a floor of boarded solid pine, blackened and scuffed with age and wear.

  Copping indicated they should sit on one of the sofas while she fetched her son, returning moments later with the boy. He was tall and rangy, with an athlete’s physique. His hair was close cropped, which gave the face beneath a hard, mean look about it. The scowl intensified that same impression. Mitchell, wearing sneakers, cargo shorts and a white T-shirt, couldn’t quite prevent the look of disbelief from touching his eyes at seeing Duncan Baxter sitting there. Sydney saw the show the boy was putting on for what it was, but she also thought there was less tension by the time he took his own seat. It looked as if the ex-teacher had been right to come along after all.

  ‘I got chores to do,’ Mitchell said, looking through Sydney. ‘Can we get this over with?’

  His mother, standing directly behind the boy, squeezed his shoulders. He squirmed away and snapped her a hard look. Sydney had seen that same contemptuous glare plenty of times before. Suzie Copping was a third-class citizen in her own home, and no mistake.

  ‘This won’t take long, Mitch,’ Baxter said. ‘The agent here needs to ask a few standard questions. That’s all.’

  There was that look of surprise again. Sydney bet the boy had never heard Baxter call him by his first name before, let alone the abridged version. ‘Thirty minutes of your time,’ she added, drawing Mitchell’s attention. ‘I’m sure you can spare that in honour of your fifteen fellow students.’

  ‘Fourteen,’ Mitchell snapped back. Mean eyes flitted between the two of them.

  ‘As you wish. That actually leads me nicely to the first phase of questioning. Tell me, Mitchell, what did you know about Kevin Muller before the terrible incident that day?’

  ‘How’d you know I was here?’ Copping asked instead.

  ‘Your school told us you were absent.’

  ‘But how’d you know I’d be here, at home?’

  ‘It’s where we’d expect to find any student absent from school having called in sick. And here you are. So, you were about to tell me about Kevin Muller.’

  The boy grinned and snorted. ‘He was a retard or something.’

  ‘Mitch!’ his mother cautioned, her pinched face looking all the more pained. ‘Please don’t use that word. It’s not Christian.’

  ‘Well, he was. You all probably use another word, but to us he was a retard. Only we never called him that.’

  ‘What did you call him?’ Sydney asked.

  This time Mitchell Copping laughed, finishing with a self-satisfied smirk. ‘A retread. You get it? Re-tread.’

  ‘Yes, we get it. It’s not hard to figure out. So, other than Kevin being academically challenged, what did you actually know about him? Any idea what he got up to when not in school, or who his friends were? Anything at all about his home life?’

  ‘I know his pops works with wood for a living. Ain’t got no ma as far as I know. Out of school, I can’t say I remember seeing much of Muller. I guess he was kinda into sports, hanging around the football field. I seen him a coupla times at the mall. I don’t think he had many friends. Lots of guys pretended they were, getting him to make a fool of himself. I didn’t bother with him none. I think the likes of him need to be in special schools with their own kind.’

  ‘What foolish things did other students force Kevin to do?’ Baxter asked, leaning forward as he spoke.

  ‘They didn’t force him to do nothing. They talked him into it, you know. Like getting him to go up to some crazy dude and tip books outta his hand so’s he’d end up being chased and maybe take a beating. Coupla times he got himself into trouble copping a feel of some big titties because he was told it was okay and the girls enjoyed it.’

  Sydney glanced at Baxter. This was an echo of Dexter Muller’s theory, with Kevin being hoodwinked into changing clothes with the gunman and going outside carrying the holdall, not stopping no matter how often he was ordered to.

  Deciding not to linger on that point, Sydney said, ‘Mitchell, you told us Kevin didn’t have many friends. Can you name any at all?’

  The boy shrugged. ‘He hung around with a coupla real freaks. Stewie Beavon and Nile Landry. Man, they ain’t retreads or nothing, but they ain’t quite all there, either.’

  In the background, Suzie Copping gave a frustrated sigh. Clearly she did not approve of the way her son spoke about others, yet evidently she lacked the authority to make him stop.

  ‘You seem to have adjusted well to what happened,’ Sydney said to Mitchell. ‘Were you close to anyone who was shot?’

  ‘Not so’s you’d notice. They were in a different grade. I knew a few of them, sure.’

  ‘Mitch was so very upset on the day,’ the boy’s mother said.

  Sydney doubted that. ‘So where in the building were you while the shooting was going on, Mitchell?’ she continued.

  ‘Me?’ He jabbed a finger into his own chest. ‘We had a free period, so I was hanging out in the library.’

  Sydney’s mind wandered across a plan of the high school in her head. Nodded. ‘Right, so towards the rear of the main building, some distance from the rooms and corridors used by the gunman. Did you hear any of what happened?’

  ‘We all heard something. A far off noise, then what sounded like screaming and shouting. It ain’t unusual to hear the school like that, but I recognised those gunshots as soon as I heard them.’

  ‘You did? You knew what they were, even though they would have been indistinct?’

  Mitchell nodded, the vapid grin back in place. ‘Oh, yeah. I’d recognise that sound anywhere.’

  Moving on, Sydney asked about the school’s policy on how to react when threatened. He described the training they had received from their teachers, meetings in the school hall in which the sheriff spoke to them about how and when to act under gunfire. The boy was at ease with the conversation. As if he were enjoying the experience. Sydney wondered if that was because they had broached the subject of guns.

  Both she and Baxter fired off a couple more questions each. Not pushing the kid, more attempting to tease information out of him. After half an hour, Sydney called a halt. She wanted to make sure they were long gone by the time the boy’s father arrived home. They thanked Suzie Copping for her hospitality, but as they turned to say goodbye to Mitchell he had already left the room.

  ‘You have a lovely home here, Mrs Copping,’ Sydney told her. ‘It must be nice having so much land. I guess it would be easy to get lost out there if you don’t know it well.’

  ‘We got trails to follow. Ain’t that hard.’

  ‘I hear the dairy industry is struggling. Is that a concern?’

  ‘We get by.’ Copping lowered her gaze and Sydney instantly recognised there was no more to glean from this particular source.

  As they drove away, Baxter was initially quiet. After a few minutes back on the road, he shifted slightly in his seat and said, ‘You did well back there, Sydney. Neither him nor his mother realised you were questioning him as opposed to asking questions of him. The difference was subtle. Too subtle for those two, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Thanks. Same goes for you. But what did we learn from it? That Kevin Muller was impressionable? I think we already had that going in.’

  ‘Of course. But not straight from Mitch Copping’s mouth we didn’t.’

  ‘Hmm. Funny he should mention it, don’t you think? I mean, why would he if he had used the boy’s suggestibility against him?’

  ‘True. But then, we don’t know that he did. Likewise, he isn’t the type to play a long game. He’d say whatever popped into his tiny head, no matter what.’

  Sydney nodded. She thought about Copping, and tried imagining him as the gunman, casually taking lives before implicating Kevin Muller and pointing the boy in the direction of his own death. The kid was aloof, disagreeable and uncaring, evidently rough-natured, but Sydney had not seen any evidence of him possessing the adr
oitness of mind to conjure up such a devious plan.

  ‘Did you see the emblem on his T-shirt?’ Baxter asked. He shook his head and blew out a long sigh. ‘It was small and faded, but it was there all the same.’

  Sydney shook her head. ‘I noticed something, but didn’t pay much attention to it.’

  ‘It was the American Preppers Network logo.’

  ‘It was? That’s interesting.’

  ‘I thought so, too.’

  Sydney did not have to ask the meaning of the name or symbol. The APN’s tagline was ‘Freedom through teaching others self-reliance.’ Essentially it was the formal and accessible face of survivalist groups. Preparedness was the keystone of such movements, ensuring preppers were both organised and equipped to confront and survive any hardship event.

  Through her time with the Bureau, Sydney had come to learn that a number of Americans considered survivalists to be nothing more threatening than a bunch of men spending weekends being boys with toys, talking guns and ammo, hunting and killing their own food in a wood somewhere within a few miles of their local Burger King. Many groups across the country had become better organised, financed, led and trained over the years. Anti-government, anti-bureaucracy, and with a fierce hatred of the law except those which pandered to their own ethos, these men and an increasingly greater number of women lived close to the edge of the grid and despised those who ridiculed their way of life. Many suspected such outfits were also extreme right-wing groups, white supremacists in all but name.

  ‘Did you ever meet Michael Copping?’ Sydney asked, her attention back on the narrow road leading towards Moon Falls. With the sun hanging low, its light pierced layers of pollution and turned the sky vivid shades of red and orange, with fingers of purple seeming to rake across the few low-lying clouds and airliner contrails.