Bad Company

by Virginia Swift

  “Mr. Good Samaritan,” said Hawk.

  “Mr. Full of Horse Crap. Once I’d dragged that much out of him, I knew he was the kind who’d keep holding out on us and make us have to work for every single crumb of the true story. Took me another half hour to get him to admit that he’d driven her home after her shift, when he was on his lunch break. Christ, I wish I could pin this one on the little worm, but he only had a forty-five-minute break, and evidently after he took her home, he did come back to work.”

  “Why would he take her home?” Sally asked.

  “Said he was just being nice,” Dickie answered.

  “Uh-huh. That Adolph is such a considerate guy. Couldn’t be that she’d invited him over, maybe to smoke a reefer or have a quick one,” Sally said.

  “Adolph says he didn’t even go in, just dropped her in front. Who the hell knows? I didn’t have another hour to spend working on him. Places to go. People to see.”

  “The life of a busy public official,” said Hawk.

  “Ain’t no good life, but it’s my life,” said Dickie, draining the first Coke and popping the tab on the one Hawk had brought. “Bone Bandy was next on my list— thought I’d go look him up out at the campground. We have a couple of witnesses who said they’d seen him hanging around the Kum ’n’ Go mini-mart, across from the Lifeway, and one person who put him at the supermarket last weekend. His alibi for Monday has never been rock-hard, and I guess I’ve sort of been hoping we’d pull on a string that would eventually lead to him.” Carefully he crushed out his cigarette on the top of the empty can and pushed the butt inside. “I was being a bad police officer. I wanted to be able to arrest him for Monette’s murder because Mary’s always blamed Bone for her sister’s death. Couldn’t nail him for that one, but maybe we’d get him for this.”

  “Can you get him for assaulting my girlfriend?” Hawk asked.

  Dickie scowled at Sally. “Bone mentioned he’d talked to you, but he didn’t say anything about getting physical.”

  “He tackled her,” Hawk explained. “But then they ended up being best friends or something. Ticks me off, but what can you do?”

  “With her, not a damn thing,” said Dickie, and then asked Sally, “Do you want to file charges?”

  She drank some beer and gave it some thought. You could consider a guy like Bone a public menace. Getting him off the street would be doing everyone a favor. Then again, was it worth her time, and Bone’s continuing resentment, to make a big fuss about a tackle? “Why bother?” said Sally. “He didn’t hurt me. And he didn’t kill Monette. He’s looking for the bastard who did. He’s of the opinion that she was shaking somebody down.”

  Dickie had been leaning against the wall, but now he pushed off and stood upright, looking down at Sally from his highest height. “What makes you think that?”

  “Because he told me so. He’s been following me around, and he has this idea that I’ve been taking an unusual interest in the matter, and he thought I might know something he didn’t know.”

  “Following you around? Has he got some kind of grudge against you personally?” Dickie stared a minute, craned his neck to look around, and then slumped back against the wall, slugging down some more soda, hauling his cigarette pack out of his shirt pocket. The gold foil on top glittered briefly in the barroom light. “Well, he doesn’t seem to have tagged along tonight, but he did indicate this afternoon that he’d, uh, run into you this morning. He left out the part about grabbing you, and didn’t say a word about Monette being involved in any kind of shakedown.”

  Sally watched as Dickie took out a Marlboro, put the pack back in his pocket, and lit up. “Maybe he thought it reflected badly on him. I couldn’t tell exactly whether Bone was hoping to collect the blackmail himself, or if he wanted revenge. He was being as coy as he could, but hell, the guy isn’t exactly a model of self-control and rationality. Maybe he figured he’d said more than he meant to with me, and decided to tail back on his story with you.”

  Dickie rolled his eyes. “Why should he be any different from anybody else? Seems like everybody I talk to lately has the idea that everything they say to me can and will be used against them.”

  “You’re the law,” Hawk said gently. “They’re supposed to think that.”

  “Yeah yeah, I know,” Dickie said. “It sucks. Days like this, I end up just wanting to crawl into a bed with a nice bottle of Joe the Crow and never wake up.”

  Hawk and Sally exchanged a look. The last thing Dickie Langham needed, after all his years of climbing up out of the pit one day at a time, was a tumble off the wagon and back into the dark abyss.

  “Jose Cuervo is not a friend of yours,” said Sally, “but we are. Come on, boy. Let’s go over to the Wrangler and I’ll buy you a burger. If we leave now, before the band starts up again, I might have some chance of saving what’s left of my hearing.”

  “Nah,” said Dickie, adding, to her amazement, “I’m not hungry.”

  She put her hand up to his forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I been better. But really, it’s just that I don’t feel like running into my sister right now.”

  Sally thought of the phone message from Delice. When Dee was storming, people tended to go to the northeast corner of the basement. “She said you’d been over there asking questions.”

  “Yeah. For, like, fifteen minutes before she booted my ass out and told me that I better not come in there aggravating her again, or she’d file a police harassment complaint.”

  “You were down there asking about JJ, weren’t you?” Sally asked.

  “I just wanted to let her know that I’d have to have some time for a serious talk with him about this case. You can imagine how she reacted.”

  Hawk looked Dickie up and down. “You don’t look to be leaking from anyplace new.”

  “I’m a spartan,” said Dickie. “Carrion birds could be ripping my guts out and I’d be whistling ‘Big Chief Got a Golden Crown.’ ”

  “You’re a hoss,” Hawk agreed.

  Dickie seemed to be cheering up a little. That was good. Sally and Hawk wouldn’t leave him alone until they’d convinced him that the wall of the Torch Tavern wasn’t the only thing he could lean on. She put her beer down on a table and put her arms around him and gave him back one of the hugs he’d given her, over the years. Those hugs had sometimes been all there was pulling Sally back toward the light.

  “You think you’ve failed Mary because her sister died, and now Monette’s been killed. And you think you’re letting Delice down because you have to question JJ. But you’re not a failure, sweetie. We all love you. You’ll find the killer.”

  He sighed heavily, his big bulky body shifting in her arms, leaning his chin on her head. “Yeah, one way or the other, between Scotty and me, we’ll run this fucker down. But it feels bad right now.”

  “Sure it does,” Hawk nodded, his version of hugging.

  “The worst part,” Dickie said, as the band, back on stage, began tuning up for the next set, “is that Jerry Jeff’s one of the ones who’s lying to me.”

  Friday

  Chapter 19

  Swinging into Action

  “All teenagers lie,” said Delice the next morning, setting a poached egg on an English muffin in front of Sally, pulling a bottle of Tabasco out of her pocket, plopping down into a chair, and planting her elbows on the table with a clattering of silver bracelets. “They have to. It’s in their code of conduct. If they’re caught telling the truth to an adult, their friends break their skateboards and exile them to the geek table in the lunchroom. Jesus probably lied to Mary.”

  Sally shook Tabasco all over the rubbery white and hard, graying yolk, wishing that she’d just forsaken the path of righteousness and ordered a couple over easy with a side of hash browns. When it came to nutrition, the Wrangler was built for cholesterol, not for need.

  “You’re his mother. Can’t you threaten him?” she asked Delice.

  “With what? A whipping? He’s got si
x inches and fifty pounds on me. Should I ground him? He’d just sneak out while I was at work.” She took a sip from Sally’s coffee mug, grimacing involuntarily. Sally wondered if, after all, Delice had gotten used to the superior brew at the Yippie I O.

  Sally searched for a device. “You could take away his allowance, I guess.”

  Delice snorted. “JJ’s been mowing lawns and walking dogs and washing windows since he was eight. He’s earned all his own spending money, and for the past three years he’s been working his ass off trying to save up for a roping horse. Allowance-schmowance.”

  Sally gave up on her egg and opened a plastic packet of grape jelly to spread on the other half of the muffin. She’d asked for it dry, but the cook had scorned the request. Whatever they’d squirted on it, Sally could easily believe it wasn’t butter. “Isn’t it supposed to be one of the warning signals of the end of the American family when parents can’t control their children anymore?”

  “Only according to people who’ve never had children. You can’t control teenagers. You can only hope to keep them alive until their hormones settle down and their brains kick back in,” Delice explained, finishing the coffee.

  Sally looked at her empty cup. “Do you think I could get some OJ?”

  “Not today. We had a product recall,” Delice said.

  “A product recall on orange juice?” Sally asked.

  “Trust me,” said Delice, “you don’t want it.”

  Sally wasn’t inclined to give that too much thought. “But you’ve got to get him to tell the truth. This is about murder, Delice.”

  Delice was the Vince Lombardi of Laramie—all offense. “Don’t lecture me, Mustang. I do crack down on him now and then, and I can reduce him to tears when the situation calls for it. If I thought his lying about the piggin’ string meant he killed Monette, I promise you, he wouldn’t have a chance. I’d take him down to the courthouse myself and show old Scotty Atkins exactly how to work him over until he confessed.”

  Now Delice sat back in her chair and put her hands in the pockets of her jeans: jingle jangle. “But Jerry Jeff didn’t kill Monette Bandy. He just plain couldn’t do it. I know mothers are always the last to admit that their kids are psycho, but I’m telling you, mine isn’t.”

  “They’ve got some of the evidence back from the state crime lab,” Sally told her. “Scotty’s going to make JJ go down to the courthouse today and look at the piggin’ string.”

  “I know that. Dickie told me yesterday. I can’t stop them from taking him in. In fact, I’m glad they’re doing it. It’s barely possible he’ll have something useful to say. But my guess is that, short of torture, JJ won’t tell even that pigheaded Atkins anything he doesn’t want to tell him. He’s not ready. Dickie already tried the good-old-uncle-sheriff approach; I doubt Scotty’s tough talk will be more effective if he doesn’t have anything more to hold over my kid than a stupid piece of rope.

  “Look, I don’t doubt that Jerry Jeff’s done brainless things—fooled around with girls, maybe done some dope—things I’ve probably threatened to kill him for. Whatever he’s hiding, he figures it’s serious enough that it’s easier for him to keep quiet than deal with the consequences of spilling it, but not so bad that if he doesn’t tell, somebody might get hurt. That balance could change any time. For now I think we’re going to have to keep reminding him that whatever he’s covering up isn’t going to get him thrown in jail, but it might help Dickie find out something important.”

  “Maybe I could talk to him,” said Sally. “I mean, it’s not like I’m his mother or a cop. I’m not really an authority figure in his life. We get along great.”

  Delice considered it. “Hmm. And of course, he does realize that you haven’t exactly been a perfect little angel all your life.”

  Sally narrowed her eyes. “What have you been telling him about me?”

  Delice laughed. “Let’s put it this way. As his mother, I am forced to admit that I myself might have done one or two things that I would prefer he not feel compelled to try out. We’ve had those conversations about sex and drugs and borrowing the neighbors’ car to enter in the demolition derby. But it would undermine me with him to own up to everything, so some of the time, when I’m giving him an example of the kind of stuff he’s not supposed to do, I generally borrow a little from your life story.”

  “Borrow!” Sally exploded. “You didn’t tell him it was me who drove up on Dickie and Mary’s lawn that time we smoked all that hash and decided to deliver that pizza right to their door!”

  Delice hung her head.

  “You didn’t tell him about the time I busted that jug of Almaden at the midnight movie at the Nixon Theater?”

  “It could have happened to anybody,” Delice said, charitably.

  “You didn’t suggest that I was the one who got kicked out of that hippie restaurant on Ivinson for spitting out my dinner and accusing the cook of making phlegm burritos?”

  “No!” Delice exclaimed. “I told him that was Hawk.”

  They looked at each other. “It was Hawk, come to think of it,” Sally admitted.

  “Maybe you could talk to JJ at that,” Delice agreed. “It’s bound to make me look good, anyway.”

  Then, abruptly, Delice changed the subject and began bullying Sally about the events of Tuesday night. Sally reflected that it was probably true that if Delice hadn’t been able to get anything out of Jerry Jeff, Scotty Atkins wouldn’t do much better. Delice could have had a great career in the Spanish Inquisition. Reluctantly Sally gave up the whole story, down to the shredded teddy and the message on the mirror. She went on and told her about the unpleasantness out at the rodeo, and figuring that Delice would eventually find out about her tussle with Bone, she threw that in too.

  Delice’s dark eyes flashed. “Shit!” she exclaimed. “There go another pair of salt and pepper shakers!”

  Sally turned to follow her gaze, and saw a very nice-looking family getting up to leave, the mother pausing to add a sugar dispenser to her bag.

  “Excuse me, ma’am!” Delice yelled. “Could I have a minute?” The family froze. And then, in a much softer voice, Delice told Sally, “If she just hands them back and tells me they crawled into her purse, I’ll let her off. If she doesn’t, I’m going to spoil their vacation.” She leaned over and clasped Sally’s hand. “You’ve got problems, girlfriend,” she said. “I’d be your bodyguard if I could find somebody who’d keep the customers and the help from walking off with everything in the place. Hawk’ll have to handle it. Do you want to borrow a gun?”

  “Sure,” said Sally. “I want to shoot everybody in town. NO, I don’t want to borrow a gun. I don’t need a gun.” And if she did, of course, Hawk had several on hand. But she didn’t, because Sally would not, under any circumstances, use one.

  “Talk to JJ,” Delice told her as she hurried off. “He’s working this morning, and supposed to go to the cop shop after that, but he’ll be home later in the afternoon.”

  In truth, Sally was mortally sick of talk. Ever since Monette’s murder, it seemed as if she’d done nothing but react to other people and yak about the latest crazy events. At the moment all she could do about Monette was to show up later in the afternoon to help paint signs for the parade. It was one more form of talking and reacting.

  Enough. The time had come to swing into action. For a historian like her, that could mean only one thing: going to the library. She couldn’t raise Monette from the dead, but she could do Molly Wood a favor (and help Hawk out, and distract herself from the matter of murder) by finding out what she could about the land upstream of Molly’s potential new home in the Laramie Range.

  For Professor Sally Alder, a good research library was church, stadium, theater, and battlefield all rolled into one. She particularly loved libraries in the summer, when the only people around were unlucky students, dedicated diggers, and a staff much less hassled than usual. She planned to put in a couple of hours in Coe, the university’s main library, do a littl
e background reading and then head up to the archives to root among the railroad documents. She figured she could find out a hell of a lot with maybe five hours’ work. That would be five hours she wasn’t thinking about honky-tonk angels.

  She began with the catalogues, online and card (aesthetically she preferred the latter), looking up books on the Laramie Mountains and on the railroad in southern Wyoming. Finding what she wanted, she took the stairs. Up on the third floor the stacks stood dark and full, waiting for her. There were a few students studying at tables in open areas, but other than that, the place appeared to be hers. Seeking solitude, she headed for a desk in the shadowy far corner of the stacks, and then went to gather books. Soon she returned, piled the books on the desk, and went silently to work.

  Hunched over her books and papers in the silver-gray fluorescent gloom, so lost in the past was Sally that when she looked up an hour later, she didn’t at first comprehend the sensation that gripped her. Clenched muscles in the middle of her body, tight jaw, chills running shoulder to fingertips. Three seconds later the feeling had a name: terror. She was absolutely certain that somebody had followed her, was watching, lying in wait.

  Once again room tone tipped her off. The breathy aspirations of library quiet had shifted, just a bit, just the fraction of one more soul, inhaling, exhaling.

  Slowly she raised her eyes from a memoir by a woman who’d found a job with the Union Pacific during World War II, a book titled I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad. She’d just gotten to a chapter where the woman joined an all-female crew that was working in a newly constructed railroad tie plant in the Laramie Mountains. Sally knew she was on to something, but the awareness of somebody else, prowling close by, held her fast. Trying to make as little noise as possible, she marked her place, closed the book, took off her reading glasses, and rose half out of her chair to peer over the high back of the library desk. And then she heard it, the faint sound of a book being slipped back into place on a stack shelf, sliding with a soft ssh between other books and then hitting the back of the shelf with a muffled thump.