Hud continued pushing forward, stopping behind a tree when the need arose. He zigged and zagged back to where he had come from in the beginning. There were some questions he wanted to ask the owner of the boat company, the tall man Moran had been talking to when he’d arrived. Like, “Why didn’t you look for the stolen boat in the small cove before you called the police. With the leaves off the trees, it would have been easy to see.”
It hadn’t made an ounce of sense to Hud that Sherman was sitting there waiting to flee. There was more going on than what had initially appeared to be a simple case of theft. There had to be.
Chapter Twenty-One
A rusty old Jeep sat behind the boat company. It had a tear in the canopy top and the rust looked like an angry red rash had attacked the metal, spreading without regard to anything in its path. It wasn’t long before the tall man that Moran had been talking to hurried out the back door, his eyes focused on the Jeep and nothing else. The Open sign still sat in the window, and the man was in a big hurry.
Hud stepped out from behind one of the big pines that edged the road. “You got a second?” he said. His .45 rested at his side, firmly in his grip.
The man stopped a few feet from the driver’s door. His face went pale. “Sure, I guess.” He stared at the gun, trembling.
Hud flashed his badge at the man, let it linger at eye level long enough for him to determine that it was genuine, then stuck it in his back pocket. “I’m Detective Hud Matthews. I just need to ask you a few questions.”
“I know who you are.”
Hud squinted, looked at him closer. He still didn’t recognize the man. “Do I know you?”
“Hard to say, ’less you ever had a boat worked on here. I was the head mechanic till Old Man Curlew died, then I bought the place outright from the estate, if you want to call it that. Charlie Sandburg’s the name if’n you don’t recall. I knew Gee from the local business owners’ association in recent years. She was a good woman, that one. You have my condolences on her passing.”
“Thank you,” Hud said. He glanced at the man’s hands. He had oversized knuckles and they were permanently stained a lighter shade of black from all of the oil and grease he’d handled in his lifetime as a mechanic. “The only boat I ever had had oars.”
“Then I guess we wouldn’t’ve crossed path then, would we?”
“Probably not.” Hud sized up Sandburg all over again, then focused on the ignition key clutched firmly in the man’s big right hand. “You in a hurry?”
“Got a part to run after.” There was no hesitation, no flinch that suggested a reason to be questioned. It was a quick, believable answer.
“Nobody else here?”
“Nope.” Sandburg shook his head and never broke eye contact with Hud. “I pare things down in the winter. I got a motor rebuild going on that’ll keep me busy for a month, then I’ll be sweepin’ the floors and watchin’ the barn owls get ready for spring. They got a nest up in the north corner that’s been there since before I come along. Curlew said it was there before his day, too. Hard tellin’ how many generations have came and went after all these years.”
“Yeah, hard telling.” Hud nodded, then said, “I want you to think about your answer to my next question carefully, but first you need to know that Leo Sherman’s dead. He was shot in the head. Didn’t feel a thing.”
“You do that?”
“You think I’d be standing here if I had?”
Sandburg shrugged. “What do I know about how the law works?”
“You might want to think about it depending on how things turn out here.” Hud paused, looked past Sandburg, then briefly around, calculating an escape route the man might take if he saw the need to run like Sherman had. “How come you didn’t look in the small cove before you called the police about the stolen boat?”
Now the hesitation came. Charlie Sandburg looked at the top of his boots, a soiled pair of Doc Martens that looked like they’d been resoled more than once. “You know Leo Sherman?” he finally said.
“That’s not the answer I was looking for.”
“It should be. He’s an innocent man.”
“Was.”
“The thought of such a thing makes me sad. Lost his wife, then his own life. For what?”
“Maybe you can tell me if you knew him that well?”
“I knew him.”
“I need more than that . . .”
“He was the CO for a lot of years. What do you think? Of course I knew him pretty well. He stored his personal boat here along with the state’s boat once the lake started to freeze. Didn’t take them anywhere else. You get to know a man over the years by the way he takes care of things. They tell you stories at the counter waitin’ for this or that. ’Specially the full-timers. Vacationers, they come and go, and more glory to them as long as their checks don’t bounce. Snotty-nosed bastards want everything now and don’t want to pay the goin’ rate for a damn thing. You ought to know that. You lived off those folks all your life.”
“When I was kid.”
“Don’t matter. You know what I mean. Leo was a rare breed, a real friend of nature. I never knowed of anything he killed that he didn’t eat, and I think he felt bad about that. He fished mostly for the sport of it, catch and release. Even the rule breakers, the ones without a licenses, and such, if he could see a way clear of it. He had no heart for trouble, which makes all of this more of a tragedy than it should be. Yup, biggest tragedy I can ever recall ’round these parts. That enough of an answer for you to put that gun there away? It’s makin’ me a little nervous. I knew Leo Sherman as a good man, that’s it.”
“Everyone agrees with you. Did you know him well enough to let him hide out in your shop?” Hud made no effort to put away the .45. He didn’t even acknowledge its presence.
“That’d be harborin’ a criminal and obstructin’ justice, wouldn’t it?”
“I thought you didn’t know much about how the law works?”
“I watch TV cop shows and read a Travis McGee novel every now and again, but I figure that’s all made up stuff.”
“Sure you do.” Hud casually raised the .45 so it was level with the man’s head. The end of the barrel was pointed at the bridge of Charlie Sandburg’s nose.
The tall mechanic trembled. “Don’t I get a lawyer?”
“We’re just having a friendly conversation that no one knows ever existed. You give me a reason to arrest you, then I’ll Mirandize you properly. But at the moment, what happens here is just between us. Who do you think is going to believe you once I can prove you hid Leo Sherman in your shop if you claim otherwise?”
“And I’m supposed to believe that I’ll get my rights starin’ down the ugly end of a gun?”
“Believe what you want. The only way this gun’s going away is if you tell me the truth, what I want to know. Otherwise, we’ll just have to see how far you’re willing to take this charade you’re playing.”
Sandburg sighed, lowered his head, then nodded. “All right, I let him stay here.”
Hud returned the nod. “I figured as much,” he said, then lowered the gun back to his side. “Now, answer my original question. How come you called the police to report the boat stolen when you knew where it was.”
“He was goin’ to give himself up, claim his innocence. He couldn’t stomach the thought of folks thinkin’ that he killed Kaye, and it was gettin’ harder and harder to hide. It was just a matter of time before someone came along and flushed him out. We both knew that. He didn’t want to get me in trouble, too.”
“Why’d he run?”
Charlie Sandburg stared Hud directly in the eye, and said, “‘I don’t know. Maybe he saw you. He was gonna give himself over to that deputy . . .”
“I spooked him?” Hud took a deep breath, then looked upward for a long second. “Did he ever tell you who he thought the killer was? Why he ran in the first place?”
“He was tryin’ to help that Sizemore girl. Don’t know why, or how they was
connected, but he had a soft spot for her. I guess he thought it’d look bad if he was known to be cavortin’ with a known druggie, but I don’t know that for sure. As far as who’s behind the killin’, well he never came right out and said it, but he thought there was a turf battle of some kind goin’ on, and Pam Sizemore got herself caught in the middle of it somehows.”
“A turf war with who?”
“Local people and an outfit from Chicago, but that’s how it’s always been ’round here, isn’t it? Locals versus the big city folk. I wish they’d just leave us the hell alone,” Charlie Sandburg said, sadly. “Can I go now?”
“When was the last time you took a ride with Gee, looking for your mother?”
“I don’t know, a few years back. I came home for one thing or another and she asked if I wanted to go for a ride, so we did.”
“Where’d you go?”
“The usual places, then we stopped at the Ferris wheel. It was closed by then. Things had already fallen apart. It was a relic from the past collapsing into the lake like everything else. I think she thought her time was getting short, and she reminisced about her life here as a girl. Got her first kiss on the Ferris Wheel, if I recall. She had fond memories of how things were.”
“She talk about your mother?”
“No. Didn’t mention her.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“We’ve already established that you don’t believe me, so why would I try to convince you otherwise?”
“To entertain yourself?”
“I don’t have any place else to go, do I?”
“Noted.”
“She apologized. Wished she could have been a better mother to me since I didn’t have one in the important years. A father either, for that matter. I think she thought she failed me in one way or another.”
“Because of how you turned out?”
“You’d have to ask her that.”
Hud had left the Crown Vic parked at the boat company. The first thing he did after climbing into the car was dig out a cigarette and light up. As he took the first long drag, he watched Charlie Sandburg drive off to wherever he was going. The old Jeep rattled up the gravel drive that led out to the main road and disappeared. There was no need to detain the man any longer. Burke could question him if he wanted to, but Hud was satisfied with the answers he’d gotten. Troubled, but satisfied. The idea that he might have spooked Sherman hit him deep in the gut. He was responsible for the man’s death if that were the case. But still, how had the shooter known where Sherman was?
He looked up the empty road and saw nothing as another question for Charlie Sandburg formed in his mind: Did you call anybody after Sherman fled? If so, who was it?
Hud fumbled the cigarette as he reached for the ignition. How could he have not thought about that, asked the mechanic if he’d had contact with anyone. You’re slipping, Hud.
He flipped the cigarette out the window, then started the car, expecting it to roar to life, but it choked and sputtered then died. He tried to start the engine again, but the cylinders wouldn’t fire. The starter turned and turned but wouldn’t catch. He jumped out of the car, intent on popping the hood, but something else caught his eye. The round door to the gas tank was standing wide open. He hadn’t noticed it when he’d got in the car to leave. It only took a quick look, once he was close enough, to see that a thin pile of sand lined the lip of the gas cap. Someone had jammed up the engine by pouring sand into his gas tank. He wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
That realization brought another immediate cause for concern: He was standing out in the wide open, unprotected, without a way to escape. He had his .45, his wits, and a police radio, and that was it.
Hud took a short breath, then jumped back into the Crown Vic. He half expected to hear the thunder of a gunshot follow him inside, but all he heard was the sound of a police siren off in the distance.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hud had two choices, and neither was one that he favored. He could call for help over the radio and face Burke sooner than he wanted to, or hoof it back home, get Gee’s car, and go from there. Burke was most likely busy with the murder scene, so Hud had time to avoid him. There was no use going back there—Moran could fend for herself. If he called for help, told dispatch he was stranded because someone put sand in his gas tank, then Burke would know where he was and start barking orders over the radio. He didn’t want that, either. Which, of course, left his only alternative to leave the boat company on foot. It was a huge risk, but so was just sitting there and waiting for whatever happened next. Not the way he wanted to die. For all Hud knew, he was in the shooter’s bead right now. If he was going to die, he wanted to be doing something, anything, not waiting around for death to come to him unannounced.
He had navigated the maze of trails behind the boat company before. But that had been when he was a kid. His secret paths had probably grown over, changed, were lost to time and memory. It frustrated him that the past was the only thing that could save him, get him home. He’d been trying to avoid that since he’d come back from Detroit, and, like almost everything else since then, he’d failed miserably. He longed for a swig of Wild Turkey and a jukebox blaring in the background, drowning out his thoughts and fears.
The sun had started to fall toward the western horizon, fertilizing shadows, adding a gray cast to everything behind it. Clouds were starting to roll in, and the breeze had transformed, just like the light, changing from comfortable and pleasant to a mad whisper that promised trouble was on the way. Hud had no idea whether it was a storm or not. He hadn’t been paying attention to the sky. But now that he was, he knew by the looks of the clouds that he’d better get moving if he was going to make it home.
Wind suddenly swirled around Hud as he got slowly out of the car. If he’d held the .45 any tighter, the tips of his fingers would go numb, but he couldn’t help himself. Every muscle in his body was tense, on alert. He was the mouse on the lookout for an owl.
It’s no different now than it’s ever been, he said to himself. The streets of Detroit were no fairy tale either. Still, Hud preferred to look his monsters in the eye. Gang bangers were cocky enough to walk right up to you. Did the shooter put the sand in the gas tank?
Hud scuttled away from the safety of the car, from the lifeline that shelter and the radio offered. He had no handheld, but he did have his cell phone on him. That was a mild comfort. He dodged in and out of the tall pine trees that dotted the landscape before they accumulated into a full forest. Once he reached the rear of the boat company, Hud stopped and took stock of his surroundings all over again. Alone. He still seemed to be alone. Except he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched, that there were a pair of eyes on him, waiting for him to make a wrong move, a final mistake.
“You said your mother said everything was going to change, that she was in love.”
“Yes, I said that.”
“Did you ever find out who that was with?”
“Gee said my mother didn’t tell her, and as far as I knew at the time, she really didn’t seem to have a big circle of friends, you know, girlfriends to confide in, that kind of thing, so there was no one to go ask really.”
“Why not?”
“I guess she was a loner.”
“I’m not sure I totally buy that.”
“Me, either, really. I guess the closest person she had to a friend was Helen Burke, but I think that’s mainly because I was friends with her son. I was in and out of Burke’s house a lot when I was a kid. It was the first place she’d come to look for me if she needed me to come home. Sometimes, she would stay, and her and Helen would smoke cigarettes and drink iced tea or lemonade on the sun porch. My mother loved a good lemonade. Especially if it had a little vodka in it.”
“How long have you and Burke been friends?”
“I think I’ve known him all of my life. One day he was just there, and always has been.”
“But you were best friends as kids
, right?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I don’t think I’ve ever said that.”
It was dark and shadowy inside the woods. The outside world disappeared, and Hud was instantly reminded how deep and thick the way home really was. If he hadn’t had a good sense of direction, it would have been easy to get lost, at least until he figured out where the lake was, then he could trail the shore. Time in a big city had numbed Hud’s comfort in the natural world.
The bright sunlight that had been so prevalent when he was out in the boat seemed like a distant memory; gloominess surrounded him like it had been sent on a mission to restrain him. Wind pushed all around Hud, coming from every direction, rattling the dried and brown weeds that had thrived on the ground during the summer, and what leaves remained on the trees. No birds spoke or sang, nor were there any to be seen. Hud was the only living creature willing to show himself in the forest. Everything else had been successful in their run for cover. Everything except him.
He hurried down a ravine, followed a well-worn trail, and hoped beyond hope that he would make it home before all hell broke loose, that the shooter wasn’t following him—or waiting for him behind the next tree. He looked over his shoulder, felt his heart race as he picked up speed. The wind pushed at his back. The smell of rain invaded his nose. He hated feeling like the mouse, the bottom of the food chain. He wasn’t used to it at all.
The rain started to fall just as Hud reached the parking lot of the shop. He looked up to see clouds roiling overhead, an angry black and gray swirl that threatened to dump buckets of water instead of casual drops. By the time the rain hit his face, the wind had blown it sideways, and it was cold, felt like it was on that precarious borderline of freezing, making life even more miserable than it promised to be if he didn’t hurry up and make it inside the shop. Ice was not a worry. The ground was too warm to allow it to form. Thunder rumbled behind him. The ground under his feet vibrated in a deeply concerning way. But the weather and its impending force were the least of his worries. There was a car in the lot that he didn’t recognize and a person standing at the front door waiting for him, trying to stay dry under the extended eave that shielded the shop’s entrance. Even in the grayness and dim light, it was easy to see that he had nothing to fear. While he didn’t recognize the car, he did recognize the person. It was Goldie Flowers.
Where I Can See You Page 14