AMayhar - The Conjure

by The Conjure (v1. 0) [lit]

  Parker bent forward, his eyes bright. “Why didn't you tell us about him before now?” The question had a vicious edge. “Why didn't you pull him in for questioning? He might well be part of the drug bunch."

  Cole stared at him, raising his eyebrows. He felt himself getting mad again, and he did his best to hold it down. “Mr. Parker, Choa's people have been down there since the Spanish ruled here. Never in over two hundred years have they given anybody an ounce of trouble.

  "Besides, nobody knows where he lives, and better men than me have tried to find him to get him to show them the best fishing holes and such. Those that have so much astalked to him you could count on one hand and have fingers left over.

  "He has no money, doesn't want money, and wouldn't do anything to GET money, they tell me. I've lived here, man and boy, for fifty years, and I've never seen him, though I grew up on tales about his family and later about him.

  "He might have heard something or seen something, or he might not. And even if he did, you could feed him to the gators, one leg at a time, and he'd never answer you if you asked him questions the way you just asked me."

  He felt better as he saw Parker digest his words. The man didn't believe him, of course, because that kind couldn't imagine anybody that didn't worship money. But Parker knewhe believed what he said, and that was good enough. The sapsucker couldn't find a big turtle in a small mud puddle, much less an Indian in a swamp.

  After the DEA man left, the highway patrolman asked his question, got his answer, and went on his way. Then the deputies leaned against the wall, as if the starch had suddenly gone out of their backbones, and began to bitch about their past week's duty.

  That was fine. They were good boys and knew a sight more about the bottomlands than any federal man. He let them have their say, nodded judiciously, and gave them all the rest of the day off. If he had to keep looking for a drug stash that probably was all the way out to sea by now, he'd do it with people who weren't tired to the bone.

  After they left, he got down to the paperwork he had neglected while worrying about having Feds looking down the back of his neck. Myra returned from her break and picked up the figures he'd put together toward next year's budget, and when she was gone he leaned his chair back against the wall and stared at the ceiling.

  Harland Fielding was working for somebody who was deep into the drug trade, that was all but certain. He wanted Ranse to secure those drugs for them, if somebody stumbled across them.

  If he did, Cole stood a good chance of losing everything he'd worked so hard to achieve. He'd straightened out his life, dammit! Why should he have to keep suffering for something he did when he was too young to know his ass from a hole in the ground?

  Besides, Mae was vulnerable. Without his salary and the medical coverage, they'd never be able to pay for her treatments.

  If he didn't do what Harland asked, he might lose his life, and Mae might well lose hers. That was the choice, and now he knew how it felt to be caught between a rock and a hard place. Even if he could find some unsuspicious way of getting rid of Fielding, the Man who stood behind him would always be a threat.

  Whoever he was, he did a good job of finding out what went on in the County, too. Had informants planted all through the courthouse, probably, and maybe even things like bugs in the telephone system. Maybe in the computer system, too.

  Cole straightened his chair and stared at his telephone. Two could play at that game, he thought. He had a fellow in his jail who'd been caught in a federal operation aimed at finding computer hackers. That boy could do just about anything with one of those gizmos, he'd heard. Could he fix something that would track down the information Cole needed?

  It was worth a try, he decided, whatever came of it. He picked up the phone and called the jailer.

  "Sissy? You got young Kramer over there still? Nobody's come and picked him up yet? Good. You just put him in the interview room and keep him till I get over there. I need to talk to that boy."

  He rose, hitched up his belt to settle his old fashioned revolver on his hip, and stalked out of his office. Callhim old fashioned, would they? He was about to usetechnology , by God, to do what had to be done.

  Anybody into drugs big-time was probably using all kinds of computers and modems and such to do his deals. If a slick and somewhat crooked kid could just tap into that network—whooeee!

  Grinning, Cole cranked his car and headed toward the jail. Maybe things would work out, after all.

  CHAPTER X. Confrontation

  Stephen Parker was ambitious. Unlike many of his peers, he knew it and wasn't ashamed of it. This drug case was no big deal and was unlikely to make a name for the man who tracked down Parmelee and his cargo, but every little triumph added up. One day somebody farther up the hierarchy might check his record and see that Stephen Parker left no stone unturned, when it came to solving cases.

  That was why Parker went to the County Clerk's office, after his last talk with the sheriff, and got his own copy of the county map, with every dwelling marked and a key to the names of owners. Once he spread the thing out in his motel room, he found it hard to believe that human beings could bear to live in such isolated spots as some of those shown on the map. One tiny dot indicating a house would be surrounded by what looked like miles of land unmarked by more than dotted-line roads.

  He circled the swamp with a finger, trying to visualize the terrain again. It was a big area, and in the center of it there were no roads at all. Marsh was what the map indicated, and he'd been close enough to know it was right. Nobody could live in its middle, he was convinced. That meant that some of those houses marked as nearest to the low country had to belong to that Indian or to someone who knew how to find him.

  "I'm going to take one last look around,” he said to Phil Voorhes, who shared his room. “You get things buckled up here so we can take off this afternoon. I'll make one more pass down those dirt roads and see what I can scare up."

  He had in his pocket photocopies of the reports filed by the deputies. As he proceeded, he checked off the houses whose occupants had been questioned before, comparing answers given him to those noted by the local lawmen.

  Up one oiltop and down another he went, lining through names as he located the inhabitants, taking to dirt tracks whenever a marking showed a house there. Most of those were now empty, glassless windows staring blankly from gray walls, porch roofs sagging or fallen, but he checked out every one, just in case someone might be hiding there.

  He kept trying, and at last he turned across a cattle-guard onto a crooked two-wheel trail through the woods that showed recent tire tracks. A car had been here not long ago, he could see, and there was a black dot that meant a house at its end.

  He steered between great trees whose crowns loomed out of sight, making it dark beneath them. Never been cut, he thought, and wondered how that could happen in these days of expensive lumber. Someone was missing out on a fortune in timber money. The big companies paid major bucks for trees this large.

  He had to go slowly or risk breaking an axle, but at last he came around another dog-leg bend and found himself staring at an ancient gray house, one side of which was showing a definite sag in the roof. The other side, however, was roofed with corrugated aluminum that shone blindingly in the sunlight.

  A battered tomcat stared at him from the porch. Pots of geraniums and ivy, as well as flowering bushes around its edge, showed the touch of a gardener.

  Recalling the warning one of the deputies had given him about barging into yards unannounced, he tapped the car horn, three sharp, impatient hoots. In a moment the screen door opened and a tiny figure in a faded cotton dress moved to the steps.

  "Who's that?” she yelled. He looked at the map. Lena McCarver was listed as owner of record. The second body had been found after deputies had visited her and had seen circling buzzards.

  "Mrs. McCarver?” he called. “I'm Stephen Parker, with the DEA. I'd like to talk to you a minute, if it's all right."


  "MissMcCarver,” came the instant reply. She made her way to the gate and looked him up and down. From her expression, he thought she wasn't overly impressed with him or his connection to the federal government, but at last she nodded.

  "On the porch,” she said, turning. “Too hot out here in the sun."

  She gestured toward a battered splint chair and took her place in the ancient swing. “Now what could I do for you? A couple of lawmen have already been out here, when they located that last body. I couldn't tell them anything then, and I can't tell you any more now."

  It had been a long time since Parker had questioned someone he felt he couldn't bully. His job, his credentials, and his steely resolve, wedded to innate lack of sympathy with any human being, good or bad, usually did the job for him.

  Now he looked into slanty black eyes set in a face lined by many years and a lot of weather and felt doubt creep into his resolve. This little old woman wasn't a bit awed or cowed or even uncomfortable.

  Parker leaned forward, putting on his boyish expression reserved for persuading silly old women that black was white. “Now, Ma'am, I'd think you know just about everything that goes on down here. Do you know a man named Choa? I'd like to talk to him."

  "I been asked that before, and the answer was just the same. I see Choa maybe twice a year. I don't know where he lives, because it's so far off and hid in the swamp that nobody can find it. What you want with him, anyway?"

  Parker chose his words carefully. “The sheriff seemed to think this man has no money and doesn't want any. We both know that can't be true. Everybody needs money, just to live on, if nothing else. I think he might be a source of information about this drug deal, if I could find him."

  The black eyes grew even sharper. “Choa's had no money since the last time he worked outside, which is more years than you've lived. He hates the outside, and he needs no money any more than his Indian ancestors did. If you think he'd deal with drug people, you're even dumber than you look, which is plenty."

  Parker decided that his usual ploy wasn't going to work with this one. He narrowed his eyes threateningly. “Withholding information from a federal official is...” he began, but suddenly he found he couldn't speak.

  The woman's hand lifted, fingers moving as if weaving a web. Parker's body rose to its feet and stepped off the porch onto the ground. Struggling to control it and completely unable to, he found he was being marched back toward the car, the woman following behind him, muttering.

  Her footsteps seemed unnaturally loud as she came to the gate and manipulated his hands and legs to open the door and work him into the car. “Don't think to sneak back out here and arrest me,” she said in a conversational tone.

  "The owls watch for me. The tomcat tells me. The crows and the hawks cry out to warn me. You can't sneak up on a McCarver, Parker.

  "Next time I see you, I'm just liable to sticky you up and march you out into the swamp until you sink in the muck for good. Keep that in mind. Now drive!"

  Suddenly he found himself in control of his own body again. He put his hand on the door handle to reopen it, but instantly it froze in place, and again he could not move.

  Lena McCarver came to the window and peered into his eyes. “You're not in town now, boy. You're not in Washington or your office, wherever it is, with all the other fools who think they know the real world. This is MY real world, and I'm the boss here. Remember that."

  She straightened and pointed back down the road. “Now get, before I do something we're both going to regret."

  Then he found himself driving along the shadowy track, feeling as if the trees themselves were staring down at him with contempt. He could hear a shrillskree high above, and he thought about her words.The hawks cry out to warn me ...

  He put his foot down and sped around the bends at reckless speed, kicking up a storm of dust behind his wheels.

  This case was in the hands of the sheriff, and he found himself perfectly satisfied to let it remain there permanently. Still, it stuck in his craw, letting an old biddy like that get the better of him.

  When he returned to the motel, one of the deputies was sitting in a chair, shooting the breeze with Voorhes. Parker greeted him, saying nothing about what had just happened for a while. Then he couldn't resist asking about that old woman down in the woods.

  "Philips, do you know an old woman named McCarver? Lives way down toward the river in a house that a good sneeze could blow down."

  Philips shot a sharp glance at him. “You been down there? My God, man, don't you know a good place to avoid if possible? That old lady scares the socks off people. I wouldn't visit her unless I got a direct order to."

  Parker shook his head. “There's something odd about her, I'll admit, but she wouldn't weigh eighty pounds, soaking wet. What on earth could she do to anyone?"

  "Just for instance,” Philips drawled, “she single handedly caught a couple of oversized bank robbers, some years back. And then she did something that riled the Air Force so they almost shit their britches.

  "I know an old fellow who takes her groceries out there, and he swore she had her yard plumb full of generals and colonels and all kinds of top brass, froze into oddball positions like a bunch of kids playing sling-statue. Said it was the funniest thing he ever saw, but it scared the life out of him, too."

  "Frozen?” Parker knew that description fitted what had just happened to him too closely to be coincidence. He felt a cold shiver down his spine.

  "Then a cousin of mine swore and be damned he was going to sneak some walnut logs out of her woods along the river. Bragged big about it, took a couple of his cronies from downriver with him ... and not one of them has ever been seen or heard of since.

  "The family didn't look very hard, but he'd of been back with his hand out, if he hadn't made the steal. If he had, he'd have spent all the money and been back wanting his Papa to give him more."

  Philips looked at his watch and rose. “Got to get back to work. I just thought I'd use my break to tell you fellows goodbye. I don't ever expect to be able to say we've found those drugs—or Parmelee, either.

  "You may not know it, but this county has been run like a train by big money for a couple of hundred years, and big money likes anything thatmakes money. The sheriff isn't a bad fellow, but there are strings tied to him. You can bet on it.

  "Every public official in this County except Washington Shipp, the police chief, has an invisible halter around his neck. The other end is in the hands of old families with money. I expect before they get through they'll find a way to halter Shipp, too. Or kill him, whichever looks best at the time."

  Philips looked around as if to find a hidden listener. “If you tell anybody I said that, I'll deny it with my dying breath!"

  Parker sighed. He was ready to get back to his office, where nobody had to worry about witches or officials who might hide things from him. This crazy town and county were past history, as far as he was concerned. He insisted silently to himself that this was The End, as far as he was concerned. Something still niggled at him, anyway.

  He and Voorhes loaded their luggage into the car and headed north, both silent, both obviously thinking hard. Before they got onto the Interstate, Parker picked up his cell-phone and spoke to his superior.

  "There may be a law enforcement problem in Templeton ... the county, too,” he told Davidson, after identifying himself. “We got a leak from inside. We might need to check it out."

  "So what else is new?” Davidson drawled. “Every little bitty town in Texas has crooked cops and sheriffs and judges and police. You know that, Steve. You sound odd—something happen to you?"

  Parker shuddered, but he managed to control his voice. Nobody was going to believe what had really happened to him, and he didn't intend to say a word about it. He didn't want people thinking he had lost his mind.

  No, let some other agent snoop around in the swamp country. Crooked lawmen he could deal with, but wicked little old women with gestures that stopped you col
d and made you march to their beat were something else again.

  "No, Sir,” he said. “We're on our way back to the office. I'm ready to dictate my report while we drive.” He touched the off button and looked over at his companion.

  "Step on it, Phil,” he said. “I really would like to get home tonight.” And that was no lie. Yet something inside told him he would be back, whether or not he wanted to return.

  CHAPTER XI. The Watcher

  Wim Dooley was used to being ignored. Hell, he did his best never to be seen at all, and he had a shrewd idea he'd gotten so good at it that he might even beat Possum Choa on his own ground. Indeed, the boy had been practicing all summer, doing that very thing.

  He had watched Choa sit on his porch, run his trotlines, dig his edible roots and tend his garden. He figured he was the only person, man or boy, who could find Choa's cabin every time he looked for it.

  It was the grief of the boy's life that he hadn't been down in the swamp when those drug runners were there. Dooley would have bet his life that Choa had been paying attention and knew just what happened. He intended to do the same, when he grew up and was independent.