AMayhar - The Conjure

  He had hardly finished the exercise when an ear-splittingcrack exploded through the trees, echoing in his head as he watched unbelievingly. The chopper dropped into the quagmire, one blade angled strangely and seeming to try to turn around its rotor shaft.

  Before it could do that, the chopper splashed into the gunk below it and sank. Someone dived out the open hatch from which the detector had dangled, but the top of the hatch caught him in the back as the chopper went down like a rock, taking its passengers with it.

  "God!” Wash gasped, and he felt Wim huddle against his side, trembling.

  "Is there any way to get ‘em out?” Wim asked in a shaky voice.

  "If we had a winch and a float and several men to help us, plus a tractor or two, we might get the wreckage out. Nobody would be alive by the time anybody could get to them, though,” Wash told him.

  "By now they're down there with the deer skeletons, the bears and bobcats and surely a million turtles and such that have gone down for a thousand years. Did you ever hear of anybody even trying to get somethingout of there?"

  "Far as I know, only me'n Possum Choa even know where it is,” the boy said. “Nobody else ever comes here."

  Wash began to stand up but stopped abruptly, putting out a hand to keep Wim down, too. Beyond the sinkhole, in the shadows of the trees, a dim shape moved toward the edge of the hole. It carried a rifle, which it leaned against a cypress before going to the very edge of the morass.

  Wash reached for his sidearm, but Wim grabbed his arm. “That's Possum Choa,” he said. “He put that thing there, and he made sure nobody ever got it out again. Seems fair to me, since there's nothin’ anybody could do for those men, anyway."

  Wash sank back on his heels, thinking hard. All his instincts told him that he had seen murder done. Yet his head told him that at least one of the men in the craft had caused murder to be done hereabout for many years, using the hands of others to pull triggers and wield tire irons and do other and even more cruel things to those he wanted dead or terrified.

  It wasn't law, but it was justice of a sort, he supposed, as he rose and stepped into the narrow strip of open ground that edged the sinkhole. Across the troubled ripples, now settling again into smoothness that was occasionally troubled by a burp of escaping air from beneath the surface, the shooter looked into his face.

  So this was Possum Choa, he thought, and he almost shivered at finally meeting the legendary hermit. The old man had lived down here most of his life, and he was protecting his own turf, it was clear. Wash couldn't find it in him to blame him.

  "Was that Nate Farmer?” he called to the man beyond the hole.

  A deep voice rumbled, “I expect so. He found out where his stuff was,whatever it was, and he couldn't let it rest. Had to get his hands on it or die. You kin see he died tryin'.” The old man shrugged. “You going to arrest me and take me in for killin’ him?” he asked.

  Washington Shipp shrugged in turn. “You didn't shoot anybody. Far as I can tell, you shot athing , not a man. No law against shooting machinery that I know about. At least not down here in the bottomlands."

  Choa grinned, his teeth a pale flash in his dark face. “Then I'll go moseyin’ home,” he said. He stepped back and caught up the rifle. Then, like some spirit of the swamp, he disappeared among the shadowy tree trunks.

  Shipp looked down into Wim's eyes, which were wide in his pale, freckled face. “We had us a fishing trip, Wim, don't you agree? Came down here to fish and got ourselves lost and wandered around almost all day finding our way out again. I've got my pole and tackle box in the trunk of the car, in case anybody asks. Did you see anything unusual?"

  Wim's color began to come back, and his eyes lost their worried look. “Didn't see a thing except critters and birds,” he said.

  They smiled at each other as they turned to wriggle their way back into the shelter of the big trees. As far as Wash could see, Choa had saved the county a big batch of money, without costing the taxpayers a dime.

  CHAPTER XXIV. A Sneaky Way to Go

  Ransome Cole was feeling pretty good. Mae was staying with her sister Ellen, out of danger, while he fixed up the damaged house and put it on the market. He had prepared his resignation for the County, to be submitted in three months. He figured that was just about enough time for him to put some plans into action that might clean things up a bit and then let him get out of the way before the axe fell on the crooks.

  His inspiration about getting information through computers had turned out to be so successful it staggered him. He'd never thought of himself as being all that bright. Sammy Kramer had managed to hack into banking systems and census records and every possible sort of list all over the world. The boy said he could disencrypt anything anybody could put into cipher codes, whatever that meant.

  His quarry had a list of accounts, some in the Cayman Islands, all coded to numbers that could be traced back, through a web of false identities, to Nathan Farmer, connecting him firmly to Harland Fielding, Oscar Parmelee, and a man who had seemed too elusive to nail down. Carlos Monteverde now lived in Dallas, Mexico City, and just about anyplace he chose.

  Strangely enough, he was originally from Templeton, Texas, where his ancestors had settled on a grant from Spain, before the Anglos appeared on the horizon. It was the old family account at the smallest bank in Templeton that had given Kramer the clue connecting Monteverde with the other local bad hats.

  Ranse didn't understand how Sammy managed what he had done, but he now had the printouts locked in the office safe, plus copies mailed to himself in care of his wife's sister. Another set was with an old friend, who swore he'd send them to the Justice Department if anything bad happened to the sheriff.

  The worst problem he could see was the fact that there was no way to inform Monteverde about what he had done, in order to protect himself. Still, probably Farmer hadn't even told his big boss about a local sheriff''s rebellion. That would be penny-ante stuff to a man like Carlos Monteverde, who was so rich and so unobtrusive that he considered himself invisible to the law..

  Myra opened his office door and said, “Chief Shipp is here, Sheriff. Can you talk to him?"

  Cole nodded and straightened his tie. When Shipp entered the office, he looked up, as if he'd been deep in paperwork. “Wash. Good to see you, man. What kin I do for you today?"

  Shipp looked odd. If Cole didn't know better, he'd think the man was excited, but he'd seen the Chief handle messes that would have bothered King Kong. Never had seen him flustered. Now there was a strange gleam in his eye.

  Shipp sat in the visitor's chair, his back straight, his regulation hat on his knee, but when he spoke there was a highly unusual note in his deep voice. His words were altogether unexpected, too.

  "Sheriff, I've known you for years. Never knew you to actually hurt anybody, and I don't think you're crooked, at least not nearly as crooked as the people you work for. I'm going to ask you a question, and if your answer satisfies me I'm going to tell you something."

  "And if it doesn't?” One thing Ranse knew beyond question was that Shipp was straight, so this was no set-up.

  "Then I won't tell you. But I think, since your house burned, you've been looking around kind of slow and careful, and I expect you've learned some things that make you think. I can maybe add something to that. What do you say?"

  Cole thought for a moment, but it was a short moment. If Shipp was setting him up, there was no hope, anyway. “Ask away,” he said.

  "Do you still have any connection with Harland Fielding and Nathan Farmer?"

  That was a shock, but now he could answer the question truthfully. “I did a few favors for Fielding, over the years, but never anything really crooked and nothing that hurt anybody. Recently I cut off the connection all the way, which I figure is the reason my house got bombed. They've got too much nasty stuff they've begun dealin’ in to suit me, and I didn't want anything to do with ‘em."

  Shipp nodded, his gaze searching Cole's face. He nodded aga
in. “Can anybody hear us in here?” he whispered.

  Cole rose. “Let's go get a cup of coffee, Chief,” he said. Since Kramer showed him how easy it was to listen in on conversations, using your own phone system or simply a listening device outside the building, he had become a lot more cautious than before.

  "We'll drive over to Rosie's; let's use your car, if you don't mind. Mine's developed a ... knock."

  One thing about Washington Shipp, Cole thought. He was quick on the uptake. He rose at once and they went together to the police car parked outside the courthouse.

  Only when they were beyond the main part of town, turning down the quiet street on which Rosie's cafe was situated, did he sigh and say, “Now we can talk, Wash. What's goin’ on?"

  Shipp seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “Sheriff, I was down in the river bottoms Sunday. Took a little boy I know fishing. We got turned around—you know better than anybody how you can do that, under those thick treetops—and we heard a helicopter moving back and forth across the bottomlands."

  He seemed to expect some reply, so Cole nodded. “Been there many a time and got lost more than I stayed found. So what was that chopper lookin’ for, do you know?"

  "Well, it seemed like it might be scanning for plantings of marijuana, but when it came by real low and close to a little clearing, I could see Nate Farmer in the passenger's side. He'd be more likely to plant maryjane than to search for it.” He cocked his head, and now Cole knew something big was on its way.

  "Farmer, eh? If he was down there it's ninety to nothing he was lookin’ for that stash those dead men lost there this summer. Which tells me he was the one they was supposed to deliver it to. So what then?” For it was clear the story was not finished.

  "I wondered, after I got that glimpse of Farmer, just what was going on, so I got the boy to go with me and we sort of followed it, by hearing so to speak, till it started to hover over a sinkhole. You know how many of those there are in the swamp, and this was a big one. Biggest I ever saw or heard of.

  "We crept up to a thick spot that would hide us and watched, while the chopper started sort of trolling with a black box kind of device, going lower and lower. And then, out of the blue, I heard a terrible crack and one blade of the chopper bent, and the whole thing went down and sank out of sight quicker than it takes to tell the tale. I've been figuring since, and it must be a blade hit a tree branch and broke."

  Cole stared at Shipp, who was turning into the parking lot of the cafe. There was more to it than that, he would have bet his best socks, but he'd never get it out of the Chief.

  "You mean Nate Farmer's gone? Just like that? Why that would mean the county fathers would have to find an entirely new Big Crook to manage all the little crooks they control.” Inside he was thinking it also meant that Carlos Monteverde, on losing his inside man, might find it convenient to visit Templeton. Which would make things interesting.

  Shipp parked neatly and killed the engine. “Yessir, Farmer's gone, with whoever was piloting that chopper. We were lost, you remember, and it took us the rest of the day to find our way out. By then neither the boy or I could have found that spot again in a million years. And of course the men in the craft were long dead. Then it occurred to me that this might not be such a bad thing.

  "With Farmer gone, just like that, a lot of loose ends in his business are going to start to unravel, particularly since none of his people are going to have a clue what happened to him. Fielding isn't an idea man, just a strongarm, and I figure a smart lawman might get some information out of him if he went at it right.

  "Farmer wasn't the biggest Big Man, either, but likely he did all the thinking for his bunch. But of course you know more about him than I do, being as he's out of my jurisdiction."

  Cole began to grin. “Wash, let's just keep this between us, for the time being. Let Farmer's henchmen get nervous when he don't turn up. Folks make mistakes when they're off-balance, and when nobody knows anything about what happened to their boss they're going tobe off-balance, big time."

  He opened his door and joined Shipp as he went into the cafe. Over coffee they made small-talk, for the biggest gossips in Templeton drank coffee at Rosie's most of the day and part of the night. Retired men didn't have much to occupy their minds, and anything said at Rosie's, even in a whisper or back in the lavatory, was public knowledge (or misinformation) two hours later. Cole had wondered if Rosie didn't have some of those sophisticated spy devices herself, installed for the use of her customers.

  When Shipp dropped him back at his office, he called Myra into his office and closed the door. “Get me Deputy Philips,” he wrote on her steno pad. “And don't say anything aloud unless you want it known all over. I think we may be bugged."

  She looked shocked for a moment. Then she frowned, and he knew she had realized how some items they both thought were secrets had found their way outside the office, though only they two knew them. If the office was bugged, he could see her thinking, then he wasn't suspecting her of breaking faith, after so many years of service.

  "Got some filin’ for you to do, Myra,” he said aloud. “I think I'll go home and see how the workmen are doing. If anything comes up, you can call me on that cell-phone."

  "Yes, Sir,” she said, but she wrote, “I'll send Philips over there?"

  He nodded and left the office, hearing file drawers open and close. She'd do that for a bit and then find some reason to leave the place so she could get Philips on the ball. Smart woman, that Myra.

  He found one carpenter ripping out burned carpet to get to the floorboards of the living room. Another was on the roof, removing melted asphalt shingles. “You want to replace this with something fire-proof?” the man called down. “It's a wonder the whole entire roof didn't go up."

  Cole thought for a moment. “You know, I'd better put on a new roof. It would have had to be done in a year or two, anyway. You know that colored metal roofing? That'd be good. Fireproof. How's the price?"

  "Lower than it was, but higher than this cheap stuff."

  "Go the whole hog,” Cole said. “Insurance will pay for most of the work, anyway, and if I have the place in good shape it'll be easier to sell."

  He mooched around the yard, watering the grass and checking Mae's flowers, though she wouldn't see them bloom here next year, if he had any luck selling out. He was staring sadly at the workshop he'd built years before but had never had the time to use, when Philips pulled up in the driveway and came over.

  "You need me, Sheriff Cole?” he asked.

  Cole looked around. In the daytime, there was nobody at home in this neighborhood except those too old to work, but this was his own house, and it, too, might be bugged in some mysterious way.

  "Let's go for a walk, Deputy,” he said, heading toward the sidewalk. “I've got somethin’ I need for you to do..."

  CHAPTER XXV. Fishing in Deep Waters

  Washington thought hard about his interview with the sheriff as he drove back to his office. As soon as he finished with the stack of paperwork waiting for him, he leaned back in his chair, which had been comfortably broken in by his predecessor over the decades of his service, and thought long and hard.

  He knew he hadn't been entirely straightforward with Cole. Over his own years of sitting in this chair, he had run across a lot of sticky trails that led to Nate Farmer and, beyond him, to a shadowy figure who looked more and more like the last of the Monteverdes.

  There were other bad hats in town, of course, but they were small potatoes compared with Carlos. Wash had compiled a considerable dossier on the man, using federal facilities when he could and even Interpol, once, when he had done a favor for the police in Dallas and they offered him the chance.

  He was certain there were Colombian connections, and there had been a mention from Interpol of a Libyan connection, as well. That might explain the possibility of something dangerous and valuable having been in that shipment.

  He scooted his chair on its rollers and fetched up
against the filing cabinet at the back corner of his tiny office. Here he kept things unconnected with ongoing cases, yet which he felt would be convenient to have at hand. He took out that file and stared at it, turning the pages of printout.

  Then he took the bundle into the file room and photocopied the entire thing. Ransom Cole might be able to use this, and together they might stand a chance of nailing someone bigger than a tadpole like Harland Fielding.

  Cole's caution as they talked together had impressed him, so he told nobody that he was copying the file. He'd wrap it in with the bunch of reports that was ready to go, and he'd deliver it himself to Myra, as he drove home.

  Before he sealed the parcel, he wrote a note on a file card and inserted it into the dossier. That should set the sheriff's gears in motion, he thought.

  The next morning, he had been out to inspect the scene of a robbery when his radio in the official car sputtered, and his dispatcher said, “Chief Shipp, could you swing by the courthouse on your way back to the office? Somebody there wants to check some things out with you."