A Reckoning in the Back Country

by Terry Shames

  She smirks. “Too tired! That’s an old geezer talking.”

  I give her narrow eyes. “An old geezer who’s your boss.”

  She flaps her hand at me, dismissing the threat. “I’ll be ready to go as soon as you are.”

  “Before we go, tell me what you found about the woman who sued Wilkins. Did you talk to her?”

  “You know me. I think the direct way is the best way. I didn’t call. I went to her house. Well, her apartment. She lives with her husband.”

  “Had she heard that Wilkins was dead?”

  “Yes, somebody apparently had seen it in the San Antonio newspaper and told her.”

  “What did she have to say about it?”

  “Plenty. She said she was glad he was gone, that he deserved anything he got, that he was the devil, yada yada. I know I should feel sorry for her. What happened was terrible. But she was a whiner. I hate that.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Sixties. Both her and her husband are in bad shape. It looked like the only thing they do is eat and watch TV. It’s clear what they spend the lawsuit money on. They had the biggest TV I ever saw, and two big recliners. Her husband sat there like a lump watching football the whole time I was there.”

  “Did you ask if she ever saw Dr. Wilkins after she filed the lawsuit?”

  “She said he tried to get in touch with her, but she wasn’t having any of it. After the surgery, Wilkins blamed the mistake on the nurse. She figured all he wanted was to talk her out of suing him by saying it wasn’t his fault.”

  “Is it just her and her husband?”

  “They have one son, but she whined that he never came to see them.” She shudders. “I can imagine why. The place made me claustrophobic. And she’s so negative it would drive you crazy. How can you feel sorry for somebody who feels so sorry for herself? She uses up all the sorry in the room. I was prepared to think the worst of the doctor, but by the time I got out of there, I wasn’t so sure.”

  “You might change your mind when you know more about him.”

  “Like what?”

  “He was gambling, and it looks like he was hiding money from his wife. His kids were barely speaking to him. Even his friend Dooley says he went downhill after that lawsuit.”

  “Sounds like maybe he deserves what he got.”

  “Not the way he died . . . nobody deserves that.”

  She looks at her watch. “I’m going to go get changed. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

  She’s back in fifteen. I haven’t heard from Margaret, but I figure she should be home soon, so we head out to the lake. If she’s not home, I can show Maria the site where Wilkins’s body was found.

  On the way I tell Maria about the possible connection of Wilkins’s death to his gambling on dogfighting. “Seeing how he was killed, and the fact that he was gambling, I can’t help wondering if he got himself tangled up with some people in that business.”

  “That would sure give him a good reason to run,” she says quietly.

  I look over and see that her back is rigid, and she’s staring out the side window so I can’t see her face.

  “You know anything about that?”

  She turns back to me, anger in her eyes. “Unfortunately, I do. I have cousins who go to dogfights and cockfights. A few years ago at a family reunion, one of them was bragging about it. I was a teenager. He said he went to Mexico to a dogfight. It made me sick. I went home and cried. My papa said he was trash.”

  I could tell her about my own experience with dogfighting, but I’ve never told anybody, not even Jeanne, and I’m not going to start now.

  Margaret Wilkins’s car is in the driveway—a modest little Toyota. When get to the door, I see that it’s slightly ajar. I knock, but there’s no answer. “Maybe she went next door,” Maria says.

  “Maybe.” But I have an uneasy feeling. Margaret Wilkins is not the type of woman to leave the door open. I rap on the door, and when there’s no answer I push on it. “Margaret? Are you here?”

  At first I hear nothing. Then a thump.

  “What was that?” Maria asks.

  “Margaret?”

  Another thump. “We have to go in.” I hope we find Margaret somewhere in the back, dragging boxes out of a closet, but I don’t think so. If that’s what it was, she would have called out. The sound comes again.

  “You have your gun?” Maria asks.

  Of course I don’t. “It’s in the glove compartment.” From her giant handbag she draws the compact Smith & Wesson that she favors.

  “What are you doing with that in your handbag?”

  “I didn’t take the time to strap up before I left the house, okay? I’ll go in first,” she says and steps in front of me, gun leveled. “Margaret!” she yells.

  This time the thumps are frantic. We can’t risk going in too fast, in case someone is holding her hostage, so we ease around the walls of the front room, heading toward the hallway. When we get there, I grab Maria’s arm and pull her back. “Cover me,” I whisper. I move along next to the hallway wall and peek into the first room I come to, a small bedroom. Maria scoots in and clears the room. The thumping is coming from farther back. The next room appears empty, and Maria clears it as well. Then we come to a bathroom with no places of concealment.

  We creep up to the last door, at the end of the hall. “If there’s anyone here, you need to come out,” I yell. I jerk my head to Maria and she comes up behind me. The door is halfway open. I fling it back and there on the floor is Margaret tied up and gagged. I start to move toward her.

  “Wait!” Maria says. She eases into the room, looks behind the door, and then moves to a closet and flings it open. Nobody there. Another door leads to a bathroom. “Clear,” she says as she leans over to peer under the bed.

  Margaret’s gag is a scarf tied tight around her head, covering her mouth, and when I remove it, I see that she was hit from behind. There is a lump and matted blood. As soon as the scarf is gone, she gasps and words spill out. “Oh, God, I thought no one would come. When I heard you, I banged my feet on the floor. I was afraid you wouldn’t hear me and you’d leave me here.”

  Maria crouches next to her, puts her hand on her shoulder, and looks into her eyes. “Take it easy, we’re here now. You’re okay.”

  I untie her feet while Maria gets her hands. They’ve been tied with scratchy rope, and her wrists are raw where she tried to wriggle out of it.

  “Let’s get an ambulance out here,” I say.

  “I don’t need an ambulance.”

  “Sorry, it’s procedure,” Maria says, though it isn’t really. But I agree that Margaret’s head wound needs to be looked at. She sits with her knees up to her chest, crying quietly, while Maria steps into the hallway to call for the ambulance. I do my best to comfort her.

  When Maria comes back, she crouches down again and puts an arm around Margaret’s shoulders and talks soothingly to her. Finally Margaret quiets down enough that I can ask her to tell us what happened.

  She insists on getting to her feet so we help her up. She’s wobbly.

  “Let’s get you something to drink,” Maria says.

  We guide her into the kitchen and sit her down, and Maria pours her a glass of water. She’s shivering, and Maria goes back and brings her a sweater.

  “I was so scared,” Margaret says. “They kept asking where the money was. I told them I didn’t know what they were talking about.”

  “Did you get a look at them?”

  “No. They had masks over their faces.” Which is probably why she’s still alive.

  “Start from the beginning and tell us everything you remember.”

  She tells us that she had just arrived home when someone knocked on the door. “I thought it was Gloria from next door. When I opened the door, two men with hoods over their faces pushed me inside. It was too fast for me to even scream. One of them hit me on the back of the head and I blacked out. When I came to, I was tied up and they started telling me they wanted th
eir money.”

  “What did they say exactly?”

  She rests her head in her hands. “They said something like ‘your husband has our money.’ I realized they must mean that money you found in the SUV. I was afraid if I told them you had it, they’d kill me. So I said I didn’t know what they were talking about. They said ‘don’t play dumb, he must have told you.’ I said no.”

  “What did they say to that?” Maria asks.

  Margaret whimpers. “One of them cursed, I think. I don’t remember.”

  “It’s okay,” Maria says. “You’re doing fine.”

  “What can you tell me about the men?” I ask. “Were they tall? Short? Did they have an accent?”

  “Both a little taller than me. One of them was wiry. The other one was a little heavier.”

  “What are you, five foot eight?” Maria asks.

  “That’s right.”

  “And an accent?” Maria asks again.

  Margaret cocks her head as if she’s listening. “Both of them had soft voices.” I remember thinking that they were doing something so awful and yet their voices were soft. In a way that was almost scarier.”

  “Did they have long sleeves? Did you see their arms?”

  “Yes, they had long sleeves, but . . . oh.” She looks at Maria. “I do remember. I saw the hair on the back of their hands. One had light hair, the other was darker.”

  “Very good,” Maria says. “I know it’s hard to concentrate, but try to think of anything else that might have caught your attention. A limp, or a funny way of moving, or an odd phrase.”

  Margaret puts her head in her hands. “All I could think was that if these were the men who killed Lewis, were they going to turn dogs on me, too. I was so scared.”

  Maria had told the hospital on the phone that there was no need for an ambulance siren, but they use it anyway, which means we hear them come blaring up. From the car I hear a little yipping sound. Apparently Dusty doesn’t like what the sound does to his ears.

  Maria goes out to meet them, and when the medical team comes inside, Margaret looks panicky. She tells them that she doesn’t think she needs to go to the hospital, but they take a look at her wound and tell her it’s best if she has it looked at. “You might have a slight concussion,” the older of the team says.

  “I’ll come to the hospital,” I say. “Do you want me to call your kids?”

  A shadow passes across her face. “No. Don’t.”

  “Margaret, do you remember if either of the men touched anything while they were here?” Maria says. “I’d like to try to get some fingerprints.”

  She looks on the verge of tears. “I don’t know.”

  Margaret insists that she doesn’t need a stretcher, but they tell her that at least they want to take her in a wheelchair. When she gets up to walk, she wobbles and sinks gratefully into the wheelchair.

  After she leaves, Maria and I gather up the ropes and scarf used to tie her up and look for other evidence, but we find nothing. We decide that I’ll take Maria back to get her car, and she’ll come back to dust for prints while I go to the hospital.

  When we get outside, there are a few neighbors hanging around, wanting to find out what the ambulance was doing here. A man who says he lives three doors down says he heard about the murder. “Did somebody else get killed?” His wife is standing next to him, looking frightened.

  “No, it was an accident,” I say. Maria darts a glance at me. She probably thinks I should warn people that someone had broken in and attacked Margaret. I would do that if I didn’t think this was something particular to the Wilkinses.

  On the way back I have a chance to run my ideas by Maria. “I told you that when I found the money in the SUV, I thought Wilkins was planning to go on the run with it, but the fact that these guys who attacked Margaret asked her where it was suggests to me that he was supposed to give it to someone. So why didn’t he give to them?”

  “Maybe he was on his way to turn it over and someone else abducted him,” Maria says. She has Dusty in her lap and is stroking him behind the ears. He leans his head to get the best angle.

  “So whoever killed him didn’t know he had a bag full of cash with him.”

  “That seems obvious,” she says. “But if they weren’t after the money, why did they kill him? Was it a grudge? A random attack?”

  “It was too specific to be a random attack.”

  Maria is quiet, so I don’t say anything. She’s got her stern look on, so I know she’s working on the problem. “Look,” she says, turning slightly to face me. “It’s an awfully big coincidence that he owed that much money to someone and that someone else had him killed.”

  “But still, if whoever killed him knew he had money to pay off a debt, they would have searched the car. The stash wasn’t that hard to find.”

  She nods. “So we’re looking for two suspects. One who killed him and one who was willing to attack his wife to find the money.”

  We arrive at the station, but neither of us makes a move to get out of the car. “I’m thinking the attack on Margaret was odd,” I say. “Why tie her up and demand the money? Why didn’t they begin by telling her that her husband had a debt to pay and they expected him to pay it, and they were there to collect? There was plenty of time to get rough if she said she didn’t know anything about the money.”

  “Maybe they thought she killed him and took the money.” Her dry tone says she doesn’t really believe that, but we are no closer to solving the riddle.

  Maria checks the back of the squad car to make sure the forensics kit is shipshape, and when she’s ready to go back to Margaret’s, I say, “Be careful. They left her tied up for a reason. Maybe they were planning to give her some time to think it over and then they were coming back to try again.”

  “What are you going to do with Dusty while you’re at the hospital?”

  “I’ll take him. He’s used to being in the box.”

  “Yes, but he needs to be out playing. Why don’t I keep him while you’re gone? No telling how long it will take you.”

  “He’ll get in your way.”

  “No, I’ll put him in his box in the kitchen while I work.”

  “I know a sneaky excuse when I hear one. I better look out, or before I know it you’ll take him over.”

  On the way home from the hospital, I stop and pick up Dusty from Maria’s. I tell her that I’m no wiser than I was when I went there. “Margaret swears she knows nothing about the money her husband had with him, and that she can’t remember anything else about the two men who abducted her.”

  It’s after eight when Ellen calls to say she made it back to town.

  “Would you rather forget about getting together tonight? You sound tired,” I say.

  “I am, but I’d like to see you. We can tell each other Thanksgiving stories. I’ll bet yours was better than mine.”

  Guilt washes over me, and my heart plummets, but I tell her I’ll come over.

  On the way home I had stopped and picked up some salads and cold cuts at a deli in Bobtail, so I tell her I’ll bring them. Nothing exciting, but a little different from the Mexican food we usually end up with if Ellen isn’t cooking.

  Ellen usually holds back. She’s cautious by nature, so I’m surprised when she opens the door and throws her arms around me. “I’m so happy to see you,” she says, reaching up to kiss my check. Frazier is a terrier, and full of energy. He dances around at our feet, yelping. I bend down and ruffle his ears, and he suddenly takes a step back, sniffing. He must smell the puppy. I have to coax him to let me scratch his ears.

  Ellen leads me into the kitchen. “I hope you don’t mind; I opened a bottle of wine before you got here. I need a glass. In fact, I may need two glasses.” She likes white wine, while I prefer red, so I’m surprised to see that she has opened a bottle of pinot noir.

  I finally really look at her. There are dark smudges under her eyes, and she has the anxious look that she used to have all the time when I first met
her, the result of being married to a bully. A bully that she has spent part of last weekend with. For all I know, she has spent the whole weekend with him, and maybe even in his bed. But it’s also possible that I’m trying to assuage my guilt by thinking she’s guilty.

  She pours me a glass and drinks a healthy swig of hers. She’s usually a sipper. She opens the bag of food I’ve brought and starts bringing out the items. “Oh good, egg salad,” she says.

  “While you dish it up, I have something else to get out of the car.”

  I go outside and get Dusty. Back in the house, I walk into the kitchen. With his ears perked up, Frazier eyes what I’m holding. Dusty takes the opportunity to yip sharply.

  Ellen whirls around. “Look at him! Where did you get him? Can I hold him?”

  “If you don’t think Frazier will be jealous.”

  She takes Dusty from me and cuddles him. Frazier stretches up onto his hind legs to see what Ellen is up to, so I crouch down to give him a good scratch on the back and behind the ears. I tell Ellen the short version of how I came to find Dusty.

  “Poor little guy.” She nuzzles him. “Can I introduce him to Frazier?”

  “Sure, set him on the floor. Let’s see what Frazier does.”

  Frazier rushes over to him, and for a second my heart pauses. What if Frazier decides to take a big bite? The puppy is not big enough to defend himself. Frazier sniffs him all over and then steps back and gives a low growl.

  “No, Frazier, be a good boy,” Ellen says.

  Frazier decides that being a good boy would be better accomplished if he backs away with a baleful look.

  “Oh, Frazier, come back. You’re my good boy.” He stops at the doorway and pouts.

  I scoop up Dusty. This is Frazier’s territory after all.

  “Tell me what you’ve been up to while I’ve been gone,” she says once we’re sitting down to eat. The two dogs have settled at our feet. “You told me you had Thanksgiving with Jenny and Will. Did you have fun?” It’s almost as if she knows and is poking at me.