Coffin Man

by James D. Doss

  * * *

  Citizen Whitsun sucked in a deep breath. “Hey, Morris,” the burly handyman bellowed. “It’s me—Freddy.” He frowned at the damaged door. “You okay?”

  Nary a peep from the custodian.

  Whitsun took the doorknob in hand, turned it gently, and pushed the door open just enough to poke his shaggy head into the inner twilight. “Is there somebody here?”

  Some body was … somebody was not. What remained of Morris Meusser was the residue thereof.

  Whitsun blinked at the man on the parlor couch and swallowed hard. I sure hope Morris is asleep. He approached for a better look at a purple bruise on the prone man’s forehead. He don’t look like he’s breathing. The worried man pressed a thumb under his friend’s jawbone. Oh, Lordy—there ain’t any pulse at all! He took another look at Meusser’s gray face. I never saw anybody who looked deader than that. At that very instant, Whitsun noticed a detail that startled and horrified him. To verify this disagreeable discovery, he leaned to squint at the dead man’s chest. Sure enough … Some lowlife thief has pinched Morris’s pocket watch right off his vest! Obviously, the same lowlife who had cut the phone line and pried the door open.

  The way Freddy Whitsun saw it, a killing was one thing—in a fit of anger, fright, or self-defense, even a decent man might bop another fellow on the head without the least intention of doing him any serious harm. Whitsun had done this himself a time or two. But to steal from a corpse? That was miles over the line.

  As the room began to spin slowly around him, the big man made a grab for an armchair. When the dizziness did not subside, he eased his bulk into the convenient seat. Thus stabilized, he began to absorb the enormity of what had happened. I can’t believe my old buddy is really dead. A single tear coursed its way down his leathery cheek. This is the awfulest thing that ever happened in my whole life. Without warning, Whitsun’s massive frame began to quake with a horrible shudder that shook every joint in his body and rattled his teeth. Overcome with grief, the big man began to wail and then to weep. As if to stop the flow, he pressed both hands over his eyes. It seemed this pathetic paroxysm might never end, but even the most violent thunderstorms have a way of passing quickly. After a few moans, his huge shoulders ceased to heave; his reddened eyes had no more tears to shed.

  There were important things to do here, and Freddy Whitsun was the man on the spot. Cool as blue alpine ice, Yukon cucumbers, and November’s frosty breath, Morris Meusser’s outraged, grief-stricken friend got up from the armchair, marched out the front door, and made a beeline for his van. Freddy Whitsun got his mobile phone out of a plastic toolbox, leaned his butt on the truck, dialed the appropriate three-digit number, and provided a terse report to GCPD dispatcher Clara Tavishuts: “I just found my buddy Morris dead in his little house at the cemetery.” Pause. “Yes’m—Morris Meusser, the custodian.” Shorter pause. “Yes’m, I’m sure he’s dead.” The caller responded to another query. “I’m Freddy Whitsun.” A deep intake of breath. “Yes’m, I’ll be here when the po-leece show up.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  GCPD’S TOP COP TAKES CHARGE

  SUNDAY, 9:40 A.M.

  The chief of police skidded his GCPD unit to a stop between its black-and-white twin and the Mr. Fixit van. Like a fighter pilot ejecting from the cockpit of a craft going down in flames, Scott Parris fairly exploded from his unit. Giving Freddy Whitsun a glance as he passed by, the beefy cop barreled into the custodian’s quarters—and stopped on a dime when he saw the dead man on the parlor couch. Towering over GCPD Officer Alicia Martin, Parris glared accusingly at the corpse as if it had committed some particularly odious social offense. “State cops’ll show up any time now, not to mention our favorite medical examiner. Before things get really noisy and confusing, gimme the essentials.”

  The petite blonde in the dark blue uniform began the recitation by advising her broad-shouldered boss that the victim was one Morris Meusser, who was—make that had been—custodian of the Granite Creek Cemetery for as long as she could remember. “Morris must’ve been in his midseventies.” It was almost impossible to believe he was dead. “Nice old fella.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “Body was discovered shortly after 8 A.M. by Freddy Whitsun, who stopped by for coffee and a game of checkers.”

  “I know Whitsun—and Meusser too,” Parris said abruptly. “Those two’ve been buddies for a ’coon’s age.”

  “I haven’t got a written statement from Whitsun yet, but he looked like he’d cried his eyes out.” Martin wiped a speck from her left eye and cleared her throat as she pointed to a telephone on an end table by the couch. “If Meusser had tried to dial 911, he wouldn’t have gotten the call through. Before the perp pried the front door open, he cut the phone line at of the terminal box on the outside wall.”

  Parris was mildly surprised at this unusual precaution. “This wasn’t an ordinary dope-addict burglary that turned into a killing—this guy had homicide on his mind and he thinks about something before he does it.” Which puts our chances of arresting the sly bastard someplace between slim and none.

  Nodding her agreement to both the statement and the thought, Officer Martin took a deep breath. “We’ll get the official word from Doc Simpson later on, but you can see that the victim’s forehead has suffered trauma.” She pointed her miniature laser flashlight at the corpse; the ruby dot jittered on the purple bruise. “Funny thing, though—the perp didn’t take the victim’s wallet.” She waited for the boss to reach the obvious conclusion.

  Parris did not disappoint. “Probably because his work was interrupted.” The cop followed this train of thought. “The killer was probably here when Freddy Whitsun showed up.” He blinked at Martin. “So what did he take?”

  She knelt by the couch. The dead man’s face was smiling, perhaps (she thought) at something amusing known only to the deceased. “Meusser always carried a Hamilton pocket watch. It’s been ripped right off his vest—along with the chain and fob.”

  Parris was pleased to hear that the killer had taken something that would be easy to identify. “What kind of fob?”

  “An old coin.” Officer Martin tilted her chin to smile at the boss. “Five-dollar gold piece.”

  The chief of police grinned at the lady with the extraordinary memory for detail. “You absolutely sure about that?”

  “Mm-hm.” Miss Martin closed her blue eyes to recall the image of the custodian’s treasure. “Half eagle.” She opened her eyes. Both of them sparkled at the boss. “Minted in 1867.” She dangled the bait. “Which was a memorable year.”

  “Sure.” Parris made a wild guess: “That’s when the Civil War was over.”

  With some delicacy, Officer Martin cleared her throat.

  The man who couldn’t recall what he’d had for supper last night glared at the show-off cop. “What?”

  “Unless memory fails me, General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.” Please, please please ask the right question. The cop crossed her fingers, wished upon a star, and so on and so forth.

  Say what you like about absurd superstitions—it worked.

  Parris grinned. “Okay, Little Miss Smart Britches—what’s so special about 1867?”

  Feigning surprise at such a question, Martin assumed her big-eyed expression of astonishment. “I’m sure it just slipped your mind, but that was the year when Mr. Samuel Clemens—known more widely as Mark Twain—made his famous steamboat trip to Europe and the Middle East. That journey was the basis for Innocents Abroad, for which he gained national acclaim.”

  “Oh, right.” Martin needs to find herself a man and get married and have a couple a kids.

  Matter of fact, that was precisely Miss Martin’s aspiration. And she was looking the man right in the eye. Hardly a week went by when she didn’t pause to daydream about how elegant MRS. ALICIA PARRIS would look on her personalized stationery.

  Oblivious to either her amorous sentiments or matrimonial intents, the mildly myopic cop grunte
d his way into a painful squat and got a closer look at Morris Meusser’s scuffed leather vest—where a buttonhole was torn through. That’s where the bastard ripped off the watch chain. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and the pocket watch with the gold half whatzit will show up in a Denver pawn shop.” Parris scratched at a two-day growth of itchy, bristly stubble on his chin. “That gold coin on Meusser’s watch chain—I wonder how valuable it was.”

  “That depends upon the quality, which I would judge as ‘very fine.’” Officer Alicia Martin paused. “And of course on the number of half eagles minted in 1867.”

  “Go ahead, Martin—show off.”

  She blushed. “Just under seven thousand.”

  “Don’t be so danged modest.” The moderately overweight cop grunted his way up from the painful squat. “We both know you can do better than that.”

  The Lady Who Could raised her chin. “Six thousand nine hundred and twenty.”

  The boss nodded agreeably. “That sounds about right to me.” His tongue-in cheek remark was interrupted by a literal sound. Eight rubber tires crunching gravel.

  Parris and Martin went to the open doorway to see a sleek Colorado State Police Chevrolet follow the Granite Creek County medical examiner’s van into the driveway. Reminding Officer Martin of a slightly tipsy Father Christmas, the merry old M.E. was laughing as he told his youthful driver a grisly joke. (The one about a couple of big-city elk hunters, an ill-advised rifle shot, and a startled country veterinarian. If you haven’t heard it, be thankful.)

  Like the late Mr. Morris Meusser, Doc Simpson loved his work.

  While the medical examiner probed the corpse’s various orifices with precision thermometers, fiber-optic viewers, and other instruments of his morbid profession, the chief of police turned his back on the unseemly spectacle and checked his wristwatch. Charlie goes to the early service, so he ought to be getting out of church right about now. Scott Parris placed a call to his sometimes deputy and caught the Southern Ute tribal investigator as Moon was pulling out of the St. Anthony’s parking lot. After a mildly sarcastic “Good morning,” the pale Caucasian cop gave his dark Indian friend a thumbnail sketch of the homicide, including the detail about the missing pocket watch and gold-coin fob. Parris terminated the forty-second executive briefing by advising Mr. Moon that he was “on the time clock at your usual rate,” and invited his part-time employee to “… please drop by the cemetery at your earliest convenience.”

  Which, since the Catholic church was not quite a mile away, was about three and a half minutes later.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MR. FIXIT

  It was a chilly Sunday morning, so to keep his companion warm Charlie Moon left the Expedition engine idling and the heater on. The young lady who was occupying the passenger seat had not uttered a word since Moon had taken the call from Scott Parris. One of Sarah Frank’s many endearing traits was that the nineteen-year-old kept quiet when she didn’t have anything to say. A corollary to this singular virtue was that she did not trouble Moon with pesky questions such as, “What’s this all about?” But even a girl with tight lips cannot help what her big eyes say.

  The skilled poker player was about to open the car door when he read the query under Sarah’s arched brow. Grimly eyeing the winking lights of three squad cars and the ME’s van, Moon replied, “Police business.” Enough said.

  Sarah winced as the heavy door slammed shut. “Well I could see that.”

  Outfitted in his gray Sunday-go-to-meeting suit, the lean, lanky Ute pulled the matching gray Stetson tightly onto his head and adjusted the silver-veined lump of turquoise on his bolo tie. Feeling sufficiently spiffy for a dinner date with Patsy Poynter, he took several long strides toward the khaki-clad chief of police.

  Breaking off his conversation with Freddy Whitsun, Scott Parris waved at Moon. He also gave Sarah Frank a snappy salute.

  “Can’t stay more than a few minutes, Scott.” Moon jerked his chin to indicate the Columbine flagship puffing exhaust. “I promised Sarah a breakfast at the Sugar Bowl.”

  “This won’t take long.” Parris nodded to indicate the man who had discovered the corpse. “Freddy’s not exactly anxious to tell me all the gory details, so I asked him to wait till you got here from St. Anthony’s—that way he won’t have to do it twice.” He turned an expectant gaze on the dead man’s friend.

  Whitsun sucked in a deep breath that puffed up his broad chest, and got right at it. “It was like this, y’see. I drove over this morning to see Morris…” He hesitated, then clamped his mouth shut.

  Parris prodded by asking what he already knew: “About what time did you show up?”

  “Oh, not long after eight o’clock.” Knowing what was expected of him, Whitsun made a valiant attempt to tell the lawmen what they needed to know. And choked again.

  Embarrassed for the witness, Charlie Moon turned his head to glance at the handyman’s beat-up van.

  Whitsun’s eyes followed the Indian’s gaze. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Most weekends I stop by to have some coffee with Morris, and we generally play a game or two of checkers. Ever’ now and then, he’ll have a little job of work for me to do.”

  The cattle rancher, who’d been through some hard times at the Columbine, felt sorry for the man. “Business a little slow, then?”

  Whitsun nodded. “Some days, I don’t get a single call.”

  Parris snorted. “You ought to drop by Wanda Naranjo’s place.”

  The entrepreneur stared blankly at the town cop.

  The chief of police explained, “Couple a days ago, Mrs. Naranjo called a plumber who didn’t show. She appreciates men who turn up right on the dot and know how to stop leaks under her sink.” Parris winked at Moon. “And there’s lots of crumbly old pipes in her house that need fixing.” He beamed a toothy smile at Freddy Fixit. “I expect she’s got enough work to keep you busy for a month.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Whitsun licked his lips. “I mostly do carpenter work and roofing and painting and the like, but I never was much of a hand at fixing water pipes and such.”

  Charlie Moon steered the drifting conversation back on course. “So what’d you find when you showed up at Meusser’s place this morning?”

  Freddy Whitsun hesitated again. After exhaling a sigh, he began. “When I got here, I saw right off that his door was all busted up.” The handyman pointed his chin at the custodian’s cottage. “Right after that, I saw that the phone line had been cut. I hollered some but Morris didn’t answer back, so I poked my head inside and there the poor fella was on the couch.” Anger flashed in Whitsun’s bleary eyes. “Some no-good thief had pinched his pocket watch and chain—the one with the gold piece on it.” A pause. “And Morris was dead as a … I don’t know. One a them ocean fish that dies soon’s it’s taken outta the water.” He thought about it. “A mackerel.”

  Scott Parris posed the obvious query: “Did you notice anybody in the cemetery when you showed up this morning?”

  Freddy Whitsun shook his shaggy head. “Not a living soul.” While Moon maintained a poker face and Parris smiled, the superstitious witness shuddered. “And I’m glad to say, I didn’t see no haunts.” The handyman was tempted to mention his eerie sense that someone had been watching him as he stood at Morris Meusser’s front door. But that’d sound pretty silly.

  IT’S AN ILL WIND THAT BLOWS NO GOOD

  Such as a stray twenty-dollar bill sailing down a ghost town’s main street to hit the sole surviving member of the community smack in the face. Here’s another one—a long, slow rain shower drifting onto a destitute rancher’s thirstiest section of pasture. Or, in the current instance, a regular job and a comfortable place to hang his hat for a handyman who’s down on his luck and more or less living out of his truck.

  As is often the case, the Good arrived right on time and in a highly effective disguise.

  The lawmen’s conversation with the witness who had discovered Morris Meusser’s corpse was abruptly terminated whe
n a sleek black Lincoln came creeping along the cemetery lane at the posted limit of fifteen miles per hour, turned into the custodian’s crowded driveway, and braked to a sedate stop behind Charlie Moon’s Expedition. The driver, a nervous-looking little man in a black three-piece suit, emerged with the instinctive caution of a citizen who wears both a belt and suspenders. Spotting the threesome, he approached warily, regarding both the lawmen and the handyman with an expression of concern that might have been a mask. “Is it true?” he asked in a half whisper. “Is Mr. Meusser actually dead? And did someone really club him to death?”

  Scott Parris’s solemn nod assured the manager of Granite Creek Cemetery that he was correct on all counts.

  George R. Hopper wiped a spotless linen handkerchief across his forehead. “This is absolutely terrible.”

  “It’s pretty grim,” the chief of police agreed.

  “Oh, you don’t know the half of it.” Hopper flailed his spindly arms. “It will be a terrible scandal—a dead man found in our lovely cemetery!”

  Charlie Moon turned his face away.

  Scott Parris bit his lower lip.

  Freddy Whitsun stared blankly at the stricken man.

  As oblivious to the dark humor in his remark as Mr. Fixit was, the cemetery manager shook his head. “I’ll have to submit to interviews with the newspaper and radio stations, maybe even cable TV. It will be a horrible disgrace!” But the canny capitalist could see a potential bright side to the calamity: After all the fuss dies down, the publicity might drum up some business. It was a matter of branding, and from now on Granite Creek Cemetery would be etched in the public’s memory—a final location to be reckoned with. We might even attract clients from Salida and Durango. But there was a downside that could not be sugar-coated. “With Mr. Meusser absent, as it were—I’ll have to hire a replacement custodian.” Hopper glared at the lawmen as if Scott Parris and his part-time deputy were responsible for his troubles. “You have no idea how many hoops the federal and state governments make me jump through when I must hire someone—not to mention those tedious bureaucrats over at the county courthouse.” He glared harder at Granite Creek’s top cop, whom he considered a peripheral member of that clique of parasites.