The Old Gray Wolf

by James D. Doss

“Yes. May I come in?”

  “Sure you can, honey.” Miss Poynter opened the door. “You’re right on time.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  HE MAKES AN ON-THE-SPOT DECISION

  His thin lips set tight as a steel trap, the Old Gray Wolf deliberately ran the illuminated Stop sign, made a tight (but not tight enough) U-turn in the intersection, bumped over a corner of concrete curb, uttered an oath appropriate for such a mishap—and headed back to the Poynter residence lickety-split—where he braked the pickup to a stop with a spine-jerking lurch.

  Was he upset? You bet.

  But a seasoned old pro does not make hasty decisions. After taking thought for about three ticktocks of his Hamilton pocket watch, the man under the cowboy hat deliberately eased the pickup forward until it blocked the driveway exit.

  THE NEIGHBOR

  An alert resident across the street had emerged onto her front porch with a small flashlight to look for the evening newspaper—and noticed the decrepit old Bronco pulling into Miss Poynter’s driveway. Mrs. Buxton had also seen the shiny pickup pass by slowly, turn around at the end of the block, and return to park in front of the Poynter driveway—thus preventing the exit of the SUV.

  Much like that tufted-ear squirrel gnawing on a cone in that spruce tree that abutted the small creek for which the town was named, she thought this behavior sufficiently interesting to pause and take careful note of. For a while, not much occurred that was worth gawking at—but presently her curiosity was amply rewarded.

  It is accurate to assert that the ultimate event turned out to be very interesting indeed, and that Mrs. Buxton shrieked like a woman who had seated herself on a prickly pear cactus that was in full prickle. She dashed inside her cozy home, snatched up the nearest cordless phone, and dialed 911.

  THE GRANITE CREEK PD DISPATCHER

  “GCPD—what is the nature of your emergency?”

  “This is Margery Buxton on Second Street—I want to report a fire!”

  Clara Tavishuts responded in a dull monotone, “What is the location of the fire, Mrs. Buxton?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—I can’t remember the number—but it’s right across the street from my house. And I’m at … oh, gracious—I just can’t think.” She closed her eyes. “I’m at 249 Second Street, so Patsy might be 248 or maybe 250—I don’t know for sure.”

  Clara Tavishuts knew the town like the back of her hand and the names of most of the residents and their pets. “Patsy Poynter’s house is on fire?”

  “Yes! Well, no. Patsy’s house is across the street, but it’s not on fire—it’s her car—well, not her car, but the car that parked in her driveway just a few minutes ago!”

  “Please stay on the line, ma’am—I’m dispatching the fire department.”

  “Well, hurry!” Mrs. Buxton turned to watch the blaze flickering outside her front window. If that car explodes and blows sky-high (they always did on TV thrillers) it’s liable to shatter my window and the pieces of glass will slice me up like a ripe tomato! Backing away from the window, she crouched behind the protection of an overstuffed La-Z-Boy recliner.

  Within a few of the caller’s racing heartbeats, Clara’s voice crackled in her ear: “The firemen will be there within three minutes. Please stay inside, ma’am—a burning automobile can be extremely dangerous.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that—I wouldn’t go out there for all the tea in China!”

  “Good for you.” Clara’s task now was to calm the distraught citizen, and the best way to do that was to keep the lady talking. “Now tell me everything that you know about this fire.”

  Mrs. Buxton did. What she actually knew was limited, but what she had seen proved interesting to the dispatcher. She ended her account almost breathlessly: “And after the lady came out and told the man in the pickup to move it out of her way—I didn’t actually see him because it’s so dark—but I’m assuming it was a man—nothing much happened for two or three minutes. I couldn’t see the lady or the man in the pickup, but right after she walked up to the truck, I’m sure I heard a popping sound, like someone had dropped a lightbulb, and then it was quiet for a while. Finally, I heard a car door open and close—it might have been the pickup or the car parked in Patsy’s driveway—I just don’t know—then the pickup drove away and I thought, ‘Well, that’s over with,’ and was about to come back into my house when I noticed a little fire on one side of the SUV and then whoosh! I mean the whole car went up in flames and I could feel the heat on my face clear across the street!” She peeked around the recliner. “I’m afraid it’ll explode and blow all of my front windows out.”

  Clara Tavishuts had frowned at the mention of a “popping sound” and she was beginning to have an uneasy feeling about this fire report. Her intuition kicked in with: That woman has been shot dead—and her body left to burn up in the SUV. “Ma’am—did you recognize the lady who came out to confront the driver of the pickup?”

  “Oh, no—it was too dark.”

  Now for the big question: “Could she have been Miss Poynter?”

  The caller’s answer was immediate: “Oh, no—this woman was about half a head taller than Patsy.”

  Charlie Moon’s old friend closed her eyes. Thank you, Jesus. Thankful though she was, the dispatcher couldn’t help wondering why Patsy Poynter hadn’t made a 911 call to report a car on fire in her driveway. Maybe she isn’t at home.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  THE FIRST DOSE OF SERIOUSLY BAD NEWS

  As Parris and Moon had just finished off a gooey, half-pound Reuben sandwich (the chief of police) and a man-size serving of the Sugar Bowl’s semifamous green chili beef stew (the deputy), the stew eater’s mobile phone began to buzz in his pocket.

  Laying his soup spoon aside, Charlie Moon checked the caller ID. “It’s Butch.”

  His attention focused on the dessert menu, Parris shrugged. “Wonder what that tough little cowboy wants.” I want a great big chunk of strawberry shortcake. He glanced down at his bulging belly. But I guess I ought to settle for a little bowl of sugar-free red Jell-O.

  “I’ll ask him.” Moon pressed the instrument against his right ear. “What’s up, Mr. Cassidy?”

  Dead silence.

  “Butch—are you there?”

  A long, raspy sigh rattled in Moon’s ear.

  Something’s wrong. The owner of the Columbine Ranch frowned. “Talk to me.”

  “It’s bad, boss.” More silence, then: “Really bad.”

  The rancher felt an icy chill. Little Butch Cassidy was one of the coolest hands on the Columbine, and he never got drunk or exaggerated. “Has something happened to Daisy?”

  “No sir.”

  Moon closed his eyes and prayed for another “no.” “Sarah?”

  “Huh-uh.”

  Thank you, God! He steeled himself for whatever was coming. “Spit it out, Butch.”

  “Okay.” Quick intake of breath. “Here goes. I just showed up at the Big Hat with some provisions. It’s…” The cowboy choked. “It’s Pete … and Dolly.”

  Moon’s chill dropped to forty below. “What’s happened?”

  “I don’t rightly know.” Cassidy’s voice broke. “Except—except that they’re both dead.”

  “Dead?”

  At Moon’s mention of Daisy, Parris had laid the dessert menu aside. Now, he locked gazes with his deputy. “Who’s dead?”

  Moon covered the mouthpiece with his hand long enough to mutter, “Pete and Dolly.”

  The chief of police blanched. “How?”

  Moon shrugged. The Indian’s head began to spin as he considered the possibilities. Pete could have fallen over from a heart attack or Dolly might have had a stroke. Then the probabilities. But not at the same time. He addressed Butch again: “How can they both be dead—did they have a wreck in their pickup?”

  “No sir. They’re both right here in the Big Hat headquarters, sitting in the kitchen and—” Cassidy paused to swallow an unmanly cracking in his voice. “They’re bo
th dead.”

  Moon’s numb disbelief gave way to a dark horror. Maybe Pete shot his wife, then turned the gun on himself. Why would his foreman do a thing like that? Because he lost his mind. And Charlie Moon knew who was to blame. I should never have put Pete out to pasture—or sent them over to the Big Hat. The rancher was unaware that he was grinding his teeth. “Dead how, Butch—gunshot wounds?”

  “Far as I can see, there’s been no shooting.” Cassidy was gradually getting a grip on himself. “Some murderous bastard has knocked both of ’em in the head!” He strangled on phlegm, then coughed. “There’s a bloody rolling pin on the kitchen table, boss—I’m sure it’s Dolly’s.”

  Moon tried to wrap his mind around the horrific picture Butch Cassidy was painting. Someone shows up at the Big Hat and bludgeons a harmless old couple to death? But why? It was too bizarre—an absurd nightmare that Moon was afraid he wasn’t going to wake up from. The best friend Pete and Dolly Bushman ever had resisted the pull of the abyss by assuming his role of lawman. “You’re absolutely certain that they’re both dead?”

  “If you could see what I see, you wouldn’t ask me a question like that.”

  “Listen to me, Butch—don’t touch anything.” Charlie Moon was getting up from the restaurant table as the chief of police did the same. “I’m at the Sugar Bowl with Scott. We’ll be there inside half an hour.”

  “Okay, boss. Uh, just so you’ll know—I already used my mobile phone to call 911. I expected to talk to Clara at GCPD, but somehow or other I got connected directly to the state police. They’re sending a trooper who’s already in the neighborhood.” A pause while the cowboy checked his wristwatch. “He’s maybe about ten minutes away. Oh—and the state cops are sending in a helicopter too, but I don’t know when it’ll show up.”

  “You did good, Butch—now just hold on for the trooper. Me’n Scott’ll be on the road in thirty seconds flat.”

  And they would be. But not on their way to the Big Hat. For the next several hours, the state police would have to deal with that calamity.

  THE SECOND DOSE

  The lawmen were striding through the Sugar Bowl Restaurant’s front door and about to break into a trot for Scott Parris’s squad car and Charlie Moon’s Expedition, when the police chief’s mobile phone played a familiar tune. Not a surprise. Ever since Butch’s call to Charlie Moon, Parris had been expecting a call from GCPD Dispatch. He assumed that Clara Tavishuts would advise him that the state police had reported an urgent trouble call from his deputy’s smaller ranch. He answered the call with the brusque assurance that: “I’m already on top of it, Clara—me and Charlie are on our way to the Big Hat.”

  “Uh, I don’t know anything about that, Chief. I’m calling because I thought you’d want to know about a reported auto fire at—”

  “A car fire will have to wait,” he snapped.

  “Okay.” The faithful dispatcher paused for a moment to display her annoyance with the boss. “But you might want to tell Charlie that the auto fire’s at Patsy’s home.”

  Parris stopped in his tracks. “Repeat that.”

  His dispatcher did, and added some additional details.

  As Clara Tavishuts elaborated on the automobile fire, where GCPD units were already on the scene, Parris was side-mouthing bits and pieces of the urgent communication to Charlie Moon. The distressed rancher already had a dead foreman and his wife to deal with, but that double homicide was about half an hour away if they drove flat-out pedal to the floor—and the state police would have a trooper at the Big Hat in a few minutes, plus a helicopter with a detective and forensics team that would probably touch down before Moon and his best friend would show up.

  Charlie Moon’s decision was a no-brainer.

  The Big Hat emergency was trumped by a fiancée only blocks away who might be in some kind of serious trouble.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  RUSHING HEADLONG INTO PANDEMONIUM

  The chief of police took the lead, clearing their way through the evening traffic. Scott Parris accomplished this task with grim determination, dual wailing sirens, a cluster of flashing red-and-blue emergency lights—and a thumb-size transponder in his hand that (at the touch of a button) greened every red light in their path. About three blocks down Copper Street, they were already moving along at a pretty good clip and “excessive acceleration” was the name of the game. It would be an exaggeration to declare that Charlie Moon was using his Columbine Expedition to literally push Parris’s screaming black-and-white along a tad faster, but Patsy Poynter’s worried sweetheart was keeping as close as he could get without nudging the squad car’s rear bumper, and that sleek Chevrolet (as old-timers used to say in those bygone days of the Pony Express)—was flat-out carrying the mail. Only a shameless liar would assert that if they’d gone much faster, the lawmen would’ve shown up at their destination before they’d left the Sugar Bowl, but just ninety-eight seconds flat after they’d roared away from the curb, Deputy Moon and Granite Creek’s top cop arrived at the outer margin of a firelight-illuminated scene of highly organized confusion.

  From one end of the block to the other, the tree-lined residential street was clogged with the kind of official traffic that generally bodes ill for someone in the neighborhood. Limber up your fingers and count three fire engines, the fire chief’s red Ford Explorer, a matched pair of boxy ambulances, three GCPD black-and-whites, plus two Colorado State Police cruisers. The makeshift Second Street parking lot for official vehicles was already cordoned off at both ends with yellow-and-black POLICE—DO NOT ENTER ribbons. After driving at breakneck speeds, the lawmen were obliged to park a half block from the scene of whatever calamity had occurred at Patsy Poynter’s home. Moon pulled his Expedition to a jerking halt on the sidewalk, cut the ignition switch—and before the Ford V-8 engine had hit its last lick, he emerged from the Columbine flagship like a pilot ejected from a flamed-out F-15 jet-fighter aircraft. The lanky rancher hit the ground at a trot. What did he see?

  About eighty yards away, a pair of EMTs were manhandling a stainless-steel gurney—whose burden was a person under a green sheet. The face was covered.

  As the rancher’s high-heeled cowboy boots popped on the blacktop, a somber drum’s voice thumped in his head, She’s dead … dead … dead … The runner picked up speed as his long legs propelled him to his fiancée’s address, but like a sleeper slogging through a nightmarish swamp, his feet seemed mired in muckish mud—his legs made of lead.

  Mr. Moon was relieved beyond all measure and description when he saw his wife-to-be—alive and upright! Supported by the fire chief and staring like a wild creature, Patsy stumbled along. The helmeted man was shouting to be heard over the melee, “Who’s the woman we found in your hallway, Miss Poynter?”

  “My little sister,” she wailed.

  The public servant yelled again, “The EMTs will want to know her name.”

  “It’s…” Suddenly angered by this noisy congregation of officialdom and their officious questions, she shouted back, “I’m so upset I’m don’t even know my own name!” A touch of hyperbole, no doubt, but the fire chief got the message and shut his mouth.

  When Patsy saw her intended approaching in long strides, she pushed the boss of the fire crew aside, took a few tentative steps to meet her sweetheart, tripped over a fire hose—and would have fallen flat on her pretty, tear-stained face had not Moon caught her in an enveloping embrace. He had the good sense not to pose a pointless, annoying question like, “What’s happened here?”

  But she told him straightaway: “Oh, Charlie—someone has hurt my little sister. I got a call from Daphne this morning … she was boarding a plane for Colorado Springs and wanted me to meet her there … so I hurried over there to pick her up … we only got back about an hour ago.” She shot a wide-eyed glance at the ambulances. “I don’t know whether poor Daphne’s alive or dead…” Patsy suddenly paused like a run-down clock that had stopped—and slumped into a faint.

  Moon scooped the lady up and
was carrying her toward the nearest ambulance when Parris came huffing and puffing like the overweight, late-middle-aged cop he was. “My God, Charlie—this looks like a war zone. What’n hell’s going on here—is Patsy injured?”

  “I don’t think so, but her sister’s been hurt.” He handed his unconscious fiancée off to a brawny emergency medical technician, who took Patsy to the ambulance, where another alert EMT was waiting with an empty gurney. Satisfied that his sweetheart was in good hands, Moon pointed his chin at the Bronco, which—despite the best efforts of enough firemen to put out a barn fire—was still sprouting a stubborn blaze near the gas tank. “And there’s that.”

  Emergency lights persisted in their winking-blinking.

  Firemen continued to shout at one another.

  Petite, blond officer Alicia Martin appeared at Parris’s elbow, her pale face smudged with smoke—suggesting a Tinker Bell who’d been dipped headfirst into a bucket of soot. She shouted into the boss’s ear, “We’ve got a corpse in the SUV—charred almost beyond recognition, but the firemen believe it’s a female.”

  His face prickling with the heat of the fire, Parris blinked at the impromptu funeral pyre and—recognizing the old Bronco—mumbled under his breath, “It’ll be Miss Whysper.” Realizing that there was no longer any reason to conceal the hopeful bounty hunter’s true identity, he said to Martin, “It’s Louella Smithson.” Like his personality, the cop’s logic was uncomplicated: if the corpse in Miss Smithson’s Bronco was female, the odds were a hundred to one that the victim was Ray Smithson’s granddaughter. And though the situation contained an element of complexity, so it would prove to be.

  Like his best friend, Charlie Moon was not what you would call a complex man—but neither was he simple. For some reason that Parris’s deputy could not quite get a handle on, he felt light-headed, somewhat detached from reality—and oddly perplexed. Something don’t smell right about this. A peculiar response; what could possibly be right about one woman burned to a crisp and another seriously—perhaps mortally—injured? But Moon must be given some slack. Even the strongest of men has his limits, and this veteran of the Second Gulf War began to experience flashbacks like those he’d endured following his ordeal in a drop zone some ninety kilometers behind Iraqi lines. Now, much like way back then, black-and-white pictures popped before his eyes like 35-mm slides projected onto a gritty silver screen—the impromptu picture show displaying no apparent chronology or logic. As if this were not sufficiently disturbing, the still shots began to couple themselves together into an erratic filmstrip that took on Technicolor tints; the various actors assuming the lively form of animated characters. Touched up by a few deft brushstrokes of fantasy and foresight, this jumbled assembly of memory vignettes began to speak: