Not for Nothing

by Stephen Graham Jones

  Again, you’re standing on the wood plank floor, looking down through the ragged hole, kitty litter crunching under your feet.

  You only come back when the stunted door of the pop-up camper opens.

  For a few long seconds, you and Dan Gates try to make sense of each other, and then he’s running hard, jumping discs you have to skirt, one-handing fences you have to hold the wire down to step over.

  You chase him out into the pasture on the other side of the house, then lean down on your knees just to breathe, watch his bare back until it drops into a draw you didn’t know was there, and he’s gone, a rabbit gone to ground.

  What you want to tell him with your hands cupped around your mouth is that it’s okay about the other night. That you’re sorry. That his mother, she’s—

  It’s better that you didn’t catch him.

  On the way back to the wrecker, you stop at the stock tank, cup water up to your face, finally just push your whole head under, open your eyes. Wonder if this is what it’s like, then. Five minutes later you open the door of the camper, wait for your pupils to adjust.

  It’s what you expected: grocery sacks, magazines, a batteryrun little television still on at the foot of the stubby couch mat Dan’s been sleeping on during the day. The mat of his night bed is crossways at the front of the trailer.

  You turn the television off so his batteries won’t be all the way gone by the time he slinks back and almost have the door closed again when you see what isn’t there, what Thomas had out at the old house, what any sixteen-year old kid’s going to need: beer.

  Does Dan, Rory Gates’s son, not drink?

  It’s not the kind of question you can ask Gwen, really.

  Just in case it disappears, before you leave, you copy down the license and VIN of the wrecker, then find yourself watching the stock tank again, know that if there’s beer anywhere on this property, then it’s there, hanging on a wire deep underwater.

  You don’t want it that bad, though.

  The Ford starts for you on the fourth try, but you have a better idea.

  21.

  DURING YOUR INITIAL HOMICIDE ORIENTATION two years ago, the detective you rode with to learn procedure—an old man named Sanders, who claimed to still remember Midland ranchers storing hay in the office buildings along Wall Street during the Depression—told you that every investigation is a math problem: all you do is add the numbers together, carry the one, and then look at the bottom of the page for the answer.

  Because you were still a hero, and because he’d probably done all twelve grades in one classroom and never had a Mrs. Rankin to test him on the quadratic formula, you’d asked him where algebra fit in?

  In answer he’d rubbed his nose in the shameless way of old men, shrugged, and said that that kind of fancy arithmetic was what you might call a murder investigation—the kind of problem where you already have the answer, a dead person, then all this evidence bunched up on the other side of the equals-sign. Your job as a detective, then, is to arrange the evidence in such a way that only one variable will work with them to produce a dead body. And that variable, that x, that’s your killer.

  “What if there’s two or three x’s?” you’d asked.

  “Then the second x is y, the third’s a z, and it’s conspiracy, as long as it all adds up right.”

  It had made your head hurt. And you’d never learned the quadratic formula like Mrs. Rankin taught it anyway. For some reason, it makes you feel guilty about stealing the wrecker and the Ford from her husband’s place.

  The deal you make in your head with her is that if you can just get the wrecker primed, jumped, then figure out the lift enough to tow the Ford, you’ll look at one of Thomas’s algebra books.

  It’s the least you can do.

  And it’s not like you promised to open it or anything.

  You might be disgraced, an outcast from the police, a reject in your own town, going through drive-throughs on lawnmowers, but still, you’re not low enough yet for tenth grade math.

  Because Betsy Simms might still be watching from the Davidson place, you don’t take the cut-across to 137 but pull the Ford all the way back to 829 instead. Its tailgate pops open going over the cattle guard but doesn’t drag sparks on the asphalt, so you keep going, the wrecker wrapped up high in second gear, and you only realize you’re touching the steering wheel with bare skin when you’re back by the military surplus.

  You try to wipe your prints off with the rag from the dash, leave just Darryl Koenig’s, then drive with the heels of your hands past the Town & Country, your heart slamming into the walls of your chest because this is like coming back from the ocean with a thirty-foot killer shark strapped to the side of your rowboat. If you can keep it straight in your head, you might even use Sanders’s algebra to explain to Sheriff Felson that Koenig the cropduster is the only variable that can make Rory’s death make sense.

  With the evidence of the wrecker, it’ll be obvious to her that you were set up to finger Fin for the murder. Then, like a series of gears, she’ll have to let Fin go, and you’ll be waiting for him at the property desk, and then you can carry the film back to Aardvark Custom Economy Storage, where Jimmy Bones and Arnot King have to be waiting. Maybe you’ll give it to Jimmy Bones or maybe he’ll buy it, you’re not sure yet.

  Either way, you’ll be back in the game.

  You swing wide for the final turn to the sheriff’s office, and see at last what you probably should have seen a quarter of a mile ago, if the Ford hadn’t been in the wrecker’s rearview: a dark Lincoln Town Car shadowing you.

  You swallow, look back to the road, weave the wrecker to see the Lincoln in your side mirror now.

  No auction number. It’s Gwen.

  You straighten back up, bite your lower lip, and grip the thin steering wheel with your whole hand now: it’s a parade. First the wrecker, then the Ford, then the second variable, the real killer. The one too pretty, too grief-stricken to suspect.

  By the time you park longways across the four handicapped spaces of the court house, she’s coming at you across the road, her purse clutched tight to her side.

  The first thing she says is about the Ford. “It’s already broke down?”

  For a moment you don’t understand, but then look back to it, its front tires hanging, the bumper knuckled under from the tow straps you know you didn’t quite figure out right.

  “Thought you’d be more interested in this—in the evidence?” you say, nodding down to the wrecker.

  She shrugs like she doesn’t have time for this. “You’re saying you found him?”

  “The cropduster?”

  “The—what?”

  “Mr. Darryl Koenig,” you announce, both hands in your pockets.

  Her eyes behind her alligator print sunglasses track across the name letter by letter, and then she nods to herself, ducks her head forward, unsure. “That Future Farmer of America from Greenwood?”

  “You’ve got this down good,” you tell her.

  “Listen,” she says, cupping her forehead in her hand. “You have Dan’s truck. This means you found him, right? Is he all right? Why isn’t he with you?”

  You try to process at least some of this—that she’s interested in the gimme-case, not the one that’s going to put her away.

  “Yeah, I found him,” you say. “It’s what I do, right? Last time I saw him, he was”—you nod to yourself, as if confirming this in your head—“yeah. He was crossing Mrs. Rankin’s north pasture.”

  “Janey Rankin?”

  You had never considered that Mrs. Rankin might have a first name, but shrug sure all the same. “He’s been sleeping in a little hideaway camper thing. You want, I can move him into town, a little efficiency unit I’ve got…”

  When she doesn’t smile, you do. But have to look away from her, too. She touches you light on the bicep. You turn back to her, your mouth formed around a word you haven’t even thought of yet, but before you can say it her forehead is against your chest
and she’s crying. Saying she’s sorry for getting you involved, that it was never supposed to be like this, that—

  She finishes with the fingers of her other hand stuffing her half of the insurance check into your chest pocket.

  You spread your pocket to see it, and then she’s pushing away from you, the kind of push you always imagine one person would give another if they were both standing in a road, a pair of headlights coming fast.

  You try to say your word again, still don’t know what it was going to be—what did you say to her in the truck, that first time, when it was done and neither of you knew whether to laugh or kiss, cry or get married?

  It doesn’t matter.

  In four long scrapes of her slingback heels she’s across the road, behind the dark windows of her Lincoln. Her right rear tire breaks free a bit, spits a handful of gravel up into the afternoon.

  “Display of acceleration…” Toby Garrett’s baby brother says from behind you.

  “You’d write me up for it,” you tell him.

  “You’re not a grieving widow.”

  You look at the wrecker one more time and ask if the good sheriff’s in.

  Toby Garrett’s baby brother smiles wide, nods like this is an inside joke. Before you can turn to go inside, he points with his chin down the block, toward your lawyer.

  He’s waving his arms wide like you’re landing a plane.

  If you were, then what he’d be telling you is pull up, pull up. Don’t land.

  You lift your hand back to him and hold it there, trying to tell him that it’s all right, that everything’s fine now.

  Deep in the shade of the awning is another more compact figure: Jimmy Bones.

  From across all this distance, you can feel him watching you. It makes you feel like—like a South American president, your arm up to the crowd, the crosshairs settling on you.

  You bring your hand down to the back of your neck, to your chin. Pull at the loose skin of your throat.

  “What’s that about, you think?” Toby Garrett’s baby brother asks.

  You look at Arnot King still trying to signal you away. “As my lawyer, I guess he doesn’t want me to park in an illegal fashion.”

  Toby Garrett’s baby brother tries hard not to smile. “Remind me to write you up for that later.” He holds the glass door open for you, the refrigerated air of the sheriff’s office rushing out, making you look away at the last moment to the squat, black form of Jimmy Bones, Panhandle-division 9-ball champion for three years running. The cane he’s walking away on is painted like a cue, has an ornate bridge-rig for a handle. Moving beside him, the lanky, raggedy shape of your lawyer, looking back to you the same as you’re looking at him.

  “Coming?” Toby Garrett’s baby brother says, stepping aside.

  “Of course,” you hear yourself say.

  Of course.

  22.

  AT THE TALL FRONT DESK, Toby Garrett’s baby brother peels off, nods ahead to Felson’s office.

  Through her open door you can see one side of her desk, part of her left arm.

  This is the beginning of the end of your first case as an unlicensed PI. She won’t like that you’ve solved her murder for her, but, hey, what did she expect? If she wanted all the glory, she should have kept you locked up when she had the chance. Even then, you probably would have broke out somehow.

  Live-in security guard for a storage facility? That’s just a cover, ma’am. One of many.

  You pause before you’re in her office, knock lightly on the wall.

  She leans over, narrows her eyes at you, lets her face twitch into a smile.

  “Mr. Bruiseman,” she says, very formal, waving you in with just her hand, “we’ve been waiting for you.”

  “We—?” you start and then forget how to breathe. In one of the two conference chairs is Judge Sheila Lynn Harkness.

  “Detective,” she says, angling her head over, her metallic red hair spilling down across her not insignificant left breast.

  You manage to say, “Your honor.”

  “Sit down,” Felson directs.

  You guide yourself into the chair.

  Felson and Harkness sit watching. By degrees, you learn to breathe again, are even able to fake the smallest possible smile. “This about me?”

  “You could say that,” Harkness says.

  You keep your smile, swallow, the saliva loud in your ears.

  “Nice of you to drop by like this,” Felson says. “Saves us some footwork.”

  You nod as if accepting her gratitude, have to consciously make yourself stop.

  “I was—I was bringing evidence,” you say. “Math.”

  Felson leans forward so you can say it again.

  You close your eyes, start over. “I found that wrecker I told you about. It’s real.”

  “I know,” Felson says, and for an instant you forget about Harkness, are only aware of Felson. “Dan said you were messing with it when he left.”

  Dan, Dan. It takes saying his name a few times to attach it.

  “He’s here?” you say.

  Felson stands to wave him in.

  You turn awkwardly, watch him rise from the chairs on the other side of the glass door you walked in. He’s wearing clean clothes, has his hair plastered down to his skull, must have had Rory’s tall truck parked in the bottom of the draw he was running for.

  “Mr. Bruiseman,” he says, and holds his hand out.

  You look from it up to him, then back to Felson.

  She explains: “He said you were probably going to—that you were going to accuse him of trespassing, stealing, loitering, something like that.”

  You shake your head no.

  “Show him,” Felson says.

  Dan unfolds a yellow receipt from his pocket. It’s from the auction two weeks ago. The item paid for with a check was one camper, lot 14. The buyer was Rory Gates.

  “We were going to fix it up for the lease down at Robert Lee,” he says, not looking at any of you.

  “And the—the wrecker?” you manage.

  Felson answers for him: “It’s not his, Mr. Bruiseman.”

  “It’s not supposed to be. It’s Darryl Koenig’s.”

  Felson leans back in her chair, studies you.

  “He’s the one who did it,” you say.

  It sounds more like a question now than it did on the drive over.

  Sheriff Felson smiles, likes this. “And he did it because…?”

  “Because Gwen—” you start, but Felson interrupts, stands to usher Dan Gates out, shut the door behind him. She stares at you all the way back to her chair.

  “He did it because Gwen Tracy told him to.”

  “Gwen Gates,” Felson corrects. “This isn’t high school anymore.”

  You squint, knew that. “It was her, ma’am.”

  Felson shakes her head back and forth, her eyes never leaving yours. “So we’re back to that again?”

  You settle the plate number and VIN onto the edge of her desk in response.

  She doesn’t even look at it.

  “Why not Dan himself?” she says. “Since you’re accusing everybody and all.”

  You stare at her paperclip-holder, consider it.

  “He had access to the tow-truck, right?” she says.

  “It wasn’t—he’s not Jim Martindale.”

  “But Darryl Koenig is?”

  “Was, yeah.”

  Harkness pops a bubble with her molars, makes you think about her breasts.

  “And your little…” Felson says, motioning out front to the wrecker, “your little grand-theft auto today. It’s supposed to somehow prove this beyond a reasonable doubt?”

  “It’s Koenig, ma’am. The cropduster.”

  “And you’d bet your life on this, Mr. Bruiseman?”

  You collapse a little inside. “I’ve bet it on less.”

  Ten awkward minutes later, most of which you spend in the bathroom hiding from Harkness, Toby Garrett’s baby brother props Darryl Koeni
g up in the door of Felson’s office, then takes a step back.

  “Mr. Koenig,” Felson says.

  He peers out at the office like he’s been underground for days. He’s wearing a jumpsuit now, has his hair washed. It spills down across his shoulders.

  Felson introduces you and Judge Harkness.

  Koenig keeps his eyes on Harkness until Felson asks him if he bought or found himself driving a tow-truck at any time in the last seven to ten days.

  “Gonna pin that on me too?”

  “Just answer the question, Mr. Koenig.”

  He leans forward to trail a line of spit into Felson’s planter. “What’d it do, this tow-truck?”

  “Were you at the Rankin farm sale two weeks ago?” Felson says.

  “I don’t even go to Rankin anymore,” Koenig says, his upper lip raised at the idea.

  “It was an auction here in town.”

  “They selling planes?”

  Felson shakes her head no.

  Koenig flashes his gap-toothed smile, and you ask him if he didn’t buy the truck from Tom Howard, maybe?

  “Howard?” he says, shaking his head with disgust. “You see him, give him this from me,” and then he brings his hand up to your face, extends his middle finger.

  “It’s okay,” Felson says, staring at Koenig now. “This would have been…Thursday, Mr. Bruiseman?”

  You nod, your teeth set, Judge Harkness smiling at you the whole time.

  “Thursday,” Koenig says, smiling again, waggling his eyebrows. “Got to say, sheriff. Thursday’s a little cloudy to me.”

  Felson stares at him for one moment more, then nods to Toby Garrett’s baby brother to take him back to his cell. After Koenig disappears she punches the intercom on her phone, asks for Darryl Koenig’s logbook.

  Two minutes later an officer you don’t know brings it in. It’s creased and stained from living in Koenig’s back pocket, smooth on one side like he keeps it behind his wallet.

  Felson keeps the palms of her hands as far from it as she can and flips to the last page Koenig filled in, the day before the night he was arrested at the liquor store. She spins the book around for you to read.

  “Go on,” she says, when you don’t lean forward.