Gray Ghost

by William G. Tapply

  The doctor came over and held out her hand. “Mr. Calhoun,” she said, “I’m Samantha Surry, the medical examiner. They call me Sam.”

  Calhoun took her hand. Her grip was firm like a man’s. “Glad to meet you, Doctor.”

  Freckles were spattered across the bridge of her nose. She wore a little subtle eye makeup, which looked good on her. She had a shy smile, as if she and Calhoun shared a private secret.

  “Let’s go sit,” she said. She turned and went to the edge of the parking area, where Calhoun and Lyle had moved some big boulders out of the way back when they cleared the land for the house, and sat on one of them. She placed her black bag on the ground beside her. She was wearing black pants and a gray hooded sweatshirt. Her tangly red hair was tied back with something that looked like a shoelace. She was wearing no jewelry.

  Calhoun sat beside her.

  She looked up at the state trooper, who had followed them and was standing there at parade rest watching them. “Give us some space, Officer, would you?”

  He shrugged and wandered back to his cruiser.

  She turned to Calhoun. “Your dog’s gone missing, huh?”

  He nodded. “It ain’t like him.”

  “I hope he turns up,” she said. “I love dogs. I’ve got a dog myself. Little springer named Quincy. After the old doctor show on TV. He’s pretty good on woodcock.”

  “You hunt?” said Calhoun.

  She nodded. “A little. When I can find the time. Birds, mostly. Grouse, woodcock, ducks. Quincy loves to retrieve ducks. What kind of dog you got?”

  “Ralph’s a Brittany,” said Calhoun. It occurred to him that Dr. Surry was trying to put him at ease so he’d be off guard when she asked him clever questions, but he didn’t really care. He liked talking with her, and he was pretty sure that he’d never been off guard in his life. “Pointing dog. Damn good hunter. It’s what he lives for. Bird smells and food. I don’t take him out enough.”

  She touched his arm. “He’ll show up.” She cleared her throat. “I got a couple questions for you.”

  Calhoun nodded.

  “Did you touch that man’s body?”

  “Nope.”

  “You didn’t even touch his skin or the blood?”

  “No. I know better than to do that.”

  “You didn’t go through his pockets?”

  “ ‘Course not.”

  She nodded. “You knew him, though, right?”

  “I took him fishing a couple days ago.”

  “When you found that body out on Quarantine Island.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Any idea what he was carrying in his pockets that day?”

  Calhoun thought for a minute. “He had a cell phone and a camera and car keys and a wallet. It looked like he was carrying a lot of money with him, judging by the thickness of his wallet.”

  “That purple bottle of sunscreen belong to you?”

  “No. Mr. Vecchio used sunscreen. I guess it was his.”

  Dr. Surry was writing in a little notebook. “The cell and the camera,” she said. “Was it your impression that he generally carried them with him ?”

  “The phone,” he said. “He kept that in his pants. Not the camera. I wouldn’t let him bring the damn phone on my boat. Why? He doesn’t have them on him now ?”

  She cocked her head and looked at him. “Detective Gilsum thinks you did it, you know.”

  “Gilsum?”

  “He’s the state homicide detective.”

  “Well,” said Calhoun, “I didn’t.”

  “The sheriff vouches for you. I trust his judgment, which is more than I can say about Gilsum. He’s always looking for the easy way out. I’m only trying to explain why I probably shouldn’t answer any of your questions.”

  “It don’t really matter to me, Doctor. I was just curious.”

  She smiled. When she smiled her eyes went crinkly, as if she were truly amused by something. “Call me Sam, for Christ’s sake.”

  Calhoun nodded. “Okay.”

  “I’m just the local on-call ME,” she said. “I show up, figure out if a dead body is truly dead, give it a preliminary examination, and write up my report. I’m not a cop. I don’t do autopsies or anything like that. I don’t participate in police investigations. I just do reports. In my real life, I work at a clinic in Portland.” She smiled. “So, really, I don’t care one way or the other whether they think you and I ought not to have an actual conversation.”

  Calhoun smiled, too. “So Mr. Vecchio doesn’t have his phone or his camera on him, huh?”

  “No. Nor his wallet or his keys.”

  “His car is right over there,” said Calhoun. “He must’ve had keys with him.”

  “They’re not in his pockets,” she said, “and they’re not in the car.”

  “Killer took ‘em,” he said. “And the other stuff, too, no doubt.”

  “He had a lot of money on him, huh?”

  Calhoun nodded. “He did the other day when I was with him. You’re not thinking this was a robbery, are you?”

  “Not really,” she said. “It doesn’t make much sense.”

  “You figure he was shot right there where he’s sitting?”

  She nodded. “The way the blood was pooled. The lividity.”

  “You got a look at the bullet holes in him?”

  She smiled again. “That is a big part of my job. Looking at bullet holes and smashed-in skulls and knife wounds. I’ve come up with this wild hypothesis that one of those three bullets is what killed him.”

  “Could you tell what sort of weapon shot him?”

  “It wasn’t that .30-30 I saw up there. I’m pretty sure of that. Small caliber. I’d surmise it was a .22.” She arched her eyebrows at him. “You own a .22, Stoney?”

  “Sure. I got a Colt Woodsman.”

  “I’m going to need it.”

  “It’s in the drawer beside the kitchen sink,” he said. “I imagine all those experts up there have come upon it by now. So you can take the bullets out of Mr. Vecchio and compare them to the bullets that come out of my pistol, and you’ll see I didn’t shoot him.”

  “Not me,” she said. “But the ballistics experts up in Augusta can do that, and I expect they will. And for that they’ll need your gun.”

  “They’ll find it ain’t been fired recently.”

  She nodded. “You’ll get it back. Eventually.” She closed her notebook and stuck it into her shirt pocket. “I may need to talk to you again.”

  “Okay. I don’t mind.”

  68

  She gave him one of her quick shy smiles. “You’re a fishing guide, I understand.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Out of Kate Balaban’s fly shop.”

  “Ayuh.”

  “And you live here”—she swept her hand around the area, taking in the house and the yard and all of the woods’“by yourself?”

  He nodded. “Me and my dog.”

  She smiled. “It’s really nice.”

  “Except Ralph’s not here.”

  “I bet he’ll be back as soon as all the commotion dies down.” She touched his arm. “I might need to know how to find you, is why I’m asking.”

  “If I ain’t here or at the shop, I’ll be messing around in my boat. That’s about it.”

  “Maybe someday you’ll take me out,” she said. “I’m not much good with the fly rod, but I love fishing.”

  “We could do that.”

  “I’m serious,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  “Good.” She stood up, reached down, and picked up her bag.

  “You actually carry a black bag,” said Calhoun.

  “I do, yes.”

  “I didn’t know doctors had black bags anymore.”

  “Doctors don’t generally make house calls anymore,” she said. “You don’t need to lug your instruments around if you only see patients in your office.”

  “You make house calls?”

  She sm
iled. “Only when there are dead bodies. The bag was my dad’s. He was a country doctor up in Presque Isle. Drove all around in his Oldsmobile, visiting sick people who were too poor to come to him. He retired a few years ago, gave me his bag. I got his stethoscope in here. Also the mallet he used for testing your reflexes.”

  Calhoun looked past her and saw two of the men coming toward them. One of them was the state detective named Gilsum.

  Dr. Surry glanced back, then said to Calhoun, “I’ll be in touch. About fishing.” She reached over and gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Well,” she said in a loud voice meant to be heard by the two approaching men, “I’m about done here for now. It was nice to meet you, Mr. Calhoun. Don’t let these sons of bitches give you a hard time.”

  “I’m not all that worried,” he said.

  She held out her hand. “I hope your dog comes back.”

  Calhoun took her hand. “Thanks. Me, too.”

  He watched Dr. Sam Surry intercept the two men who were approaching him. She spoke to them, cutting the air with the side of her hand, making some point, and the two guys shifted their weight back and forth, looking uncomfortable.

  He could still feel the burning imprint of her fingers where she had given his shoulder a squeeze.

  CHAPTER SIX

  As Dr. Surry walked over to her vehicle, the two men turned and watched her. Then the bearded guy said something to the guy in the windbreaker, and they both smiled.

  The two of them came over to where Calhoun was sitting on the rock and stood there looking down at him. The man wearing the blue windbreaker and chino pants said, “Mr. Calhoun, I’m Lieutenant Gilsum. I’m a homicide detective with the state police.”

  Gilsum was a beefy guy with a round face and round glasses and a small, mean mouth. He looked more like a banker than a cop. “This,” he said, jerking his head toward the bearded man, “is Mr. Enfield. He’s the county DA.”

  Neither man showed any inclination to shake hands, never mind use their first names, so Calhoun just sat there.

  “We’ve got some questions for you,” said Gilsum. He sat on the boulder next to the one Calhoun was sitting on, the same one where Dr. Sam Surry had been sitting. Enfield remained standing.

  Gilsum fished a notebook out of his pocket, flipped it open, and studied it for a minute. “There’s a .30-30 up there on the deck,” he said. “It’s yours?”

  Calhoun nodded.

  “Deer rifle?”

  “Guess it could be, if I wanted to go deer hunting.”

  “You don’t hunt?”

  “Not deer. They’re all over the place around here. I could shoot ‘em from my deck. But if I started doing that, they’d stop coming around.”

  “You like having them around.”

  Calhoun shrugged.

  “So what’s the rifle doing there on the table, then?” said Gilsum.

  “That’s where I put it when I was done with it.”

  “Done with it.”

  “Turned out I didn’t need it,” said Calhoun.

  Gilsum glanced at Enfield, then turned back to Calhoun. “Why’d you think you might need it?”

  “When I came home from work and turned into my driveway tonight, I thought I might have company.”

  “What made you think that?”

  Calhoun shrugged. “Just a feeling.”

  “A feeling.”

  Calhoun was thinking that Gilsum was the kind of guy who’d been fat and unathletic as a kid, probably been bullied on the playground by the other third graders, and that’s why he decided to become a cop. “That’s right,” he said. “A feeling.”

  “What kind of feeling?” said Gilsum.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I get feelings about things. Mostly they’re on target.”

  “You mean you noticed something? Picked up on some kind of clue? Maybe you smelled burnt gunpowder or something?”

  “Nope,” Calhoun said. “Just had a feeling.”

  “Do you always greet visitors with a deer rifle?”

  “If I’m in the house, I got a Remington twelve-gauge.”

  “That’s not very hospitable.”

  Calhoun shrugged. “So far I haven’t had to shoot anybody.”

  Gilsum and Enfield exchanged glances. “Maybe,” said Gilsum, “you better just tell me what happened when you came home today.”

  “Not much to tell. When I pulled into my driveway, I got a feeling, like I said. So I took out my rifle and snuck back here and found Mr. Vecchio dead in my chair.”

  “Your rifle was in your truck?”

  Calhoun nodded. “Behind the front seat.”

  “You travel with a loaded deer rifle?”

  “I keep the chamber empty. There’s some bullets in the maga-zine.

  “That’s your truck,” Gilsum said, “parked in the bushes off your driveway?”

  “I tried to pull way over. You were able to get by okay, weren’t you ?”

  Gilsum smiled quickly. “I’m interested in this … feeling of yours, Mr. Calhoun. You sure you didn’t have some kind of information that led you to believe that somebody might be waiting for you, or that you might find a dead body at your house ?”

  “I’m sure,” said Calhoun.

  “You have feelings like this often?”

  Calhoun nodded. “Now and then.”

  “How would you describe them?”

  “Describe my feelings?” He hesitated. “I don’t know. Feelings, that’s all. You start feeling jangly and tense, and you know something’s going on. You never had a feeling like that?”

  Gilsum shrugged.

  “You’ve got to pay attention to those feelings,” said Calhoun.

  “So,” said Gilsum, “on the basis of this—this feeling—you took out your rifle, jacked a cartridge into the chamber, and sneaked up on your own house.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And what did you see?”

  “Just Mr. Vecchio’s vehicle and him sitting there with bullet holes in him.”

  “You saw nothing else. No other person or vehicle.”

  “Nope. Just Mr. Vecchio and his vehicle.”

  “Did you happen to pick up any spent cartridge cases?”

  “I looked,” said Calhoun. “Didn’t see anything except Mr. Vecchio’s sunscreen, which I didn’t touch. I wouldn’t’ve picked up any cartridge cases.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t.”

  Calhoun narrowed his eyes at Gilsum. “You think I plugged Mr.Vecchio?”

  “Why would you do that?”

  Calhoun shook his head. “I wouldn’t. Didn’t.”

  “Tell us about that argument you and he had.”

  “Huh?” Calhoun frowned. “I didn’t have any argument with Mr. Vecchio. We got along pretty good.”

  “At the dock the other morning,” said Gilsum. “You wouldn’t let him go on your boat out to Quarantine Island. He didn’t like that.”

  “That was the sheriff, not me. He’s the one who said he couldn’t come with us.”

  “That’s not exactly how we heard it, Mr. Calhoun.”

  “You think he came here because we wouldn’t let him ride in the boat with us, and he made me so mad I shot him ?”

  “That is a plausible scenario,” said Gilsum.

  “No, it ain’t,” said Calhoun. “That’s plain stupid. Anyway, we didn’t have any argument. It wasn’t like that.”

  Gilsum smiled quickly. “Did you go through his pockets?”

  “Dr. Surry, she asked me that. I told her no.”

  “Do you have any idea what he might’ve had in his pockets?”

  Calhoun shrugged. “Wallet. Cell phone. Car keys. The usual stuff, I guess.”

  “You know this how?”

  “I don’t know it,” said Calhoun. “I know it’s what he had in his pockets the morning I took him fishing, that’s all.”

  “How well did you know Paul Vecchio?” said Enfield, the DA. It was the first thing he’d said.

  “I spent a coupl
e hours with him in a boat,” said Calhoun. “That’s about it. He seemed like a nice guy.”

  Enfield was stocky and strong-looking. He had a sharp nose and suspicious eyes. “Catch some fish, did you?” he said.

  “It wasn’t bad.”

  “Mr. Vecchio, was he a good angler?”

  “He got better after a while.”

  “You gave him some pointers, did you?”

  “Only when he asked.”

  “How did you happen to hook up with Mr. Vecchio?” said Enfield.

  “He called the shop, talked to Kate, said he wanted to go fishing. It was my turn, so I took him.”

  “He didn’t ask for you?”

  “I don’t think so. But you should ask Kate. She’s the one who talked to him.”

  Enfield nodded. “Did Mr. Vecchio mention anything about problems he might be having? Troubles with other people?”

  Calhoun shook his head. “We just talked about fishing.”

  “So,” said Enfield, “how did you happen to stop off at Quarantine Island that morning?”

  “I already explained all that the other day. When we found that burned-up body out there.”

  Enfield nodded. “Explain it again, please.”

  Calhoun shrugged. “Mr. Vecchio had to take a leak, wanted to stretch his legs. We’d been into stripers pretty good. I guess he got kind of cramped up.”

  “Yes,” said Enfield, “but why that particular island?”

  “It was there, I guess.”

  “There are several islands in that area.”

  “Well,” said Calhoun, “you’re right. As I recall, Mr. Vecchio pointed to that one, Quarantine, and asked about it. I told him the stories, and he said that’s the one he wanted to stop off at. He was a writer. I suppose he was interested in things like that.”

  Enfield nodded as if he’d heard something significant. Then he turned to Gilsum. “I don’t have any more questions for him right now.”

  Gilsum nodded. “Me, neither.” He stood up, then looked down at Calhoun. “We might need to talk to you again. You’re not planning to go anywhere?”

  “Just to the shop. Probably have another guide trip or two coming up. I’ll be around.”

  “I understand your dog ran away.”

  “Ralph would never run away,” said Calhoun.