Gray Ghost

by William G. Tapply

  The doctors at the VA hospital in Virginia had explained that his memories of the first thirty-odd years of his life weren’t really gone. They resided in remote and mysterious corners of his unconscious mind. But his wiring had short-circuited. The electronic connections, the network of ganglions and synapses that allowed thoughts to move back and forth between the conscious and the unconscious parts of the normal mind, had been fried in Calhoun’s. Sometimes there would be a spark—a dream fragment, a song lyric, an evocative smell—and a distorted impulse would plow into his consciousness, daring him to make sense of it, which, so far, he hadn’t had much luck at.

  So Stoney Calhoun was left with weird, quickly forgotten dreams, and jolts of deja vu, and apparitions. They were the gifts’ and the curses’of a lightning-zapped brain, and he accepted them as his own version of normality.

  Then along would come the Man in the Suit hinting that maybe he had children, or he’d get a particularly vivid flash of déjà vu, or a gray nun who’d been dead for eighty years would cry out to him from Quarantine Island, and even if he couldn’t figure out what it meant, or if it was just random and meaningless, it would leave him jangly and depressed—sometimes only until he came fully awake, but sometimes for the whole day.

  He hoped today wasn’t going to be one of those days.

  He poured a mug of coffee, took it down to Bitch Creek, and sat on his usual boulder. Ralph sat beside him. Calhoun thought about Lyle, as he always did when he visited Bitch Creek. He remembered how Lyle had brought a little Brittany puppy to him, telling him that a man living alone in the woods needed company. For a young guy, Lyle was pretty wise. Calhoun always missed him.

  They looked for feeding trout, but there were none to be seen this morning. No ghostly dead bodies came drifting down on the currents, either, and whatever it was that had been tugging at Calhoun’s memory recently did not reveal itself.

  They went back to the house. He fed Ralph and made a toasted peanut-butter sandwich for himself. They ate on the deck while the sun rose into a pure blue September sky, but Calhoun’s cloud of hopeless sadness continued to envelop him.

  He spent the morning splitting and stacking firewood, and gradually the intense, hard, repetitive exercise cleared his head and calmed his spirit.

  A little before eleven Calhoun and Ralph piled into the truck and headed for the shop. Sundays had been dead since Labor Day, but Kate insisted that they open up for a few hours anyway. If you closed the shop when business was slow, she said, business would just get worse. He supposed she was right. Anyway, Kate was the boss.

  So he opened up, turned on the classical music station, checked the voice mail for messages, made some coffee, then sat at the bench to tie some more flies for the Boston guys.

  Kate had set up the fly-tying bench in the middle of the store, and she encouraged Calhoun to tie flies whenever he wasn’t actually with a customer. She theorized that a man tying flies would be an attraction to any potential customers who wandered into the shop. Plus, it would give them something to talk about with Calhoun, who was uninterested in holding idle conversations with strangers.

  A little after two o—clock, the bell over the door dinged. Calhoun looked up. A woman had stepped inside.

  Ralph got up from where he was lying beside Calhoun and went over to her with his stubby little tail all awag, and she knelt on the floor and bent her face down so Ralph could lick it. He could hear her cooing and nice-dogging at him. Ralph couldn’t get enough of that kind of attention.

  At first he didn’t recognize the woman. A long reddish-blond braid hung out of the back of her Boston Red Sox cap. She was wearing dirty sneakers and tight-fitting blue jeans and a dark leather vest over a man’s untucked white shirt.

  It was Dr. Sam Surry, the medical examiner. She looked more like a college art student than a doctor.

  After a minute she straightened up, looked around, and spotted Calhoun. She smiled and waved and came over, with Ralph trailing behind her trying to sniff at her cuffs.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey, yourself. Where’s your stethoscope?”

  She smiled. “This is Ralph, right?”

  Calhoun nodded.

  “He came back. I’m so glad. I was worried about him, I really was.” She bent over and gave Ralph’s forehead a scratch. “He’s a nice doggie. He must smell Quincy on my pants.”

  Quincy, Calhoun remembered, was her springer. “Ralph’s a bird dog,” he said. “He’s got an excellent nose.”

  “You’re tying flies. That’s so cool.” She came over and stood behind him. “It’s hard to reconcile, a big tough guy like you making those delicate little things out of feathers and thread and fluffy stuff.”

  “I ain’t that tough,” said Calhoun.

  She put her hand on his shoulder and leaned over to look at what he was doing. Her fingers burned, the way they had left heat the other night when she’d touched him. Her hair smelled soapy. “Do you give lessons?” she said. Her mouth was very close to his ear.

  He shrugged. “Kate and I have talked about doing that. Holding fly-tying classes in the winter when things are slow. It would bring people into the shop, give us more exposure, maybe even create some new fishermen, new customers. That’s her idea, anyway. I think it’s probably worth a shot, though I’m not sure I have the patience for it. Maybe we’ll try it this year.”

  “If you do,” she said, “I’ll sign up. I almost went into surgery because I like to do precise work with my hands. It must be satisfying to catch fish on flies you made yourself.”

  Calhoun nodded. “Ayuh. It is.” He wondered why Dr. Sam Surry had come into the shop, but he couldn’t come up with a polite way of asking.

  “I bet you’d make a wonderful teacher,” she said. Her hand was still on his shoulder. He wondered if she’d forgotten it was there, or if she was as aware of it as he was.

  He shifted in his chair, and she finally took away her hand, which was a relief.

  “We got a big clearance sale going on,” he said after a minute. “Fifty percent off all the clothing. Or, if you like, you can get two of something for the price of one. Whichever you prefer. We’re making room for next year’s outdoor active wear fashions.”

  She was smiling at his cumbersome change of subject. “Are next year’s outdoor active wear fashions better than this year’s?”

  Calhoun shrugged. “I am the last person you should ask about fashion. I was just trying to do my job and sell you a damn shirt.”

  “Would it be awful if I didn’t buy anything?”

  “You didn’t come here looking for a bargain?”

  “No,” she said. “I came looking for you.” She hesitated. “I thought you’d want to know that they did the ballistics, and your pistol was not the weapon that Mr. Vecchio was shot with.”

  “I was pretty sure of that,” said Calhoun.

  “You should get it back in a few days.”

  He nodded. “That’s good. I appreciate you dropping by to tell me.”

  She shrugged. “I was in the neighborhood. Thought you’d like to know that you’re no longer a suspect.”

  “I’ve been wondering whether I did it or not.”

  She smiled.

  “You want some coffee?” he said.

  She looked at her wristwatch, then at him. “Okay. Sure.”

  “Milk and sugar?”

  She shook her head. “Just black.”

  Calhoun got up, went back to the coffee urn, filled two mugs, and brought them back to the fly-tying bench.

  Dr. Sam Surry had picked up one of the featherwing streamers he’d made the other day. She was holding it up to the light, squinting at it. “This is gorgeous,” she said. “A work of art.”

  “It’s called a Gray Ghost.”

  “It’s too pretty for some old fish to chew on.”

  He handed her a mug of coffee. “I’ll make one for you, if you want. Show you how it’s done.”

  “I’d like that,” she said.r />
  She hitched up a chair beside him, and he proceeded to tie a Gray Ghost for her. He explained what each piece of material and each part of the fly was called, and he told her that Mrs. Carrie Stevens, who’d invented several Ghosts—gray, green, and black that he knew of, maybe others—tied beautiful flies without a vise, holding the hook and manipulating the thread and the materials with her fingers.

  He was just stroking back the wings and whip-finishing the head when the bell over the door dinged and Kate came in. She looked around, and then her eyes lit on Calhoun with Dr. Sam Surry sitting beside him. She arched her eyebrows, smiled quickly, and came over.

  “How’s it going?” she said to Calhoun.

  “Slow.” He dabbed a drop of head cement on the Gray Ghost. “This is Dr. Surry,” he said to Kate. “She’s the medical examiner on Mr. Vecchio’s case.” To Sam Surry, he said, “This here is Kate Bala-ban. She’s my boss. She owns the place.”

  Kate gave Dr. Surry a quick smile. “Stoney and I are partners, actually,” she said.

  “He was showing me how he ties a Gray Ghost,” said Dr. Surry.

  “He’s an artist, all right,” said Kate.

  “I thought you were taking the day off,” said Calhoun.

  Kate nodded. “I know you did. I need some stuff in my office. I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”

  She went into her office in the back of the store, and after a few minutes she came back out. She went behind the front counter, did something at the cash register, then waved and left the store.

  “Kate’s a spectacular-looking woman,” said Dr. Surry.

  Calhoun nodded. “She surely is.”

  Dr. Surry stood up. “Well,” she said, “I guess I should get going.”

  “Don’t forget your fly,” said Calhoun. He put the Gray Ghost he’d tied for her into a transparent envelope. “Go catch something with it.”

  “I think I’ll have it framed,” she said. She headed for the door.

  Calhoun got up and followed her. “Sure I can’t interest you in a nice half-price Patagonia shirt?”

  She smiled. “I’ve already got a shirt. Thanks for the fly. If I hear anything new on the case, I’ll let you know.” She gave him a little wave and went out the door.

  Calhoun watched her walk away, then shrugged and went back to his fly-tying bench. He had the feeling that between Sam Surry and Kate Balaban, he’d missed something, but he decided not to dwell on it. There was no point to trying to understand the ways of women.

  Calhoun was putting away the fly-tying stuff, getting ready to close up the shop, when the sheriff came in.

  “You want to buy something,” said Calhoun, “or are you on the job?”

  “On the job, I’m afraid. Two murder cases, Stoney. Can’t really take a day off, even if it is a Sunday. Jane doesn’t like it, but what are you going to do?”

  “Take her out to dinner.”

  He nodded. “Already thought of that. We’re going to try that new Mexican place. I’d ask you to come along, but…”

  Calhoun smiled. “If you did, I know enough to turn you down. So what’s up?”

  “Just wanted to update you. They haven’t been able to check the dental records yet, it being the weekend and all, but the body size and age and everything of that burned corpse matches what they know about Errol Watson. It’s not a positive identification, but everything fits and I’m prepared to pursue it. He served four and a half of a seven-year sentence for fondling a twelve-year-old girl, exposing himself to her, showing her pornographic photographs. Got out a year and a half ago. I got the names of the victim’s parents and the ADA who prosecuted the case and the PD who defended him. I figure we should try to talk to all of them.”

  “We?” said Calhoun.

  The sheriff nodded. “I’m hoping you’ll come with me, Stoney. I’d value your insights.”

  “You talking about tomorrow?”

  The sheriff nodded. “The sooner the better. Your shop’s closed on Mondays, if I recall.”

  Calhoun shrugged. “I got nothing better to do.”

  “I also want to talk to Mattie Perkins’s parents,” said the sheriff.

  “Suspects,” said Calhoun.

  “Sure. The other thing is, Gilsum says his cops never went to Vecchio’s house. I had the feeling he never even thought of it, though what he said was, they hadn’t gotten around to it yet.”

  “You tell him I was there?”

  “Had to,” said the sheriff. “Had to tell him you were working with me.”

  “What’d he say about that?”

  “Nothing. I think he’d’ve liked it if you were a good suspect. But you’re not, and he knows it. Gilsum’s a pragmatist. He just wants the case solved. He doesn’t much care how it happens.”

  “So,” said Calhoun, “whoever killed Vecchio took his keys and went to his house up in Sheepscot and grabbed his laptop and stuff.”

  “We don’t know that,” said the sheriff, “but it’s a reasonable supposition.”

  “Reasonable supposition,” repeated Calhoun. “You sound like a damn lawyer.”

  The sheriff smiled and glanced at his watch. “Jane’s waiting. I’ll pick you up around nine in the morning?”

  “Come early,” said Calhoun, “we’ll have coffee.”

  Thick black clouds were hanging low in the sky Monday morning when Calhoun and Ralph went down to Bitch Creek with their coffee. The air was still and heavy. It smelled damp and organic, and moisture was dripping off the trees. Calhoun wondered if a line storm was going to come blasting through from the northeast, ripping the leaves off the trees and blowing the warm summery air away, leaving the crisp chill of autumn in its wake. It was the season for line storms—the autumn nor—easters that demarcated the line between summer and fall in New England.

  He supposed he could check the weather forecast on the radio, but he didn’t see the point. There was nothing you could do about it.

  It had rained overnight, and the boulders along the stream were wet. Calhoun and Ralph sat on them anyway. The surface of the stream was littered with yellow poplar leaves. They swirled like little sailboats in the eddies and gathered in rafts along the edges of the stream, but right in the current seam where the stream was narrowed by the remains of the old bridge and the quick water rubbed against the slow water, Calhoun spotted the dimply rise of a trout. Probably eating some ants or beetles that got blown onto the water along with the leaves.

  He hoped Lyle liked the idea of having his ashes mingled with clean spring water and trout and mayflies in Bitch Creek.

  After a while, he heard the sheriff’s Explorer coming down the driveway. Then he heard the car door slam. Then the sheriff appeared at the top of the slope.

  Calhoun made a show of looking at his wrist where a watch would’ve been if he’d worn one.

  “Okay, dammit,” said the sheriff. “So I’m twenty minutes later than I said I’d be. If you carried that cell phone around with you like I told you to, you’d know why. Now I’m going up to your house, and I’m going to pour myself some coffee, and then I’m going to dry off a chair and sit on your deck, and the sooner you come up and join me, the sooner I can fill you in and we can get going.”

  Calhoun smiled. The sheriff sounded kind of pissed. He wasn’t usually that long-winded.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Ralph.

  Ralph scurried up the hill, and Calhoun followed behind, and when he climbed up on the deck, the sheriff was sitting there sipping coffee with his reading glasses perched low on his nose, peering at a notebook that he had propped up on the arm of the chair, and Ralph was lying on the deck beside him.

  The sheriff looked up over the tops of his glasses. Then he reached into his pants pocket and took out a thin electric cord with a heavy square plug on one end. He put it on the table. “Use this to recharge your phone,” he said. “We got to be able to keep in touch, Stoney. You didn’t lose it, did you?”

  “I got it somewhere,” said Calhoun.


  “I tried to call you about an hour ago. Wanted to tell you I was going to be a little late and fill you in.”

  “Fill me in now,” said Calhoun.

  The sheriff looked down at his notebook for a minute. “Okay. First off, the reason I’m late, I was talking with the ME’s office up in Augusta. They matched up Errol Watson’s prison dental records with the X-rays of that corpse we found on Quarantine Island. So we got ourselves a positive ID, which is pretty damn big progress all by itself. I managed to track down the whereabouts of the assistant district attorney who prosecuted Watson, guy name of Acworth, though I wasn’t able to talk to him, inasmuch as he’s presently residing in a cemetery.”

  “He’s dead?” said Calhoun.

  The sheriff nodded. “Drowned three summers ago. Jet Ski accident.”

  “I guess he didn’t kill Errol Watson, then,” said Calhoun.

  “No,” said the sheriff, “and he won’t be helping us figure out who did, either.” He looked at his notebook for a minute. “I got a meeting with Detective Gilsum this afternoon.”

  Calhoun felt a twinge of panic. “A meeting,” he said.

  The sheriff laughed. “You aren’t invited, Stoney. This is just me and Gilsum and maybe Enfield. Gilsum wants to keep this thing organized and coordinated, and I’m all for that. He’s got some Portland detectives talking to Watson’s neighbors and coworkers and anybody else they can track down who knew him. He’s also lined up some state cops up there in Augusta to question people about Paul Vecchio. At this point, Gilsum is treating Watson and Vecchio as separate cases.”

  “That don’t make any sense,” said Calhoun. “It’s pretty obvious—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said the sheriff. “The point is, Gilsum has got competent people doing what needs to be done, tracking down people and interrogating them, and that is good for us, Stoney, because it’s necessary, but it’s the kind of legwork can be terribly boring and unproductive.”

  “Does that mean they’re going to follow up with Mattie Perkins?”