Gator Kill

by Bill Crider

  I thought of my sister, lying dead in a field for a long, lonely time with no one to know, and of how I'd looked for her for so many months. And how I'd never be absolutely sure of how she got there and why.

  I thought of what it would be like to lie there in the rainy darkness with a bullet in my gut.

  I thought about how Dino would have to keep on feeding Nameless, and how he'd hate having to do it.

  I thought about long blonde hair, and a shadow on blue eyes.

  "All right," Brenda Stone said. "Put the flashlight down, and then you can both turn around."

  Fred bent over and put the light on the ground. We both turned around. Brenda Stone was standing about fifteen yards behind us, holding a small rifle, probably a .22. I didn't think she could kill me with it, not unless she was a really good shot, or unless she got lucky, but it wasn't worth taking the chance. One of those small caliber bullets could tumble around inside me and rearrange my internal organs in a way that the surgeons would never quite figure out.

  She looked as if she would shoot without hesitation, too. He blonde hair hung in lank strands around her face, and the man's shirt she was wearing clung to her curves in a way that might have been interesting under other circumstances. Her face was set and hard.

  "Can I just step out of this water?" I said.

  "Real slow," she sad, gesturing slightly with the rifle barrel.

  I stepped up to stand beside Fred. "I knew this was a bad idea," I said.

  "I knew I shoulda invested in IBM forty years ago," he said.

  I got the point.

  Brenda looked at us and held the rifle steady. It occurred to me that she didn't have any more of an idea about how to proceed from this point on than I did.

  "I guess you know you're trespassing," I said.

  "That's not really my problem," she said. "You two are the ones with the problem."

  "What exactly is the problem?" I said. "That's what I'd like to know."

  "You didn't get my husband out of jail," she said.

  That wasn't my job, and I hadn't said I'd do it anyhow. But I was a little surprised.

  "I talked to him and the Sheriff this morning," I said. "I thought he'd be out by now. They didn't really seem to have any grounds for holding him."

  "They're holding him," she said.

  "What about his alibi?" I said. "What about all those friends of his that he said could vouch for him?"

  "Deputy Jackson says friends can lie." She paused thoughtfully. "They probably are lying."

  "What?" Fred and I said at the same time.

  "Perry has a lot of friends. They wouldn't mind lying for him if he killed Zach Holt."

  "You mean you think he did it? Why--"

  Then it came to me. "You think he might've had a good reason. Those rumors I've heard. They're true."

  She didn't say anything, and I accepted her silence as confirmation.

  "That still doesn't explain why you're standing there holding a rifle on us," I said. "Can't we go somewhere out of the rain and talk about this?"

  "It's not raining," she said.

  I was so wet that I hadn't noticed, but she was right. The sky was even beginning to get a little brighter over the tops of the trees, but I knew that it would soon be getting dark again.

  "We can walk back over toward your Jeep," she said. "Slow."

  Fred and I squished our way toward her as she backed toward the Jeep. She held the rifle on us all the way, the barrel never wavering more than a quarter of an inch. I wondered how she'd gotten down in the woods. I hadn't heard any other vehicles.

  "I walked," she said when I asked. "We don't live very far, and I saw you turn in. I thought I recognized Mr. Benton's Jeep."

  "That doesn't explain why you're here."

  "I'm trying to find out who killed Zach."

  "I thought you suspicioned Perry done it," Fred said. "You said his buddies would lie for him."

  "I said they'd lie for him. I didn't say he'd done anything. I think he was probably off in the rice fields somewhere yesterday, but I don't think he killed anybody. I think he just got his buddies to say he was with them so he wouldn't get thrown in jail."

  "His buddies didn't do him much good, then, did they?" Fred said. "Or maybe they ain't such good buddies after all."

  "It's that Jackson," she said. "He's the one. They lied for Perry, all right. He just didn't believe them, and he got one of them to tell the truth. Or I guess that's what happened. Perry didn't know. All he knows is that he's still in jail."

  It seemed to me that Jackson was making it look as if Perry Stone were guilty without having all the facts, though it was certainly suspicious that Perry had gotten his friends to lie about his being with them. And of course there was the earlier fight--or scuffle--he'd had with Holt, which added to the reasons for holding him in jail. But why would Stone have killed Holt's wife? Why hadn't Jackson gotten a bullet or two out of the dead alligator? Little things like that bothered me.

  "Does your husband know?" I said. "About you and Holt, I mean?"

  "No," Brenda said.

  She sounded positive, but from my conversation with him that morning, I was sure that Perry had at least heard the rumors.

  "What about Holt's wife?" I don't know why I asked. Maybe my mind was constructing some sort of murder/suicide hypothesis.

  "She didn't know either. Nobody knew. Until now. Those rumors were just talk for a long time. Zach and I didn't get together until long after they'd already started."

  "I hope you weren't planning to shoot us because we know about you and Holt," I said. "We wouldn't have known if you hadn't told us. We didn't come looking to find that out."

  "That's what I want to know," she said.

  ""What?" I said. I couldn't follow her train of thought.

  "I want to know what you came looking for."

  "We don't know," Fred said.

  It was true, but it sounded pretty lame to me, and Brenda Stone didn't take it any differently.

  "You mean to tell me you drove down here in the woods in a rainstorm for fun? You must be crazier than a bedbug, then."

  "Look," I said. "We're all standing here drenched to the skin, in the dark, in the middle of a swamp." I looked around. "Well, on the edge of a swamp, at least. I'm wet, I'm cold, and I'm uncomfortable. And you're holding a gun on me. Why don't you tell us about why you're here and why you have the rifle. Then we'll tell you why we're here."

  She thought about it for a minute. If she'd been some macho guy who felt he had something to prove, she'd have said something like, Hell, no. I've got the gun. You do the talking.

  But she was more sensible than that. I liked to think my reasonable argument persuaded her. Maybe it did.

  "All right," she said. "I'll tell you. First of all, you have to understand about Zach. He wasn't happy with his wife. She didn't like the way they lived, and she was always complaining.

  It was such an old story that it might even have been true. Whether it was or not didn't matter. It had been true enough for Brenda Stone.

  "We happened to meet on the road one day," she said. "Just passed in our cars. So we stopped and talked for a little while. We'd gone together before, a long time ago, and one thing just led to another."

  Another old story. So was what came next.

  "It wasn't that I loved him or anything. It was just that--I don't know. Being married to Perry was fine. He's really very nice. But we never go anywhere. We never do anything. We live out here in the middle of nowhere, and his idea of a good time is to go down to the river and set out a trotline for yellow cat. You'd think we could go into Houston now and then, go to a movie, go out to eat at a nice place. But we never do. We watch TV, we make popcorn, we--"

  She stopped herself and shook her head. "I didn't mean to go into all that. But you can see why what happened…happened. Sometimes Zach and I would meet in that old house up there. What happened to that house?"

  I thought about that mattress. I hadn't been
the only one who used it, and now I knew why it had been there.

  "I'll tell you about the house when it's my turn," I said. "I still don't know what you're doing here."

  "I think you killed Zach," she said. "And if you did, I'm going to kill you."

  ~ * ~

  I wasn't convinced that she could do it.

  If we both rushed her, one of us could get to her even if the other was shot; and if he was shot only once or twice, whoever took the bullets stood a fair chance of surviving.

  Not that I wasn't worried. And not that I wanted to be the one who took the bullets. I didn't want Fred to get shot, either, but that was beside the point. The whole thing would be easier if we could convince Brenda Stone that killing us was simply a bad idea.

  "It's pretty dark," I said. "Do you think you could hit us?"

  "Perry's taught me to shoot. I can hit you."

  "Fine," I said.

  "Fine, hell," Fred said. "I say we take that pea-shooter away from her and beat her over the head with it."

  "Don't try it," she said.

  It was almost too dark now to make out the rifle barrel, but I would have bet that it was pointed in Fred's general direction. I decided to try again.

  "We didn't kill Zach," I said.

  "I didn't expect you to admit it," she said.

  "Why do you think we did?" I said. "What have we done besides drive down here to the woods? We're not even on your land. You're the trespasser, and now you're talking about murder. You're going to wind up in jail along with Perry."

  "I could dump you in one of these holes back here, drive that Jeep in after you, and nobody'd find you till the year 2000," she said.

  For someone with worried blue eyes, she was certainly cold-blooded. "You're probably right," I said, thinking that she had a point. If there was quicksand, or if the water were deep enough to cover the Jeep, she was certainly right. I was glad I hadn't waded any farther into the water before she stopped me.

  "You still haven't answered my question," I said.

  "Which one was that?"

  "Why do you think we're the ones who killed Zach Holt?"

  "Because he knew something."

  Fred snorted. "I say she's crazy. I say we jump her."

  "If we decide to do that, let's not warn her first," I said. To Brenda I said, "What did he know?"

  "He didn't tell me."

  Fred muttered something I didn't catch.

  "So we killed him for something he knew, but you don't have any idea what that was. Is that right?"

  "Yes."

  "Then why do you think we know what it is?"

  "Because you're down here."

  Fred muttered again. This time I caught the words "crazy as hell."

  I didn't think so. Confused maybe, but not crazy. I wished I could see her better, watch her face. That would make things easier, I thought.

  "Being down here has something to do with Zach's death, right?" I said.

  "Now you're getting it," she said. "He told me that there was something here that was going to make us rich. We were going to leave here and go to someplace better. Someplace where he didn't have to spend all his time doing dirty work like skinning alligators and where we could go out to eat and see a movie every now and then."

  "You know about anything here that could do that for a man, Fred?" I said.

  "Nope," he said. "Nothing out here but mosquitoes and snakes."

  I wished he hadn't said that about the snakes. It was one thing to have the bugs on your neck, which I did, singing in my ear and then biting me--or was it the ones that didn't sing that bit you?--but it was something else again to worry about snakes.

  "There was something here," Brenda said. "Zach said he knew about it."

  While her attention was on Fred, I took a step to the side. She didn't notice; it was too dark, and I moved slowly.

  "There is something about this place," I said.

  And there was. I didn't know what it was but there was something that wasn't right, something that didn't fit with the surroundings.

  "I'm gettin' real cold," Fred said, getting Brenda's attention again.

  I'd already noticed that he had better night vision than I did, and I was sure he'd seen me edging away from him. It didn't seem quite fair that he could see better than I could, considering the difference in our ages, but I wasn't going to worry about it. I slid farther away from him.

  "We didn't kill Zach," he said. "And we don't even know what you're talkin' about. So why don't we forget this ever happened and go somewhere that we can get warm? I'm goin' to catch pneumonia and die, even if you don't shoot us."

  "I don't believe you," she said.

  "Look here," Fred said. "Somebody tried to kill us the other day. Took a few shots at us from the woods on my place. We want to know about Zach as much as you do, 'cause somebody's after us too. And we want to get Perry out of jail. What you need to think about now is Perry, not about gettin' revenge on who killed Zach. All that's gonna get you is a cell in the State Pen."

  "What about the money Zach told me about?"

  I have to admit that my opinion of Brenda Stone had lowered a great deal in the last fifteen minutes or so. She was a very pretty woman, but she was also unfaithful to her husband and greedy to boot. It was a real shame, but that's the way it works out sometimes. I'd felt sorry for her and wanted to help her that morning. Now I just wanted to jerk the rifle out of her hands and send her home.

  Well, I wasn't going to get a better opportunity. She was listening to Fred, I had managed to separate myself from him by a pretty good distance, and he was ready for me to try something.

  So I did. I planted my good leg and charged Brenda.

  She saw me coming, but not until it was too late. I hit her high, getting my hands on the rifle and twisting the barrel up. The gun went off, a typical .22 pop, and I smelled the burned powder as we fell to the ground, me on top.

  Her breath went out in a whoosh, and I jerked the rifle away from her and tossed it in the general direction of Fred, hoping he'd have the presence of mind to pick it up.

  Brenda gasped for breath and twisted under me, struggling to swing her arms. I tried to pin them to her sides, and we slopped in the mud.

  Under other circumstances it might have been fun. If I hadn't heard what she'd been saying recently. If she hadn't threatened to kill me. Now I didn't like her very much.

  We struggled briefly, and then she went limp. There wasn't much fight in her.

  Or so I thought. When I started to lift myself off her, she came up with a sharp knee toward my groin, and I barely managed to twist aside in time, taking the kneecap on the outside of my thigh. I'd have a bruise tomorrow.

  "That'll be enough of that," Fred said. "I got the rifle now."

  I rolled on over and got up, dripping water and mud, looking a little bit like The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

  Brenda just lay on the muddy ground. She was crying. Earlier, that might have bothered me. Now it didn't seem to matter so much. Still, I bent over to help her up.

  She slugged me in the jaw as hard as she could, twisting away and slithering off through the mud, trying to get to the other side of the Jeep. I knew that Fred was too much of a gentleman of the old school to actually shoot her, so I dived at her, getting my arms wrapped around her legs and bringing her down into the mud again. I hit her in the back of the head, and her face slapped into the mud. She was still.

  Not that I trusted her.

  "If she tries anything else, Fred, shoot her," I said as I stood up. "Or give me the gun, and I'll shoot her."

  He handed me the .22.

  "Rifle," he said.

  "Rifle. I'll try to remember. Do you have any rope stashed in that Jeep?"

  "I'll see," he said. "Let me find the flashlight."

  He splashed off to where we'd been standing earlier, and in a minute or so the beam of the flashlight came on, focusing on Brenda Stone.

  She was sitting up now, and she blinked
in the light. Otherwise, she didn't move.

  "See about that rope," I told Fred.

  While he rummaged around under the seats in the Jeep, I talked to Brenda.

  "We're going to have to tie you up," I said. "I hate to have to do it, but you don't seem very trustworthy." I rubbed my jaw where she'd slugged me. She had quite a punch. "After we get all cleaned up and dried off, we're going to have a little chat about things."

  She was a dark shape on the ground. I couldn't see the expression on her face, if there was one.

  "We're not going to turn you in to the Sheriff," I said. "I don't really have any hard feelings about this, and I don't think Fred does either. But you've got to understand that we didn't kill your boyfriend and that we don't know who did. And you don't have to worry about your husband. We're not going to confirm the rumors for him. That's your business unless it turns out that Perry actually did kill Holt. Then it's our problem, or it is if it ties in to whatever's going on here on this property, which I guess it does."

  "Here's the rope," Fred said, coming over with the light.

  He was holding a thin strand of nylon rope that had once been white. It was hard to say exactly what color it was now. In the dark, it looked black and oily, as if it had been under the seat in the Jeep for a long time.

  "Tie her up," I said. "Just her hands ought to be enough."

  Fred handed me the light, and I held it in my left hand with the rifle in my right. I turned the beam of the light on Brenda, who looked as if she wanted to cry some more. Or maybe she just wanted to spit on us. It was hard to tell. She did neither, however, as Fred tied her hands behind her back.

  "All right," I said. "Let's all get in the Jeep."

  Fred and I got Brenda into the passenger seat, and then Fred got behind the wheel. I sat behind Brenda on a tool box and held the rifle.

  "Now where to?" Fred said.

  "If Perry's still in jail, we might as well go to his house," I said. "No one's likely to bother us there, and you can call Mary to tell her we haven't been eaten by a giant gator."

  Fred started the Jeep and slewed it around in the mud, heading it back out toward the road.

  "We still don't know what's goin' on here?" he said.

  "I'm beginning to get an idea, though," I told him. "Let's go get dry."