by Bill Crider
"It was easy," I said. "He was scared half to death. The alligators accounted for the other half."
"That silly son of a bitch," Tolliver said. "He was so scared he was almost pissing his pants."
"He had a right to be scared," I said. "All his worst fears came true."
"That's too bad," Tolliver said. "You can pitch that rifle down, by the way. And I guess you might as well throw that pistol over here by me, Jackson."
I thought for a second or two that Jackson might make a play. If he had, I might have tried something myself, but neither of us did anything. I dropped the rifle, and Jackson tossed the pistol into the mud near Tolliver.
"Pick that thing up, will you, Lonnie?" Tolliver said.
The hoarse man hopped down and picked up the pistol.
"I sure as to God wish I knew what in the everlovin' hell was goin' on here," Fred said.
"I can tell you that," I said. "Remember when we were talking about how the dumpers needed the cooperation of the law? And we thought it was Jackson who was cooperating? Well, we were wrong. It was the big man himself."
"How long have you known?" Tolliver said.
"Not long," I told him. "In fact, it just came to me back there when the alligators were dining on your buddy Ransome."
"I sure wish you'd told me," Fred said.
"I wasn't sure. And then Deputy Jackson showed up here with his pistol in his hand, and I thought maybe we'd been right all along. It was a little confusing."
"Jackson's been doing a little poking around all on his own," the Sheriff said. "Looks like he's found out more than he should have, too, but just a little too late."
"I just wish I'd caught on to you a little sooner," Jackson said. "People kept askin' me about the rustlin', like I was supposed to know. I finally remembered who'd told me about it in the first place. And then I heard that I was the one who was supposed to be in charge of the case. It made me wonder a little bit."
"Then there was that pistol in Stone's truck," I said.
"Yeah. I asked him over and over, but he kept on sayin' that it couldn't be his. And that pickup had been at the jail a whole day before the Sheriff told me to search it. If anybody put that pistol there, it was him."
"I'm not admitting a thing," Tolliver said, sounding smug. "I would like to know, though, what it was that got you onto me, Smith."
"It took me a while to realize that everything pointing to Jackson could point to you just as well. I'm sure he's not the only one with the keys to the County's truck."
"There's gotta be more to it than that," Tolliver said. He was probably wondering whether anyone else was going to figure out just what had been happening.
"Not much," I said. "The main thing was how much you protested today when I hinted that Jackson might have planted that pistol. You didn't want that getting out, because Jackson might think of you. It turns out that he already had."
"Hell, nobody'd believe you thought of me just because of that."
"Maybe not, but along with everything else, it adds up. And then there was the clincher. After I told you all I knew this afternoon, the funny noises started again. Somebody wanted to get me and Fred down in the woods to do us in. Who knew I was getting too close? Jackson? He'd chased me off from around here once, if it was him, but that's all. If it was you, though, that plus everything I told you added up to big trouble if I put it all together." I shook my head. "I did, but it was a little too late."
"Don't blame yourself, son," Fred said. "Hell, ever'body thought the Sheriff was an honest man."
"They must have offered you a lot of money," I said.
"Enough," Tolliver said. "So the only problem is, what do we do with you now?"
"Shoot 'em and dump 'em in a hole with the barrels. Cover 'em up and leave 'em there," Lonnie said.
Fred had been exaggerating when he had suggested that we shoot the men for trespassing, but this was different. This time, no one was kidding.
"That's a lot of bodies to leave lying around," I said. "Four, counting Ransome."
"If you're telling the truth about him, there's not much left to lie around," Tolliver said. "And that's a good idea for all of you. Tie 'em up, Merle."
Lonnie's buddy jumped off the back of the bobtail. "Where's the rope?" he said.
"Back of my truck," Tolliver said, and Merle walked off to get it.
"You three can sit down," Tolliver said. "Lonnie, get me that rifle."
Lonnie came over and got the rifle, and we sat down. There wasn't much else to do.
In a minute, Merle came back with some nylon rope.
"Tie their hands and feet," Tolliver said, and Merle proceeded to do a very efficient job.
I wanted to say something, to tell Tolliver that he couldn't do this to us, but I'd heard that line in too many bad movies.
Besides, he very obviously could do this to us.
"Put 'em in the back of my truck," Tolliver said.
Merle and Lonnie picked Fred up like he was a sack of feed and hauled him off. Then they came for Jackson.
By the time they came back for me, there was hardly any feeling at all left in my hands. Merle tied a mean knot.
They carried me to the truck, one holding my shoulders and the other my feet. I tried to sag on them, to go limp, to give them as much trouble as dead weight could. It didn't help. They tossed me high in the air and over into the back of the truck. I never thought they could do it, but moving all those barrels must have given them some real muscle.
I landed on Fred and Jackson. It wasn't that they wanted to break my fall. They were just in the way.
I heard the air go out of Fred.
"Sorry about that," I said.
He sucked in a deep breath, but he didn't try to say anything.
"How is it they do things in the movies?" I said. "Don't we put our backs to each other and work on the knots?"
"Might as well try it," Jackson said. "I don't expect it'll work."
His pessimism was justified. I couldn't even feel his hands, much less the knots.
"I can't feel yours, either," he said.
That was when I knew we were in real trouble.
Lonnie climbed up in the truck bed with us. Merle and Tolliver got up in the cab. The doors slammed, and we were off to visit the gators. They probably had their appetites stimulated by Ransome and were really eager for more.
For some reason I thought about the crocodile in Peter Pan, the one who got a taste of Captain Hook and followed him forever after, hoping for another. I wondered if alligators and crocodiles were alike that way.
"You fellas gonna be a mighty good meal," Lonnie said as we jounced along. He was standing braced against the back of the cab, holding Jackson's pistol.
We didn't answer him. It's hard to talk when you're lying face down in a truck bed with your hands and feet tied, especially when you're being bounced around by the motion of the truck.
I wondered if Tolliver would really throw us to the gators.
I wondered if he'd kill us first.
I wondered if Dino would keep on feeding Nameless if I never came back.
Then the truck stopped.
Lonnie stepped over us and opened the tailgate. He didn't mess around with us after that, just slid us over the steel bed and out onto the ground.
It was quite a fall, but the ground was soft. The breath went out of me for a second, but I didn't think anything was broken, not that it was going to matter very much in a little while.
Tolliver and Merle were standing over us. Lonnie looked down from the truck bed.
"I just wanta know one thing," Fred said. He had landed face down in the mud, but he had managed to roll over so that he could talk.
"What's that?" Tolliver said.
"Are you the son of a bitch that killed my gator?"
18
I wanted to laugh, but that's not easy to do when you've got a mouthful of dirt--cold, damp, and gritty. I spit most of it out and ran my tongue around my teeth trying to cle
ar the rest of it. There were a few grass blades in there, too.
Tolliver laughed loud enough for both of us, anyway. "Hell, old man, you got a lot more worries than that one," he told Fred.
Fred didn't seem to mind the laughter. "That's the one that bothers me most, though. That's all I ever really wanted to know about this whole mess. I didn't give a damn about the dumpin'--hell, I didn't even know about it till last night. If you really are gonna feed us to the gators here, I'd sure like to know who killed that other one."
"Why don't you ask your big-time investigator," Tolliver said. "It could be that he has it all figured out by now. After all, he's the one you paid."
"Ain't paid him yet," Fred said.
Tolliver laughed again. "Then you'll be saving yourself a little bit of money. How about it, Smith?"
"To hell with that shit," Merle said. "I think we oughta dump 'em in the lake and get outta here."
"We got time," Tolliver said. "Let's see what he knows."
My mouth was mostly clear of dirt, and I rolled onto my side so I could get a look at Tolliver. It wasn't easy to see him, since it was dark and I didn't want to twist my head up. All I could see were his boots and the bottoms of his pants.
"What I don't know," I said, "is how you're going to explain away the disappearance of four people, including one of your own deputies. I'd think that might be a little tricky."
"Just three people," Tolliver said. "Nobody's going to miss old Ransome, unless it's the people he worked for. And they won't say a single word. I think I can promise you that."
"But what about Jackson?"
"Oh, I suspect that word'll get around that he found out who was doing the rustling around here. Seems like it was old Fred Benton--can you believe that? That old fart's been around here all his life, and we all thought he was honest as the day is long. Fooled us all, that's for sure. But we all got suspicious when he brought in that city fella to work for him. Shows he wasn't to be trusted.
"But old Jackson got onto 'em some way or another, found out what they were up to with those cows. We got a call from him on the radio, and he'd chased 'em all the way into Fred's back forty. That's the last we ever heard of any of 'em. God knows what mighta happened to 'em back in those old lakes and marshes. They might all be dead, killed in a shoot-out. Gators probably ate ever' last bite of 'em."
He laughed. I was getting tired of hearing him do that. He really seemed to be having a good time, and I was tired of that, too. I just wished I could do something about it, which I couldn't.
"Hell," he said. "That story's close enough to the truth, after all. I imagine everyone around here will even believe most of it."
"If they search, they'll find the dump," I said, hoping to tone down the laughter.
"They will like hell," he said. "Who do you think'll be leading the search? And even if they do, none of the barrels are marked. Thanks to Jackson, we came back and got the one we screwed up on."
I had figured that. Jackson had obviously reported to Tolliver about Brenda's conversation with Perry. That accounted for the missing barrel.
"Who cares about that?" Merle said. "Let's shoot 'em and dump 'em."
"Damn right," Lonnie said. "I'm tired of listenin' to all this shit. They'd talk all night if it'd keep 'em out of the water."
"Hang on a minute," Tolliver said. "He still hasn't told us who killed Fred's gator."
"I don't know," I said.
"Damn," Fred said.
"Don't give up so easy," Tolliver said. "I bet he's got an idea or two, don't you, Smith?"
He was right. There was nothing I could prove, but I did think I knew the answer.
"Let's say it was Zach Holt. But he didn't do it on his own. You told him to."
"See there, Fred," Tolliver said. "You wouldn't have wasted your money on this fella even if you had paid him, not one bit. I knew he was a smart one, even before Jackson warned me. Didn't I, Jackson?"
His boots walked past my face, and he went over to Jackson and gave him a kick in the side. Jackson, who'd had very little to say until then grunted when the boot hit him. Then he said, "I should've kept my mouth shut."
"Maybe so," Tolliver said. "But you told me he needed watching, and you were sure right."
He walked on back over to me. "Now tell 'em the rest," he said. His voice seemed to be coming from high above me.
"It was the rumors about the park that started it all, I think. You were afraid that if the land sold, the State would come in to build the park and maybe find all those barrels you thought were safely hidden. If that happened, Jackson might guess the truth about the rustling story, and you'd be in big trouble." I spit out a grass blade. "So you decided to scare Fred off."
"If that's what I decided, it sure as hell didn't work," Tolliver said.
I had been trying to hold my neck up and watch his legs, but it was too much work. I laid my head on the ground and went on.
"Oh, it worked all right. You didn't really want to scare him. Just the opposite. Fred told me himself that he was so stubborn that the more someone tried to make him leave, the more likely he was to stay. You knew what he was like, and so did everyone else. So you started in with the calls and the noises. And then you threw in the gator for good measure."
"That's pretty close, all right," Tolliver said. There was a note of something almost like admiration in his voice, as if he hadn't thought I'd really been able to figure things out.
"You got Holt to kill the gator and make the noises," I said. "And then I guess he got suspicious of why you wanted it done. Or maybe it was Ransome that paid him. Anyway, he caught on to what was happening and found out about the dumping. He even told someone about it."
That last bit wasn't true, but he'd hinted to Brenda Stone about what was going on, and I hoped the Sheriff would worry just a little bit.
"I think that what happened next is that Holt got a tad greedy. He tried to blackmail you. Or Ransome. Whichever. One of you went over to his house to discuss things with him, got into an argument, and killed him. Since his wife was there, naturally she had to die too.
"Smart," Tolliver said. "Too damn smart for your own good, though."
"Yeah," Fred said. "I just wish he'd told me all this a little sooner. It mighta done some good."
"I put it together too late," I said.
"Not too late for us," Lonnie said. "Let's dump 'em."
"There's more," I said.
"Hell," Lonnie said. "I don't care."
"Let him tell it," Tolliver said.
"All right," I said. "When you and Ransome met to talk over Holt's murder, I followed Ransome part of the way to the meeting place. You tried to kill me then, since Jackson had already told you I was going to be trouble. I guess that's really about all. When I came in today with most of the pieces in place, after Jackson had already told you about what Fred and I had found down here, you knew it was time to take me out for good. Even if I did suspect the wrong man, you didn't want to take any chances with me. So you made that noise to get me and Fred down here, and we fell for it."
"And now here we all are together," Tolliver said, immensely pleased with himself.
"Who killed Holt?" Jackson said, lawman to the end. "You or Ransome?"
"Well, now," Tolliver said. "That's for me to know and you to find out. Sure gonna be hard for you to do, though, where you're gonna be."
"Now can we dump 'em?" Merle said.
"Sure," Tolliver said. "Let's dump 'em."
"We gonna shoot 'em first?" Merle said.
"Let the gators have 'em, the way they took Ransome," Tolliver said. "Alive and kicking, so they can appreciate the fun of it."
Someone grabbed my shoulders and began dragging me out into the water. They wouldn't have to shoot us. Put us in water over a foot or so deep, and we'd probably drown soon enough.
I heard splashing on either side of me. Fred and Jackson were being dragged into the lake as well. I tilted my head back to see who had me. It was Lonnie.
He didn't say anything, just kept dragging me.
When the water was about up to his waist, he let me go.
I thought that it might have been Ransome's thrashing around that got him in trouble, so I tried to hold still. I was working on the theory that if I didn't attract any attention, I'd be all right.
It was a good theory. The only thing wrong with it was the fact that I immediately sank to the bottom of the lake. It's not easy to stay calm in a situation like that.
Somehow I managed it. I got a deep breath before I went under, and I then lay there in the moss and weeds, feeling their rough tendrils on my face and trying to concentrate. The water had been only up to Lonnie's waist, hadn't it? Therefore, all I had to do was stand up, and then I could breathe.
Sounds easy, right? After all, I was in the water, which provided some buoyancy. It wasn't like lying on the ground.
So just try it sometime, with your hands and feet tied and thick, grasping water weeds all around you. It's not as easy as it sounds.
I was lying on my back, so the first thing I did was to sit up. Even that wasn't easy, and I kept tangling in the weeds. I was beginning to think that I would attract an alligator before I got started, but I finally jackknifed myself into something resembling a seated position.
By then I needed to take a breath. I tried lunging upward, sort of like a merman, but I didn't accomplish a thing.
I sat for a second, thinking about it and telling myself not to panic. It shouldn't be so hard to move. After all, I was in the water, and the water would help me if I didn't try to fight it.
I tried bouncing up and down on my butt, each time straining my body upward and trying to get a little higher. It worked, and I managed at last to get my feet under me and force myself out of the water.
I came up covered with slimy moss, water draining out of my hair, vines hanging in front of my eyes. I sucked in a deep, gasping breath and then another, wondering how I could help Fred and Jackson.
Just about then, Jackson popped out of the water to my left, sucking air like a vacuum cleaner. He would be all right.