An Unsettling Crime for Samuel Craddock

by Terry Shames

  “Jeanne said you called, and I thought I’d stop by.”

  “You might as well come on in.” She turns her back on me and shuffles into the living room. She has the heater on and it’s at least eighty degrees in here. She’s always been thin, but now her arms and legs are like sticks. She looks twenty years older than she is. I wonder if a nasty attitude ages a person. She eases herself into her rickety rocking chair that has a quilted seat cushion and back. It’s positioned to watch the black-and-white console TV that Daddy bought right before he got sick. I don’t know where he got the money for it. Some things you don’t ask.

  “You want me to make some coffee?” I ask.

  “Go ahead. Make yourself right at home in my house.”

  If I hadn’t asked, she would have complained that I never did a thing for her. She’s the original “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” I’ve learned not to bite back, but it exhausts me to resist.

  The kitchen is small but adequate. I’ll say this for her: she has always kept a clean house. I smile at the school picture of my nephew, Tom, that she has taped to the refrigerator. It’s from a year ago, when he was in the second grade, and in the last year he has sprouted considerably. He’s grinning a mile wide. I don’t know how Horace and Donna managed to produce such a smart, friendly kid. I put the coffee on to perc and sit down, choosing a leatherette side chair rather than the saggy sofa with the nubby weave.

  “It’s cold outside,” I say.

  “Humph. You got nothing to talk about but the weather?”

  My conversation choices are limited by what I can stand to hear her go on about. If I tell her that my cows arrived today, she’ll declare that they’re a waste of time and money. When I first told her I was going to buy some cattle, she said, “That’s nice. You’re going to be a gentleman farmer.” What she meant was that I was a phony, trying to look like a cattle rancher when I’m nothing but a boy who grew up poor and married a rich wife.

  If I tell her about the fire, she’ll blame the victims, and when she finds out they were black, she’ll rant that “coloreds” have it better than her and don’t know how to take care of their goods. “Well, it is cold,” I say. “Norther came in and the temperature dropped thirty degrees.”

  “I heard all that racket out there this morning with the fire trucks. What happened?”

  I don’t have the heart for this. “It was a fire, but it’s out now.” Before she has a chance to pump me, I say, “Jeanne said you had something you wanted to talk to me about.”

  “I doubt it would be of interest to you.”

  “It might. Why don’t you try me?”

  “You going to let that coffee sit in there percolating until it’s scorched?”

  I go into the kitchen and pour us each a cup. “Cream and sugar?”

  “Not too much cream,” she says.

  When I hand it to her, she eyes it with suspicion.

  I sit back down. “Go on, tell me what it was you wanted to talk about.”

  “I guess you didn’t hear that Donna got beat up over the weekend.”

  “No, I hadn’t heard it.” This is news. Donna isn’t one to take anything off anybody, and I’m surprised somebody got the better of her.

  “Of course not. You’re just the chief of police. Why would you know when somebody’s going around attacking women?”

  “Somebody attacked her? Did she say who did it?”

  “I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t Horace that beat her up.”

  “That wasn’t in my mind. Did she go to the hospital?” I don’t know exactly what “beaten up” means. It could mean anything from somebody slapping her to having bones broken.

  “I told her she looked so bad that she ought to, but she said she was all right.”

  “I’ll stop by and see if she wants to file a complaint,” I say.

  “La-di-dah, ain’t we official. I don’t expect she’ll appreciate you sticking your nose in.”

  She’s probably right. Donna and I have an adversarial relationship due to some history that I prefer not to dwell on. But regardless of what Mamma thinks, I am the chief of police, and I can’t have people getting beaten up and not reporting it. “Have you seen Tom?”

  “He don’t ever come by here to see me. Lives right downstairs, and I hear him run out hollering with his friends, but he doesn’t have the time of day for his old granny, even though he’s the apple of my eye.”

  He could come by every day, and she’d say the same thing. All I know is when I was that age I stayed out as much as I could to escape her tongue.

  I get up and tell her I need to go. “Thank you for telling me what happened to Donna. I’ll talk to her or Horace to make sure she’s all right.”

  I’m surprised when the sharp retort I expect doesn’t come. Instead, she nods and looks off toward the front door with her head cocked. “You watch. There’s more to that story than she’s telling.”

  After I perform all the little rituals of leave-taking I head downstairs to the apartment where Horace, Donna, and Tom live. I knock on the door and hear footsteps. Donna opens the door, and I can’t help letting out an exclamation of surprise. Someone has made a mess of her face. Her left eye is black and swollen almost shut, and she has bruises all over, including around her neck. It looks like somebody tried to strangle her.

  She shrinks back when she sees me. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” she says, sweeping her long mane of hair back over her shoulder. Her hair is naturally brown, but a year ago she went blond. She’s short and stacked, with a tiny waist and curved bottom. She’s not exactly pretty, but she has a way of pouting her lips and lowering her head to look up at you that gives you ideas.

  “What in the world happened to you?” I ask.

  “I guess she told you.”

  “Mamma was worried about you.”

  “Don’t give me that BS. She just wants to gossip.” She steps back. “It’s cold! Now that you’ve seen me, you might as well come on in.” No wonder she’s cold. She’s wearing tight pants and a short-sleeved shirt with a plunging neckline that exposes a lot of skin. She puts me on guard.

  I close the door behind me. “Who did this to you?”

  She gives her usual roguish smile. But the effect is grotesque, given the state of her face. “You gonna go beat him up for me?”

  “Donna, just tell me what happened.”

  “I hitched a ride from the wrong person.”

  “Why were you hitchhiking?”

  She licks her lips. “I went out to get some milk for Tom. Horace had the car, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to thumb a ride. It’s only a mile down the road to the grocery store.”

  Something sounds fishy, but I don’t want to directly accuse Horace of hitting her. To tell the truth, Horace may be shiftless and he drinks too much, but I’ve never known him to be violent.

  “Did you know the guy who picked you up?”

  She touches the skin above her eye. “Never laid eyes on him.”

  “What kind of car was he driving?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. A Ford, I think. A lot newer than ours. It was dark-colored.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Late. About ten o’clock at night. That’s what time I realized we didn’t have any milk for Tom’s breakfast.” Her eyes cut to the side, which makes me suspicious. Shifty eyes. Could mean she’s nervous because I’m asking all these questions. But could also be that she’s lying. But why? It’s not as if it matters what she was doing out. But then an uncomfortable thought strikes me.

  “Where was Horace?”

  “He was over in Bobtail, having a beer with some guys.”

  Horace isn’t a particularly friendly guy, and I wonder who he could have been out drinking beer with. I have a feeling that Donna is lying, but I’m not sure what about exactly.

  Could she be cheating on Horace? If he found out, it’s possible that he’s the one who hit her. And I know from firsthand experience th
at she cozies up to other men. Right after she and Horace were married and I was in college, I came home for a visit and she cornered me in the house when everybody was out. If she’d been married to anybody but my brother, I might have been tempted, but that was one step too far. We’ve had an uneasy relationship ever since, and she’s downright cold to Jeanne, although I don’t think that bothers Jeanne one bit.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you, but you shouldn’t be hitchhiking late at night,” I say.

  “How else am I going to get to the store if Horace is gone?”

  I know what she wants me to say, but I’m not going to offer to come take her to the store late at night. “Don’t run out of milk,” I say.

  She laughs. It’s a throaty sound. She knows how to be sexy, even with a torn-up face.

  “If you see the guy who did this again, call me.”

  Chapter 7

  It’s almost five o’clock, so it’s likely I missed Newberry’s press conference. Not that he had much to tell the press, but it might have been interesting to see how these things are done. I wonder if that reporter from the Dallas Morning News went. It’s a four-hour drive from Dallas to Jarrett Creek. I guess they monitor reports that come in to the highway patrol and the Rangers, and a bulletin about five dead bodies is worth traveling down here to check out.

  I can’t get the crime scene out of my mind. Even if it isn’t my place to investigate, I want to go back there and took a look at it. I’m afraid Albert Lamond is right. From the way Sutherland talked, since the victims are black, I’m pretty sure he isn’t going to put a lot of effort into the case. It has been a while since I left there, and maybe everyone has cleared out until the fire cools down enough to go inside. I’d like a chance to look over the site without others milling around.

  First I stop by headquarters. No one is there, but Tilley has left me a note saying he’s gone off to help his wife get their cat out of a tree. There are three messages on the answering machine, all asking about this morning’s fire. One of them is Bonnie Bedichek, wanting an update for the newspaper. None of them needs to be answered at the moment.

  The fire chief’s truck is still parked on the road near the path that leads to the house. He and another man are sitting in the truck, eating hamburgers. They greet me with a gloomy air.

  “Still too hot to get close?” I ask.

  “Nothing we can do anyway. That’s up to the fire forensics team from Austin. They’ll be here first thing tomorrow. We’re waiting for THP to send somebody out to keep an eye on the place overnight. You get looters and curiosity-seekers at something like this. That structure is not safe and somebody could get hurt.”

  “I’m going over there to take another look around,” I say.

  “Let me get you a hard hat,” Koontz says. He climbs out of the truck and sizes me up. “You okay staying here until the THP man arrives? I’d like to get on back.”

  I tell him I’ll stay. He doesn’t have to hear it twice. As he’s climbing back into his truck, I ask him what to do with the hard hat when I’m done.

  “I’ll get it from you next time I see you. No doubt we’ll run into each other again.”

  I don’t know what I’m looking for. Maybe I’m overstepping myself and ought to leave this to the experts, but at the very least I want to get a good look at the scene. I want to know how they lived and what was going on inside when the murders occurred. Did they know the person who killed them? Did they have a meal together? Or were they rousted out of bed? The stench is still hanging in the air from the fire and the bodies, but it has come down a notch in the chill air. The scene has a feel of doom, trees at the perimeter of the clearing drooping from the heat and the smoke of the fire. I have to remind myself not to get caught up in the desolation of the scene. That’s what they told us in the scant training I received—that your investigating is best done with a neutral attitude. Still, it’s hard not to react when children are involved.

  Wisps of smoke still rise here and there from the embers. There’s a big area of bare ground surrounding the house. Nobody bothered with a garden here. Why would anybody go to the trouble to clear such a big area and leave it bare? It makes the house look stark, standing in the middle of the clearing. It looks suspiciously like whoever lived here wanted to be sure they didn’t get snuck up on.

  I first walk the perimeter of the clearing, keeping my eye on the ground to see if anything is out of place. A lot of the area is trampled with the footprints of the men who responded to the fire. There’s a variety of discarded items—a lone sock, half buried in the dirt; a paper cup; several feet of frayed rope; a bangle bracelet; and a comb with half its teeth missing. All of this has obviously been here for a while.

  More interesting is a pile of beer bottles and cigarette butts, newer, next to what looks like a campfire. It’s possible that a bit of drinking turned into an argument and an argument into gunplay. I crouch down and hold my hand near the ashes. The remnants of wood are cold. I use a stick to sift through the ashes of the fire and find a marshmallow, charred on one side, uncooked on the other. I peer off through the trees, picturing the scene. A kid cooking marshmallows and this one slipping off the stick. Adults standing around, drinking beer, watching the kids cook over the fire. There might have been hot dogs, too. Animals would have eaten any remains of that, but no self-respecting animal would touch a marshmallow.

  Footprints around the fire indicate that there were women here as well as men. There’s a track of a high-heeled shoe very clearly marked. But I don’t have a way of making this mean anything.

  I rise, dusting my hands on my pants, and continue my walk around the clearing, getting closer to the house. There are more cigarette butts and a few more pieces of detritus, but nothing that strikes me as of great interest.

  The back of the house is the most intact, and I wonder why. From the way the house is damaged, it looks like whoever lit the fire came up to the front door and started it. So why were the bodies at the front of the house? I get a sick feeling at what occurs to me as the most likely scenario. Someone at the back of the house was stationed to keep them from escaping out the back, so they ran to the front. There they either ran into the fire or were mowed down by gunfire. One body was found inside the back door. When that person was killed, the others must have fled toward the front.

  There’s a concrete slab for a porch at the back door, scuffed and with dried dirt on one edge where someone scraped their shoes. The door is closed, but it opens readily and I step into the kitchen. It’s chaotic, as if someone had served a meal and hadn’t gotten around to doing the dishes. Everything is covered with soot, so it’s hard to tell if these are dishes accumulated from several days or if it’s a recent meal. I stand still, getting a sense of the scene. There’s an area on the floor in front of me that has less soot on it, and a messy area of overlapping footprints where the body must have been retrieved. I wonder if anybody noted any footprints present before the ambulance crew arrived. No way of knowing.

  I step around where the body was found, and I walk over to the kitchen counter. There are beans in the bottom of a large pot, and a couple of pieces of cornbread in a metal pan. Another pot is empty, but there’s a green leaf sticking to the side—collards, most likely.

  The dishes are mismatched, mostly melamine, but with a couple of chipped china dishes. They are spread haphazardly across the counter with remnants of the meal. One person scraped their plate clean, and one hardly ate anything. Most didn’t leave much. The glasses are jelly jars. Two of them have traces of milk in the bottom—or at least I take it to be milk. It’s cloudy with ash. Children. I wonder if there was an adult here to cook this meal.

  And then it strikes me: The fire happened this morning. What kept them from doing the dishes last night? It’s possible that they left the dishes every night and washed them the next morning. I know some people do that. But the rest of the kitchen is relatively tidy. I don’t get the sense that this is a household that would have left the dis
hes like this. So what happened?

  I step into a hallway. The air stings my nose, and the smell is nauseating. It’s dark in the hallway, but every surface is covered with soot. I look up at the ceiling. The soot is darkest there.

  There are three doors off the hallway, all closed, and an open entry into the living room, which took the brunt of the fire. I open the closest door and peer in. It’s a girl’s bedroom with two twin beds without headboards, made up with sheets and no bedspread. On one of the beds there’s a stuffed animal that has seen better days. Hard to tell what kind of animal it was originally. Between the two beds there’s a wooden crate for a bedside table. It has a lamp on it with no shade, just a bare bulb. Clothes are strewn across one of the beds, and there are tattered magazines on the floor, as if the girls had looked at them again and again. There’s a plain mirror propped up on a wooden chest of drawers, and various bits of paraphernalia are scattered in front of the mirror. Makeup and nail polish, and cologne. So not really young children anyway. I don’t know why, but that makes me feel a little better.

  The next room is a small laundry room that smells of cat. I haven’t seen signs of a cat. Probably ran off into the woods when the fire started. There’s a scrub tub and an old wringer washer that looks like it hasn’t been used in a long time. A piece of twine is tacked up across the room. It’s hung with a few underclothes.

  The third room is completely different. It is tricked out like someone’s idea of a New Orleans bordello. The room is papered in red-flocked wallpaper, and the double bed is covered with a red-and-gold spread and decorated with gold and black satin pillows. There’s a fancy, old-fashioned chest of drawers with carved handles and legs, and a mirror across the top. I use my handkerchief to open the top drawer. It’s warped and hard to open. It contains women’s undergarments. The other drawers are a jumbled mess of blouses and slacks that don’t look like they belong to children. A straight-backed chair in one corner has a worn, red velvet seat cover. Next to the bed is a carved round table with an ornate glass lamp with a red-fringed lampshade.