The Judas Murders

by Ken Oder

  Ray stared at the corpse through his field glasses. “I don’t know.”

  Ray’s eyesight for distance had dimmed with age to the point that he’d become an unreliable shot at a hundred feet, so he had gone looking for help. He found Bowie on a firing range in Buck County. A tall, rail-thin scarecrow in his twenties with a knife-edged nose, receding chin, and greasy shoulder-length blond hair, Bowie didn’t look like much, but he could shoot the eyes out of a crow at three hundred yards.

  Ray checked out Bowie’s credentials at a crafts shop that was the hub of all gossip in Buck County. The shop’s owner, a grossly obese old woman named Eva Deatherage, sat on a stool beside racks of handmade quilts and recited Bowie’s resume. He spent his youth in reform school for assaults on his parents and their neighbors. When he turned eighteen, he shot a man to death. He spent a year in county jail awaiting trial, got off on self-defense, and promptly broke into an elderly widow’s house in the middle of the night, beat her half to death, and stole a fistful of cash and a bottle of Canadian Club. The county sheriff found him at daybreak, passed-out drunk in a ditch across the road from the widow’s house. Sentenced to six years in the Richmond Penitentiary but released after four, Bowie came home last summer. “Couple days later,” Eva said, “Thurman’s daddy up and disappeared.” She gave Ray a knowing look.

  A half hour with Bowie over a jar of moonshine corroborated Eva’s report. Dumb as a rock, mean as a timber rattler, and dirt poor, Bowie was tailor-made for Ray’s needs. Ray offered him five hundred dollars for two long-range kill shots, and he jumped at the chance.

  The unforeseen downside to Bowie surfaced after they struck the deal. He talked incessantly, a continuous stream of stupid blather that made it impossible for Ray to concentrate.

  “The woman must have been hell on wheels,” Bowie said. “Got you mad enough to kill her. Got some other man so mad he come along and killed her first.” Bowie squinted at Ray. “What’d she do to you, anyway? You ain’t never said.”

  Ray ignored Bowie and scanned the foot of the mountain in search of Leland Mundy.

  “Can’t be no lover’s quarrel,” Bowie said. “She don’t look more’n forty-five. You must be what? Sixty-five? Seventy? She’d never drop her drawers for an old man like you.” Bowie made a sucking sound with his teeth. “Course, you coulda paid for it, I reckon. How much did you pay?”

  “Shut up.”

  Bowie propped his rifle against the pine and picked up his bottle, sixty-nine-cent Hombre, red wine with a smiling bandito on the label, bandoleers crisscrossing his chest and a rifle in each hand. Bowie took a swallow, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and belched. “None of it’s my fault. I can’t help it some bastard horned in and killed the woman. And it ain’t my fault the man ain’t here. You’re the one said he’d come out the house at daybreak. I held up my end of the bargain. You got to pay me my money.”

  “You’ll get your money. Be quiet while I think this through.”

  While Bowie guzzled rotgut, a few blessed minutes of silence allowed Ray to ponder his next move in light of Betty Lou’s murder. He had scouted the Mundys since New Year’s Day. Every Sunday Leland left the house between eight and eight thirty and drove to Grace Church in Fox Run to attend the nine o’clock service while Betty Lou slept in. Leland didn’t seem the churchgoing type, but Ray didn’t have the time or interest to investigate what had driven him into the arms of the Lord. All Ray cared about was the predictability of his behavior.

  That Sunday morning before dawn, Ray drove Bowie to Bobcat Mountain’s summit, five hundred feet above Mundy’s property. They set up in a stand of white pines where they had a clear view of the house and planted a shoulder-high tripod in front of a fallen pine. Ray’s plan was for Bowie to shoot Leland when he came out of the house to go to church. If Betty Lou came outside, Bowie would take her down, too. If not, eliminating her later would pose no challenge. She was a soft target, but Leland was not. He owned an array of firearms and he was a good marksman. Blowing his head off from five hundred feet away avoided the risk of confronting him face-to-face, and the long-range shot would be difficult to trace. The law would find no sign of the shooter on the Mundy property, no footprints, no tire tracks, no evidence of any kind except a .30-06 bullet. Determining the trajectory of the kill shot and pinpointing its origin based on nothing more than a corpse with a gaping head wound would be almost impossible.

  When Bowie took his position that morning, Ray anticipated a successful hit. Then came the dawn, when they saw Betty Lou’s corpse lying in the yard. Leland’s truck was not in the driveway, and Ray’s carefully crafted plan evaporated with the morning mist.

  He moved his field glasses over the terrain around the house again in search of some sign of Leland. Nothing.

  “The man ain’t here,” Bowie said. “We might as well head out.”

  “Not yet.”

  A few minutes later, the groan of an engine rode the back of a cold wind up to the fallen pine. Ray trained his glasses on a bend in the road below the house. Leland Mundy’s blue pickup truck came around the turn. It pulled in the driveway at the far end of the yard and braked to an abrupt stop. Leland got out of the truck and ran across the yard to Betty Lou’s corpse.

  Bowie placed the rifle in the crotch of the tripod and took aim.

  “Hold off,” Ray said.

  “I got him square in my cross hairs. I can’t miss.”

  “I said hold off. I want to see what he does.”

  Bowie pulled his sighting eye away from the scope and spat.

  Ray watched Leland kneel beside Betty Lou. He embraced her and rocked her back and forth. He seemed to be crying.

  “Let me shoot him fore he moves to cover,” Bowie said.

  “Not yet,” Ray said, watching. Leland held Betty Lou in his arms for a long time, then got slowly to his feet and stood over her. After another long stretch, he left Betty Lou and walked toward the house.

  Bowie took aim.

  Ray put his hand over the scope. “Wait.”

  “He goes in the house I won’t have a shot.”

  “Let him go.”

  Leland went inside the screened porch.

  Bowie exploded. “God damn it! I would’ve blown his head clean off you hadn’t stopped me. I want my money. Now! Pay up!”

  Ray pulled a roll of twenties out of his pocket, counted off twenty-five Andrew Jacksons, and handed them to Bowie, giving him a good look at the rest of the cash before he put it away. “If you sit tight, there’ll be more in it for you.”

  Bowie counted the cash and jammed it in his pocket. He shook his head and smiled. “I had you figured for a cheat there for a while, but I reckon you’re a square dealer after all. You got more you want me to do, we can work a deal.”

  “Let’s see what develops.”

  A patrol car came along the road and stopped in front of the property.

  “Somebody called the law,” Bowie said. “We best get out.”

  “Stay put. He can’t see us from down there.”

  Ray watched Sheriff Coleman Grundy walk across the yard to Betty Lou. He knelt beside her, looked her over, went back to his car, and climbed inside.

  “If you want me to kill the law,” Bowie said, “it’ll cost you another five hundred.”

  “He’s calling for backup. We’d better hold off.”

  Cole got out of his car and walked across the yard to the porch. It looked as though he talked to someone and then went inside. Shortly after that, two little pops, ten seconds apart.

  “What was that?” Ray said.

  “Small firearm. It ain’t the law’s gun. Selk County lawmen carry a powerful weapon, Colt Python, six-inch barrel, .357 Magnum. Talks loud.”

  Twenty seconds more and another pop. Then nothing.

  “Mundy shot the law,” Bowie said.

  Ray doubted it. Cole was too careful for that.

  A few minutes later, a tall old woman in a bulky black fur coat crab-walked down the road and across th
e yard.

  “Want me to shoot the old lady?”

  “Let’s see what she does.”

  The woman stood at the porch, talking to someone inside. Then she shuffled back to her house as fast as her bent legs would carry her.

  The old woman’s calling an ambulance, Ray guessed. Cole must be down or he’d make the call.

  “What do we do now?” Bowie said.

  “Wait for the sheriff’s backup and the rescue squad. See what they do.”

  Bowie took a swig of Hombre and belched a long, guttural croak.

  Ray looked at him ruefully. His patience with Bowie had run out without his firing a shot. Ray stood and stretched his legs, stiff from the cold. “I’ve got to take a piss. Watch the road and call me if anything happens.”

  Ray walked up the slope to his truck on the summit. He leaned over and massaged his left knee. The morning’s activity had inflamed his arthritis. The doctor said all the cartilage in the joint had worn away, bone grinding on bone with every step he took.

  He straightened up, took a piss, zipped up, opened the truck’s door, and groped on the floorboard under the seat until he grasped a cold steel barrel. He glanced at Bowie to make sure he wasn’t looking, then put the Colt Python .357 Magnum in the big side pocket of his winter coat.

  He withdrew a bottle of Cutty Sark from the glove compartment and took a short pull. It lit a warm flame in his stomach. He turned the bottle up twice more, small swallows, enough to dull the pain in his knee without slowing his reaction time. He stowed the whiskey in the glove compartment, returned to the pine, and sat beside Bowie.

  Bowie took another swallow of rotgut. The bottle was three quarters gone.

  “How much can you drink before you can’t shoot straight?” Ray asked.

  “Long as I’m standin, I’ll hit my target.”

  Could be true, Ray thought. Set the trap carefully. He looked down at the house and waited.

  Soon, the wind carried the faint sound of a siren. An army-green patrol truck cleared the bend in the road and stopped in front of the house. A deputy climbed down off its running board, ran a hand over his bristly red hair, reached inside the truck for his hat, and put it on. In his midthirties, average height, and muscular, he fit the description of Chase Dooley. Ray had never met him, but he’d heard plenty about him. A foster kid who served time in reform school, a bad boy until the army got hold of him and sent him to Korea. Cole had snapped him up when he came home. By reputation, he was tough and street smart with no quit in him.

  Dooley went through the gate, paused at Betty Lou’s corpse, and headed toward the porch. Ray set his field glasses on the pine and put one hand in his coat pocket. “Kill that one,” Ray said to Bowie. “Split his skull in two and I’ll pay you a thousand.”

  Bowie tossed his bottle of Hombre into the bushes. “He’s a dead man.” He positioned his rifle on the tripod and put his eye to the scope.

  Ray placed his Colt Python’s silencer against Bowie’s temple and squeezed the trigger. Thump. The top half of Bowie’s head exploded in a crimson mist. His carcass lurched violently away from the gun, as though he’d been hit above his ear with a sledge hammer. Bowie’s legs stiffened straight out like an underwater frog-kick. He fell on his back, knocking over the tripod and throwing his rifle down the hill.

  Ray leaned over him, placed the silencer over his heart, and fired again. His arms and legs twitched; cords of muscle in his neck flexed; and he went still.

  Smoke curled from the silencer. Ray set the gun on the pine and looked down at the house through his field glasses. Dooley was nowhere to be seen. Inside, Ray guessed.

  More sirens. An ambulance rocked into view and pulled up to the porch. Two EMTs unloaded a gurney and hauled it inside the screen porch.

  A minute passed before they emerged with Leland on the gurney. They hadn’t pulled the sheet over his face, but he looked dead. He had blood in his hair and he wasn’t moving. The EMTs loaded him in the van, went inside again with the gurney, and came out with Cole, Dooley trailing alongside. The EMTs carried him into the van and sped away.

  Ray watched Dooley walk over to Betty Lou and kneel beside her.

  Ray lowered his field glasses. He would learn nothing more by staying there. He might as well return to the rental house. Think things through. Reformulate his plan.

  He looked at Bowie’s corpse at his feet. So much for the idea of working with a second man. Ray had sure as hell learned a hard lesson with this dumb ass.

  He searched Bowie’s corpse for the five hundred dollars and pocketed it. He looked through Bowie’s wallet. Three one-dollar bills. Bowie’s driver’s license, birthdate January 3, 1943. Ray did the math. Twenty-four years stupid. A couple of photos, a skinny toothless old hag and a fat young woman with buck teeth. Ray shoved the wallet in his pocket.

  He retrieved the rifle and looked it over. A .30-06, bolt action, fitted with a Leupold scope. A fine weapon in pristine condition. He propped it against the pine, picked up the tripod, and put it beside the rifle. He’d make good use of them down the road.

  He looked at the corpse again, thinking. People didn’t climb Bobcat very often. The body might go undiscovered for a while. There was a patch of dense brush near the truck. Bowie probably didn’t weigh more than a hundred fifty pounds, less with most of his head blown off. Ray supposed he could drag the bony carcass that far without further crippling his arthritic knee.

  He grabbed Bowie’s still warm hands and pulled his body up the slope.

  Chapter Three

  A Dead Man’s Alibi

  March 1, 1967, Wednesday afternoon

  Ten days after Betty Lou Mundy’s murder, Sheriff Coleman Grundy pulled into the old schoolyard across the road from Grace Church about four o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon and parked in front of the Fox Run Schoolhouse, an abandoned yellow two-story stone building with padlocked heavy wooden double doors and windows boarded up with sheets of plywood. The schoolyard was a barren desert of powder-dust, save for a sickly locust tree near a rusty swing set.

  Across the road Cole saw Reba Emley, Betty Lou Mundy’s sister, kneeling beside a grave inside the wrought iron fence that separated the cemetery from the churchyard. The grave looked fresh, its mounded soil still iron red. Betty Lou’s grave, Cole guessed.

  Reba placed a long-stemmed rose at the foot of the shiny new headstone. She lingered there and then seemed to notice Cole’s patrol car across the road in the schoolyard. She took a last look at the grave and walked along the fence toward the cemetery gate, disappearing from Cole’s view behind the pine trees that surrounded the church.

  Carrie’s grave lay behind those trees. Cole stared at the pines until the cold seeped into the car. He started the engine and turned on the heater.

  Reba’s souped-up black Chevy Impala emerged from the pine grove and rumbled over the church’s driveway to the road, sunlight glinting on the twin white racing stripes on its hood. It crossed the road and coasted into the schoolyard, its muscular engine thrumming. Reba parked beside Cole and got out of the car.

  A wave of cold air blew into the patrol car when Reba opened the door and sat down. Her perfume grabbed Cole’s attention right off, a distinctive odor, floral, like violets, mixed with something earthy, leather or oak moss. The fragrance seemed familiar to him, but he couldn’t place it.

  Reba looked like a younger version of Betty Lou. Big heavy-lidded baby-blue eyes, a strangely sensuous hooked nose, and a pouty mouth with full lips painted cherry red, all framed by chestnut hair cut chin length. She wore a sable coat over a beige blouse and a black skirt. The skirt and coat stopped at midthigh.

  “Afternoon,” Cole said.

  Reba slipped the gold chain strap of a little black purse off her shoulder and clutched it in her lap. “Thanks for comin. I heard tell the doctors made you stay down for a while. I hope drivin over here don’t aggravate your back.” Her voice was raspy and she spoke with a lisp.

  “They gave me a shot that numbed it up
pretty good. It’s coming along fine.”

  “I’m sorry I called you off your sick-break, but I don’t trust no one else.” She withdrew a pack of cigarettes from her purse and lit up. She set the pack on the bench seat between them. Kool Filter Kings, menthol.

  The acrid smoke overwhelmed her perfume. Cole cracked his window to give it somewhere to go.

  Reba’s hand trembled as she brought the Kool to her lips. A streak of eyeliner on her cheek told him she’d been crying. He looked across the road at the grave. “I’m sorry about Betty Lou.”

  “Betty Lou’s buried on the other side. That one’s Leland.”

  He mulled that over, putting it together with the long-stemmed rose. The implication didn’t shock him. She had a reputation for sleeping around. Still, an affair with her sister’s husband seemed brazen, even for her.

  “When I heard about it on the radio,” she said, “I went straight to the hospital. The doctors wouldn’t let me go in his room, so I stood in the hall and looked at him through the window.” A tear slid down her cheek. “The machines kept him breathin for a while, but I knew he wouldn’t make it. When you know someone real good, you can tell. You can feel it.”

  Cole studied her. He’d heard she was a spitfire who didn’t care about any one man. It appeared the gossip was wrong. “I’m sorry I couldn’t wrestle that gun away from him.”

  “From what I hear, you tried your best.”

  Cole sighed heavily. “I’m afraid my best wasn’t good enough.”

  “Neither was mine,” she said bitterly.

  He looked at her curiously.

  She blew out a chain of little smoke rings. “You go to school here?”

  He shook his head. “I grew up in Jeetersburg.”

  “Me and Betty Lou went here. Four little rooms with potbelly wood stoves. Hot as hell next to em. Cold as a icebox two rows back.” She puffed her cigarette and stared at the padlocked doors.

  She was working herself up to tell him something about the murder, he thought. He waited her out, allowing her to come to it on her own terms. The patrol car’s engine vibrated and the heater whirred. A cold wind blew across the schoolyard. The locust tree’s spindly branches clattered and little twisters swirled in the powdery dust.