The Judas Murders

by Ken Oder

  Cole went out to the parking lot and climbed in his patrol car. It was unseasonably warm and sultry. He wiped his face and neck with a kerchief. He looked at the pink predawn crescent glowing on the horizon and tried to figure out what the hell was going on. His instincts told him all the crimes were related. The pace of the violence alarmed him, and he sensed there was more to come.

  Toby and Frank were still gathering evidence at Walt’s house. Frank’s forensics team was stretched thin. Analyzing the evidence about the attack on Walt and about the corpse Chase had found on Bobcat’s summit yesterday required time, but another act of violence might come at any moment. Cole needed to act now.

  He rubbed his eyes and sighed. He had only one lead about any of the crimes: the identity of the man Betty Lou had met at Kelly’s Place. Cole doubted Elwood Critzer murdered Betty Lou, and he couldn’t imagine he was involved in the other crimes, but for now he was Cole’s only suspect.

  Cole started the car and drove north out of Jeetersburg. By the time he passed through Fox Run, the sun was up. Deep in the hollow, a couple miles short of Whippoorwill Hollow Dam, he turned onto a red clay driveway and drove up a steep slope to the top of a little knoll. At the crown, in a grove of giant oaks with trunks as big around as fifty-gallon barrels, sat an old farmhouse whose paint had worn away to expose rotting planks.

  Cole parked in the shade next to an old green Hudson pickup and climbed out of the car slowly, pressing his hand against his lower back. Chickens scattered in all directions as he limped around the house to the front porch. The screen door squeaked open and Sadie Critzer, a short, stringy woman in her late sixties with a weathered, dried-prune face and iron-colored hair pressed tight to her skull, came out on the porch. She was barefooted and a faded brown dress hung on her frail figure like a feed sack.

  “Good morning, ma’am.”

  “Reckon so. Right smart hot for this time a year, though. Ony six thirty and I done sweat a bucketful.”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s mighty hot. Is Elwood home?”

  “Done milkin by now. Cleanin up.” She jerked her thumb toward the back of the house. “Barn’s down the hill. You see him you tell him to get his ass up here to mend the chicken wire or the chickens’ll be in Fox Run by sundown.” She went inside and the screen door slapped shut behind her.

  Cole walked around the house and stopped under a big oak. A footpath descended a steep slope to a red barn. Downhill climbs were hardest on his back. By the time he reached the barn door, it had tightened up. He leaned over. His back relaxed. He straightened up and it tightened.

  He adjusted his back brace and looked the barn over. With new timbers and a fresh coat of paint, it was in much better shape than the house. He opened a tall, wide door and stepped inside. Fluorescent lights ran the length of the ceiling. Stainless steel drums with black tubing stood against the wall. The floor was broom-finished concrete.

  Elwood Critzer stood on the other side of the barn in front of huge sliding double doors that had been rolled open. He was a tall, heavyset man with a double chin and a bald head rimmed with gray. He wore rubber boots, bib overalls, a long-sleeve undershirt, and a red ball cap. He was hosing down the concrete, flushing cow dung out the back. He looked Cole’s way, froze for a moment, and then went about his business.

  Cole waited. When Elwood finished, he turned off the water and dropped the hose. He faced Cole and jammed his hands in his pockets. “I wondered when you’d come around.”

  “Sounds like I don’t need to tell you why I’m here. Anywhere we can sit and talk? My back don’t take kindly to long stand-ups.”

  Elwood picked up two wooden stools and placed them in front of the double doors. He sat down and Cole joined him.

  The morning sun behind the barn cast a long shadow over a pasture that dropped down to Black Snake’s Creek. Over a hundred head of Holsteins grazed along its banks, their bells tinkling.

  Elwood thrust a pack of Domino cigarettes at Cole, who declined. Elwood lit one and smoked silently. Cole waited him out.

  A rooster crowed. The faint sound of a tractor laboring over rough terrain farther down the creek came to them on the back of a hot breeze.

  Elwood finished his cigarette and flicked it out the door, where it died in a puddle of hose water and barn muck. He leaned forward, his arms propped on his knees, his hands clasped together. “You won’t believe it, I s’pose, but I didn’t chase after her. She come on to me. Little girl grabbed hold of this old mule and rode him hard, like he was a young stallion.”

  “You met up with her at Kelly’s Place?”

  Elwood nodded.

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Drinkin.”

  “Thought you were a teetotaler.”

  “I am.” He took off his ball cap. “At least, I was.” He dropped it on the floor and mussed up his gray fringe with calloused, knotty hands. “I hauled some cattle to market that afternoon, three old cows, dried up, not worth the feed. Sixteen, seventeen years old. I raised em from calves.” He ran his hand over his bald head and rubbed the back of his neck. “When the ole boy at the intake shed herded em into the holdin pen for the slaughterhouse, I cried. Scared me. I couldn’t look the ole boy in the eye. Grabbed my check and drove off fast as I could.” Elwood shook his head back and forth slowly. “How old are you?” he asked Cole.

  “Sixty-two.”

  “You gettin up there. Maybe you can understand.” Elwood looked down at the floor and spat between his feet. Cole watched the saliva sparkle and then sink into the concrete. “I’ll be seventy July nine. Most of what I care about is gone from here. Our girls grew up and moved away long time ago. Gave us four grandkids. We never see em. They don’t call. They don’t write.” He looked down at his hands. “Used to be I couldn’t keep my hands off Sadie.” He rubbed his arthritic fingers. “Way it is now, she’s cold as a winter wind. We ain’t touched in years.” He let out a long breath. “Ain’t nothin left for me now but the cattle. That’s why I cried that day, I reckon.”

  Cole understood. To a lesser degree and in a different way, he was living it. It took him a few moments to shake off Elwood’s comments and return to the subject of the murder. “So you met Betty Lou at Kelly’s Place?”

  Elwood nodded. “Kelly’s Place got a billboard on the state road comin away from the market. Has a pretty woman on it, blonde, big smile. A barmaid, I reckon. I turned the truck around and drove downtown to the address on that billboard. Went up to the bar like a regular drunk. Ordered straight whiskey. Drank it down. Ordered another one. Knocked that one down. Kelly McNiel tended the bar. She told me I had to slow down or I’d be sick. I heeded her warning and drank real slow like she said. Seemed to bring my dobber up a little. But not much.” He took in a breath, held it for a moment, let it out. “Until little girl come in there.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve described Betty Lou as little, but she wasn’t little.”

  “It ain’t a description. It’s a name. It’s what she told me to call her. Little Girl.” He looked out at the mountains on the horizon. “And I sure as hell did whatever she wanted, I’ll tell you that damned much for certain.”

  Cole took his notebook out of his shirt pocket and jotted down the pet name. “What happened when she came into Kelly’s Place that night?”

  “I noticed her when she come in, like every good ole boy in there. She ate her supper by herself in one of them booths. When she finished her meal, she walked over to the bar real slow, showin off what she had, and sat down on the stool beside me and asked me to buy her a drink. I figured she was fixin to fleece an old fool. I said, ‘What do I get for it?’ She pressed her titties up against my arm. ‘You won’t be sorry,’ she said. I figured she’d milk me dry and move on down the bar to the next dumb farmer with more money than good sense, so I told her, ‘You don’t fool me none, missy.’ She smiled and said, ‘How’s about I buy the drinks? All you want.’ She ordered us a round and rubbed herself up against me. Half the men in
that place come up to her and tried to peel her away from this ugly old fool. Young stallions. Good lookers. Big-shouldered boys.” A wistful smile crossed Elwood’s face. “She told every damned one of em she was with me. Bout eleven o’clock when I was so drunk and stirred up I like to busted open, she said, ‘Let’s go have us some fun.’ She pulled me off the stool and on out to her car. Took me to the Robert E. Lee Motor Court over by Beacon Hill.” He shook his head. “Little Girl sure-God knew how to pleasure a man, tricks I’d never heard of, much less tried out. My head was spinnin and I was plum wore out when she drove me back to my truck.”

  “What did Sadie do when you got home?”

  “Nothin. She never said a word. Didn’t seem to care.”

  “So you did it again the next night?”

  “You bet your ass I did, and most every Friday and Saturday night after that till her husband shot her.”

  Cole paused. Elwood’s assumption that Leland killed Betty Lou sounded sincere. He didn’t seem shrewd enough to plan an offhand remark to cover his guilt, but he’d apparently learned a lot of new tricks since New Year’s Eve. Cole ignored the comment for the time being. “You always met her at Kelly’s Place?”

  “She wouldn’t go no place else with me. I tried to get her to meet me at the motel. ‘Let’s leave out the drinkin at the bar,’ I said. ‘Ain’t you worried evibody can see you comin on to me out in the open? What if your husband finds out?’ She said she hoped he did. It would serve him right.”

  “Did she say what she meant by that?”

  “I asked her, but she wouldn’t talk no more about it.”

  Cole remembered that Betty Lou’s mother died on Christmas. It seemed curious she would be partying so soon after her death. “Did she mention that her mother passed on a few days earlier?”

  Elwood nodded. “She said she wanted to have a high ole time cause her momma had just died.”

  “Trying to get over it, you figure?”

  “It was the other way around, more like a celebration. She said she hated her momma. Said the old bitch deserved what she got.”

  Something about that didn’t fit with a detail that chewed around the edges of Cole’s memory, but he couldn’t get a grip on it. He gave it up for now. “Were you with her the night before she was killed?”

  Elwood’s eyes clouded over. He nodded somberly. “We met at Kelly’s Place and went to the Robert E. Lee, like always.”

  “What time did you check in?”

  “Bout eleven, but you won’t find my name on the register. She always made me sign as Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Emley. Clarence was her daddy’s name.”

  “Why did she want you to use his name?”

  “I don’t know. She wouldn’t say.”

  “What time did you leave the motel?”

  “Bout three. She drove me back to my truck at Kelly’s Place and let me off.”

  “Where did you go from there?”

  “Home.”

  “What time did you get back here?”

  “Four.”

  “Will Sadie vouch for the time you got home?”

  Elwood shrugged. “She was awake when I crawled in bed.”

  “Does she know about Betty Lou?”

  “She ain’t stupid. She’s bound to know I been runnin with a woman, but she never asked me anything about it. ”

  Cole looked over his notes. “Anything else you can tell me about your time with Betty Lou?”

  Elwood picked his ball cap up off the floor and put it on. “When we was in bed, she called me Papa Bear. Only it didn’t seem like she was talkin to me when she said it. I had the feelin she was thinkin about some other man.”

  Cole looked out at the field. A goldfinch darted across the pasture and lit on top of a fencepost by the creek. It fluttered its wings to hold its spot against a light breeze.

  Bessie Tilden said the man who took the nude photograph of Betty Lou had signed a note to her as Papa Bear. Now, many years later she called Elwood Papa Bear, told him to call her Little Girl, and made him sign in at the Robert E. Lee with her father’s name. Elwood was old enough to be her father. It didn’t take much imagination to speculate that Betty Lou was using Elwood as a substitute for her daddy. Cole wondered how many other affairs she had with men old enough to be her father.

  He put his notepad and pencil in his shirt pocket. “A little while ago you let on you thought Leland Mundy killed Betty Lou,” he said to Elwood. “As things stand now, it’s an open question who killed her.”

  Elwood looked surprised. Then awareness dawned in his face. “Well, you’re a damned fool if you think I killed her. Hell, Little Girl lit up this ole boy’s night like a bolt of lightning. I’d sell my soul to the devil if he’d give her back to me for one more roll-around. And if the sumbitch who killed her ain’t her dead husband, you find him and give me five minutes with him and you won’t need to waste no time on a judge and jury.”

  The passion in Elwood’s denial was convincing. What’s more, he’d never been much of a liar, but then again, he’d never gotten drunk as a polecat and chased a loose woman with his tongue hanging out. Thirty-eight years in law enforcement had taught Cole that human nature often defied reasonable expectations.

  Cole put his hands on his knees and pushed his way to a standing position. “I’m afraid I’ll need more than your word that you got home at four a.m. the night Betty Lou was murdered. I have to ask Sadie about it.”

  Elwood nodded. “I understand.”

  “You wait here.”

  Cole limped to the barn door and went outside. The sun bore down hard and sweat beaded on Cole’s brow and ran into his eyes and stung them as he climbed the hill. At the top, he stopped under the big oak tree and leaned over, relieving his pain, but when he straightened up, it returned.

  He walked around to the front of the house. Sadie sat at the top of the porch steps, her elbows propped on her knees, her hands cupping her face.

  “You find him?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You tell him to come up here and mend the chicken wire?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m afraid I forgot.”

  She gave him a disgusted look.

  He took off his hat and wiped sweat off his brow. He squinted at the sun, considering an appropriate way to ask her about Elwood’s infidelity. He decided there was no kind way to get into it, so he went straight at it. “I s’pose you know Elwood’s been running around with a woman.”

  “Course I know. I ain’t a idjit. What kinda slop he dip his wick in? I heard tell they sell it for fifty cents in them shanties down by the railroad tracks in Tinker’s Mill. That where he went to get it?” She pulled her dress down over her knees and gathered it under her legs, her face scrunched up in a frown.

  “No, ma’am. Elwood says he went to Kelly’s Place. Says he met a woman there Saturday night, February eighteen. Claims he came home Sunday morning at four a.m. Do you happen to remember that night, ma’am?”

  “Course I member it cause it was the last time he done it. Rutted around like a billy goat evy Friday and Saturday night and then shut it all down sudden-like. Ain’t done it since.”

  “Did he come home at four in the morning like he says?”

  “You tell me who gave it to him, I’ll tell you what time he got home.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t trade information.”

  She stared intently at Cole. “You say he went to Kelly’s Place?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Her eyes widened, cornflower blue eyes he hadn’t noticed before, eyes that he guessed were once bright and shining, even fetching, and all the wind seemed to go out of her. “He’s the one they been talkin about.”

  “Pardon, ma’am?”

  “I thought he took up with some old whore,” she said with a tremor in her voice. “An old man sowin wild seed one last time afore he gave it up. My daddy did it when he got old. Crawled back to Momma when he found his senses. I figured that’s all it was.” A tear slipped o
ut of the corner of her eye. “But it wasn’t some old whore.” She faltered and swallowed hard. “Betty Lou Mundy,” she whispered. She covered her eyes with her hands and wept.

  Cole gave her some time. Then he said gently, “Excuse me, ma’am, but did Elwood come home at four a.m. that morning, like he says?”

  She dried her eyes with the hem of her dress. She drew herself together and cleared her voice. “He come home at four, smellin of liquor, a woman’s bathwater, and sex.” She fought back new tears. “Betty Lou’s sex.”

  “Are you sure it was four a.m., ma’am?”

  She nodded. “He come home at four. Got up at six. Milked the herd. Stayed down at the barn till the sun was high.” She wrapped her arms around her trembling shoulders.

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Cole started around the house, then stopped, and looked back at her. She stared off into the distance, her eyes full. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  She looked at him. “What you sorry for? Ain’t none of it your fault.”

  Cole looked away and then at her. “I’m sorry just the same, ma’am.”

  She ran her arm across her nose, got up, and walked slowly to the screen door, her head down. She stopped there and looked at Cole, her eyes shining, then went inside the house.

  He sighed heavily, limped around the house, and forced his aching back to descend the hill again.

  Elwood had put the stools away. He leaned against one side of the open rolling doors, his hands in the pockets of his bib overalls, looking out at the pasture. Cole walked across the concrete and stood beside him.

  Most of the Holsteins had crossed the creek to the opposite slope. One of them stood in the stream, drinking. She lifted her head and looked up at the barn, water drooling from her jaws.

  “Sadie backed you up.”

  Elwood didn’t say anything for a while. Then, without looking at Cole he said in a gritty voice, “You tell her it was Betty Lou I took up with?”

  “I didn’t tell her, but she figured it out. Like you said, she’s not stupid.”