Bitch Creek

by Tapply, William

  “Guess I can do that,” said Barnes.

  They left the store and climbed into Dickman’s truck. “Now,” said the sheriff, “I want you to take me to the crime scene.” He glanced sideways at Calhoun. “Which, I’ve got to mention, Stoney, you have already corrupted.”

  “Because I lugged Lyle out of there?”

  Dickman nodded.

  “Be damned if I was gonna leave him in the water.”

  “No, I suppose you wouldn’t do that.”

  “Nobody would do that.” Calhoun turned to Dickman. “You’re checking out Lyle’s Power Wagon, I assume.”

  The sheriff nodded. “I called the state police, suggested they get their forensic boys onto it. Of course,” he said, “you’ve corrupted that piece of evidence, too.”

  “If I hadn’t gone into it for that map,” said Calhoun, “we wouldn’t’ve found Lyle in the first place.”

  “Valid point,” said Dickman.

  It took about fifteen minutes to drive from Jacob Barnes’s store in Dublin to the barway beside the dirt road in Keatsboro, where the overgrown cart path led through the woods and down the long slope to the milldam where Calhoun had found Lyle. The sheriff pulled his Explorer off the road. They both got out.

  “Lead on, Macduff,” said Dickman.

  They pushed through the saplings that overgrew the old ruts through the woods, and after a while Dickman said, “How far we got to go, Stoney?”

  “I figure it’s about a half mile in, altogether. We’re getting there.”

  “And you lugged that big fella all the way up this hill and through the woods?”

  It didn’t seem to be a question that needed an answer, so Calhoun said nothing.

  Lyle’s deflated float tube, vest, fins, waders, and fly rod were piled on the other side of the milldam where Calhoun had left them. Dickman went over and scootched down beside them.

  Calhoun stood there, looking around. It was actually a pretty spot in the little valley, with the forest rising from scrubby hardwoods to tall pines on both sides. Red-winged blackbirds chittered in the reeds along the rim of the pond, and down toward the far end he spotted a great blue heron, poised in the shallow water as still as a stump, his head drawn back and his neck arched like a bow at full draw. A pair of redtailed hawks cruised on the thermals high overhead. A quiet, peaceful place, the kind of place Lyle loved. Not the kind of place where someone would shoot a man.

  “Hey, Stoney,” said the sheriff. “Look here.”

  Calhoun squatted beside Dickman.

  The sheriff was holding Lyle’s waders on his lap. He poked his little finger against a hole in the bib—right about where they would cover a man’s solar plexus. “Doc Pritchard said the entry wound was just about straight on. If Lyle was floating on the pond, the shooter must’ve been kneeling or lying on the ground, because in one of those float tubes, his chest is only a foot or so out of the water.”

  Calhoun glanced around. “About the only dry land around here where someone could set up to shoot is right here, around the dam.”

  “Assuming he was out there in his tube when he was shot,” said Dickman.

  Calhoun nodded. “They could’ve moved him, you’re thinking. Shot him first, then stuck him in his tube and pushed him out, let him drown on his own. Or maybe shot him, held his head under water till he died, then stuck him in his tube.”

  Dickman shrugged. “I’m not complaining, Stoney. But it would’ve been a helluva lot easier to figure out if you hadn’t . . .” He waved his hand. “The hell with it.” He gazed up at the sky. “Are those red-tails?”

  “Yup.”

  “Thought so.” The sheriff looked at Calhoun. “Wonder if your Mr. Fred Green was packing a twenty-two handgun.”

  “Not when I saw him,” said Calhoun. “I don’t know what he might’ve had in that rented Taurus of his. You got a scenario in mind?”

  Dickman shrugged. “Just the obvious one. What I’m missing here, of course, is a motive.”

  “The fact that we don’t know it doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”

  The sheriff was poking through the pile of stuff that Calhoun had taken off Lyle’s body. Calhoun was watching the heron when Dickman said, “Aha!”

  Calhoun turned to him. “Aha?”

  Dickman was peering at the flaccid float tube. “Look at this, Stoney.”

  His fingertip lay beside a round hole in the tube. He moved the tube around and pointed out another hole on the opposite side.

  “So he shot a hole in the tube,” said Calhoun. “That’s how he deflated it. So what?”

  Dickman shrugged. “Not sure.”

  “Look,” said Calhoun. “Lyle was out there in his tube when he got shot. Shot in the belly like that, he must’ve been looking square at the guy. I think the man plugged him, then shot a hole in the tube so Lyle would go down and drown.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Well, there’s current in this pond. It comes in up there, slows down considerably, then picks up a bit down here by the dam. It looks like a pond, but it’s still a stream. You toss a stick into the water up by the far end, eventually it’ll come down here and pass over the dam.”

  “So,” said the sheriff, “if Green shot Lyle here, say, then pushed him in the water—”

  “He wouldn’t’ve ended up back there in the reeds,” said Calhoun, pointing. “Which is where he was when I found him. Green is pushing seventy, and he’s not a big man to start with. No way he’s going to shoot Lyle then lug him up through all that marshy muck to the head of the pond. Nope. Lyle was out there on the water when he got shot.”

  The sheriff squinted out over the pond. “Where’d you find him?”

  Calhoun pointed. “Up there, near those reeds. I just saw his butt sticking up.”

  “And he must’ve been even farther up when he was shot, to drift down to there.” Dickman nodded. “Which means he was shot with a rifle, not a pistol. Nobody could center him from this distance with a handgun.” He looked at Calhoun and grinned. “See what you can learn, even from a corrupted crime scene?”

  “Maybe we ought to check the edge of the pond for footprints before we jump to conclusions,” said Calhoun.

  Dickman shook his head. “You’ve had some kind of training, son.”

  Calhoun shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about any of that.”

  They started slogging through the boggy ground that rimmed the pond. There were no prints in the mud leading around the near side, and they followed it all the way up to where the stream came in. Then they retraced their steps back to the dam, crossed over, and started around the far side. Here there were two distinct sets of bootprints in the mucky ground.

  “Assume these belong to you,” said the sheriff.

  Calhoun nodded. “You can see how those coming back are deeper and closer together than the ones going in. See how the reeds are all broken over? That’s where I dragged Lyle out.”

  They finished their examination of that side of the pond and found no prints in the mud except those that Calhoun had made the previous day.

  When they got to the dam, the sheriff said, “Okay, now let’s look around.”

  “What’re we looking for?”

  “Cartridge cases. Size twenty-two.”

  The sheriff went down on hands and knees, and Calhoun imitated him. They crept around, poking through the dead leaves and weeds, and about ten minutes passed before Calhoun spotted two little brass cartridge cases glittering in the grass. “We got ’em,” he said.

  “Don’t touch,” said Dickman. He came over, squatted down, and picked up one of the empty cartridges on the end of a twig. “Long-rifle,” said Dickman. “Looks like he was lying on his belly right here”—he pointed to a place where the weeds were matted down—“nice solid prone position. With a decent rifle and a scope, you could put a man’s eye out anywhere on the pond from here. Two shots. One to the belly, one through the tube.”

  “You figure these were shot out of a rifle,” s
aid Calhoun, pointing at the cartridges, “not a handgun?”

  “Makes sense, that’s all.” Dickman shook his head. “Can’t tell by looking at them. Give me the gun, we can tell if it was the one that shot them. You can tell by the ejector marks and the imprint of the firing pin here along the rim. That’s the best we can do.”

  He fished a plastic bag from his pants pocket and dropped the two empty cartridges into it. Then he stood up. “Let’s get out of here, Stoney.”

  “You got it figured out, Sheriff?”

  “Enough to know that the sooner we catch up with Mr. Green, the better off we’ll be.”

  They picked up Lyle’s gear and started back up the slope toward the road. Halfway out, Dickman said, “Time out, Stoney. I’m winded. Damned if I know how you carried that big young man out. A deflated float tube has got me tuckered.”

  They squatted on the ground. “Something’s bothering me,” said Calhoun.

  “What’s that?”

  “If you’ve got the scenario right, it means Green carried a twenty-two rifle in there with him for the purpose of shooting Lyle.”

  Dickman shrugged. “That’s how it looks, all right.”

  “Well, how do you suppose he explained that to Lyle?”

  “I don’t know, Stoney. Guns are pretty much standard equipment around here. Wouldn’t’ve bothered Lyle, I don’t think. Maybe it was taken apart. Little twenty-two, you could fit the pieces in a gear bag and Lyle wouldn’t have even known he had it.” Dickman shrugged. “I guess that’s another question we’ve got to ask the man when we find him.”

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  WHEN THEY GOT BACK to the road, they loaded Lyle’s gear into the back of the sheriff’s Explorer. Dickman slammed the tailgate shut, then paused and gazed across the road. “Anna and Dave Ross live up there,” he said.

  He pointed at the white farmhouse that stood on the knoll about fifty yards down the road on the opposite side.

  Calhoun nodded. “She’s the one who called you yesterday.”

  “From up there, if you happened to be looking, you could see people coming and going down here.”

  “She saw me bring Lyle out. Came down in that little Wrangler of hers to help out.”

  Dickman frowned. “Wonder if either of them saw anything else.”

  “You mean the day Lyle got shot?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ve got a pretty wild idea, Sheriff.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Why don’t we go ask ’em?”

  Dickman smiled. “That’s brilliant, Stoney. Never would’ve thought of that.”

  They climbed into the Explorer and drove down the road and up the curving driveway to the Rosses’ farmhouse. Dickman parked in front of the barn beside a pickup truck with a plow hitch on the front and a light bar on the roof. Beside the barn were two tractors, a back-hoe, and a flatbed truck. Anna’s Wrangler was not there.

  When Calhoun stepped out, he heard loud rock ’n’ roll music coming from inside the barn. The music was punctuated by the rhythmic clanging of metal crashing against metal.

  He went to the doorway and looked in. David Ross was lying on his back on the barn’s plank floor with his head under the rear end of an old John Deere tractor. He was holding a chisel and pounding up on it with a steel mallet, working at the underside of a mechanism attached to the back of the tractor.

  The sheriff went over and squatted down beside Ross. “What’s the problem, Dave?” he shouted.

  Ross took one more whack at the chisel, then rolled his head to the side and looked up. He jerked his chin toward the radio, which sat on a workbench along the wall. “Whyn’t you shut that damn thing off.”

  Dickman went over and turned off the radio.

  Ross continued to peer up at the underside of the tractor. “This here piece of shit belongs to Obie Hoyt. Hitch is rusted up so bad he can’t hook up his harrow. I gotta bust it off and rig a new one for him.” Ross narrowed his eyes, gritted his teeth, set the chisel, then slammed it again.

  He was wearing overalls with no shirt underneath. The stub of a dead cigar was clamped between his teeth, and his forehead and thinning yellow-white hair were damp with sweat. “So,” he grunted between blows on the chisel, “what’s on your mind, Sheriff?”

  “Wondering if we could talk for a minute?”

  Ross nodded. “I guess so.”

  He slid out from under the tractor, laid down his tools, stood up, and wiped his hands on his overalls. “Mr. Calhoun,” he said with a nod. “Didn’t see you there. Suppose we go fetch us some iced tea?”

  Calhoun and Dickman followed David Ross across the yard to the farmhouse. In the kitchen, Ross took a plastic jug of iced tea from the refrigerator and three glasses from the dish rack beside the sink, and they sat around the table.

  “So, how can I help you?” said Ross.

  “You know that a young man drowned in the pond across the way the other day,” said the sheriff.

  “Over to Potter’s,” said Ross.

  Dickman nodded. “We think another man might’ve been with him. Wondered if you saw anything.”

  “What day was this?”

  Dickman glanced at Calhoun. “Tuesday?”

  Calhoun nodded.

  Ross shook his head. “I saw you yesterday,” he said, looking at Calhoun. “Told Anna to take a run over. It appeared you could use some help.”

  “I appreciate it,” said Calhoun.

  “I was hoping you or Anna might’ve noticed this other man we think was with the fella who drowned,” said Dickman. He reached into his shirt pocket and took out the sketch Calhoun had made of Fred Green. He unfolded it on the table and turned it so Ross could see it.

  Ross dragged it in front of him and peered at it for a long moment. Then he looked up at the sheriff. “Sorry.”

  “You ever notice anyone who looked like they might be going fishing in there?” said Dickman.

  “Over to Potter’s little pond?” Ross shook his head. “Nobody that I ever seen.”

  “It looked like it ought to hold trout,” said Calhoun.

  Ross turned to Calhoun. “You’re a guide, ain’t you?”

  Calhoun nodded.

  “Well,” said Ross, “I wouldn’t waste my time in there. Ain’t been trout in that little pond or upstream of it for a long time.”

  Calhoun nodded. “Your wife said Mr. Potter died in the fire.”

  Ross took a long gulp of iced tea, then put down his glass and wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist. “It was over fifty years ago,” he said. “We knew it was comin’ a whole day before it got here. Smoke so thick you couldn’t see the sun. Made your eyes water, burned your throat.” Ross shook his head. “Me and my mother, we kept hosin’ down our house here, but it had been such a dry summer that our well was near empty, and all we got was a little trickle. If that fire had decided to come sweepin’ over this hill it would’ve leveled us. But it jumped the road less than a mile from us, burned out the bridge, and went aboilin’ down the valley over on the Potter’s side. I guess Sam figured he was safe up there on his hill. Hell, everyone knows a fire burns uphill faster’n it burns down.” He shook his head. “Lucky his wife and kids wasn’t there. October the twenty-second, nineteen forty-seven. A Wednesday.”

  Dickman nodded, drained his glass, and stood up. “Well, Dave, you’d be doing me a favor if you mentioned this to Anna. Perhaps she saw something that might be of help. Have her give me a call.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Ross.

  He followed Dickman and Calhoun out to the Explorer and stood there in front of the barn as they turned around and headed down the driveway.

  “Guess I better drop you off, Stoney,” said the sheriff as he turned onto the dirt road. “I’ve got to get back to the office, organize a hunt for Mr. Fred Green, not to mention all the other problems that’ve probably piled up on my desk by now.”

  “So what’ve we learned?” said Calhoun.

&n
bsp; Dickman shrugged. “Can’t tell yet. Sometimes you hear something, it doesn’t mean anything at the time, but later on, after you’ve heard two or three other things, it all of a sudden makes some sense, fits in somewhere. It might’ve helped if Dave Ross had seen Mr. Green coming out of there.”

  They drove in silence for a while, heading back to Dublin. As they turned into Calhoun’s long driveway through the woods, he said, “Do you know everybody in York County, Sheriff?”

  Dickman grinned. “Nope. Not everybody. But the folks who’ve been around a little while—Millie, Jacob and Marcus, Dave and Anna Ross, folks like you and Kate—I guess I do. They’re good people to know. Whatever’s going on, they know it—who’s driving around drunk, who’s breaking into gas stations, who’s shooting their thirty-thirties at road signs—and if they trust you, they’ll tell you. Folks around here don’t like crime, Stoney. They’re pretty old-fashioned that way. They actually appreciate sheriffs and deputies and police in general. Dave’ll remember to ask Anna if she saw anything, and if she did, she’ll jump on the phone. So one of the main things I do in this job is, I get out and talk to people, tell ’em what’s going on, what I need. Word gets around. When we catch up to Mr. Green, I expect it’ll be because somebody’s seen him and lets us know about it.”

  The sheriff pulled into Calhoun’s dooryard. Kate’s Blazer was gone.

  When Calhoun got out, Ralph came sauntering down off the deck with his entire back end wagging. Calhoun squatted down so that Ralph could lick his face. Then he stood and went to the back of the sheriff’s Explorer where they’d stored Lyle’s gear.

  “Leave that stuff,” said Dickman. “Those bullet holes are evidence.”

  “If you don’t mind,” said Calhoun, “I want to keep Lyle’s rod. That’s not evidence, is it?”

  “Guess not,” said Dickman. “Sentimental reasons, huh?”

  Calhoun shrugged. “It’s a damn good rod.”

  He took out the Thomas & Thomas bamboo fly rod, then went around to the driver’s side of the sheriff’s Explorer. They shook hands. “You’ll keep me posted,” Calhoun said.