Dead Body Language

by Penny Warner

  The sheriff pulled out a clipboard of paperwork Dan needed to complete before we left. At Dan’s insistence, I waited outside in the late afternoon sunlight and thought of old Boone Joslin. He’d had a tough life. And now he was dead. Drowned. Nobody knew why or how. Had he been drunk and fallen into the water? Or had he been drowned deliberately? By a man with the gold ring? I suppressed a wave of nausea.…

  Forty-five minutes later Dan and I entered the restaurant recommended by the bartender. Although neither of us had much of an appetite for lunch, we needed a place to think, and a cool beer sounded soothing.

  From the outside, Al the Wop’s looked condemned. The small one-lane main street was flanked on either side by rickety, distressed buildings that didn’t appear as if they’d last through the next rainstorm. Locke truly looked like a ghost town, in every sense of the word.

  But inside, the restaurant brimmed with energy and life. The restored teak-and-mirrored bar was choked with patrons, most of whom seemed to know one another. The place was filled with the usual country-western bar decor—a stuffed moose, velvet paintings, burl clocks, and silly signs. Dan pointed upward with his thumb and I followed the direction of the gesture; hundreds of dollar bills were glued to the ceiling.

  We were seated in the restaurant area away from the bar, in wooden booths painted so thick with layers of lime green paint and Verathane, they might one day be studied by a geologist. We pulled menus from between bookends made from jars of crunchy peanut butter and grape jelly.

  Only two choices were listed for lunch and dinner: steak or chicken. If you didn’t like either, you could make yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the slices of fluffy white bread the waitress brought to your table. The food smelled good, reminding us we hadn’t eaten for hours—it was nearly two o’clock. I ordered the chicken, Dan had the steak. We split a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the side.

  “I’m … sorry about Boone,” I said after awhile, not knowing what else to say. “I didn’t know him all that well, but we were becoming friends. He was always there to help me if I had a problem.”

  Dan half smiled. “I didn’t know him that well either, to tell you the truth. He was so much older than me and we didn’t always get along. We had different ways of viewing the world, I guess. I thought maybe this time we’d find something in common, maybe be able to work together. But I guess he’d gone back to drinking.”

  “That surprises me, too. He’s been sober since I’ve known him. I think he attended A.A. meetings on a pretty regular basis. He had one of those ‘One Day at a Time’ stickers on his desk. I asked him about it once and he told me he went to meetings. He didn’t share a lot more, though.”

  “He always had a drinking problem,” Dan said. “I was hoping he’d licked it for good, but maybe you never beat something like that. He had a few ghosts he probably wanted to keep at bay. I guess he thought vodka was one way to do it. Unfortunately, it just makes the ghost greater—and more dangerous.”

  I wondered if there was something more personal beneath that last statement. It wasn’t the time to ask.

  “What do you think happened to him?” I asked, when my mouth wasn’t too sticky from the peanut butter.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he was drunk, fell in, couldn’t get out. But what puzzles me is, who was the guy Boone left with?”

  “And what about the missing jewelry and shoes? A looter of some kind who preys on drunks?” I took another bite of peanut butter and jelly. I hadn’t had white bread since fifth grade. I wished I could taste it, but right now it was just filling the hole in my upset stomach.

  After a few minutes of sitting in silence, the waitress brought the order. I halfheartedly cut up my chicken, while Dan poked his steak around as if it were alive.

  “Tell me about Boone,” Dan said, laying his fork down and folding his arms on the table.

  I swallowed the piece of chicken I had in my mouth, and took a drink of the beer, composing my reply.

  “He was … interesting. Unpredictable. I liked him, but not many people did. He had strange, irritating habits that bothered people. Boone could be loud, I guess, from what people said. Never bothered me of course. He said ‘fuck’ a lot. Used it as an adjective, an adverb, a noun, whatever. Your brother didn’t seem very happy, didn’t laugh much. Never saw any women that I know of. Didn’t have any close friends. Once a week we’d share a pizza and watch Murder, She Wrote on his little TV. We’d both try to guess whodunnit. He never did.”

  “How about you?”

  “Always. Made him madder than hell. We had a bet going. Whoever guessed the right person didn’t have to pay for the pizza. I never had to pay. But other than that I didn’t see him a lot. We both had our work to do.”

  Dan sipped his beer and stabbed the steak distractedly with his fork.

  “And you?” I asked. “You were his brother. What was he like for you?”

  “Like I said, I didn’t see him a lot. He grew up with a different father, who took off after a while. Then when he was ten, father number two came along, and I arrived soon after. I think both those events kind of displaced him. He started rebelling, getting into trouble, drinking. The drinking seemed to numb a pain he carried with him. I found out later he had beaten pretty regularly by his real father. When his dad finally left, I think Boone was relieved. But when Mom married again, Boone never gave the guy a chance. He left home around fifteen or sixteen, when I was five or six years old.”

  “Where did he go? What did he do?”

  “We didn’t know for a long time. Heard he joined the service eventually.”

  “So you pretty much grew up without him.”

  “Yeah. I went to school, got a degree in Administration of Justice, then became a cop for the City of New York. Classic, huh?”

  “Wow. You were actually a cop? Why’d you quit?”

  “Long story.”

  “I’ve got time.”

  He chugged his beer and ordered another. I followed suit.

  “Boone changed after he got out of the army. I used to get an occasional phone call or letter, depending on whether he was drunk or sober. He seemed to settle down after Vietnam. Went back to school and got his degree, then went on to law school. Kind of ironic. While I was sending the guys to jail, he was getting them out. Anyway, his drinking was still a problem. He’d attend A.A. for a while, then go for weeks, months, without taking a drink, thinking he had it conquered. Then something would happen, like he’d lose a case or a girlfriend, and he’d go into a three-day binge, complete with blackouts.”

  “Could that have happened to him this time?”

  “Possibly. When he’s having a blackout he has no idea where he is or what’s happening. He can’t remember anything the next day. He’s done some pretty crazy stuff. Used to strip all his clothes off and run around the hills naked, fall asleep when the booze ran its course, then come to and not know where he was, how he got there, or what he had done.”

  “How frightening.”

  “Tell me about it. So one day he came by our house. He’d been drinking. I don’t think he knew what he was doing.”

  “What happened?”

  “By then my father had died. Mom was alone again. I was out on a homicide when Boone dropped by and found Mom with his real father. I guess the old guy had been showing up again. Anyway, he’d been beating on her.”

  “What did Boone do?”

  “Neighbors called the police when they heard my mom screaming. I was sent on a domestic and it turned out to be my mom’s address. I got there and found Boone’s father. He’d been shot to death.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  Dan hesitated, took another sip of beer, and stared down at the fork protruding like a sword from the middle of his untouched steak. He spoke slowly and with some difficulty.

  “Boone had shot him with the gun Mom kept in the house. The gun I gave her to protect herself. When I got there Boone was delirious, drunk, crying, out of his mind. Mom was hys
terical. I knew they’d throw the book at Boone, even though his dad had been beating on Mom and probably would have killed her. I figured if I stepped in, claimed the shooting myself, I could keep him from going to jail and ruining his life. After all, I’m a cop. Cops shoot people.”

  “So you took the blame.”

  He pressed his lips together for a moment. “Boone never even knew what he had done. He woke up the next day with no memory of anything, and I made Mom swear not to tell him. He promised to go to A.A. again, and this time he sounded like he meant it. He left town, moved as far away as he could—‘out west’ he used to say—and became a private investigator. We heard from him now and then over the years, but I never saw him again … until today.”

  “What happened to you? Did you get off?”

  Dan shrugged. “Not exactly. There were some holes in the story. They took me before Internal Affairs and decided it wasn’t a justified killing, that I could have done more to stop the guy, arrest him, or get him out of the situation. They asked me why I hadn’t used my own gun, why I had used the gun in the house—which was registered to me. I’m not a very good liar, I guess. I couldn’t make it work. They knew there was more to it, but I stopped talking at that point.”

  “Were you arrested?”

  “Nope. ‘Reassigned.’ They promised me a teaching job over at the correctional facility if I resigned. But by then I needed a change. Things were falling apart. I left the state and got a job teaching Administration of Justice at the University of New Mexico and at the C.F. My degree came in handy for all those guys who didn’t get good lawyers and wanted to pursue their cases in appeals courts.”

  “But you were terminated there, too.”

  He looked at me. “How did you know?”

  “I … I thought you told me.”

  “You’re a lousy liar, too,” Dan said with a half-grin.

  “I am not. I’m a good liar!”

  “Your body language gave you away. You blushed, you stammered, you couldn’t meet my eyes.”

  “Where did you learn all that about body language?”

  “Part of the police academy instruction. Know your opponent.”

  “I’m not your opponent. Although I’m not so sure about you.”

  He gave me a look that set a few hairs at attention, then downed the rest of his beer. “Okay, so I got fired. Actually I quit, but that’s a technicality. I was working with this one guy who said he was not Mirandized. So I helped him get a new trial. Turns out he was accused of raping the police chief’s daughter. They didn’t appreciate my butting in. So I was canned.”

  “Did he rape her?”

  “Not according to six other men who had dated her in the past. She used this rape scam with every one of them. It was apparently part of her foreplay. But my guy got caught—and was screwed, so to speak.”

  “So you came out here to what—work with your big brother?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to see him. See what California was like. Spend some time figuring out what to do next. I’ve been a cop who’s put criminals in jail and a teacher who’s helped them get out. What’s left? Become a criminal myself?” He laughed.

  I didn’t. There was still something he wasn’t telling me. Whatever it was was lurking right behind those dark eyes.

  Dan and I shared the bill at my insistence—twenty bucks for two peanut butter sandwiches and two slightly mutilated but mostly untouched beef and chicken orders—and left the restaurant. We rode back to Flat Skunk in silence. At least I did. Dan played the radio and kept punching the buttons to find new music stations. He asked me why I had a radio. I said it came with the car.

  When we arrived back at my office, there was a flashing light on my message machine.

  “Dan, could you listen to my messages for me? My regular machine is broken, Miah’s not around, and I’m waiting for a call from the sheriff about—” I started to say the break-in at my diner but decided not to mention it. I still didn’t know who was responsible, and at this point, everyone was a possibility.

  Dan didn’t press it. He punched the play button, picked up a pencil, and began to write down the first message.

  “Connor—Mickey. Call me—another …”

  Dan put the pencil down slowly, punched the rewind button and listened to the message again, combing his beard as the tape played. Then he looked at me with wide eyes.

  “What?” I said, feeling those butterflies collecting in my stomach again.

  “There’s been another one.”

  “Another what?” I said, trying to read his face.

  “Another … murder. Some guy staying at the bed-and-breakfast inn over on Front Street. He’s been stabbed.”

  Beau was standing outside the Mark Twain B & B, talking with half a dozen onlookers, rubberneckers, and ambulance-chasers, even though the ambulance was already gone. And along with it, the body of the man in the red Miata, according to Beau.

  It was late afternoon by the time we arrived, and growing cool again, a reminder that spring was fickle. The sheriff and Mickey stood among a group of inn guests, taking statements, while television crews packed up their gear into minivans.

  Dan and I had apparently missed most of the action.

  I couldn’t get to the sheriff or Mickey immediately. They both seemed engrossed in official business, pointing and nodding and readjusting their belt buckles. But Beau looked as if he wouldn’t mind being torn away from the murder groupies. He waved halfheartedly as we approached.

  “Excuse me,” he said to a couple of elderly women who were “tsking” and “oohing” and making a bunch of other mouth noises I couldn’t recognize. He made his way over and clasped my hand. “Connor! Did you hear what happened?”

  I said I had, then introduced Dan to Beau. “So what are the details?”

  Beau took my hand and pulled me over to the side of the inn near the garden pond he had put in last weekend. Dan followed hesitantly, as if he wasn’t sure he was invited. We sat in white wrought-iron chairs that were supposed to create a serene retreat.

  “Oh, my God, Connor. I just don’t believe it! That guy, the one who ran you off the road the other day—”

  Dan looked at me curiously. I rubbed my knees in memory of my fall.

  “He was killed! Sometime last night! Right here in my beautiful bed-and-breakfast inn! Oh, God. It’s awful.”

  Beau’s lips quivered. His lashes flashed.

  “Were you the one who found him, Beau?” I asked, putting my hand on his knee and giving it a comforting pat.

  He nodded vigorously, bit his lip, then turned away for a moment to look at a frog that had hopped out of its watery home. When Beau had composed himself, he continued.

  “It was terrible. I knocked on the door with breakfast—cranberry scones and kiwi jam. He always took his breakfast in the room, never came out to join the other guests at the dining table. Anyway, I knocked, no answer, so I thought he was still asleep. I took the tray back to the kitchen, figuring I could reheat the scones when he was ready—although they wouldn’t be as good. Anyway, about an hour later he got a phone call, so I went back to tell him about it and offer him his breakfast again. But there was still no answer.”

  He paused to check on the adventurous frog for a moment. The slimy amphibian had filled its neck with air and was opening and closing its mouth. I found myself trying to read its lips. Beau resumed his story with a renewed look of concern.

  “I was a little worried, so I used my key to check on him. That’s when I found him, lying on my great-grandmother’s crazy quilt. One of the antique mining picks from the wall was sticking out of his chest! The killer just took it right down and—God!” He shuddered. “I called the sheriff right then and there.”

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I looked around to see the deputy.

  “I see you got my message,” Mickey said, flipping his notebook closed.

  I stood up to face him, feeling almost angry. “What’s going on around here, Micke
y? Things are getting way out of hand! Another death? Jesus! What happened?”

  Mickey bent his head to the side. “We don’t know much more than what Beau here told us.” Beau sat up straighter, acknowledging the reference. “The victim was stabbed with an old gold-mining pick. Looks like it went right through the heart.”

  I thought about Lacy Penzance’s stab wound. Wasn’t it much the same? “A pick? How odd.”

  “Lacy wasn’t stabbed with a pick, was she?” Beau asked.

  Mickey shook his head. “No. We’re fairly certain Lacy was stabbed with an instrument used in embalming cadavers. The mortuary recently reported a theft.”

  “An embalming tool! A mining pick! We’ve got some kind of lunatic running around town!” Beau said dramatically, rubbing his hands on his legs. His flashing eyelashes punctuated his statements.

  Mickey shook his head. “He’s not a lunatic, that’s for sure. In my opinion, this guy is very intelligent, very cautious, and extremely calculating. We don’t know who it is yet, but we’ll find him—or her, for that matter. We picked up a few hairs, some clothing threads, and we have a partial print on a sheet of paper found in the room that doesn’t seem to belong to the victim. We’ll find him. It’s only a matter of time, believe me. And I’ve got a pretty good idea where to look.” Mickey glanced at Dan and rubbed the butt of his holstered gun as he spoke.

  Dan seemed preoccupied, not attending to the conversation any longer. I glanced over at Beau who appeared terrified. The deputy, in contrast, seemed confident and in control, even if he did look kind of goofy with his hair sticking out.

  “Do you have an ID on the dead guy?” Dan asked, coming out of his trance.

  The deputy nodded. “Yep. Found his wallet, license, something called a Screen Actor’s Guild card—expired—some credit cards, and a business log. He’s an actor, formerly of Santa Monica. Name’s James Russell. Ring any bells?”

  “Doesn’t sound familiar,” Dan said.