by Paul Moomaw
Glazeburke shook his head. “No, but I took down the license plate, because I was angry, and I wanted to report the guy. I still have the number somewhere. It started with a 13T. Anyway, I did report him, not that it did any good, as far as his crazy driving was concerned. The sheriff down there in Hamilton just shrugged and said there wasn’t a lot he could do. But he took the number, and I guess that’s why they came to me later. It turns out the truck belonged to the murderer.”
Arceneaux drained his soda. He wished he had a beer, and decided he would have one as soon as he got home. He stood up, and Harold growled again. He thought it would be nice to take Harold for a walk in the woods, and tie him to a tree for the bears to eat. The thought helped him smile as he held out his hand to Glazeburke.
“Thanks for your time,” he said.
Glazeburke opened the front door for Arceneaux. “If you’re working for that guy, you’re wasting your time and his money,” he said. “If anybody was ever a killer, he is.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Arceneaux said. He walked to his car, opened the door, then paused to look around. The cedar townhouses stuck out like squatters. The memory of how the old orchard had looked came to him unbidden. He shook his head, got into the Subaru, and drove away.
Chapter 9
Barbara Drake was good looking enough, with dark curly hair, darker eyes, and smooth olive skin that managed to glow even under the fluorescent lights of her office; but she was all sharp edges and ambition, and did not know what compromise meant. She hated to lose, would skate to the very edge of legal ethics to win, and if you couldn’t handle dirty fighting, stay out of her way. Even her swivel chair was corkscrewed as high as she could get it to go, so that she was able to look down at Arceneaux, who sat across the desk from her. Brassy was the term that popped into his mind, and would not go away, even though he knew as he thought it that he was being unfair, that if she were a man he would not mind the way she was, might even admire it.
Barbara had been willing enough to see him, had even bestowed a rare smile on him when he entered the room. Arceneaux was surprised, remembering the constant guerrilla warfare he had engaged in with her when she had been an assistant city attorney in Missoula, and he had been one of her law school interns.
She sat quietly, and appeared to be listening attentively as he went through the facts he had uncovered so far, facts he believed should nudge her toward expanding the investigation, only speaking when he described the discrepancies that appeared in the pathologist’s report.
“The thing is, Barb, if you’ve got the wrong man, a lot of evidence is going to go stale while you waste time trying to convict him,” Arceneaux said.
“I will convict him,” she replied. “It’ll be easy. The evidence is there, and Larry’s rolling over and playing dead for me.” She rolled her eyes, and there was a tinge of contempt in her voice. “I never knew he was so afraid to lose.” She wagged an index finger with a blood red nail at Arceneaux. “If I were going against you, I think it would be different, Sam. You were a pain in the ass when you were a student. But you were sharp, and you knew how to fight.”
Arceneaux shook his head. “I wish I could fight you on this one,” he said, “but I don’t have standing. All I can do is try to get you and Larry to look at the facts. And one of the facts that nobody seems to pay attention to is that Corey Wallace was a big time drug dealer.”
“Says who?”
“Oh, come on, Barbara. Don’t play with my head. You know it’s true.”
“I’m simply interested in knowing where you got that information.”
“Anne O’Meara at the Missoula County Attorney’s office.”
“Well, you’re right. Wallace dealt, we think. But that has nothing to do with anything.”
“Drug deal goes bad? Angry customer kills Wallace, and Samantha is collateral damage?”
Barbara sighed and rolled her eyes. “Crazy, jealous husband kills Samantha, and Corey Wallace is collateral damage. Look, Sam, even if this case weren’t a slam dunk, I would go to the wire on it. I want Marks. I know damn well he did it. He’s violent and abusive, has been since he was a kid. Hell, he half killed his father.”
“What I hear is that his dad tried to beat him up one time too often, and Arden took him down with a plank,” Arceneaux said.
Barbara shook her head. “What you heard is only half the story. Arden’s father was a kind of mean son of a bitch, and way too handy with a belt. But the day Arden assaulted him, all he was giving the boy was a tongue lashing. Arden took a piece of stove wood and knocked his father down. He was about as big as his old man by then anyway. And after he took him down, he kept on beating him. One of the neighbors finally turned his dog loose on him to get him to stop. The old man had a fractured skull, a busted elbow, and two broken ribs. He nearly died, and Arden would have spent a few years in Pine Hills after that, except his father refused to prosecute, covered for him, and the neighbors went along because they figured it was a family matter.” She paused. “Did you know that Samantha was Arden’s second wife?”
Arceneaux shook his head. “I suppose he murdered the first one, too,” he said.
“No,” Barbara said. “She got far enough away, soon enough, so he never had a chance. You might want to talk to her.”
“Are you going to tell me her name, or would that just be coddling me?” Arceneaux said.
Barbara gave him a third smile, and then actually laughed. Arceneaux had never heard her laugh before. She did it as if it came naturally to her, and he wondered if she laughed a lot when no one was around to catch her.
“Ruth Cantrell,” she said. “She took her own name back after she divorced him. She’s a Life Flight nurse at St. Patrick’s Hospital in Missoula.”
“I bet that’s a scary job, sometimes,” Arceneaux said. “Especially when the weather turns nasty.”
“I guess after Arden, not much scares her,” Barbara said. She stood up. “I’ve got to get back to work, but listen, Sam. I’ll admit some of the stuff you’ve come up with is interesting, but it isn’t close to being enough to turn my head. The question is, if Arden Marks didn’t kill his wife, who did? Bring me a believable suspect, Sam. I promise I’ll pay attention. Until then, I’ve got Arden, and I intend to keep him.”
Chapter 10
The house of David and Elizabeth Crisp, Samantha’s parents, was small and worn, a place that had seen too many years and not enough kindness. Elizabeth Crisp was like the house. She stood about five-three, with a sallow, weathered face and dark brown hair that was beginning to show patches of gray. Her hands, which held the front door half open, as if she did not know what to do about Arceneaux’s presence on the front porch, were rough and knobby, and had clearly never seen the services of a manicurist. It was hard to see much of Samantha in her mother, except for the eyes, which were the same color.
“My name is Sam Arceneaux,” he said. “I wonder if I could talk with you for a few minutes?”
“What about?” she said.
“I’m looking into your daughter’s death,” he said, and paused as she winced. “There are a lot of things I don’t know about Samantha that would be helpful to know.”
“What sort of things?”
“What she was like. What kinds of things she liked to do. Who her friends were. Anything that might point to the identity of her killer.”
She shook her head. “I thought they already arrested her husband,” she said. “He killed her, didn’t he?”
“That’s not certain,” Arceneaux said. He reached toward the screen door. “May I come in and talk?”
Elizabeth Crisp wavered, looked briefly over her shoulder, as if she hoped someone else would respond for her. Then she stepped back from the door, her shoulders sagging slightly. “I guess you can come in,” she said. She pulled the front door all the way open and nodded toward the front room. “We can talk in here.” She walked to a stuffed arm chair covered in dark blue fabric that was worn gray at the ends
of the arms, and sat down. “Go ahead and take the sofa,” she said. “It’s the most comfortable place.” She held herself stiffly, not leaning back into the chair, and watched Arceneaux as he sat. “I already talked with the Sheriff’s deputies,” she said. “They wanted to know all about Arden and Samantha.” She glanced down at the floor. “I couldn’t tell them much. Samantha never talked about her marriage to speak of. In fact, I didn’t really see her that much after she moved up to Woodvale. I guess Arden didn’t like visitors.” She brightened for a moment. “I was excited when she called and told me she was leaving him.” She paused, and a confused look crossed her face briefly. “I mean, I wasn’t excited that the marriage was ending. I think marriage should be forever. But she said she wanted to move back home with me, at least until she decided what to do about work and things. I was really looking forward to spending time with her again, catching up, you know?”
“Do you have any idea if Arden ever got physical with her?” Arceneaux asked. “Did you get the idea she was afraid of him?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Samantha wasn’t afraid of anything,” she said. “Couple of times, when we talked on the phone, she complained about how stubborn he was, but she never said anything about him hurting her. Said he never even raised his voice to her. If anything, it was just the opposite. She said when he got mad, and I guess that was pretty often, come to think about it, he wouldn’t talk about what was wrong. He’d just clam up and sulk, and that just drove her up the wall.”
“Did she have many friends?” Arceneaux said.
“More than you could shake a stick at,” Elizabeth said. “She was so cheery and good-natured. Everybody liked her.” She frowned again. “I guess she didn’t see much of them either, after she married Arden. Some of them used to drop by or call, and ask me how she was doing. It was embarrassing not to know anything to tell them. Sometimes..” and she ducked her head and looked at Arceneaux from under her eyebrows, “sometimes I would just make something up.”
A cluster of photographs hung on the wall behind Elizabeth. Arceneaux got up and went over to inspect them.
“That shot of Samantha in the green dress, that’s the newest one I have of her,” Elizabeth said. “We were picnicking up by Lost Horse Creek. It was a sort of final family outing before she got married.”
“No wedding pictures?” Arceneaux said.
She shook her head. “David, that’s my husband, took some photographs, but something was wrong with the camera, and they didn’t come out. Arden’s brother, Elbert,” she made a face. “I don’t know if you’ve met Elbert.”
“I know him a little,” Arceneaux said.
“So different from Arden,” she said. “Anyway, he took pictures at the ceremony, and Samantha always said she would have some copies made and get them to us, but she never did.” She shook her head, and a shadow of pain crossed her face. “I don’t think I would want any, now,” she said.
One of the photos on the wall was of Elizabeth, Samantha, and a dark-haired man who appeared not to be any taller than Samantha. “Is this your daughter’s dad?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s David.”
“You wouldn’t guess it,” Arceneaux said
“David’s not Samantha’s natural father,” Elizabeth said. “Dirk, that was her dad, died when Samantha was a couple of months old.”
“I’m sorry,” Arceneaux said.
“He was a logger,” Elizabeth said. “They don’t always live very long. David and he worked together. In fact, David felled the tree that took Dirk down. It made him feel pretty awful. He says he still has nightmares about it now and then, watching the tree fall, yelling for Dirk to run, and then having to watch the look on Dirk’s face when he realized he wasn’t going to get out of the way.” She smiled briefly and ran her fingers through her hair. “Sometimes I think the only reason he married me was from feeling guilty. Anyway, he did, and then he adopted Samantha. He’s her father in every way that counts, except looks. She has Dirk’s looks.”
Elizabeth got up from the chair. “Wait here,” she said, and headed toward a door into another part of the house. Arceneaux examined the other photos. Elizabeth Crisp looked tired in all of them, and David Crisp looked mean. It was the only word Arceneaux could come up with. Two of the pictures were of Crisp alone, wearing a white karate gi, posing pigeon-toed in combat stances, trying to look deadly; but in those shots he still only managed to look mean. Arceneaux wondered what it was like to live with him.
Elizabeth Crisp re-entered the room. She had a picture in her hand.
“This is Dirk,” she said. “I took this a few days before he died.”
The photograph was of a tall, rangy blonde man, holding a baby, and smiling like he had just won a million-dollar lottery. There could be no doubt that this was Samantha’s father. The coloring, the shape of the face and mouth. They even had the same jawline and high forehead.
“He looks like he ought to be a cowboy,” Arceneaux said.
“He was,” Elizabeth replied. “He grew up on a ranch near Phillipsburg, and he figured some day to move back and take the place over when his folks got ready to retire. He only logged because he couldn’t find any decent work in Hamilton, and I was spoiled and young, and wouldn’t move away from my family.” Suddenly her eyes were full of tears. She tried to knuckle them away. “Sometimes I hate myself for that,” she said.
“You couldn’t have known,” Arceneaux said, because he felt a need to say something.
Elizabeth smiled at him. “Oh, I know you’re right,” she said. “Like they taught us in Sunday school, man proposes, and God disposes.” She touched his arm lightly, then let her hand drop. “You’re nice, Mister Arceneaux,” she said. She looked at the photograph again. “I better put this away,” she said. “David doesn’t even know I have it.” She shook her head. “Seems like by now he would have gotten over being jealous of a dead man.”
“Is your husband a martial artist?” Arceneaux asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said, with a surprised look on her face, as if she expected everyone to know that. “He teaches taekwondo. The dojo is right on the highway. You must have seen it.”
“I guess I have, come to think of it. Does he manage to make a living at it?”
“He does well enough that I don’t have to work. He specializes in teaching children. Some parents bring their kids all the way over from Salmon, in Idaho.” A note of pride had entered her voice.
“I’ll have to drop in and see the place,” Arceneaux said. “I’ll want to talk with him, too.”
A shadow of concern crossed Elizabeth’s face. “He won’t want to talk to you,” she said. “He won’t like it if he finds out I did.” She paused. “He’s pretty private,” she said, and then corrected herself, “We’re pretty private.”
The front door banged open, and a young voice announced “I’m home, Mom.” A boy who looked to be about ten years old came into the room. He stopped and stared suspiciously at Arceneaux.
“This is Mister Arceneaux,” Elizabeth said. “He came by to talk about Samantha, but he’s leaving now.” She turned to Arceneaux. “This is Bryce,” she said. “Samantha’s brother.” She smiled shyly. “He was a late arrival,” she said.
Looking at Bryce was like looking at Samantha. Arceneaux held out his hand, but the boy ignored it, and continued to stare. Arceneaux gave up and returned his attention to the mother. “He could practically be his sister’s twin,” he said. “Funny how two brunette parents could have such a blonde kid, isn’t it.”
Elizabeth’s faced shifted again, emotion passing across it, and then vanishing as quickly. “I guess you had better go,” she said.
“I’m sorry if I said something to upset you,” Arceneaux said.
“It still just hurts a lot,” she said. “I guess I’ll need some time to find peace.”
Arceneaux nodded and stepped to the front door. “Thanks for your time,” he said.
Outside, he paused to look at
nothing in particular, then headed for his car. He thought about the look that had crossed Elizabeth Crisp’s face when he had mentioned Bryce’s resemblance to his sister. She had called it pain, but Arceneaux knew that what he had seen was fear.
Chapter 11
Woodvale was more accident than town—a random collection of small houses with peeling paint and a scattering of trailers, anchored by a log church at one end of the road that tied them loosely together, and at the other by a small general store that also served as gas pump and post office. Arden Marks’ house was set off a little from the rest, with his old Power Wagon parked in a dirt driveway at one side. The house stood tucked tightly under a stand of pines, and looked as if it had been painted more recently than most of its neighbors. About ten feet from one corner of the house at least two cords, maybe three, of logs lay neatly stacked. In front of that was a smaller stack of split wood. Both piles were arranged meticulously in a neat pattern a stonemason could have been proud of. A large stump stood at one end of the small stack. It was clearly for use as a chopping block, and a splitting maul had been driven into it, a good two inches of its brightly sharpened edge buried in the wood.
As Arceneaux parked and opened the car door, he heard high, thin singing coming from Marks’ house. He stood by the side of the Subaru, not sure if he should enter the house, or wait for whatever was going on to end. Before he could make up his mind, the music stopped, and someone began to pray, loudly and rhythmically, beseeching Jehovah to protect the community, and especially its most endangered member. Arceneaux assumed that meant Marks. The prayer ended to a chorus of amens, and shortly after that the front door of the house opened and people started coming out, led by Elbert Marks. The women all wore granny dresses and covered their hair in long, white kerchiefs. The men wore mostly jeans and flannel shirts, with the occasional, well-worn quilted vest.
Elbert Marks saw Arceneaux and walked toward him. “This is Sam Arceneaux, the man you hired to find out who killed my brother’s wife,” he said loudly. No one responded, but some of the people milling around on the porch smiled. Then one of the women came down the steps and approached Arceneaux. Stopping in front of him, she smiled shyly and offered her hand. As Arceneaux shook it, the others approached and shook hands one at a time. No one said a word. Whatever rules this little community had, Arceneaux did not want to break them, so he kept his mouth shut as well, and simply stood there, smiling back at the people, and shaking hands. Elbert stood to one side, and waited. When the final hand was shaken, and without offering his own, he turned and walked to an elderly trailer that stood about a hundred feet from his brother’s house, and went inside.