Summer People

by Aaron Stander

  “I took the gun home and practiced a bit. I’ve never been much of a shot, but with one of those it doesn’t matter much. You just aim, and it throws out a shit load of bullets.”

  “Tell me about the night of the shooting,” said Ray.

  “I knew from what Kit told me that Joe worked till nine in the summer. At first I thought I’d get him when he left the store, but I was afraid there’d be too many people around, so I decided to get him when he came home.

  “I left my car by the highway and got a hiding place near their house. When he came home from work, I waited until he got out of his car and then blew the hell out of him.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I stopped and had a couple of beers and a pizza at the Village Tap. And then I got a bottle and went home and drank until I passed out. I didn’t hear nothing until you was shouting for me to come out.”

  “Lennie, why didn’t you take off? You must have known that we would find you fairly quickly if you went back to your trailer.”

  “Where was I gonna run to? I got no money, I got no place to go. I’ve been to Jackson before, probably you know that. I’m not afraid to go back.”

  “But this time you’re going for life,” said Ray.

  “We’ll see about that,” said Hawthorne. “There’s not much of this that will be admissible.”

  Lennie continued, “Being out ain’t much better than being in. At least there you know what tomorrow will bring.”

  Ray went to the door and got the deputy. He turned to Hawthorne, “If you don’t have further need of your client, I’ll have him returned to his cell.”

  “Not now,” she responded.

  After he was escorted from the room, Hawthorne said, “You won’t get to use any of this.”

  “Counselor, I’m sure that you and the judge and prosecutor will have an interesting time working out what’s admissible and what isn’t.

  She glared at him as she gathered up her things. She slammed the door behind her.

  They sat there for a few minutes in silence. “It’s interesting,” began Sue, “the only time Buck showed any emotion was when he was pushing back against Hawthorne. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so completely defeated, so hopeless. I’m surprised he cared enough for Kit, or was he angry enough to kill Hammer?”

  “Which was it?” asked Ray. “Did he do it for love, or was he just trying to get revenge for the beating?”

  “I don’t know. There was so little affect. I think he cares about her, or at least appreciates the fact that she cared about him.”

  “And does she care about him? What’s your best guess based on what he’s said?”

  “Hard to tell. She might care, or she might have been just using him for sex or companionship.”

  “Does he know the difference between right and wrong?”

  “Hard to tell,” said Sue. “What do you think?”

  “I think he knows; I don’t think that there is any question about that. But he doesn’t care. I don’t think he sees any of his actions or their consequences as having real meaning, any importance.”

  “It would be much easier if people were either good or evil. It’s never that neat?”

  “Never.”

  30

  The lot was empty, save a pickup that, by the markings on the side, obviously belonged to the owner, as Ray parked near the main door. Bud converted a general store to his gun shop when he moved up from down state in the early seventies. He had the clapboard siding covered with rough-cut cedar to give the building a more rustic appearance. Next to the front door, with red, white, and blue ribbon streamers hanging on the side, was a sign that read AK-47 Freedom Sale Now In Progress. Ray noted at the bottom of the sign a bumper sticker with Fire the Wimp, Hire a Hammer.

  Ray pushed his way through the heavy front door. The high tin ceilings, installed when the building was constructed in the early days of the century, remained. The walls, although not changed, were now covered with heads of deer. A stuffed grizzly lunged from one side of the store, its mouth open, its arms and long claws reaching into the room. A moose, sad and mangy, peered from the back of the store toward the freedom of the parking lot. Smaller animals—a fox, a wolf, a badger, a porcupine, a wild turkey, a pair of wood ducks, and pheasant—stood on wooden shelves and stared through lifeless glass eyes.

  Bud, in his late sixties, was standing behind a glass showcase at the back of the store. He was wearing khaki pants and a shirt with a military style web belt with a brass buckle. A string tie hung on his chest; a Petoskey stone cut in the shape of the Michigan mitten was centered on the two strands of the tie.

  Bud, his arms in front of him, his large hands on the counter, fingers spread, rocked his large frame forward. “Good morning, Sheriff.”

  “Good morning, Bud.”

  “Something I can help you with this morning, Sheriff? “We are investigating the Hammer murder. We found an AK47 at the scene of the arrest, and the suspect, Lennie Buck, said he bought the weapon here on Monday. I want to confirm that this information is correct.”

  “That’s correct, Sheriff. Although I’ll have to check on the day, but I’m pretty sure it was Monday. We’ve had a lot of action on those AK-47s. Surprised you haven’t been in to pick up a few for the department. With all the riffraff coming up from down state, I’d sure want my people to have adequate fire power to protect themselves.” Bud gave him a sardonic grin.

  Ray let the comment pass. “Would you please show me the paper work on the sale?”

  “I’ve got everything right here, Sheriff. As you know we do everything by the book.” Bud turned to a tall, gray file cabinet and rifled through the top drawer and then the second drawer. Finally, he extracted a worn manila folder, smudged and tatty, from the drawer. “His application is right here, Sheriff,” he said laying a slightly rumpled sheet on the glass-topped counter.

  Ray looked at the application. “Did he fill this out himself?”

  “No, I helped, but all the information came from him. He seemed to have trouble reading the form, so, in the interest of accuracy, I read it to him and copied his responses, but it’s just the same as if he did it himself. And that is his signature at the bottom. He signed it himself.”

  Ray studied the form carefully. “Bud, it says here that Mr. Buck is a resident of this county and lives at an address on Indian Hill Road. His driver’s license has him living in Flint, in Genessee County.”

  “Yes, Sheriff, he told me he had moved and was going to get that corrected right away. I thought it was better to record his current address, just to get things right. You know how slow bureaucracies are, they’d never get his address right. That’s not going to cause any trouble, is it?”

  Ray didn’t respond; he just kept perusing the form as if he hadn’t heard the question. After several minutes he asked, “Did you wait on Mr. Buck?”

  “I’m the only one here, Sheriff, except during deer season when my brother-in-law comes in to help.”

  “Can you tell me about Mr. Buck?”

  “He was waiting in the parking lot when I got here; I guess it was sometime after nine. He said he wanted a deer rifle.”

  “And you showed him a deer rifle?”

  “I started to, one of the new Winchesters that’s real popular, but he said he wanted to see an AK-47.”

  “Did that strike you as strange?”

  “I’m never surprised by what some of those fudgies come up with; besides, the liberal media has given these weapons such a bad rap, lots of honest folks are embarrassed to ask for one. And I told that young man if he wanted one of these,” he turned and picked one off the rack behind him, “he’d better buy one while he still could. Ain’t that right, Sheriff?”

  “How much ammunition did Mr. Buck purchase?”

  “He purchased two hundred rounds.”

  “Isn’t that an unusually large quantity?”

  “It’s a lot, but these guns use a lot. You can go through that much in
a few minutes of target shooting. Besides, I urge people to buy a lot just in case the government tries to ban the sale of ammo for this type of gun.”

  “Can you tell me about how he acted?”

  “He just acted normal. As I was telling you, he said he wanted a deer rifle; then he got interested in this baby. These are fun, Sheriff. You should try one.” He handed the rifle across the counter; Ray made no effort to take it, and he pulled it back. “Buck just seemed like a normal kind of person. Nothing really strange, I mean long hair used to bother me, but now it’s just common. He seemed normal, you know what I mean? I was surprised to hear about the shooting. But, Sheriff, you need to know that the gun had nothing do with the killing. If he was determined to kill Joe Hammer, he would have found a way. He could have run over him, or used an axe, or knife, or even a broken beer bottle. People kill people, guns don’t. But I will tell you one thing.”

  “What’s that Bud?”

  “He didn’t really seem like a sportsman. You can usually tell. He was too much of a fudgie. Joe Hammer, on the other hand, he was a real sportsman and one hell of a shot. He killed damn near everything that moved. He was a good customer, too. I’ll miss him.”

  Bud thrust the AK-47 in Ray’s direction again. “Sure you don’t want to get some of these? I’ll give your department a hell of discount.”

  “Thanks for the help, Bud,” said Ray as he headed for the door.

  31

  Ray’s first trip to Joe Hammer’s was the night of the shooting. In the darkness he was able to notice little of the exterior.

  His second trip was made in the brilliant light of a summer morn. Sue accompanied him. He remembered the long, unpaved drive. The house was long and low, and centered in a clearing of scrub oak. The exterior of the house was covered with a variety of materials, most of which looked like they had been scavenged from abandoned buildings. The rusting hulks of two derelict cars and one pickup were off to the side next to a partially collapsed shed. In front of the house stood two bullet-riddled cars; most of the windows were shattered. The picture window in the front of the house was covered with plastic sheeting held by thin pieces of wood carelessly tacked to the frame.

  Two small children were playing in the sand next to the house. When Ray and Sue got out of the car, the children ran to a screen door. Ray and Sue followed.

  Kit Hammer was standing at the door. “Can I help you, Sheriff?”

  “Mrs. Hammer, we have got some questions we would like you to help us with.”

  “I told the deputy all I knew the other night.”

  “We need to go over some things again and ask you some additional questions. May we come in?”

  “I wasn’t expecting no company, and the place is a mess. But,” she completed the sentence with a tone of resignation in her voice, “come on in. You can sit at the table if you like. Let me clear a few things.”

  She rushed in front of them and removed several bowls with the remains of cereal and milk. Then she wiped the table and motioned them to sit. “Would you like coffee, Sheriff and Miss….”

  “This is Sue Lawrence; she is helping with the investigation. I’d love some coffee, how about you?”

  “Yes, please,” said Sue.

  Kit picked three cups from a pile of dirty dishes in the sink, rinsed them, and set them, still wet, on the table. Then she brought a battered aluminum coffeepot from the stove and filled the cups with a dark, thick liquid.

  “Do you want anything in your coffee?”

  They both gave a negative nod.

  The two children stood quietly watching the activity. “You kids go out and play,” Kit ordered. They disappeared out the screen door. Another child appeared, a tall, frail girl of eleven or twelve. “Melody, go look after the kids while I talk to the sheriff.” The girl headed in the direction of her siblings.

  “She was real close to her stepfather,” said Kit. “She’s hardly said anything the last several days.”

  “Mrs. Hammer, we don’t want to take much of your time. We just have a few routine questions that we need to ask to get this thing cleared up. Then we won’t have to bother you any more. How long were you and Mr. Hammer married?”

  “We got married five years ago. The youngest boy, Junior, that’s Joe’s.”

  “Then you were married before?”

  “No, Joe was my first husband. I had Melody when I was in high school, but I stayed with my parents. Later, when I had Billy, I was living with another man. We always said we’d get married, but he turned out to be real mean. I was living back with my parents when I met Joe. I got hired during the summer at the IGA where Joe was a butcher.”

  “You and Mr. Hammer, did you get along?”

  “At first we were real happy. Joe was the first man that was good to me. About two years ago he got involved with the Freewill Bible Church, you know about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, things went bad after Joe joined that church. He got real religious. From that time he wasn’t no fun any more, and he was always after me to change. He stopped smoking and drinking, wouldn’t take me dancing anymore. And the worst thing was that he made me go to church with him. Sometimes we’d spend all Sunday at that stupid church. And then the beatings started.”

  “Beatings?”

  “I wouldn’t stop smoking and drinking. So Brother Tim told him it was a husband’s right to demand that his wife love him and honor his rule, and if she didn’t, he had the right to use the rod until she obeyed.”

  “How often did this happen?”

  “At first it was only occasionally, and I thought it would pass, but then Brother Tim told him that God was demanding that I stop sinning, and he had to beat me to save my soul.”

  “When did you meet Lennie Buck?”

  “It was last fall or winter. I met Lennie at the Laundromat. He was lonely, and nice, and would listen. Joe stopped listening to me years ago. He just talked at me. Lennie and me, we kinda got involved. I don’t know how Joe found out. I guess someone saw my car at Lennie’s trailer and told Joe about it. One day he takes me out in the woods away from the kids and tells me he knows all about it, and then he starts beating me. He makes me tell him everything, everything I can remember. He makes me go through everything and starts beating me again when I stop. It was like he was getting some weird pleasure out of making me tell him. Then he tells me that Brother Tim says that I should be stoned to death, that’s what the Bible says is the punishment for adultery. He tells me that he’ll spare my life for the sake of the kids if I beg for Jesus’s forgiveness at church on Sunday.”

  “And you did,” said Ray, “we’ve heard you did.”

  “But what I didn’t know was that it was all planned. It was planned for the men in the congregation to go over and beat up Lennie. I guess that Joe was the worst of all. He used an axe handle on him. Joe told me if I ever saw Lennie again he would kill both of us. But I didn’t care. As soon as Joe went to work I went over to see if he was all right. Lennie told me he was going to kill the bastard, but I told him not to do it. I thought he was just mad, that he would get over it. The next night when Joe got home Lennie killed him. As soon as I heard the shots I knew it was Lennie.”

  “And,” said Ray, “you didn’t say anything to Lennie when you saw him that might make him think you wanted him to kill your husband?”

  “No. I probably agreed with him that it would be nice if Joe was gone. Then I would be rid of him. But I didn’t tell him to kill Joe.”

  “Did you give Lennie some money?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why did you give him money?”

  “He didn’t have none.”

  “The money, what was he suppose to do with it?”

  “I told you. He didn’t have none. He needed to get away. Joe wasn’t done with him.”

  “Did Joe tell you that?”

  “No, but I know Joe. He’d find a way to get Lennie.”

  “How much money did you give Lennie?”

>   “Couple hundred, maybe three. Didn’t really count it. I’d been saving a little back for more than a year. Money I might use to leave Joe.

  “What am I going to do now, Sheriff? I got three kids and no husband to support us. What am I going to do now?” She looked across the table at him.

  “Deputy Lawrence will arrange to have the people from social services meet with you. They should be able to provide you with some help. But it will be difficult.” Ray stood, “I’m probably going to need to ask you some more questions in the next few days. Stay in the area.”

  “Where can I go Sheriff?” she asked as she walked them to the door. As Ray pushed the screen door open, the three kids came darting past them into the house. They did not talk until Ray pulled back onto the highway. “What do you think?”

  Sue shook her head. “I don’t know, Ray. I just don’t know.”

  32

  John Tyrrell’s tenure as Cedar County prosecutor started twenty years before Ray was elected to his first term. Tyrrell was only a few years out of law school when he was elected the first time. He had aspired to a judgeship a time or two during his career as prosecutor, but the voters were reluctant to make him a judge. Although he was very popular and influential in local politics, his reputation as a bit of a drunk and womanizer must have suggested to them that his expertise was more appropriately applied as a prosecutor than as a judge.

  Early in Ray’s tenure, the state police had arrested Tyrrell for DUI. Tyrrell had asked Ray to “cut a deal” with the state police and get the ticket torn up. Ray’s refusal had set the tone for a relationship that was, although not rancorous, never cordial.

  Although the Cedar County Center had been a smoke free building for more than a year, when Ray entered Tyrrell’s office the stench of the cigar smoke was almost overwhelming. In the few months since Ray had given up smoking, he had grown to dislike the smell of cigarettes and cigars and had become increasing intolerant of smokers.