Post Facto

by Darryl Wimberley

  “Butch said Hiram invited him.”

  “And you believed him?!”

  “He’s been off with Hiram before. Plenty of times.”

  What was it that Annie wrote—? Something about feeding dogs and cleaning guns?

  “I don’t like the sound of this, Thurman.”

  “Clara Sue, please—”

  “You see Butch, or hear from him, let me know right away.”

  I ran our town’s single red light on the way to the coffee shop. I hoped to find somebody, anybody who could tell me where Hiram intended to hunt for the day. It would be impossible to find him otherwise. When I was a girl, hunters rarely left the roads that gridded the huge stands of pine planted by Buckeye. Come deer season, half the county deployed in teams along those sandy meridians, their trucks or jeeps converted to deer blinds as they waited for a meet of hounds to push a buck into their field of fire. This was back when we hunted deer with shotguns and dogs and the timberlands were free for man and animal to roam.

  Hunters nowadays pay thousands of dollars to lease sections of land for similar recreation. There is very little free land left to hunt, so my first thought was to find out if Hiram was hunting with a club or on privately leased land.

  “He’s got a lease in Georgia,” Carl Koon told me over a purchase of darkly roasted coffee.

  Carl wasn’t looking too well, his eyes bagging and bruised. An employee, now, of a business he once owned. I noticed the twins busing the tables.

  “Hiram goes to Georgia to hunt deer?”

  “Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas. Goes to Wyoming for elk. Montana too. He’s got leases all over.”

  “How about local? Is there any place local he’d hunt?”

  Carl shook his head. “Not ’less it’s on his own land.”

  I was about to leave when another thought came to mind. “Where are Hiram’s dogs?”

  “Fuck his dogs.”

  I had wondered who killed Roscoe Lamb’s favored hound. I was pretty sure now that I had a candidate.

  “But would Hiram go hunting without his dogs, Carl?”

  “No. He’s not patient enough to sit a blind.”

  I left the coffee shop at a jog and rang Thurman Shaw at his office.

  “Dogs?” Thurman seemed puzzled at my question.

  “In Hiram’s truck. There’s a cage in the bed, am I right?”

  “Dog cage, sure.”

  “Yes, but were there any dogs?”

  “Damn if I believe I noticed.”

  “This is important, Thurman. Walk it back. See if you can remember.”

  “Lessee. I did follow Hiram and Butch out of the office. Fact I walked ’em to the curb. I was trying to convince Butch to leave me the confession, but he wasn’t having any of it. ‘I’m goin’ huntin’ with Hiram,’ Butch told me, and then they got in the truck and Hiram peels off some rubber, and . . .”

  “Thurman?”

  “No.”

  The lawyer’s voice was suddenly confident.

  “No, Hiram didn’t have any dogs with him. Not a one. As he pulled away I could see Butch looking back at me through the cage.”

  “Thank you.” I signed off and hit the road.

  If Hiram Lamb had actually taken Butch to go deer hunting I never would have found him. Even if he decided to poach on Buckeye’s land, or take a day lease in Taylor or Dixie County, Lamb would be tramping amidst tens of thousands of acres. I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for him.

  But I didn’t believe for a moment that Hiram had gone hunting, not for deer anyway. He already had what he’d been hunting for. Only question for Hiram would be how to separate Butch from his mother’s confession long enough to destroy it. That was a task best done privately. You didn’t want some neighbor or out-of-towner stumbling along in the middle of that sort of transaction. What you wanted was seclusion and privacy, and where could a man better hide in private than on his own posted land? I had a good idea where Hiram Lamb had taken Butch McCray and if I was wrong there’d be no point looking anyplace else.

  I returned to what used to be the McCray homestead under a slow, cold rain. I was glad to be in a winter coat and boots. It was not much over forty degrees that December day and cold as a well-digger’s ass. I felt the tires of my 4-Runner slipping on rain-slick clay as I slid along the fence line leading to the property’s padlocked gate.

  But it wasn’t locked that morning.

  The padlock that secured Hiram’s gate hung open on a length of chain draped casually around a crossbar. I could see where the Bahia grass beyond was pressed down by the passage of what almost certainly was Lamb’s truck. In any case, the trail was easy to follow, and for that I breathed a prayer of thanks. I opened the gate and drove my 4-Runner through, following the freshly pressed tracks across the pasture and past a skirt of mixed timber. Breaking out on the far side of that woods, I found the fishing hole I remembered from childhood. The big house had to be nearby and, sure enough, a minute or two later I found the broken fence marking the limits of the yard at what had been the McCrays’ cedar-shingled home.

  I pulled my 4-Runner over and killed the engine. Hiram’s pickup was parked just outside the front-yard fence, a dog cage empty in the truck’s ample bed. I got out of my SUV bareheaded and barehanded to brave the winter rain, realizing it was the second time I’d forgotten to bring a pair of gloves. As I got closer, I could hear the radiator of Hiram’s truck ticking away, a vapor rising from the hood to tease the boughs of a mulberry stretching overhead. I glanced into the cab to make sure there was no one inside. Then I scanned the porch beyond—no one to be seen there either. I breached a yard gate hanging useless in a vine of fox grape and was halfway across a rude lawn before I noticed smoke curling from a listing chimney.

  “HIRAM? BUTCH—? IT’S CLARA SUE. CLARA SUE BUCHANAN.”

  No answer. I sure as hell didn’t want to startle anyone equipped to kill, so I tried again.

  “HIRAM—? BUTCH?”

  There was still no reply, but when you see smoke curling from a chimney, you know sure as hell there has to be a fire.

  “Jesus.”

  I stomped up the front porch steps as loudly as I could, crossed the verandah, and pounded my bone-cold fist on the unlatched door.

  “Anybody home?” I called out, but less aggressively than before.

  Then I heard something, some sort of movement just inside. The McCrays’ old home is raised off the ground on stumps of pine, its bedrooms and kitchen branching off the dog run of a long breezeway. I pressed my ear to the doorframe and once more heard a complaint of flooring on the other side.

  I pulled back. Swallowed the knot in my throat.

  “I’M COMING IN.”

  I opened the front door cautiously and hearing no challenge stepped into a hallway reeking of wood rot and smoke. A door to my right was wide open. I edged through and found Butch bending from a stool over a small pile of pine knots likely collected for kindling.

  “Butch, you all right?” I asked, but he did not answer.

  His mother’s shawl was folded neatly on the floor.

  “Where’s Hiram?” I asked.

  Butch shifted on his improvised stool and I saw a box of Number-One buckshot on the wide-planked floor. A box of ammunition newly opened and dry. Then I noticed his coveralls tucked sloppily into a pair of galoshes still wet and muddy.

  “Butch, where’s the shotgun?”

  “With Hiram.” His reply was unsettling.

  “But where is Hiram? What’s happened here?”

  “They was an accident.” He smiled puckishly, and I felt a flush of ice in my gut.

  “Kind of accident, Butch? Butch—?”

  He turned away from the fire and toward the rear of the house.

  “Out by the fishin’ hole.”

  I hit the dog run at a lope and dropped off the porch in a jog for the long-dead pond out back.

  “HIRAM—?”

  I reached the soggy hole calling out Hiram’s
name, and craning for some reply, but all I could hear was the clatter of rain on fronds of palmetto.

  “HIRAM LAMB?!”

  I found him lying on his back on the far side of the bog. I ran over and took a knee.

  “Hiram?” I tried again knowing it was a waste of time.

  A burgundy stain pooled with the unfiltered water collecting beneath his body. He’d been shot in the chest. It was a shotgun did the job, no doubt, and from close range. His ribs were burst from their cage like staves from a broken barrel, the lungs inside exposed like a wilt of lettuce.

  I’ll never forget the eyes. They stared straight up as though surprised, unblinking under the spatter of rain. The scarlet scar which had distinguished Hiram’s face was now insignificant in competition with his other wounds. How long was he dead? I leaned over to take Hiram’s hand. It was clammy and cold. I stood up fighting a wave of nausea.

  A Remington over-and-under was half-buried in the muck at Hiram’s feet, a twelve-gauge shotgun with a ventilated rib. There was also a 30-30 nearby; that’d be the hex-barreled carbine passed down to Hiram from his father. I had an impulse to retrieve both firearms, but then realized better. I’d have to call the sheriff, there was no doubt about that. I rummaged the pocket of my trousers with bone-cold hands to find my cell phone and was grateful to ring right through.

  “Sheriff’s office.”

  “This is Clara Buchanan. I’m at the old McCray homestead, at the house.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Tell the sheriff there’s been an accident.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Hiram Lamb Killed Hunting County Loses Federal Grant

  The Clarion

  Sheriff Buchanan picked up Doc Trotter on his way out to the Lambs’ property. An EMS unit wasn’t far behind. The sheriff directed the techs to stay with Butch in the farmhouse. Doc made it clear he wouldn’t mind a fireside job himself.

  “I’m a coroner, not a damned medical examiner,” Doc groused as I led our group through the rain to Hiram’s body.

  “I need more help, I know where to find it,” Colt replied.

  County sheriffs routinely contact the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for forensic support, especially where gunplay is involved. The FDLE has mobile units and crime scene investigators on call for just such circumstances. Of course, sheriffs are in no way obliged to invite outside investigators into their counties; even so I was a little surprised to see Colt dismiss that assistance out of hand.

  Colt insisted on managing the crime scene himself, taking multiple photos of the body and scene as Doc Trotter examined Hiram’s corpse, making sure the chain of custody for the rifle and shotgun was well documented.

  “Were both barrels fired on the Remington?” Doc asked at one point.

  “Only one, the bottom barrel,” Colt called back. “And neither shell’s been shucked.”

  “We’re talking about a single shot then?”

  “Way it appears. Less you see different.”

  Doc shook his head wearily.

  “Can’t say as I do.”

  A steady, cold rain and mud don’t make the best palate for a crime scene, but Colt slogged it out, working in a spiral out from Hiram’s body and only when that work was finished, did Sheriff Buchanan trek back to the big house to confront Butch McCray.

  The EMTs were dismissed to the hallway and I was not allowed to attend the interrogation that ensued. Couldn’t have been much more than fifteen or twenty minutes that had passed when Colt rejoined Doc and me on the front porch.

  He appeared genuinely perplexed.

  “What about it, Sheriff?” I stood to ask. “We have an accident, here, or a homicide?”

  “Be damned if I know.” Colt pressed his hat onto his skull. “Butch shot Hiram; he admits it freely. But he says it was accidental. He says Hiram stopped at the house and told him to get a fire goin’ so they’d be able to warm after hunting. Then Hiram makes Butch clean the shotgun, but when they get ready to leave Hiram grabs the rifle and tells Butch to bring along the Remington and shells.”

  I perked up. “So Hiram had Butch bring along shells for the shotgun?”

  “Well, he would have, wouldn’t he?” Colt grunted. “An over ’n’ under only gives you two shots.”

  “Sounds like Hiram too,” Doc Trotter interjected. “Making Butch his butler.”

  Colt raised a shoulder. “Maybe. Way Butch tells it, Hiram’s got him toting the over ’n’ under and a box of Number Ones as Hiram leads the way around the old water hole for the woods beyond.”

  “Are there actually any deer back there to hunt?” I asked.

  “Sure there’s deer. There’s turkey too. Fact, Butch says Hiram spotted a gobbler roosting way up in one of those pines by the old fishing hole and he gets all excited and drops the rifle and reaches back to yank the shotgun away from Butch. He grabbed the damn thing by the barrels, is the way Butch tells it.

  “And when Hiram jerked the gun away, Butch’s hand got tangled in the trigger guard and the weapon discharged straight into Hiram’s chest.”

  “Tangled in the trigger guard?” Doc Trotter frowned. “That’s what Butch told you?”

  Colt spit a wad of Red Man carefully.

  “Awright, look. This all could go either way. They’s lots of unknowns, no doubt about it. But I can tell you this: We’re not gonna learn shit more about what happened out here than we know already, not on this ground with this weather, not even if we had every lawman in three states looking, and for damn sure I don’t want a lynch mob milling outside my jailhouse, so here’s what we’re goin’ to do.

  “Clara Sue, you’re gonna make sure anybody reading the Clarion sees a preliminary finding of accidental death with no foul play suspected. That fly with you, Doc?”

  “I expect it will,” Trotter replied tersely.

  Not a ringing endorsement, but good enough. The sheriff turned his attention back to me.

  “You can say an investigation will be made as a matter of course, but I don’t want to see any other details in the paper.”

  I chewed that one over.

  “May I say the death occurred in the course of hunting?”

  “That’s about as far as I’d go.”

  Colt made that reply scuffing the floor of the porch with his heavy-soled shoe.

  “I get my own report wrote up, I’ll shoot you a copy,” he went on. “You can print anything you want to off that.”

  “Fair enough,” I agreed too quickly.

  There I had a story unfolding right in front of me, blood, guts, and intrigue, but I wasn’t nearly as interested in Hiram Lamb’s death as I was in Annette McCray’s confession.

  “Sheriff, did you see a shawl on the floor beside the milk crate?”

  “Looked to me like a sheet.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “And it’s much more than a shawl. It’s a confession, Sheriff, Annette McCray’s confession, and Hiram wanted it badly.”

  “Stop right there.” Colt raised a hand. “Just hold up. I don’t know anything about a confession, you hear me? Nada. You can come by later on and make any kind of statement you think is relevant. You can certainly contact me directly with any information that might bear on Hiram Lamb’s death. But not today. Not now. Are we agreed?”

  Doc looked at me. I looked at him.

  “We hear you, Sheriff.”

  “Good.” Colt spit another plug off the side of the porch. “I’ll have our EMS take Hiram to the morgue in Perry; that’ll buy us some time. I need to get Butch’s prints. Prob’ly have him sign a statement, or at least make his mark. Somebody should call Thurman Shaw.”

  “I can tell Thurman to meet you in town,” I offered.

  The sheriff nodded.

  “Awright, then, let’s get after it.”

  The sheriff strode back into the house. Couple of minutes later he came out with Butch, who’s hanging onto his mother’s wrap as though it were life itself.

  “Mr. Butch,” I began a
s gently as I could and was amazed when the old man reached out to press the riddled silk into my hands.

  “Keep it fo’ me, will you, Clara Sue? Keep it safe.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  It was still raining when Sheriff Buchanan put Butch into the back seat of his cruiser. Looked like dimes bouncing off the roof.

  “Think I’ll hitch a ride with you, Clara Sue.” Doc Trotter hung back.

  “Sure thing.”

  “Maybe on the way you could tell me what the hell is goin’ on here.”

  “Be happy to give you a lift, Doc. But as for the rest?”

  I tucked Annie’s confession dry and snug inside my vest.

  “You’re gonna have to buy yourself a paper.”

  EPILOGUE

  Sheryl Lee Pearson Retires

  The Clarion

  Hiram Lamb was buried with near-papal ceremony in the cemetery behind the church at Midway that my own grandfather helped build. Naturally, the circumstances surrounding Hiram’s violent death provoked comment and speculation all over the county, but nobody outside us principals knew or suspected that Hiram Lamb lured Butch to his property for the purpose of destroying Annette McCray’s well-stitched confession. That claim was never leaked to the public by me or anyone else. In fact, it would be many weeks before Annie McCray’s confession even came into the public record. Consequently there was no conjecture in the days following Hiram’s death that Butch McCray had a motive to kill his foster brother.

  Listening to the coffee-shop gossip that ensued, I heard very few folks disputing Butch McCray’s account of the incident. The man was a retard, I heard that characterization over and over from regulars gossiping over coffee. Everyone knew the signs, the crabbed gait, the cretin’s speech. We’d seen those gelid eyes under that ridiculous cap. The perpetual thousand-yard stare. When Doc Trotter ruled that Hiram Lamb’s death was caused by a shotgun wound inflicted accidentally, he only confirmed what most folks already wanted to believe and with that backing Sheriff Buchanan closed his official investigation of the case.

  Butch McCray was never arrested, much less indicted. He never faced a grand jury.

  Hardly anybody believes Butch McCray is capable of murder.