Cutter's Run

by William G. Tapply

  “Hi,” she mumbled without turning around.

  “The sheriff and I are going to do some sleuthing. I’ll be back, but I’ve got to be in Portland at six, don’t forget. Will you be okay?”

  Still peering at her monitor, she lifted one hand and waved backward at me. “Have fun, Deputy.”

  “I’ll lock the doors behind me,” I said.

  I stood there for a moment, looking at her, thinking of what I had to tell her.

  But not now.

  I locked the slider onto the deck, grabbed two apples and two cans of Coke from the refrigerator, and joined Dickman in the driveway, locking the front door behind me. I gave him an apple and a Coke. “Lunch,” I said.

  He nodded and took a bite out of his apple.

  “What car do you want to bring?” I said.

  “Oh, definitely mine. It’s got a big light bar and a classy official logo on the door. Let’s make an impression on that boy.”

  Heavy wire mesh separated the backseat of Dickman’s cruiser from the front. He had a cellular phone and a police radio for entertainment and a pillow to sit on. The floor under my feet on the passenger side was littered with Styrofoam cups and candy bar wrappers and Dunkin’ Donuts bags. Typical cop car.

  “I dropped in on the animal hospital on the way over this morning,” he said, as we headed for Charlotte’s cabin.

  “I thought you said you didn’t have the time or the resources to investigate cases of petty vandalism and nuisance phone calls.”

  He shrugged. “So I changed my mind. I talked to that Betsy. She’s either a scatterbrain or she’s scared. Hard to say which. She told me what she told you—that the man who came for the dog was wearing sunglasses and a hat. That’s as much as she’d say.”

  “Like a disguise,” I said.

  “Like someone who didn’t expect to be recognized in the first place,” he said, “but was taking no chances.”

  “A dead end, then?”

  He shrugged.

  I directed Dickman down the dirt road to Charlotte’s driveway, and he stopped directly beside the No Trespassing sign. It still sported its big red swastika. He gazed at it for a minute, then shook his head. “I guess if you don’t understand what it means,” he said quietly, “it is just petty vandalism.”

  “Throw it into four-wheel drive,” I said. “We can drive in a ways further. When I left my car here, it ended up with its own swastika.”

  “Nobody would dare vandalize the sheriff’s vehicle,” he said. He glanced sideways at me. “Joke,” he said.

  I nodded.

  He drove down to the rocky streambed and parked there, and we walked the rest of the way. When we arrived at the meadow that sloped down to the beaver dam on Cutter’s Run, my stomach flipped. I had been here just this morning. With Susannah Hollingsworth. Right down there, toward the bottom of the slope, was where I had kissed her, lying on her gray blanket. It all came flooding back, all those complicated and contradictory feelings, and I was reminded again that I had not yet confessed to Alex.

  Dickman headed around to the back of the house where, his logic told him before I had the chance to, he’d find the outhouse. I followed him, and when we rounded the corner I caught a glimpse of orange and white flitting through the bushes along the meadow’s edge. It was one of Charlotte’s cats.

  The cat stopped, crouched, and peered at us from under a bush, then squirted away and disappeared into the woods. I looked for others, but saw none.

  Dickman stood there with his arms folded and peered at the big swastika on the outhouse door. He gave his head a little shake, but said nothing, and neither did I. After a minute we headed back to the cabin.

  “You searched the place?” he said.

  “Twice,” I said. “I went in there again this morning. Nothing has changed.”

  He went to the cabin door, knocked loudly, paused, and pushed it open. Then he bent down, picked up the note I’d left, glanced at it, and put it down again. He stuck his head inside and called, “Ms. Gillespie? Charlotte? Are you home?”

  She wasn’t.

  Dickman turned to me. “Just take a peek, tell me if anything looks different.”

  “I told you. I went in this morning. Nothing had changed.”

  “Humor me,” he said.

  I went inside and moved slowly from room to room. Nothing looked different.

  “She hasn’t been back,” I said when I rejoined Dickman outside. “Everything’s exactly as it was.”

  He nodded. “Then let’s mosey over to Mr. Hood’s house, see what he’s got to say for himself.”

  We didn’t talk during the stroll back to Dickman’s car. After we climbed in, he sat there with both hands gripping the steering wheel, staring out through the windshield. Then he blew out a long breath and patted his shirt pocket. “Got a smoke?” he said.

  “Didn’t know you smoked, Sheriff.”

  “I don’t anymore. Gimme one.”

  I took out my pack and held it to him. He plucked out a cigarette, lit it, exhaled through his nose, and said, “I lost an uncle and an aunt and an infant cousin at Buchenwald. I have trouble being objective about certain things.”

  “Forgivable,” I said.

  “Maybe, maybe not. Depends.”

  “You don’t intend to arrest Arnold Hood, do you?”

  He shook his head. “No. Not unless he’s broken the law. But if he’s got anything to do with those terrible symbols, by God, I’ll be sorely tempted to do something.”

  “I may be a lowly deputy,” I said, “but I’m also a lawyer. If you feel compelled to take action, you should consult me regarding Mr. Hood’s civil liberties first.”

  He turned to me, grinned quickly, and started the car, and ten minutes later we pulled up in front of Arnold Hood’s big square farmhouse.

  His Dodge pickup truck was parked in the same place beside the house and Hood was up on the roof, just as he had been two days earlier when I’d come here with Susannah and Alex. In fact, it looked like he was still tacking down the same shingle he’d been working on then. Arnold Hood was a slow worker.

  When Dickman and I slid out of his Explorer, we heard a woman bleating a country tune—or western, I never did know the difference—at full volume. The music had apparently drowned out the sound of our arrival, because Hood did not look down at us as we approached the house.

  “The radio’s on the windowsill in the kitchen,” I told the sheriff. “I’ll go turn it off. That’ll get his attention.”

  I moved around to the side of the house. The kitchen window was open and an elderly black plastic plug-in radio sat on the sill, about chest high from the ground. I reached up to switch it off, then hesitated as I glanced into Arnold Hood’s kitchen.

  A Confederate flag hung on the wall over the table.

  The lawyer in me tried to recall precedent, old cases that might be used to argue whether something seen through a window would constitute admissible evidence, or would be thrown out as me product of an illegal search. My recollection of civil liberties case law was too fuzzy to produce an answer.

  It was a moot question anyway. There was no law against nailing a Confederate flag to your kitchen wall. As far as I knew, there was no law against wearing a sheet in public, either.

  I turned off the radio and went around to the front of the house, where the sheriff was gazing up at the roof.

  Hood was shading his eyes and looking down at us. “What do you boys want?” he said mildly. “I was listenin’ to that.”

  “I need to talk to you, Mr. Hood,” said Dickman. “Come down here.”

  “Come back when I ain’t working,” he said. He turned and tacked down a shingle.

  “Don’t make trouble for yourself,” said the sheriff.

  Hood did not respond. He pounded in another shingle tack.

  Dickman stood there with his hands on his hips for a minute, staring up at Arnold Hood. Then he turned to me. “Come on.”

  I followed him to where Hood’s pa
int-spotted aluminum ladder rested against the gutter above the second-floor windows. “Give me a hand,” said the sheriff, grabbing onto the ladder.

  I nodded, and we pulled the ladder away from the house and let it topple backward. It crashed onto the ground.

  Arnold Hood was frowning down at us. “What in hell’re you doin’?”

  “Just want to know where we can find you,” said the sheriff. “You go ahead and finish up your work. We’ll be back.”

  “Put that goddam ladder back where it was. You can’t do this.”

  Dickman grabbed my arm and said, “Come on, Deputy. We’ve got work to do.”

  We turned and began to stroll toward the sheriff’s Explorer.

  “Okay,” yelled Hood. “Okay. I’ll come down. For Christ’s sake, put that ladder back.”

  Without turning, Dickman raised his hand and wiggled his fingers. “We’ll be back, Mr. Hood,” he said. “You just sit tight.”

  He opened his car door, then looked at me. “Well, Deputy. Don’t just stand there with your face hanging out. Let’s go.”

  I shrugged and slid into the front seat. Dickman got in, started up the car, and pulled away.

  I smiled at him. “Can you do that?”

  “I guess I could’ve pulled my nine-millimeter on him, or threatened to come back with a warrant or to bring him downtown, the way they do on TV.” He grinned. “Sometimes I love this job.” He turned the corner, then pulled to the side in the shade of a big oak tree and stopped. He reached over and patted my shirt pocket. “Gimme another smoke, Deputy Coyne.”

  CHAPTER 21

  WE FINISHED OUR CIGARETTES and continued to sit there in the shade of the oak. The car windows were open, and a dry breeze blew through, bringing with it the mingled scent of moss and ferns and pine needles and road dust. The breeze felt cool on my face.

  Dickman mentioned that he was a Pirates fan, and I said that as long as it wasn’t any team from New York such as the Mets, whom I’d never forgiven for 1986, or the Yankees, whom I had hated long before 1978, we could still work together, although we probably should’ve clarified those vital matters of compatibility before I got deputized.

  “Bill Buckner,” he said.

  “Yes. And Bob Stanley. That was ’86. In ’78 it was Mike Torrez. He gave up the home run to Bucky Dent. The villains were the New York teams, but we Red Sox fans always blame our own guys. We’re kind of masochistic that way.”

  He smiled and changed the subject to gardening, and then I talked about fly fishing, and after a while he glanced at his watch. “What time did you say you had to be in Portland?”

  “Six. I don’t want to be late.”

  He nodded. “Okay. Maybe Mr. Hood is ready to come down, talk with us now.”

  So we drove back, stopped in front, and got out. Arnold Hood was squatting up there on the roof where we’d left him, staring down at us. Dickman leaned his elbows on top of his car and called, “What do you say, Mr. Hood?”

  “I’m about done up here,” he said. “So if you’ll kindly put that ladder back for me, I’ll fetch us some iced tea. It gets hot up on this here roof in the afternoon.”

  Dickman and I wrestled the ladder up against the gutter and steadied it for Arnold Hood while he backed his way down.

  When he got to the bottom, he hitched up his jeans, looked first at me and then at Dickman, and said, “I’ll be right with you. Gotta take a leak, then I’ll bring some tea.”

  He disappeared around the side of the house. Dickman and I sat on the front steps.

  “I don’t think I mentioned that he’s got a Confederate flag hanging in his kitchen,” I said.

  Dickman turned and nodded. “That fits,” he said.

  “I don’t know as the Klan uses the swastika for one of its symbols,” I said. “I thought they were mainly into crosses, preferably fiery ones.”

  Dickman shrugged. “You might be right about that,” he said. “But from everything I’ve read, your neo-Nazis and your Klan share a lot of ideology. Either of them would serve a bigot’s psychological needs the same way. They call a swastika a twisted cross, don’t they?”

  I nodded and was about to ask him how he wanted to proceed with our interview with Hood when his eyes widened slightly. Suddenly, he grabbed my arm and yanked me sideways. We both toppled off the side of the steps into the shrubbery just as a loud explosion sounded, and at the same moment I felt something hot and sharp jab into my right calf.

  My first thought was that a wasp had nailed me. But then I realized that Dickman was pushing against my back, holding me down flat on my belly, and that the explosion had to have been a gunshot.

  I twisted away from Dickman’s grip and got up onto my knees.

  “Stay down,” he hissed. “He’s got a shotgun.”

  “He got me,” I said.

  “You all right?”

  “My leg. It smarts.”

  “Good,” he said. “It’s when you can’t feel it that we worry.” He cleared his throat, then called conversationally, “Come on now, Arnold. Throw down that old pumpgun before you do something really dumb. We just want to have a conversation here, and I was kind of thirsting for some of your iced tea.”

  “Nobody leaves Arnold Hood up on a roof without a ladder,” came Hood’s voice.

  I peeked over the steps but couldn’t see him.

  “Keep your head down,” said Dickman. He had his 9mm automatic in his hand.

  “Where is he?”

  “Around the corner of the house. If we stop hearing his voice, you turn around and watch our backs, in case he circles around.” Then he called, “I guess we’re even, Arnold. Throw that gun out on the lawn where I can see it, and then you come on out here where I can see you.”

  “I don’t want no trouble,” Hood said. “I was mindin’ my own business, just shinglin’ my roof.”

  “Yes, that’s a fact,” said Dickman. “And if you’d come on down when I asked you the first time, nothing would’ve happened. So like I said, we each got in a poke, and now we’re even.”

  “You gonna arrest me?”

  “What for?”

  “Well, shit,” said Hood. “Nothin’, I guess.”

  A moment later I saw a shotgun clatter onto the ground by the corner of the house. “Okay?” said Hood.

  “Okay,” said Dickman. “You just come on out here where I can see you, and I’d feel a whole lot better if you had both your hands clasped together behind your neck.”

  Hood appeared. He stood there with his hands pressed against the sides of his face as if he had a double toothache. He was looking at the ground.

  The sheriff stood up and moved toward him, his automatic in his hand. I followed close behind.

  “You’re not carrying another weapon, are you, Arnold?” said Dickman.

  Hood shook his head. “No, sir,” he mumbled.

  Dickman went behind him and patted him down quickly, then holstered his gun and said, “Well, put your hands down, then. You look silly.”

  Hood dropped his hands. They dangled there awkwardly at the ends of his arms, as if he didn’t know what to do with them.

  The sheriff picked up Hood’s shotgun from where he had tossed it onto the ground. A band of duct tape was wound around the stock, and the barrel was shiny where the bluing had worn off. Dickman ejected three shells onto the ground. He bent down, picked them up, squinted at them for a minute, then dropped them into his pocket. He looked up at Hood, gave him a smile, and swung the gun by its barrel, smashing the heavy wooden stock against the side of Hood’s knee.

  Hood muttered, “Shit,” and went to the ground. He sat there rubbing his leg and frowning up at the sheriff. “What’d you do that for?” he said. “You coulda busted my leg.”

  “I should arrest you,” said Dickman softly. “That’s a pretty serious thing, shooting at police officers.”

  Hood managed a lopsided grin. “Well, shit, Sheriff. A man’s got the right to protect his own property. Anyways, it was just birdsho
t. Guess I shouldn’t’ve done it, but I was pissed at you. Didn’t mean nothing by it. You didn’t have to hit me.”

  “You could’ve put out somebody’s eye.”

  Hood shook his head. “I wasn’t aimin’ for your eyes. If I’da been, I guess I would’ve put out more’n one of ’em. I was just shootin’ at the ground.”

  “You got me in the leg,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Sorry. It musta ricocheted.”

  “Why don’t you go fetch us some of your iced tea,” said Dickman. “I don’t want to see any more guns. I’d hate to have to plug you.”

  “That old pump’s my only gun. It useta be my daddy’s.” Hood pushed himself to his feet. He bent over and rubbed his knee where Dickman had whacked it. “You boys want sugar in your tea?”

  “No,” said Dickman. “Brady?”

  I shook my head, and Hood turned and limped back toward the kitchen.

  “I think that was a mistake,” I said.

  “What? Letting him go?”

  “No,” I said. “Declining the sugar. His tea’s pretty bitter.”

  Dickman cocked his head and peered at me. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “You do?”

  “Yep. You’re thinking I shouldn’t have whacked him. You’re thinking the Klan thing made me lose my cool. You’re thinking I’m a brutal policeman.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I was wondering why you don’t arrest him.”

  “I might yet do that,” he said. “If it serves our purpose. We’ll see.”

  Hood was back a couple of minutes later with three glasses and the same blue plastic jug he’d used when I’d been there with Susannah and Alex. We sat on the front steps, and he poured each glass full.

  “Your leg okay, there, Mr. Coyne?” he asked.

  I rolled up my pantleg. The pellet was actually visible, a little black dot just under the skin. A tiny droplet of blood had oozed out, and the area had reddened.