We sat there as he processed my lie, the disbelief clear in his expression. The clock ticked on the wall with a loud, intrusive pulse.
Strickland opened his desk drawer, pulled out a toothpick, and inserted it into his mouth. A flash of insight told me that the slim stick of wood had come to replace cigarettes for Sheriff Strickland not too long ago. “Why don’t you tell me what you came here to tell me, Ruddy,” Strickland suggested.
I sighed. In for a penny … “Well, I think I know where to find Alan.”
Strickland waited.
“I was in the woods today. And … I think I know where he is. His body.”
“Uh-huh.” We sat in the room for a solid minute—I know because I heard sixty ticks from his clock. Then Strickland started asking more questions—what was I doing in the woods, how had I come to know Alan Lottner. Every query dug up another lie, until I felt helplessly lost in my own deceit. I stood up.
“Look, Sheriff, I came to do you a favor, here. Are you interested or not? I need to get back home.”
“Sit back down, son,” he commanded. As I did he sighed, reaching for his hat. “All right, you give me a minute to round up a couple of people, and we’ll head out to take a look.”
The “couple of people” turned out to be three carloads’ full. I rode with Timms and Strickland, but in the rear seat, separated from the two lawmen by a steel mesh screen. Timms kept turning to stare at me with a burning intensity, but it was Strickland that I was worried about. I imagined most people who came to his attention were ultimately sorry they had done so.
“What if I’m not there? My body, I mean,” Alan fretted as we bounced down the familiar one-lane road toward the burned-down cabin. I had no way to alleviate his concerns, and at that particular moment didn’t care about them anyway.
When I directed the sheriff to pull over near the fallen oak tree, everyone jumped out and began messing with equipment. Timms carried a shovel, the coroner a black bag, and another fellow a huge tackle box and two cameras slung over his shoulders. He took pictures of the trail and the woods before Strickland would allow us to proceed to the spot I showed them.
“Here we go,” Alan said, his voice trembling with tension.
“Sheriff, mind if I wander over there a minute? Take a leak?” I asked.
Strickland surveyed the woods with his cold eyes and then nodded.
I stepped away from the little group, making fresh tracks in the snow. “Look, we’ve got a problem,” I said urgently. “If they find your body down there, how do I explain how I knew where to find it?”
“You ever see the movie Ghost Story? When they find the body, the ghost ceased to exist. That’s the rule.”
“That’s not what happened in the book,” I replied.
“Okay, but the book was fiction,” Alan answered.
“Like the movie wasn’t?” I snapped. “Would you listen? I told the sheriff I was walking in the woods and I saw your body, and now they’re having to dig for it. The ground was covered with snow! How do I explain that?”
“If that happens, if I disappear forever, promise me you’ll stay on the case,” Alan begged. “See that Burby and his accomplice go to prison for murder.”
“So this is all about you,” I noted.
“Well yeah, it is,” Alan shouted. I winced as his voice echoed around inside my skull. “They are digging for my body. Any moment and I might cease to exist.”
“Okay. Okay, I get it. Though wouldn’t that be best? Suppose this is what it is all about—we find your body and then your spirit can stop wandering the earth, searching for repos in northern Michigan. Would that really be so bad?”
“Yes! I want to find out what happened. I want to see Kathy again. Dammit, Ruddy, I don’t want to die!”
“Got something!” Timms shouted. More pictures were taken. The coroner knelt in the dirt, spoke to Strickland, and then Timms dug some more, moving carefully. The photographer opened his box and removed some tools, including what looked like small paintbrushes.
I crept closer, conscious of Strickland’s eyes on me. What Timms had found didn’t look human to me, just a bunch of dirt. The coroner kept reaching in and gingerly poking at it. “Sheriff,” he called softly.
Strickland gave me a glare to freeze me in place, then squatted next to the coroner, who was pointing at the ground.
I saw what the cops saw—some finger bones protruding from the muddy pool that had filled the black cavity in the earth from when the toppled tree pulled up its root ball. Alan was under water.
“Use the shovel and bail this out,” Strickland directed Timms. “Carefully.”
I turned away, feeling a little sick, when Timms’s efforts revealed a muddy skull. I walked a few yards away.
“I’m still here. I’m still here,” Alan babbled. “If that’s it, if they found my body, I’m not going to vanish after all.”
After a time, Timms finished his work and the men huddled around the hole. Strickland straightened, looking right at me with an unreadable expression. He brushed off his pants, coming over to put a hand on my shoulder. “Well now, we got a ways to go before we can identify the body as Alan Lottner, but it is definitely big enough to be a male.” Strickland was eyeing me carefully, thinking something over.
“Yeah, shot in the head!” Timms exclaimed as he came up to us. A sharp look from his boss shut him up.
The three of us stood there for a moment, and then Strickland made his decision. “Mr. McCann, there’s a lot here I don’t understand, but the one thing I’m sure of is that you haven’t been truthful with me. You’re involved in whatever this is a lot more than you’ve admitted to. Until I get it all sorted out, I need to keep my eye on you. I’m afraid I am going to have to arrest you on suspicion of murder.”
With undisguised joy, Deputy Timms clamped the cuffs down on my wrists, sending a quick bite of pain up my forearms. I ignored Alan’s outraged jabbering and concentrated on exercising my right to remain silent as I was led to the sheriff’s car and put in the backseat.
How could I have been so stupid?
Timms kept staring at me in his rearview mirror as he steered the car down the highway. “Happened so long ago, probably be no charges if you just tell the truth,” he ventured after a few miles, using his expert interrogation skills on me. He twisted around and gave me a friendly, innocent look so phony it looked like it was hurting his face.
“Eyes front, Deputy,” Strickland murmured.
The color climbed up Timms’s neck at the mild rebuke, and the glare he shot my way in the mirror indicated he felt it was somehow all my fault. I pointedly ignored him.
Strickland was mostly quiet, going over things in his mind. He’d sniffed me out as an ex-con and my story was collapsing under its own weight, but other than the fact that I knew where a body was buried there really wasn’t any reason to suspect me of killing anyone. He shifted in his seat to glance at me and he could read my resolve in the tight press of my lips—now he might never find out what happened.
A few more deputies were waiting for us as we pulled up to the jail, looking like an overstaffed valet parking service. Though their behavior in front of their boss was strictly professional, something in their high energy let me know they were pretty excited about all of this. Timms was less restrained, grinning openly at his pals.
The booking sergeant instructed me to hand over my personal belongings, and that’s when I broke into a sweat. I did not want to go through this again. “Sheriff Strickland?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“In my wallet, there, you’ll find a business card for a Ted Petersen. Would you mind calling him for me? I think that will get everything straightened out here.”
Strickland broke my request into segments. “Are you giving me permission to search your wallet?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“Who is Petersen?”
“He’s a lawyer now, but he used to be my parole officer.”
“Parole o
fficer.” Strickland gazed at me. People don’t have parole officers unless they were convicted of a crime—I was pretty sure Strickland knew that. “So you want me to call your lawyer for you,” he stated finally—not saying he wouldn’t, but letting me know this was not something he would normally be inclined to do.
“I just think you should talk to him. It will help clear some things up.” I waited for the question I knew was coming.
“Parole officer. What were you in for, McCann?”
I sighed, feeling defeated. When I spoke, it was with a considerable ration of self-loathing. “Murder. I was in prison for murder.”
13
Out of Control
My words hung in the air for what seemed a full minute.
Strickland hid his surprise behind those steely eyes. He nodded: I’d traded him enough information for him to make the phone call.
Behind me, I could sense Timms and his buddies glancing at each other, and, of course, Alan was going nuts.
“Murder! You’ve committed murder? You’re a murderer? You murdered somebody?”
I let him go on conjugating the verb murder without betraying anything in my expression. Strickland motioned for the sergeant to continue processing my admission, and a few minutes later I was led down a row of completely empty cells and shoved into the one farthest from the door. I looked around and shivered. Not again.
“My God, Ruddy, would you please tell me what’s going on?” Alan pleaded.
“What’s going on,” I muttered pleasantly, “is that I have just been arrested for the killing of Alan Lottner of East Jordan.”
“What was that about your parole officer? What did you mean that you were in jail for murder?”
“Prison,” I corrected. “This is jail. I was in prison. Believe me, big difference.”
“But why? What happened?”
I took in a big, unsteady breath. “Alan, I’m sorry, but that is one thing I will never, never talk to you about. All right? I don’t ever talk about it. To anyone.”
“But—”
“No, Alan. Let it go,” I interrupted.
There was a long silence. “With a record, though,” he said finally, “this could be big trouble. I could tell by the way the sheriff was looking at you.”
“Could be big trouble? Do you not see the steel bars in front of me?”
Yet I wasn’t worried about Strickland—he’d do his duty. Timms, though, was another matter—it was his spiritual ancestors who used to hang people from trees without a trial. I’d met his kind in the joint, men with weak minds and strong bodies who didn’t so much control the prisoners as participate in the mayhem. I didn’t ever want to be in a position where Timms had me to himself to play with.
Which is precisely what happened within the hour.
When the door opened at the end of the corridor I stood and peered down to see who it was, already so bored with incarceration I was willing to endure any sort of interruption just to have something to do. I caught sight of Timms and instantly realized he was up to something—he had a sneaky look on his jug-shaped face, like a little boy breaking a rule. Someone came in behind him, smaller, standing in Timms’s shadow.
“Oh no,” Alan moaned softly.
It was a woman. The proprietary way that Timms steered her down to my cell suggested that this was his woman—the deputy was showing off his big murder arrest to his honey.
“What are you up to, Timms?” I asked in a low voice.
When she stepped closer, I literally gasped in shock.
Katie Lottner.
She was even prettier than I remembered. I was drawn to her eyes, which were large and blue as they stared at me. She had the sort of long brown bangs that had to be continually pushed away from those eyes, and she did this now, an automatic motion I found charming.
“Careful, babe,” Timms warned. “Don’t get too close.”
Alan was quietly moaning, almost keening—I guess a father would always recognize his own daughter, even after eight years. I ruefully reflected on my resolve not to tell him I had already met her—I felt like that one was going to backfire on me pretty soon.
“You? You’re the one?” Katie asked in a quiet, flat voice. Ignoring Timms’s restraining hand on her shoulder, she curled her fingers around the steel bars and leaned her face in close. “You killed my father?”
I was trying to figure out how best to answer this when she spat at me, mostly missing her target. I jumped back, startled.
“Oh no, Kathy,” Alan groaned.
“You … you son of a bitch,” she choked.
“Now Katie, move back there. Come on,” Timms soothed, pulling at her.
The door at the end of the hall banged open and we all turned. Sheriff Strickland stood on the threshold, backlit so we couldn’t see his face. “What’s going on here?” he demanded in a voice that sounded like he was speaking through a megaphone. He and two other men marched down the hallway. His eyes darted to me first—secure the prisoner, always—and then rested for a moment on Timms, then on Katie. “Miss Lottner, what are you doing here?” he asked finally, his voice carrying a touch of sadness.
“I made him bring me,” Katie explained at once, moving a half step in front of Timms as if to physically protect him.
“Oh, Miss Lottner. Katie.” Strickland pursed his lips. “You shouldn’t be here, now, you know better.”
She crossed her arms defiantly. Strickland shifted his gaze to the deputy.
“Timms.”
The man visibly swallowed, and I almost felt sorry for him. He was taller than his boss and probably eighty pounds heavier, but the image that came to mind was of a small dog being whipped by its master.
“You know good and well that you are in violation of procedure. Bringing a civilian down here is not only expressly prohibited, but runs contrary to every single bit of common sense I ever thought you had. Do you have anything to say for yourself, mister?”
Timms numbly shook his head.
“You are on unpaid leave for the next seventy-two hours. Please escort Miss Lottner upstairs. Advise the duty sergeant that you are departing this shift immediately. Understood?”
Timms gave a trembling nod. Katie, biting her lip, made as if to say something, but Strickland held up his hand. “Excuse me, Miss Lottner. Deputy Timms, I have just one more thing to say to you. I’ve told you more than once that that badge of yours doesn’t mean you get to break the rules, it means that you, more than anyone else, have to follow them. I’ve never in all my years in law enforcement seen anyone do anything as lame-brained as this. I’ve half a mind to ask the board to remove you from your position. I can’t have a man in my department who won’t toe the same line as everybody else. We understand each other?”
When Timms coughed up a reply, it sounded like it had been dragged across cement. “Yes, sir.”
“All right. Step to it, son. Katie, please leave with Deputy Timms; this is a restricted area.” Strickland pointed down the hallway. I found myself intrigued by his selective use of her first name, depending on the circumstance.
The two deputies dared a glance at each other as Timms and Katie fled the lockup. You had to admire the sheriff—his public chewing out had been a deliberate act of atonement, giving me something back for the humiliation I’d suffered. Our eyes met and I nodded.
Strickland motioned one of the deputies forward. He slid the key card through the slot, punched some numbers, and the cell door clicked open. “So.” Strickland eyed me up and down. “Why didn’t you tell us you were in Jackson State Prison when the murder was committed?”
I had planned my answer to that question for the past hour. “You didn’t tell me when the murder was committed.”
If the light had been better I might have seen a glint of amusement come and go in his eye. “Ah. Well, come upstairs, Ruddy, and we will process you out of custody. And maybe while that’s going on you’ll tell me just how it is that you knew Alan Lottner’s body was buried out there in
the woods, since, as it turns out, you couldn’t have put it there.”
“Sheriff,” I sighed, “you’ll never believe me.”
I had read too much permission into the friendly banter, because his expression hardened. “You will tell me just how it is you knew the body was buried out there in the woods,” he repeated.
Oh, great.
As we turned the corner, Katie Lottner jumped up out of her chair, where she’d been fidgeting, apparently planning an appeal of Deputy Timms’s suspension. Her eyes widened when she caught sight of me strolling unshackled next to the sheriff.
“What … he…”
“Please, Katie, you go on, this is official business,” he urged her gently, blocking her view of me with his body in case she wanted to spit some more. She didn’t move. Strickland sized up the situation and reached a decision. “Now, I don’t know what Dwight told you, but this man here couldn’t have done anything to your father. He’s not the one, Katie. We’re not even sure what happened.”
“Couldn’t have done anything?”
“He was in prison when your father disappeared, Katie. He just finished off his parole not long ago.”
“Prison for murder,” she protested.
“Yes, well, vehicular homicide.” Strickland glared at me but I didn’t yield: As far as I was concerned, I killed somebody and that was murder. “But he’s served his time, Katie, and we have no right to keep him here.”
Her eyes were doubtful as she turned back to me. “Then how, how did he—”
I was tired of being discussed as if I wasn’t there. “I was walking in the woods,” I explained. “And I just…” I shrugged.
“You just happened to notice a body submerged in muddy water and identified it as someone who has been missing for eight years,” Alan suggested helpfully.
Katie was looking at me with wide eyes, and I knew she was thinking of what had happened back in my jail cell. “Oh,” she whispered. “Oh, I’m so, so…”
“Hey, forget about it,” I advised uncomfortably. “Happens all the time.”
She cocked her head, contemplating the sort of life I must lead if people spat on me all the time. Congressmen? Despite the circumstances, we smiled at each other.
The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man Page 14