“That’s enough, Conner. You apologize to these nice people or you’re going on time out.”
The boy shook his head stubbornly and glared at his father.
“That’s alright,” Parks told the father, “boys will be boys. Where are you folks from?”
“We’re up from Tucson,” the father replied as the waitress tried to blot up the mess with a towel. “Trying to have a good time, but Conner here doesn’t seem to have much appreciation for the great outdoors, do you, buddy?”
Arms still folded across his chest, Conner refused to answer.
“Where are you folks staying?”
“We’re at Eagle’s Nest Lodge,” the father said as he tousled his son’s hair. “It’s a neat place, isn’t it, Conner?”
“I hate it!”
“Eagles Nest? Wow, that’s the place where the flesh eating worms live,” said Parks. “I’m afraid of that place. You be careful there, Conner!”
The boy looked carefully at Parks, not wanting to relent an inch, but curiosity overcame his natural obstinacy. “Flesh eating worms?”
“Oh yeah. They didn’t tell you about the worms? Well, I guess they wouldn’t. It would be bad for business.”
“He’s just fooling you,” the father said, sending Parks a warning look.
“Oh no, they’re real!” Parks assured the boy. “They were some kind of hybrid night crawlers that this mad scientist who was staying at the lodge created. His idea was to turn them loose in the lake and they’d eat the brains out of the fish and he wouldn’t have to buy a rod and reel. He’d just reach in the water and scoop them out. But they got free and turned on him first, and now…. well, you’d never get me to sleep at that lodge!”
“Oh come on, now, you’re going to scare the boy,” Conner’s dad said. “Tell him that’s just a story, or we’ll never get him to bed tonight.”
Parks held his hand palm up, “I swear it’s the truth! And when you go to sleep, they crawl up your nose and into your ears and eat your brains! Your head becomes empty and then it just sort of caves in.”
Weber had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing out loud at his friend’s latest stunt. Beside him, Robyn was leaning forward with her face in her hands as Parks told his wild tale. Even Marsha was struck dumb for once.
“And ya know what, Conner? Sometimes they don’t eat your brains right away. Nope, sometimes they lay their eggs inside your head instead and they wait to hatch until you get back home to Tucson.”
“Stop it,” demanded Conner’s mother. “My son is A.D.D. and you’ll give him nightmares!” She put a protective arm around the boy, who had not said a word, just stared at Parks in horror.
Parks dug into his jeans and pulled out his badge case and flashed it at Conner. “Didn’t your mom and dad tell you that you can always trust the police, Conner? I’m a policeman. And these two here,” he indicated Weber and Robyn, “They’re police officers, too. And this lady next to me is a scientist from Washington D.C. We’re up here trying to figure out a way to stop the worms, but so far…” he shook his head sadly. “We lost a nice little boy yesterday who was just about your age. What was his name? Sam? Stuart? Doesn’t matter, with no brain he couldn’t know you if you called him by name anyway.”
Conner began to whimper, and his parents hustled him out of the restaurant, his mother turning to hiss at Parks, “You are a very, very sick and evil man!”
Once they were gone, the foursome at the table broke up with laughter, as did the waitress. A couple at another table applauded Parks and said, “Bravo!”
“A.D.D. my butt,” Parks said. “I hate that excuse from parents who won’t discipline a kid. A.D.D. means absolutely devoid of discipline!”
“That kid’s going to be in therapy until he’s at least thirty,” Weber said, shaking his head. “I wonder how long it will be before I hear from Chet Wingate on this one?”
Almost on cue, his cell phone rang, and Robyn said, “No way! Not that fast!”
But it wasn’t Mayor Wingate, it was Deputy Tommy Frost calling. “Sheriff? I think I just found the car that escaped convict used to get here. And there’s a dead guy in it.”
***
The car was a beat up old 1980 Nissan Sentra with Colorado license plates, and it was parked in the carport of a small, white frame house with green trim on Hopi Lane, two streets over from where Carl and Abby Weston lived. The trunk was open and the car was illuminated by the headlights of Tommy’s truck, which was parked at the entrance to the driveway.
“I’m surprised you had the energy to make it to work tonight,” Weber said, and even in the artificial light, he could see the handsome young blonde deputy blush.
“I was just driving around on routine patrol,” Tommy said. “I knew Mister and Miz Martin were in Las Vegas this week, because my mom and Miz Martin are friends and my mom gave her $10 to play the slots for her. I saw the car with out of state plates and decided to check it out. It comes back to a fellow named Richard Moynahan from Pueblo, Colorado, which is only about 30 miles from where that convict escaped. When I got close I could smell it. The car was unlocked, so I used the trunk release to pop the lid. I sure wish I didn’t.”
“You’ve sure had a bad day, haven’t you?” Weber said “First Tami Gaylord, and now this.”
“I’ve got to be honest with you Sheriff, I’m not sure which was worse.”
Even from thirty feet away, Weber could smell the strong odor coming from the car. It was a smell he knew well, and it never led to anything good. He walked up to the car and used a flashlight to look into the trunk, where the body of a man was folded up inside. His hands and feet were tied and a rope was knotted tightly around his neck, digging into the flesh. It was hard to tell how old the man had been but he looked unkempt, with a scraggly beard and a fringe of long hair around a mostly bald head.
“Call out the troops,” Weber said. “It’s going to be a long night.”
Chapter 12
Sunday morning, Weber was on the telephone with a detective from the Pueblo, Colorado Police Department. The detective’s name was Will Timpkins, and he told Weber he was very familiar with the dead man in the trunk of the Nissan.
“Rich Moynahan was one of our lost souls,” Timpkins said. “He came from a good family here in town. In fact, I went to high school with his younger sister, Allison. The family owns a construction company and all of the kids work in the family business, except for Rich. He got into drugs and booze when he was a young teenager and never did get straight. His parents must have sent him off to half a dozen rehab clinics, some more than once, but it never took. He’d come home and hang around for a while, go through the motions, but then he’d get busted for some petty theft, or a DUI or possession. Or he’d just disappear again.”
“He have a long rap sheet?” Weber asked.
“Yeah, but nothing serious. He was pretty much harmless. Oh, he’d rip off a GPS if you left your car unlocked, or a purse if a lady walked away and left it in her shopping cart at the grocery store. And he wouldn’t hesitate to shoplift a bottle of wine or booze when he could get away with it. But a lot of his stuff was vagrancy, public intoxication, that kind of thing. He was never violent or anything like that.”
“He wasn’t reported missing?” Weber asked.
“No reason to think anything was wrong,” Detective Timpkins said. “Nobody kept close tabs on him, and it would have been impossible anyway. He just came and went whenever the spirit moved him.”
“Any idea how he would have wound up with a guy like Chandler? It doesn’t sound like they would move in the same circles.”
“Knowing Rich, he may have picked him up hitchhiking,” the detective said. “Or, he may have been sleeping in his car along the road somewhere when Chandler came up on him. He did that a lot. He pretty much lived in that car.”
Weber ended the call by telling Timpkins he would keep him abreast of the investigation from Big Lake, though both agreed that it was likely that Chandler had
killed Moynahan and stashed the body in the Nissan’s trunk soon after they crossed paths in Colorado.
Weber rubbed his gritty eyes with the heels of his hands, and tried to remember the last time he had had a good night’s sleep. Parks somehow managed to look somewhat refreshed as he sat a cup of coffee in front of the sheriff. After Weber shared his conversation with the Colorado detective with him, Parks whistled. “This Moynahan sounds like a loser, but he sure didn’t deserve to go out that way.”
Chad Summers, who had been sitting at a desk writing up his report on the preliminary forensics examination he and Dolan Reed had done on the Nissan, nodded. “I keep thinking that Carl and Abby Weston are two of the luckiest people on earth. Chandler was a stone cold killer, no doubt about it.”
“I have to tell you, I don’t know if I could have kept as cool a head as Carl did when he capped that sucker,” said Dolan. “And I’m supposed to be trained.”
“Well,” Chad said, “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; Chandler was scum, and nobody’s going to miss him.”
***
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Chad asked as the fifth wildly painted school bus passed where they were parked in the gravel lot of the volunteer fire station.
“Not since I spent a week in San Francisco when I was in the Army.”
A beat up Volkswagen bus passed them and a young woman waved from the passenger side.
“They seem friendly enough,” Weber said.
“Yeah,” Chad acknowledged. “Do you think they’re going to be a problem?”
Weber blinked his eyes and worked his stiff neck around in a circle, trying to get some relief from the kinks in it.
“Oh, I imagine they’ll have plenty of pot, and maybe some acid, and you’ll get to see some boobs if you go out to their camp. But my thinking is that if they keep it all to themselves and don’t bother anybody in town, we’ll try to look the other way. We’ve got enough on our plate already.”
“Did you get any sleep?”
“I stretched out on the couch in my office for an hour or so,” Weber told him. “Then Doc Williams called with his preliminary results on the body. He wanted to thank us for giving him something to do on a Sunday morning, by the way.”
“So what did the good doctor have to say?”
“Pretty much what we knew already. Richard Moynahan died from strangulation caused by that rope tied around his neck, and he’d been dead for several days. They’ll do a full autopsy down in Tucson.”
Another old bus passed, this one painted red, white, and blue, with an American flag design, except the flag’s stars had been replaced by peace signs. Three laughing women in the bus’s windows raised their blouses to flash their bare breasts at the officers.
“Like I said, they seem friendly enough,” Weber repeated.
***
Except for a dozen calls from citizens alarmed by the invasion of hippies in their mountain town, the rest of the day was quiet. They had a call about a stolen boat, but it turned out that the owner had not tied it up at the dock and it had simply drifted away. Another fisherman found it and towed it to shore. Deputy Wyatt Trask wrote a ticket to a woman from Kingman for doing 50 miles per hour in a 25 zone, and was offered a quickie if he would let her go. The deputy gave her the ticket, and she promised to tell everybody she knew that Big Lake was a speed trap before she signed the ticket and drove off. Overall, a quiet Sunday afternoon in the mountains.
Weber went home a little after 6 p.m., put a TV dinner in the microwave, and sat down on the couch to pull his boots off. He fell asleep with the right boot off and the left one halfway there, and never heard the microwave ding when his meal was done. For once, no demons invaded his dreams, and when he opened his eyes again, the illuminated hands of his wristwatch read 2:13 a.m. Weber reheated the TV dinner and ate it standing at the counter in the darkened kitchen, stripped off his stale uniform, took a long, hot shower, and went to bed. The demons still stayed away and the next time he woke up it was daylight.
Chapter 13
The good night’s sleep left Weber feeling more refreshed than he had been in months, and he needed it, because when he walked into his office, Mayor Chet Wingate was waiting for him.
“Sheriff, have you made any headway on the theft of the town's mascot? Delores Drachman has been calling me for days now.”
“I'm surprised she even cares,” said Weber. “Didn’t she find a new playmate to replace that sculptor a long time ago?”
“That's no way to talk about one of the town’s leading citizens,” said the mayor heatedly. “And her personal life doesn't matter. A crime has been committed and every citizen of this town is a victim.”
“I’m not too sure about that, Chet,” Weber told him. “Most of the people I know seem glad to see the ugly thing gone.”
“That's just like you, Sheriff Weber! You're more than happy to look the other way while this town descends into chaos. Have you even started an investigation into this theft?”
“No I have not, Chet. I've had some other things going on, like a shooting investigation and finding a dead body in a stolen car. Forgive me for not looking for your silly statue, I guess I've got my priorities all screwed up again.”
“Don't you sass me, Sheriff Weber! You need to remember that I'm your superior.”
Weber wasn't willing to let the little martinet spoil his morning. It was a brand new week and he planned to enjoy it. “Chet, Chet, Chet. You’re chubby, cranky, dizzy, silly, occasionally delusional, and always irritating. But the one thing you never have been and never will be is my superior. Let's get that straight right now, okay?”
The mayor's face turned red, but before he could say anything, Weber cut him off.
“Look, Chet, I'm pretty sure that whoever stole that damn turkey cut it up and sold it for scrap before we ever got to the scene of the crime. I’ve got phone calls out to the junkyards around the area, but I've got to be honest with you, I'm not real optimistic. I think Thomas the Turkey is history.”
“What about this dead man found in a car? How come I'm the last to know about it?” asked the mayor.
“Because it's an ongoing investigation and it's really none of your business. There is nothing in my job description that says I have to report every activity to you or to the Town Council.”
“Everything that happens in this town is my business! How am I supposed to run this town if I'm kept in the dark all the time?”
“You may think you run this town,” Weber told him. “But the way I understand it, the Town Council runs things, and I run this department. Why don’t you go back and run your hardware store, Chet? Don’t you have paintbrushes or something you need to sort?”
The mayor turned and stalked toward the door, pausing to say, “One of these days you're going to go too far, Sheriff. And when you do, I'm going to be standing right there waiting. That will be the day, my friend. Indeed, that will be the day!”
As the door slammed behind the mayor, Mary Caitlin said, “Well, I guess he told you what for, didn't he? You really do need to be more respectful of your superiors, Jimmy.”
“That will be the day, my friend,” Weber told her. “That will be the day.”
***
It seemed like the stars were aligned to sabotage the sheriff’s good mood, no matter how hard he tried to fight it. He had hardly settled into his chair and looked at the latest stack of paperwork that appeared on his desk when the door to his office popped open and Mary said, “You need to get over to the Thriftway. Frank Harrelson has locked himself in his office and won't come out.”
“And that's a problem for me because…?”
“Apparently he's on the store's PA system saying all kind of crazy things and causing quite a disturbance,” Mary told him.
“Oh hell,” Weber said, “I should've known I couldn't get through one day without having some crisis to deal with.”
“While you're at the grocery store, could you pick me up s
ome apples, a dozen eggs, and a gallon of milk?” Mary asked him as he headed for the door.
Weber paused and turned back to her. “What?”
“Well, I figure if you're going to be as cranky as old Pete is on a Monday morning, I might as well treat you just like I do him and see if you can make yourself useful.”
“Mary, do you know why husbands usually die before their wives?” Weber asked her.
“No, why?”
“Because they want to!”
***
A small crowd of employees and shoppers were gathered at the front of the grocery store when Weber arrived.
Stacy Cooper, a middle-aged woman who had worked at the grocery store for as long as Weber could remember, ran up to him and said, “You have to do something, Jimmy! He's gone crazy.”
“What exactly is going on?” Weber asked her.
“I don't know. Mr. Harrelson came in and everything seemed normal. He walked around the store a little bit like he always does, making sure the shelves were stocked properly. Then he went upstairs to his office and a little bit after that Julie came in and went upstairs. The next thing I know she came back down crying, and Mr. Harrelson was on the PA system telling everybody to clear the store, it was closing down forever. Then he started throwing things out his office window.”
“Julie? Julie Smith?”
Stacy nodded her head, and said, “I tried to get Julie to tell me what was going on, but she was crying and got in her car and drove away.”
Two more police cars pulled into the parking lot and deputies Buz Carelton and Wyatt Trask joined Weber.
“Okay,” Weber told Stacy, “you stay out here and make sure nobody goes in the store. Do you know if anybody else is in there besides Frank?”
Stacy shook her head and said, “I don't think so. But I'm not sure, I just got out of there when he started acting so crazy. What do you think is wrong with him, Sheriff?”
“Who knows? Maybe he got a bad prune Danish or something. In this town, nothing would surprise me.”
9 More Killer Thrillers Page 167