Till the Butchers Cut Him Down (v5) (epub)

by Marcia Muller

  “So why are you asking about Anna?”

  “She was a friend of mine. Her death may be connected to those problems.”

  “Are you licensed to work in Nevada?”

  Oh, lady, don’t give me trouble! “Generally one jurisdiction honors a license issued in another.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to check in with the local law?”

  “I plan to do that.”

  “The sheriff’s substation is at the south end of town opposite the truck stop. Deputy in charge is named Chuck Westerkamp.”

  Why such strong resistance to talking with me? “Ms. Walker, I was with Anna Gordon the day she died. If we could talk about the time she spent here—”

  She picked up the receiver of a phone that sat under the counter.

  “Who’re you calling?”

  “Westerkamp. I’ll either tell him you’re on your way to check in, or make a complaint about you harassing me. Which will it be?”

  * * *

  “Brenda’s a little cracked, but she means well.”

  Chuck Westerkamp slouched in his creaky swivel chair. His tiny office was chilly, cold air leaking so badly around the aluminum window frames of the prefab building that it stirred the venetian blinds. The Esmeralda County Sheriff’s substation was housed in three such prefabs on a windblown mesa at the very edge of town. Across from it sprawled an enormous truck stop, where semis hulked in shadow like slumbering mastodons. Others huffed at the gas pumps, then growled away into the ancient desert darkness. When I’d arrived there, I stood beside the Land Rover for a minute, watching a convoy lumber onto the highway and crawl south; as the night swallowed it I began to feel lonesome, and I wrapped Anna’s cape closer for comfort.

  Now I perched on the metal folding chair that Westerkamp offered me and asked, “Why do you suppose Ms. Walker’s so sensitive on the subject of Anna Gordon?”

  The deputy, a wiry sunbrowned man with thinning white hair, shrugged. “Lots of folks in the town’ve got cause to be sensitive on the subject of the Gordons.”

  “But I understand Ms. Walker was a friend of Anna’s. She and I are—should be—on the same side.”

  “Like I said, Brenda’s a little cracked. Watches too much TV, if you ask me. A week doesn’t go by without us getting a call from her about some heinous criminal she saw on Unsolved Mysteries who’s holed up right here in Lost Hope.”

  “Tell me about Lost Hope, Deputy. What kind of town is it?”

  He took a paper-wrapped toothpick from the pocket of his uniform shirt and unwrapped it. Stuck it in his mouth and chewed on it while he considered the question. “First word that comes to mind is ‘greedy.’ Was greedy way back during the silver boom; was greedy during the Depression when the people in Washington more or less forgot we existed; has gotten real greedy since your T. J. Gordon performed what some folks call his miracle.”

  He paused, pale eyes thoughtful. “It’s a rowdy town, too: Miners back when. Nowadays it’s drunks. What this department mostly does is keep them off Main Street, out of their pickups, and from beating each other up.” He took the flattened toothpick from his mouth, contemplated it, and returned it. “Nasty town as well.”

  “In what way?”

  “Goes hand in hand with the greed. Oh, you could say everybody’s got a nasty secret or two: man doesn’t want the wife to know about the girl he’s got on the side; woman doesn’t want the husband to know about the booze she puts away when he’s not home. But that’s garden-variety nastiness. I’m talking about the kind when folks do despicable things for pure profit.”

  “Such as?”

  “There’s a lot at stake in this little town, always has been. Maybe not fortunes by Vegas or California standards, but fortunes to the kind of people who’ve settled here. That desert out there’s been an unholy graveyard since the first vein of silver was uncovered back in the teens. If you knew where to look, you couldn’t go more’n a mile without stumbling over a grave—some of them fairly fresh, too.”

  “This is on the level?”

  He nodded, gnawing the toothpick.

  “I thought you said your department mainly dealt with drunks.”

  “I should’ve added missing persons. People who’re missing because they want to be, others … who knows? Folks have a habit of flat-out disappearing around here.”

  “So what do you do?”

  “Depends on how bad somebody wants them found. We take reports, make helicopter sweeps. One time we even had a psychic come out, looking for her client’s rich husband.”

  “She find him?”

  Westerkamp smiled. “What do you think?”

  “To get back to the Gordons—did you know either of them?”

  “Never met her; she wasn’t here long enough. Knew T.J. and the rest of the crew. Him, you couldn’t help but. He had a habit of prowling around town, talking to folks at all hours of the day and night. Trying to get in touch with Lost Hope’s past, he said. It’s a wonder he didn’t get himself shot.”

  “Does anyone specific come to mind—somebody who might have a serious grudge against him?”

  “Only half the town.”

  “A serious enough grudge that the person would’ve recently started a campaign of harassment?”

  One corner of the deputy’s mouth twitched; my question had touched a memory—or a nerve. “I can’t name names, Ms. McCone. Wouldn’t be right, certainly wouldn’t give you the whole picture. In my job you can’t help but hear gossip, but you never hear all of the story. Folks’re leery of letting the sheriff’s deputy in on things they wouldn’t tell their best friends. I make a practice of not repeating what I do hear.”

  I couldn’t fault him for that. “Well, I guess that about covers it. Do I have your okay to look into the history of the Lost Hope turnaround? Talk with some of the citizens who were involved?”

  He grinned wryly. “Nice way to put it—makes you sound like a researcher for the state historical society.”

  “The turnaround is history, Deputy.”

  “Yeah. I just hope it stays that way.”

  “Meaning?”

  He shook his head and got to his feet. “No hidden meaning, Ms. McCone, just a bad feeling I’ve had lately. Tell you the truth, I’m kind of twitchy tonight. Maybe it’s that wind that’s building up on the flatlands to the south. Whatever, I’m going to be glad when my shift’s over and I can go get me a beer.”

  “When’s that?”

  “Midnight. You got any more questions, or want to stand me to a round, I’ll be at Joker’s on West Street. In the meantime, ask all the questions you want of our illustrious citizenry.”

  * * *

  It was close to ten when I wedged the Land Rover into a parking space across from the Native American Crafts Outlet. One glance told me that the shop was closed. I thought of Marty McNear’s words: “No moneymaking enterprise in Lost Hope ever closes early.” By that I assumed he meant drinking and gaming establishments, which as a rule operate around the clock in Nevada, but the shops on either side of Brenda Walker’s were still open and doing a fair business. I crossed the street and checked the hours on the card posted in the window: eleven to eleven.

  The mule-team hayride stand was only a few yards away. A driver in western wear slumped on the wagon box, smoking a cigar. I went over and asked him if he knew Brenda Walker. He nodded, exhaling and appraising me through the smoke.

  “How come she’s closed early?” I asked.

  He glanced at the darkened shop and shrugged.

  “Did you see her leave?”

  He just looked at me, dragging heavily on the cigar.

  I moved closer to the wagon, took a five-dollar bill from my bag, and extended it to him. “When did she leave?”

  He looked down at the bill and scowled.

  I put another five on top of it.

  The driver took them. “Fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Going which way?”

  He averted his eyes.

  I put
my foot on the wagon’s bottom step. “You know, I just spent some time with Deputy Chuck Westerkamp. He tells me this is a greedy little town.”

  The man’s eyes flicked toward me.

  “Was Brenda Walker alone?” I asked. “With someone?”

  “… Alone.”

  “And?”

  “Going home, I guess.”

  “Where does she live?”

  He gestured to his right.

  “What’s the address?”

  Now he looked at me, eyes glittering hotly. “Yellow house on the corner of Sixth and B Streets.”

  “Thank you.” I began walking back toward the Land Rover.

  The wagon driver spat on the sidewalk, narrowly missing my feet. “Greedy little town, my ass!” he called.

  * * *

  The intersection of Sixth and B Streets was halfway up the slope on the western side of town. The pavement there was narrow and potholed, crumbling away at its edges; most of the streets were little more than alleys bordered by high fences. Behind them stood a mix of old wood-frame cottages, newer prefabs, and mobile homes. Their dirt yards contained cactus gardens, assortments of junk, and hostile-sounding dogs.

  Brenda Walker’s yellow house looked better kept up than most of its neighbors. It stood back from the corner, tucked in among tall yucca trees; the trees’ spindly trunks swayed in the wind, the motion of their leaves setting shadows to dancing over the pale walls. As I pulled the Land Rover to a stop at the opposite corner, I saw Walker moving back and forth past the lighted front window. She was pacing and talking on a cordless phone; her left hand gestured emphatically, and several times she raked her fingers through her short gray hair. After a few minutes she hung up, walked to the window, and jerked the draperies closed. Then the lights behind them went out.

  I slouched behind the wheel, peering at Walker’s front door. In seconds it opened and she hurried out, clad in a down jacket. She climbed into a blue Ford pickup that sat in her yard; its engine roared, its headlights flared, and she turned around, heading uphill. I gave her a little lead, then started the Land Rover and followed without lights for a few blocks. When a third vehicle came out of a side street, its brights blinding, I used the opportunity to switch on my own lights.

  Walker drove at a steady twenty-five through increasingly shabby houses and trailers to an unpaved road that climbed steeply in switchbacks. Once we were in open country, I dropped back some. The pickup crested the hill, and its tail-lights disappeared; I sped up and cut to parking lights at the top. On the other side, the road descended through rocks and sagebrush. The pickup was already far below, where a glow backlit a thick stand of brush. The truck stopped next to the brush, its headlights went out, and Walker jumped down and disappeared into the darkness.

  I coasted down the road until I found a place to pull off behind a clump of greasewood. There I left the Land Rover and continued on foot, the full moon lighting my way. When I reached Walker’s pickup I skirted the stand of vegetation—more greasewood, gone wild and rangy, with sage and yuccas mixed in—until I found a flat outcropping. Crept onto it, keeping low, and peered over its edge.

  Below lay a wide rock-strewn wash. At one end, where it backed up into a box canyon, the lights that I’d glimpsed from above glittered in a multitude of colors and shapes, refracted at a thousand angles. Crystal, amber, green, and brown formed a disorderly kaleidoscopic pattern. Among them chaotically fragmented shadows moved: an elongated one to the right, a smaller one to the left. The shadows seemed to fall to pieces and disappear, then regroup themselves.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them. Still could make no sense of the crazy sight in the wash below me. I moved my gaze to the periphery of the pattern and concentrated on its outlines. After a moment the shape of a house emerged against the surrounding darkness. But when I glanced back at its center I lost all sense of form and again was sucked into the fractured light and fragmented shadows.

  After a moment I slid off the outcropping and down the rocky slope. Now I could make out a peaked roofline; corners took on definition. At the bottom of the incline I came to a low stone wall. Peered over it, steadying myself with one hand. My fingers touched something smooth and polished embedded among the stones. I looked down and made out a circle of glass, the bottom of a bottle. Feeling around, I found dozens more, held together by stones and mortar.

  I looked at the house again; at this distance the varicolored lights appeared circular—some large, others quite small. The house’s walls seemed to be constructed of more bottles and mortar, the bottoms of the bottles turned outward, as if to form lenses. They trapped the light from within, refracted it, distorted whatever moved behind them.

  What kind of maniac had created such a structure, here at the bottom of an isolated wash in the desert?

  The shadows inside began to move again. After a moment I heard a door open and the sound of voices—a woman’s and a man’s, their words indistinguishable. A short figure that I assumed was Walker appeared at the left side of the house and hurried uphill toward the pickup. As the truck’s engine caught, I watched the taller shadow cross behind the rows of bottles.

  The pickup toiled up the hill, the sound of its engine gradually fading. The night grew very still. No one moved inside the bottle house now, and after a bit the refracted lights began to go out. I remained where I was awhile longer, then crept uphill to the Land Rover.

  * * *

  The tavern called Joker’s stood on a short commercial block that paralleled Main Street—a block that gave a fair indication of how the rank-and-file citizens of Lost Hope lived. The bar was sandwiched between a small offset-printing shop and an auto-parts store, across from a tiny branch of the county library. Unprepossessing on the outside, it was more so on the inside: just a row of wooden booths and some tables, with a bar on the left and a pool table at the rear. The table was in use, and a few of the booths were occupied; the jukebox played a dirge about deception and depravity, like the box in every such tavern where I’d ever set foot.

  Deputy Chuck Westerkamp hunched on a stool midway down the bar, apart from his fellow drinkers, hands limp around a nearly empty mug of beer. From the droop of his head and the sag of his shoulders, I gathered he wasn’t enjoying his after-shift brew as much as he’d anticipated. He perked up some, though, when I slipped onto the stool next to his.

  “So you decided to stand me to a round after all.”

  I nodded and held up two fingers to the bartender.

  “Been out asking your questions?”

  “Damned few of them, considering I’ve already paid ten bucks for information.”

  “Told you it’s a greedy town.”

  The bartender set two mugs in front of us and took away the bills I placed on the plank. Westerkamp drained what was left in his mug, pushed it aside, and reached for the fresh one. “Who relieved you of the ten-spot?”

  “Cigar-smoking hayride-wagon driver with shifty eyes.”

  “Robbie, my sister’s boy. The little shit.”

  That explained the driver’s reaction to my mention of Westerkamp; when you’re the nephew of the sheriff’s deputy, you watch your step—but you don’t necessarily like it. “You’re a native?” I asked.

  “Lived here damn near all my life. My daddy came out from Missouri as soon as the news of the silver strikes traveled back there. He never found silver, but he opened a saloon, which in those days was just as good. Daddy married late, was dead by the time I was grown. I got out for a while—Korea—and then I was a cop in Reno, but I came back when my mama got sick. Then … I don’t know.” He shrugged, his shoulders frail under his uniform shirt. “The years just went by. Couple more and I’ll retire.”

  “And do what?”

  He looked bleakly at me. “Tell you the truth, I don’t know. Find some way to pass the time, I guess.”

  The years just went by. Like Westerkamp, maybe someday I’d look back over decades of wasted years. Here it was, my thirty-ninth birthday; tonigh
t I should have been with Hy at Zelda’s, drinking champagne and dancing to a—probably—egregiously bad country-and-western band and later going home to make love. Instead I was holding down a stool in a decrepit desert tavern, drinking watery-tasting beer and chatting up a melancholy lawman. Good God, was this going to be my life?

  I’d asked myself the same question while lying alone in bed at Moonshine Cottage the night before the explosion; now it took on greater meaning. I glanced at myself in the streaky mirror behind the bar, saw the furrow between my brows, the quizzical and somewhat alarmed expression in my eyes.

  On the one hand, it wasn’t such a bad life: I answered to no one; I went where events took me; if I failed, I had only myself to blame. But on the other hand, it had its drawbacks: long stretches of loneliness, downright boredom, and—as I’d repeatedly found out—danger.

  The thought of danger reminded me why I was here. This was no routine investigation; I’d come to the desert because I was bent on finding the bastard who’d killed Anna—who’d actually meant to kill me. Revenge? Yes. My lifelong obsession with getting at the truth? That, too. It had always ruled me, always would. And if that meant my life would consist of nights like this, so be it.

  I sat up straighter, raised my mug to my mirrored image in a happy-birthday salute, and drank. Then, feeling a little silly, I glanced at Westerkamp to see if he’d noticed. The deputy still slouched over the bar, contemplating his beer in silence. From the jukebox my brother-in-law’s voice began complaining about the shadows in the house where love once lived. I blocked Ricky out and said, “I came across something curious tonight.”

  Westerkamp raised an eyebrow and waited.

  “A house built out of bottles, down in a wash to the west of town.”

  “Leon Deck’s place.” He nodded. “What the hell were you doing way out there?”

  “Following Brenda Walker.” Briefly I explained. “Who’s Leon Deck?”

  “Lord knows. Artist of some kind. Showed up here four, five years ago. Started going through everybody’s trash for bottles and built that damn thing. Given where he put it at the bottom of the wash, we all figured he’d get flooded out and go away, maybe even drown in a flash flood. But he’s still there, and folks’ve gotten used to him.”