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

by Marcia Muller

  I nodded in agreement. “To get back to Jim Spitz, you say he’s dealing around someplace called Charleroi?”

  “Yes—town on the river midway between here and California, where the college is.”

  “Can you find out his address for me?”

  Koll’s eyes narrowed. “You want to talk with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “He won’t admit anything.”

  “Maybe not, but he’s been bought once, and I suspect he can be bought again.”

  She hesitated, then shook her head decisively. “Ms. McCone, I probably could get an address for you, but I’m not even going to try. You came here as a representative of the Esmeralda County Sheriff’s Department to get a lead on the man they turned up in the desert out there. You’ve accomplished that—maybe—and it’s time for you to go home.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Talking to Jim Spitz would only stir up a lot of trouble that this town doesn’t need. We’ve got enough problems, and I don’t want to top them off with a scandal about political and judicial corruption.”

  The phone buzzed. Koll looked distractedly at it, then picked up the receiver. “Chief Koll here. … You do. That’s good. Here’s where you send them—Fed Ex, please.” She reached for a scratch pad, read off the address of the Esmeralda County crime lab. As she hung up, she said to me, “Bodine’s dental charts’re as good as on the way. I’ll call Deputy Westerkamp, let him know.” She dialed, held a brief conversation with the deputy, then handed the receiver to me.

  From his tone I could tell that Westerkamp was having difficulty containing his elation at the news. “Ms. McCone, thanks for your help with this.”

  “Well, nothing’s solved yet. Has the autopsy on the August man been completed?”

  “We’re not backlogged the way they are in your city; report was on my desk this morning. Was shot in the heart once, nine-millimeter weapon. Our killer was either very lucky or a very good marksman.”

  “Have you picked up Walker and Deck yet?”

  “Nope. We’re dealing with a great big desert.”

  “What about Walker’s phone-company records? Did you subpoena them?”

  “Now, there’s a problem. Couldn’t get the judge to issue the subpoena or a search warrant for Walker’s house. He said we didn’t have any evidence she was involved in that body getting buried on the land where her brother’s squatting. And he’s got a point.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Are you planning on coming back to Lost Hope?”

  “I’m not sure.” I glanced at my watch. After three, and I hadn’t even eaten yet. “With luck, I may be able to wrap things up here and catch a late-evening flight. Why don’t I check in with you when I get back to the coast? Will you be around?”

  “I’ll be here until this thing’s wrapped up and tied in ribbons.”

  “Then we’ll talk later.” I said good-bye and handed the receiver back to Koll, who had been listening with interest.

  “Get things wrapped up here?” the chief repeated.

  “Well, I have to pack, and I promised Amos Ritter I’d stop by before I left. The two of us hit it off very well.”

  Her skeptical expression made it clear that she didn’t believe my plans were so innocent.

  “Really,” I added, “you’re right: my business here is finished. I’m going home.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Of course. I have an open reservation, so I’ll drive up to Pittsburgh and see if I can get on a westbound flight.”

  Koll nodded, still looking skeptical. “Well, have a good trip.”

  * * *

  The first person Koll would check with to verify that I’d left town was Jeannie Schmidt, so I went back to the guest house and told the landlady I would be leaving. Jeannie, who was on her way to the market, expressed dismay until I said she should keep the money I’d prepaid for that night’s rent. Then she perked up some, said she was sorry we’d had such a brief acquaintance, and went down the hill toward town, her aluminum shopping cart trailing in her wake. I threw my things into my bag and made a quick call to Amos Ritter.

  I cut through the writer’s questions about what I’d been doing all day with a question of my own. “Where do the drug dealers hang out around here?”

  Ritter didn’t even hesitate. “River Park.”

  “How do I get there?”

  “It’s right off River Street, three blocks south of Herb Pace’s place. If you follow Elm downhill, you’ll come to a railroad trestle on the embankment. Cross under it and you’re in the park.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Wait—are you going there now?”

  “Yes, but if Chief Koll calls and asks where I am, tell her I’ve left for the airport.”

  “Sharon, I don’t think you should go to the park alone, even during the day. That’s a pretty rough crowd down there. Let me go with you.”

  “Thanks, Amos, but that won’t be necessary.”

  “At least don’t go unarmed. You can borrow one of the guns from my collection.”

  “I’d rather not, but I may need the use of your phone later on. Okay to stop by?”

  “Any time. I’ll be here. And be careful.”

  * * *

  Long afternoon shadows were falling when I reached the foot of Elm Avenue. The weed-covered railroad embankment blocked my view of the river, and a black iron trestle spanned a sloping dirt track that looked to be a boat launch. I followed it under the trestle, avoiding discarded cans and bottles, to a narrow beach. The river was fairly wide at that point, the opposite bank forested in brilliant fall colors. A flock of ducks immediately noticed my presence and swam toward shore, making expectant little noises.

  Monora’s version of a riverside park wasn’t much: a flat dirt area fringed to the north by a grove of willows. Somebody’s abandoned bicycle lay half submerged in the water; trash overflowed onto the ground from a metal drum. I saw no evidence of the rough crowd Ritter had warned me about, only two men sitting at a broken-down picnic table. When they noticed me, one stood up, spoke briefly with his companion, then moved along the beach, hands stuffed in the pockets of his shabby denim jacket. The other—thin, with wispy white hair and pale skin—watched me silently. As I walked toward him, he pulled his blue knitted cap down low on his forehead.

  I stopped opposite him, the picnic table between us. “Nice afternoon,” I said.

  He hesitated, still sizing me up, then nodded curtly.

  “You come to the park often?”

  Shrug.

  “The reason I ask is that I’m looking for somebody I’m told hangs out here—Jim Spitz.”

  Flash of recognition, followed by another shrug.

  “He lives down at Charleroi. You know him?”

  “If he lives down at Charleroi, why’d he be hangin’ here?”

  “Business reasons.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “You got business with him?”

  “I might.”

  He studied me some more. “You’re not heat.”

  “No.”

  “Not buyin’, either.”

  “Not what Spitz usually sells, no.”

  “What, then?”

  I shook my head. “That’s between him and me.”

  “Well, I can’t help you.”

  I took a twenty from my bag and showed it to him. “This is yours if you get in touch with Spitz and ask him to call me at the number on this piece of paper.”

  He glanced at the twenty, then looked away.

  I took out another. “And this’ll be waiting for you with the bartender at McGlennon’s Pub after I hear from Spitz.”

  He ran his tongue over his upper lip, focusing on the twenties. Then he held out his hand. I gave him one bill and the piece of paper on which I’d written Amos Ritter’s phone number; he stood up and stuffed them into his jeans pocket.

  “Can’t guarantee Spitz’ll call you,” he said.

  “I know that, but there’s a good c
hance he will if you tell him that I work for T. J. Gordon.”

  “T. J. Gordon,” he repeated. The name didn’t seem to mean anything to him. He turned without another word and walked toward the dirt track that led under the trestle.

  I watched him go, then looked back toward the river. An empty barge was passing, churning the water; waves moved toward shore and lapped softly at the pebbled beach. I remained there until the barge moved around the bend where the defunct mill sprawled. This place was completely foreign to me, and yet it felt familiar. …

  A railroad overpass … two people, or maybe it was three … heat lightning on the water …

  Impossible.

  Why?

  Too much of a coincidence.

  Coincidences happen.

  I had asked Anna about those images, and she said they didn’t mean anything to her. But Anna was here in Monora.

  And she lied about that.

  Yes, she did.

  I ran back under the trestle to my rental car and headed for Amos Ritter’s.

  * * *

  “You the one who was talking to Whitey at River Park?” The voice was wheezy, the question ending in a cough.

  “Yes. Mr. Spitz?”

  “What’s this about T. J. Gordon?”

  “I’m working for him. He wants to send some money your way.”

  “What’s he need me to do this time?”

  “I’d prefer to explain that in person. Can we meet?”

  Another spasm of coughing; it reminded me of Herb Pace. No wonder people here had respiratory problems, though: for decades they’d had to contend with serious pollution from the steel mill.

  Spitz finally asked, “How much’re we talking about here?”

  “How much money? Two hundred dollars.”

  Rasping laugh. “Gordon’s got millions. Couple of hundred’s nothing to him.”

  “But it’s something to you, Mr. Spitz.”

  Silence.

  “Mr. Spitz?”

  “Look, how do I know you’re on the level?”

  “You don’t, but what have you got to lose?”

  “Plenty.”

  “I’m not a cop, if that’s what you’re afraid of. Ask Whitey—he knew that right off. And I’m working for the man who fronted your original merchandise for you.”

  Spitz’s breath wheezed. “Okay, make it five hundred, and it’s a meet.”

  “Done. Where and when?”

  “River Park, eight tonight. I’ll be at the picnic table where you talked to Whitey. Come alone.”

  “I’ll see you then.” I replaced the receiver.

  Amos Ritter came up behind me, frowning. “That was him.”

  “Uh-huh. I’m meeting him at the park at eight.”

  “I don’t like that.”

  “I’ll be okay.” I hesitated. “Seems I keep asking you for favors, and now I need a couple more. Spitz wants five hundred dollars, and I don’t have that much cash. My ATM card’s good for two hundred; can I write you a check for the balance?”

  “Sure. What else do you need?”

  “I want to take you up on your offer of the loan of a gun.”

  My appointment with Spitz wasn’t for two hours, so after Amos had given me the cash and I’d chosen a small, lightweight Smith and Wesson .38 from his collection, I borrowed a phone book. In reading the files on the Bodine case, I’d noticed that Ed’s father had also lived in Monora; he was still listed, and I decided to pay him a visit. When I left Amos’s house, he was standing in front of one of his gory stained-glass windows, shading his worried eyes from the setting sun.

  * * *

  Ed Bodine Sr. lived in a five-story brick retirement home on the hill above the abandoned steel mill; an inscription over its door indicated that it had once been the Sisters of Mercy Hospital. As I stepped off the elevator at the third floor, I caught a glimpse of the mill through the window—sprawling, dark, and unpopulated in the fading light. The residents of this home, Amos had told me, were mainly former steelworkers; I wondered how they could bear to look at the mill’s ruins day after day. For me, that would have been a constant reminder of life’s failures and my own impending death.

  The man who answered my knock at the door of unit three-seventeen was bent and frail, supported by an aluminum walker. When I gave him my card and asked if I could talk with him about his son, anxiety clouded Bodine’s eyes. He ran an arthritically swollen hand over his thin white hair, and for a moment I thought he would refuse to let me inside. Then he moved back, almost shying away from me; I sat in the place that he indicated at the end of the sofa, and he took a chair opposite, warily positioning the walker between us.

  “Mr. Bodine,” I said, “I know the last few years have been very difficult for you, and I understand that you don’t want to relive unpleasant memories. But in the course of a related investigation I’ve found some facts that may help to clear your son’s name.”

  Bodine’s fingers tightened on the walker.

  I went on, “I understand that before his arrest Ed was afraid that management was plotting to get rid of him.” Bodine had said so in the statement taken immediately after his arrest.

  The old man dipped his chin in acknowledgment.

  “Did he ever talk about his fears with you?”

  He cleared his throat and spoke in a deep voice that was at odds with his frail appearance. “Eddie didn’t talk much about union business. Child protecting the parent; he didn’t want me to worry about him. Why, I don’t know. I’m a union man myself. Walked the picket line at Keystone during the strike of fifty-nine. Was dangerous then, just like in Eddie’s time. Hell, the work itself’s dangerous. Just a fact of life; you learn to live with it.”

  “But you knew he feared for his safety?”

  “Well, sure. Not just his safety—his life. He knew Gordon’s kind, and the gang he brought in to do his dirty work. The local was one of their main problems, and the best way to weaken labor was to do away with their leader—my Eddie.”

  “Had Ed taken any precautions against that? Made any preparations in case they went after him?”

  “Sure. Three weeks before he got arrested, Eddie left this canvas bag with me. Said it was full of extra clothes and cash, in case he needed to get out of town and hole up someplace.”

  When I’d begun to suspect that Ed Bodine and the August man were one and the same, a detail about the United Airlines bag left in the room at the Aces and Eights Motel had bothered me: the Keystone Steel pen caught in its lining. I doubted that Bodine would have carried the pen to prison with him, but if the bag had belonged to him before his incarceration, the pen’s presence made more sense.

  I asked his father, “What happened to the bag?”

  He looked away. “I got rid of it after Eddie went to prison.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “… I don’t remember.”

  “It wouldn’t have been blue, with a United Airlines logo?”

  Slowly he looked back at me. “You’ve seen it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve seen Eddie?”

  “No.” What had been exhumed from the desert grave was not his son—not anymore.

  Bodine nodded, as if I’d confirmed something for him.

  “When did Ed pick up the bag?” I asked. “The night he walked away from Greensburg?”

  “He didn’t pick it up.”

  I waited.

  Bodine sighed, let go of his walker, slumped in his chair. “All right, he called that night and asked me to bring it to him. That was before my arthritis got so bad, and I was still driving. I met him at a rest stop over on the turnpike—New Stanton.”

  “Have you heard from him since?”

  He shook his head.

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “All right—two postcards, that’s all.”

  “From where?”

  “One from someplace in Illinois, the other from Omaha. No message, really, just the usual tourist stuff, and n
ot in Eddie’s true hand. After that, nothing.”

  “Did he say where he planned to go when you met him on the turnpike? What he planned to do?”

  Again the old man looked away.

  “Mr. Bodine?”

  “Doesn’t matter anyway.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Can’t hurt Eddie now. He’s dead.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because if he was alive, he’d’ve been in touch. I know my boy. He went after Gordon, and Gordon finished him.”

  “He told you he was going after Gordon?”

  Bodine closed his eyes, nodded. “Yeah. We was sitting in my car that night at New Stanton. Eddie said he’d make Gordon pay for what he done to him and Keystone. I told him Gordon was too powerful. I begged him to let it go. But my Eddie never listened to me.”

  I thought again of the desert grave, of the dental charts that were now speeding toward Nevada.

  “Nothing matters now,” Bodine said.

  I had no words to comfort him, and none were expected. Bodine had lost his son, he knew it, and very soon—perhaps as early as tomorrow morning—a police officer would knock on his door and deliver the news that the old man already felt in his brittle bones.

  * * *

  I dropped off the twenty-dollar bill I’d promised Whitey with the bartender at McGlennon’s Pub and was parked near the railroad embankment on River Street by seven-fifty. A harvest moon hung high, streaky clouds scudding across it; the night was so chill that I could see my breath. Lights shone behind curtains and blinds of the shabby houses facing the river. A jack-o’-lantern leered prematurely from a porch railing.

  I watched the railroad trestle, but no one entered the park. A police car rounded the corner and began to prowl toward me; I ducked down until it had gone past and turned uphill. Then I got out of my car and walked toward the trestle.

  From the south came the blare of a train’s horn. I glanced up, saw its headlight moving slowly around the bend by the decaying mill. Long freight, picking up speed on the straightaway. I started down the dirt track to the beach, and then the train was overhead, engine thundering, wheels pounding, steel squealing against steel. I was prepared for the noise but not for the vibration; it nearly threw me off-balance, and I stopped walking until the train passed. Finally, when its sound began to fade thin and plaintive in the distance, I moved to the far side of the trestle and peered out at the darkened park.