Dust in the Heart

by Ralph Dennis

  “It’s Missy. I’m worried about her.”

  “Why?”

  “She doesn’t answer her phone. No one answers at all.”

  “Come on, Charlotte, I was there when she said she’d been prescribed as drug to help her sleep. That’s probably what it is. She took the pill or the powder or whatever and unplugged her phone.”

  “You think that’s what it is, Joseph?”

  “Sure. And my guess is that she needs the rest more than she needs to talk right now.”

  She sighed. “You make me feel better already.”

  “It’s natural to worry about a friend.”

  “I miss you. When do I see you again?”

  “When this investigation is over. And it’s close right now.”

  “You’ll call me?”

  “As soon as I can,” he promised.

  He went into Wilt’s office. The Sheriff was awake now. Wilt squinted at him through a curl of cigarette smoke. “Anything?”

  “Charlotte. I think she wants to hold my hand.”

  “Take a few minutes and run by.”

  “She’ll keep.” It wasn’t the way Joe wanted to function. He didn’t feel you had to reassure somebody all the time. A man knew who he was and what he was and that was all there was to it. A woman ought to have the same feeling about herself.

  “Take the time,” Wilt said.

  Joe shook his head, “It’s a bother.”

  Bottoms called Wilt around nine-thirty. The work day was running long. From the window behind his desk, Wilt could see the dark, cloudless sky. There was a beginning patter of rain.

  “He’s been in touch again.” Bottoms said. Wilt lit another cigarette. His tongue felt cracked and grooved and sore. “He wants to come in. I told him to come ahead, the road was clear. He said he would as soon as he finished some business he had.”

  The stash. “He give you any idea what that business was?”

  “No.” Bottoms took a deep breath that seemed to suck air through the phone line. “Whatever it is, he won’t leave until it’s done.”

  “He calling back?”

  “When he’s ready to leave. He’s talking about the west coast. Maybe California.”

  “He gets to make his own picks?”

  “He thinks he does,” Bottoms said. “If I had my say, if I was really moving him this time, I’d put him in West Jesus, Montana.”

  “Call me when you hear from him.”

  “I hope you find him first. Otherwise, my balls are in a nutcracker no matter what I do.”

  “The shit comes with the job,” Wilt said and hung up.

  He rubbed his eyes. He felt dirty and tired and he needed a shave. He rubbed the whiskers, estimating if it was worth a layer thin run with the electric razor he kept in his desk.

  “You know what?”

  “What?” Joe heard his stomach rumble and slapped at it.

  “That asshole, Thorpe, has got the guts of a highwire walker. He hardly gets past you the last time and he’s still ready to make another attempt at the guest house.”

  “Maybe he’s thinking we’ll figure he tried and now we won’t expect him again. Anyway, he doesn’t know we know about his getaway money. He might think we believe he dropped in for a suitcase and some fresh clothes.”

  It made sense. “I’d give one nut to know where his hiding hole is.”

  Joe froze. His mouth opened but nothing came out.

  “What?” Wilt said.

  “Charlotte called because she hasn’t been able to reach Missy. Of course, it’s probably nothing. The sleeping pills Missy took. But what if it’s not?”

  “Worth a look.” Wilt said. “Might explain how Thorpe disappeared so fast after his try at the money and why he’ll make a second try.” Wilt lifted the phone and placed it closer to Joe. “Call Missy.”

  Joe found the number in his notebook. He dialed and heard the phone ring a dozen times. He waited another five or six before he gave up. “Nothing.”

  “Call Charlotte.”

  “Huh?”

  “Unless you know the complete layout of the Plowden house, call Charlotte. We get there, it might be good to know where the doors and windows are, the furniture and how it’s set up in each room.”

  “Sure, Wilt.”

  Wilt left him to make the call in private. He crossed the lobby and leaned on the counter next to Floyd. “I want cars three and four to converge on Old Oak Terrace Road. Three from the east, four from the west. I want that road blocked off for a quarter of a mile on either side of the Plowden house. No sirens. Quiet drill. Nothing loud or sudden unless a car leaves the Plowden driveway. In that case, block that car. Shoot him if necessary.”

  He put his back to Floyd as he began to call in cars three and four. He found Joe standing in his doorway.

  “She’s expecting us,” Joe said.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Charlotte had dressed herself in a jumpsuit that was a high fashion rip-off of jungle warfare fatigues and short black boots. This was obviously a serious matter, Wilt told himself. The fur coat she’d selected to wear over the jumpsuit was a sensible compromise with the weather. For all that, he could see that she was excited. Here was a real-life drama. And best of all, she was being helpful to the man she was sleeping with.

  Watching them, her sighing over Joe and Joe preening for her, Wilt wasn’t exactly sure she knew he was in the room.

  “I want the whole layout. Floor by floor. All the distances estimated. All the doors and windows noted. Closets, the way the furniture is arranged,” Wilt said, handing her a sketchpad. “What I want is the best feel we can get for the house without a walking tour. I’ve got some calls to make. Where’s the closest extension …?”

  “In the kitchen,” Charlotte said.

  He left them huddled together over the sketch pad. He leaned against a kitchen counter and dialed the station. Floyd knew he’d call and he had his report ready. Cars three and four were in place. There had been little movement on the road. That was probably because the local forecast was for slick and icy highways. There was one problem. A black woman had been stopped. She said she’d come to check on Mrs. Plowden. She had a fit when they wouldn’t allow her to pass the cruiser and enter the Plowden drive.

  “That’s Edna, the maid. Tell her I’ll be there in a few minutes and explain it to her.”

  “Will do.”

  “I’ll call in when I have something to report.

  “Sheriff …?”

  Wilt waited.

  “Be careful. The county don’t give Purple Hearts.”

  “Got mine already,” Wilt said.

  Before he made the next call, he found a glass and poured himself a milk from the gallon in the refrigerator. He gulped it down and picked up the phone again. He dialed the Blue Lagoon.

  Kyle answered. “She’s not here right now. She left twenty minutes ago.”

  “You think she’s home?”

  “That’s my guess. Unless she found somebody she liked who doesn’t wear a uniform.”

  “It’s the uniform gets them every time.”

  “Navy myself,” Kyle said. “Never could stand jarheads.”

  He ended the call and dialed Diane’s apartment at the Towers. The ring was somewhere between the seventh and the eighth when Diane answered.

  “Am I interrupting anything?”

  “Just an affair between me and the shower. I’m dripping all over the rug.”

  “I’ll call back some time when you’re dry.”

  “Don’t you dare hang up on me.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “When will I see you?”

  “Soon. If I’m lucky.” He heard the soft purr of her breath. It raised the hair on the back of his neck. “Go back and finish your shower.”

  “Oh, Wilt …”

  “Goodnight. I’ll call when I can.”

  His final call was to Raleigh. He reached Billy Egan at Deaf Smith’s. “You want to come to the dance, but just as a spec
tator, a wallflower?”

  He explained the situation.

  “What you need is a SWAT team,” Egan said. “That’s no game for men who aren’t trained to do it.”

  “You ever tapdance through a mined rice paddy?”

  “No.”

  “Come over and see how it’s done.”

  “My problem is that I’m not used to going to a dance and not getting my feet sore.”

  “Let’s say you’re there as an observer. If Thorpe gets past Joe or me, he’s your meat.”

  “That’s a better invitation,” Egan admitted.

  Wilt said he thought it might be.

  Twenty minutes after they arrived at the Plowden Estate, after all the planning and a slow floor-by-floor stealth, they reached the master bedroom. The entry was by the book. Joe the quicker and the first one in, crouched in the firing stance. Wilt behind him in the doorway, piece up and ready.

  Raymond Thorpe wasn’t there but the room wasn’t empty. Wilt walked past Joe and stopped beside the bed. It wasn’t pretty, what was there, but death wasn’t ever anything Wilt wanted to write poetry about.

  Missy Plowden was sprawled in the middle of the huge bed. Her face was battered and cut. A dental bridge was on the sheet near her right shoulder. Her face was black-blue and puffed and swollen.

  Joe stood across the bed from Wilt. “How do you see it?”

  “Beat her, strangled her.”

  “Why?”

  “Pure meanness. Maybe frustration because he couldn’t get to the money at the guest house. Maybe she whined too much. Maybe she cried and got on his nerves. Hell, we’re not talking about anything that has to be rational.”

  Wilt walked to the door.

  Behind him he heard Joe. “The rotten son of a bitch.”

  “Call Doc. He must be tired of hearing from us. Get the photographer. Close off the house until Doc’s done in here.”

  Joe followed him down the stairs. “You’ll be …?”

  “At the guest house with King.”

  “You want me there?”

  “Soon as you make the calls,” Wilt said.

  Wilt left him in the living room. He walked outside. After the sweat, the tension of the stalk through the house, the ice rain and the wind beat on him and almost staggered him. He stopped on the steps and waved an arm at the cruiser that was parked, broadside, about fifty yards away from the front entrance. Charlie stood and revealed himself from the crouch he’d taken behind the engine of the cruiser.

  “Charlie, call in and tell Floyd we missed Thorpe here at the Plowden …”

  In the distance they heard the slap-slap of a handgun. That was followed by a single boom of a shotgun.

  “What the hell …?” Wilt almost forgot the hip. He went down the steps at a run. He circled the cruiser while Charlie passed him his pumpgun and got behind the wheel. Past Charlie’s shoulder, as they pulled away and turned onto the road that led to the guest house, he saw Joe on the front steps.

  “You want me to stop …?”

  “Gun it. Get me there.”

  He listened for a second round from the shotgun. It didn’t come.

  A hundred yards from the guest house Wilt said, “Far enough,” and tapped Charlie on the shoulder. Charlie braked. Wilt stood in the road while Charlie got a second pump-action shotgun from the trunk and joined him.

  Wilt held the shotgun at high port. “It charged?”

  “Yeah. Double aught buckshot.”

  Charlie moved to the side, putting about half the width of the road between them. Wilt stopped after they’d gone twenty yards. “Best you stay here. Somebody comes running down this road and he’s not limping you put him down. You hear me?”

  “I do.” Charlie said.

  He jogged next thirty yards. Then he stopped and jogged another twenty. The running jarred the hip into a clawing pain. He stopped and took a few breaths to get his hands steady. Then he went into what he thought of as his Indian Country walk. That was for the times when you were in the open and it could come at you from any direction. Braced for the hit. And as they always said, with your asshole puckered.

  Wilt stopped in the front yard of the guest house. There were no lights. He heard no sounds. He did a pivot, the whole 360 degrees and still heard nothing.

  “King, you sing out.”

  He waited. Then he called out again.

  “Here … over here …”

  The voice was faint. He thought it sounded like King. But it was a very weak King.

  The voice was from the darkness and the shadows of a thicket that faced the front door of the guest house. Wilt rushed in that direction. He stopped. “King?”

  This time he heard coughing. He followed that and stood over King. The boy was on his back at the edge of the thicket.

  Wilt got on his knees beside King. He needed a flashlight. He didn’t have one. He’d left it in the cruiser when they prepared for the entry of the Plowden house. So he had to check King’s wounds by touch. He found the gaping hole low in King’s left shoulder first. The entry was high in the back and the exit hole low in front. Wilt wadded his handkerchief into the hole and pressed it there.

  He found the second wound in the calf of King’s right leg. As far as Wilt could tell from his touch-examination, the slug had missed the bone altogether. The bleeding was slow. That was the cold weather, Wilt thought. It probably helped with the coagulation.

  King moaned and opened his eyes. “That you, Sheriff?”

  “Yeah. What happened?”

  “He got behind me. I don’t know how he knew I was here.”

  “What are you doing out here anyway?”

  “Couldn’t stand the heat in there. Decided I had a better chance out here. Came out and got under a poncho. Lord, he must have smelled me. One second I was all alone, and the next one he was behind me and I got the feeling he was there and moved. He missed a back shot and got me in the leg.”

  “Doc’s at the Plowden house by now. Or will be soon. I’ll make sure he sees to you right away.”

  “I got turned around. I got the shotgun up. That was when he fired the second time. Hit me in the shoulder as I was turning. All I could do was cut loose in his direction with those wad cutters and hope they scared him away.”

  “Take it easy,” Wilt said.

  “That scudder tried to backshoot me.”

  Wilt heard footsteps in the front yard of the guest house. He stood and turned the pumpgun. He was about to fire when Joe said, “Wilt, it’s me. Where are you?”

  “Here. King’s down but all right. Run a circle around the house.”

  Wilt stood in the shadows, pump-action shotgun at the ready, until Joe returned. He lowered the shotgun and stepped from the thicket.

  “That man’s a ghost,” Joe said. He stepped around Wilt. “How’s King?”

  “Bad enough. Doc at the big house yet?”

  “Ought to be there soon.”

  Wilt sent Joe to Charlie’s cruiser. He wanted the word passed that Doc was to come straight to the guest house.

  Wilt left Joe with King and entered the guest house. He switched on the overhead light and looked around. The knobs were unscrewed from the fire screen rods. The brick had been removed from the fireplace apron.

  So now Thorpe knew that he was hanging in the wind. There was nothing left to him but the protection of the Federal Marshals.

  Wilt switched off the light and returned to the yard. Joe waited for him on the porch. He carried King’s cutdown 12 gauge.

  “Doc’s with King. He said to thank you for finding a live one for him.”

  Wilt eased to a sitting position with his back against the front door of the small house. His mind was running. Where would Thorpe go after learning his stash was gone?

  Not back to the Plowden house. He’d left a corpse there.

  So where?

  Behind the house, the homeowners had banded together and bought that last big chunk of woods. It was a co-op. They didn’t want some real esta
te guy to come in and put up ticky-tacky ranch houses or condos. It was about twenty square acres.

  If he were Thorpe, that’s where he’d run.

  It was time to make a choice and stay with it. “Thorpe’s in there.”

  “Huh?”

  Wilt struggled to his feet. “He’s in that twenty-acre square of woods.” He walked to the edge of the porch and reached back and took King’s shotgun. “I want you on the radio to Floyd. I want every man he can round up. See if he can borrow all Amos can spare at the Police Department. I want a line drawn on three sides of this wood. We’ll handle this side, the fourth side. I want one cruiser to patrol until it finds Thorpe’s BMW. I want it found and fixed so it won’t run. Even if we have to take a sledgehammer to the engine. Give them the color and the tag numbers so they get the right one. Got that?”

  “If you’re wrong?”

  “He’ll run to Marshal Bottoms in Raleigh and we’ll set a trap. You’ll be with me if it comes to that. But I don’t think it will.”

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  Wilt sat with his back to the closed guest house door. It was cold but there was some warmth that escaped under the door. He eased himself into a relaxation he didn’t really feel. He closed his eyes and drifted. He rested. He opened his eyes when he heard footsteps in the road nearby. He recognized the short, square shape of Charlie. Charlie reached the top step and waited.

  “How you feel, Sheriff?”

  “Got an ache. See if there’re some aspirin in the bathroom. I need about a dozen.”

  Wilt moved aside to let Charlie pass him. Charlie returned with a glass of water and a handful of aspirin. It was more than a dozen. Wilt took six and washed them down with the water. He put the other aspirin in his trouser pocket. Wilt finished the water and put the glass aside. “You got a canteen in the cruiser?”

  “Yeah.” Charlie went back down the road to the cruiser.

  Joe’s cruiser passed Charlie on the road. Joe parked and came to the porch. “It’s underway. I’ve got Bud cruising the road. Amos is sending a dozen men to help out. Floyd called in the off-duty crew and they’ll be here in ten minutes.”

  “Wake me when it’s in place.”