A Dead Man's Tale

by James D. Doss

  Daisy waited to hear what that might be.

  So did her nephew.

  Returning to his seat at the table, Parris told them. “A woman in town has gone missing.” When neither of the Utes asked him “who?” the chief of police told them. “The lady’s name is Janey Bultmann.”

  Never heard of her. Daisy poured coffee into Parris’s mug.

  “Thank you kindly.” He took a sip of the brackish, scalding brew and pursed his lips. She wasn’t kidding. Parris eyed Moon’s deadpan face. “You must’ve seen Janey around town. She’s owner-manager of Bultmann Employment Services.”

  Moon did recall the testy blonde who always had a cigarette dangling from her lips.

  “Her mother called GCPD from Seattle to tell us that Janey—who was supposed to be there about four days ago—hadn’t shown up. And Miss Bultmann hadn’t called her momma since the day she was supposed to leave Granite Creek on a three-week vacation.” Parris tapped a spoon on his coffee mug. “Janey supplied temporary staff to the Sand Hills Country Club. Not only for the restaurant and cleaning staff—also for the golf course.”

  The Ute’s eyes narrowed. “Such as Chico Perez.”

  “You got that right.” Steeling himself, Parris downed a man-size gulp of Daisy’s high-octane coffee. “And before you tell me that’s a pretty thin connection, consider this curious factoid—Janey Bultmann hasn’t been seen since the day I visited the country-club manager—a stuffy little peacock by the name of Howell Patterson. That was when I ID’d Chico Perez as the guy Sarah saw with Irene Reed. Turns out that Patterson put in a call to Janey to let her know that Perez’s services were no longer needed at Sand Hills. From what he tells me, Janey promised to ‘remove Mr. Perez from her list of clients.’”

  “So you figure the lady who runs the employment agency canned Perez, and he’s responsible for her being listed among the missing?”

  “It fits.” Parris pulled a small manila envelope from his jacket pocket, opened it, and removed a grainy copy of a photograph. “Here’s a picture of Janey that was taken sometime last year. Her mother faxed it to me.”

  Moon took a look at the snapshot. “Yeah, that’s her all right.” And she’s got a coffin nail in her mouth. Under the circumstances, a sobering metaphor. And there was more. The longtime lawman had experienced this eerie phenomenon before. Charlie Moon would never have admitted it to his aunt, but about nine times out of ten he could glance at a photo and instantly know whether or not the person that looked back at him was still among the living. This one wasn’t.

  Daisy Perika peered over her nephew’s shoulder. Why, I know that face. It took only a moment to remember where she had seen it. She’s that homeless person that smelled so bad. The one I saw outside the candy store, when Sarah and Charlie was inside buying the butter pecan ice cream with my twenty-dollar bill. Which raised an interesting possibility. So maybe she isn’t dead; maybe the poor thing had a stroke or lost her mind and she’s wandering around the streets and alleys and… Alleys? Oh, my. Daisy coughed. Cleared her throat. “Where is that woman’s business?”

  Scott Parris told her the address on Copper Street.

  Daisy’s fingers and toes were going cold. “Is that anywhere near the candy store?”

  “Sure. It’s right next door to the Copper Street Candy Shop.” The curious cop frowned at the enigmatic woman. “D’you know something I don’t?”

  Such a silly question called for a derisive snort and a tart retort. “That’s like asking am I older and smarter than you are.”

  The beefy cop grinned. “So tell me what’s so important about Bultmann Employment Services being close to the candy—” He was talking to Daisy’s backside.

  Her oak staff tap-tapping on the linoleum floor, the old woman hobbled away to her bedroom as fast as she could go, which was at about a good enough clip to pass a three-legged terrapin who was making his way up Pine Knob.

  Parris shot Moon a questioning look. What’s this all about?

  Daisy’s nephew returned a shrug. How would I know? Charlie Moon wasn’t altogether sure he wanted to find out.

  The tribal elder turned the latch to lock her bedroom door, found her purse, and rummaged though it until she found the woman’s picture. The blond lady’s face in the snapshot smiled at her like they were old friends. There was no doubt about it. That’s the same woman I saw on Sunday morning after church. And she was on the sidewalk in front of her business. There was no need to show the picture to the men in the kitchen. They already know about the connection between this Bultmann lady and Perez. Moreover, the pickpocket didn’t care to be questioned about how she had come to have the missing woman’s photograph—the only remaining keepsake of her violent adventure.

  For a few heartbeats, the old warhorse suffered the bitter taste of resentment at the loss of the other items. But Daisy Perika washed her mouth out with the memory of how she had ingeniously disposed of the dead man’s wallet and the treasured battle trophies. As she savored the sweet recollection, Charlie Moon’s aunt was immensely pleased with her clever self. A satisfied smile creased her leathery face. Nobody but me would’ve thought of doing a thing like that.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  The Town Cop Confides in the Tribal Investigator

  The moment Daisy was out of sight, Scott Parris took another gulp of her heavy-duty coffee and regarded his Ute host with a pained expression. “Something’s gnawing at me, Charlie.”

  “I’m not surprised. Aunt Daisy’s brew’ll eat the lining out of your stomach.”

  “It’s Chico Perez that’s giving me heartburn.” The chief of police reflected his Indian friend’s faint smile. “There’s no doubt that the dead man was the late Mrs. Reed’s boyfriend. Three country-club employees and one of Mr. Perez’s neighbors have positively ID’d his body.” Parris started to take another sip of coffee, hesitated. “The guy’s dead as a doorknob and I’d be happy to let the matter rest there. But something’s fishy about this Perez character’s actual identity.”

  “You told me some time ago that Chico Perez wasn’t his right name.”

  “There’s more to it than that, Charlie.” Parris banged his coffee cup on the kitchen table. “We found the registration in his old Camaro and a State Farm insurance card—both documents had Perez’s name on ’em, along with his Granite Creek address.” He paused to sop up spilled coffee with a paper napkin. “But when Perez showed up at the Reed residence, he wasn’t carrying any form of ID. “No driver’s license or credit cards. Nada.” He waited for the obvious query.

  “Nothing at all in his wallet to give you a clue as to who—”

  “The guy didn’t have a wallet on him, Charlie. And before you ask, it wasn’t in his rented house out on Sundown Avenue—or in his Chevy.”

  “Maybe the guy lost his wallet, or it got stolen.” Charlie Moon blinked at his friend. “Did he have any money on him?”

  “The so-called Chico Perez had exactly six bucks and fifty cents in his jeans.” Parris furrowed his brow. “And I haven’t gotten to the good part.”

  Now, the Gory Details

  Scott Parris got up from the kitchen table to take a quick peek down the shadowy hallway. Relieved to verify that Daisy wasn’t listening from that strategic location, he figured this was a good opportunity to reveal some police-ears-only information to his occasional deputy. After tossing back the thick dregs of tar-black coffee, the well-caffeinated cop began to pace back and forth. “I expect you’d like to hear what Doc Simpson found out when he examined Perez’s carcass.” He shot a sly look at the Indian. “Or maybe you’d like to make one of your famous wild guesses.”

  “I’m not much interested in the subject of pathology, or making unfounded speculations—but since you’re my guest and best buddy, I’ll do my best to please you.” Charlie Moon cocked his head. “I already know that the man’s head was bandaged when he showed up at the Reed residence. So I expect that whatever our favorite medical examiner discovered must’ve had to do with Pere
z’s skull.”

  Parris refilled his mug from the percolator. “You’re getting warm.”

  “Are we talking room temperature or high noon in Death Valley?”

  The edgy cop eased himself back into his chair. “It was Perez’s hair.”

  “What about his hair?”

  “Well…it wasn’t there.”

  Moon stared. “None of it?”

  Parris nodded. “Except for a little sprig here and there—it was all gone.”

  “Sounds like Perez was altering his appearance. The fella must’ve shaved his head too close, then had to wrap some bandages around it.”

  “His head hadn’t been shaved, Charlie—it was more like his hair had been hacked right down to the roots.” Parris held his breath. “And that’s not the worst part.”

  Moon assumed a ready-for-anything expression. “Go ahead—get it over with.”

  “Charlie, I don’t know how you’re going to take this—you being of the Native American persuasion and me being one-hundred-percent Caucasian—so brace yourself before I pull the trigger.”

  “Consider me braced, paleface.” The Indian grinned. “And take your best shot.”

  Parris leaned forward and lowered his voice. “According to Doc Simpson, a few days before Mrs. Reed shot him dead—Chico Perez had been…well…mutilated.”

  The Ute lost his grin. For a long time, he stared at his friend. He didn’t dare ask.

  Didn’t have to. Scott Parris told him.

  Moon shook his head. “Who’d do a thing like that?”

  As if in answer to his query, Daisy Perika toddled into the kitchen.

  The lawmen turned to gaze at the wily old lady.

  She approached the table. “Seems to me, you two coppers could use a little help.”

  Her nephew did not like the sound of this.

  Daisy Drops a Bomb

  Charlie Moon’s aunt placed her thumb on a red square, to rub a small wrinkle from the checkered oilcloth. “It has to do with that missing woman—the one who owned the employment agency.” The tribal elder counted three heartbeats before turning to fix her shifty eyes on the chief of police. “I’m not dead sure about this, but I’d bet next month’s Social Security check that you’ll find her body where Chico Perez dumped it.”

  Parris inhaled a deep breath. “And where’d that be, Daisy?”

  “In the sewer.” Leaning on her oak staff, the old woman wrinkled her nose at the unpleasant olfactory memory. “If I was you, I’d start by looking for a manhole cover in the alley behind her office.”

  Parris cast a querying glance at the peculiar old woman’s nephew.

  His face hard as flint, there was a barely perceptible nod of Moon’s head.

  Enough said.

  GCPD’s top cop used his mobile phone to place a call to Dispatch. After barking the appropriate orders, Scott Parris got up from his chair and began to pace again. A full six minutes passed without a word being spoken. The brittle silence was broken by Parris’s telephone playing a lively rendition of “Turkey in the Straw,” courtesy of Charlie Moon and his fine Stelling’s Golden Cross banjo. “Talk to me,” the cop said.

  The dispatcher talked and Parris’s already chalky face blanched a shade more pale with every word. “Tell Officers Knox and Slocum I said don’t touch a thing and—” He listened again. “Yeah, I guess they wouldn’t, at that. Call Doc Simpson. You already did that? Good work, Clara.” After terminating the conversation with Clara Tavishuts, Parris pocketed the telephone. “Eddie Knox spotted a corpse under manhole cover number 128, which is located in the alley behind the Copper Street Candy Shop and maybe twenty paces from the rear exit of Bultmann Employment Services.” He stared at Charlie Moon’s aunt. “Turns out that employees of the candy store have been complaining about a stink of something dead in the alley.”

  Daisy could have dropped a second bomb by telling Moon and Parris who Chico Perez really was, but she was saving that explosive for an occasion when it would produce maximum effect. Wearing a deadpan expression that any poker player would’ve envied, Daisy departed from the kitchen for the final time that day. The vain old lady had enjoyed her brief moment in the limelight. And she wasn’t done yet.

  Neither of the lawmen could think of a thing to say. But again, the men who knew her so well shared more or less the same thought.

  If we ask Daisy how she knew where Chico Perez had dumped Janey Bultmann’s body, she most likely wouldn’t tell us. Then, there was the really scary possibility: She just might.

  Daisy’s nephew had a serious matter to tend to. But the tribal investigator’s business could wait until tomorrow. To that end, Charlie Moon asked Scott Parris to stay the night.

  The rancher’s gracious invitation was gratefully accepted.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  “‘O bury me not…’ And his voice failed there.

  But they took no heed to his dying prayer.

  In a narrow grave, just six by three

  They buried him there on the lone prairie.”

  A Rude Awakening

  After enjoying the benefits of a restful sleep and tranquil dreams, Scott Parris awakened in gradual stages of increasing awareness. His drowsy perceptions included the observation that it was still dark outside and that…I’m not in my own bed. After realizing that he was in the Columbine headquarters downstairs guest bedroom, the reassured chief of police dozed off and on until the first pearly-gray glow of dawn, which he greeted with a soul-satisfying yawn. Now this is the kind of life a man ought to live. Parris stretched luxuriously, popping wrist, elbow, and shoulder joints. A thousand miles from town and good friends all around and fine horses to ride and enough rolling prairie and rivers and lakes and mountains to satisfy a fella right down to his marrow. He rubbed his eyes. Guess I ought to hit the floor and get ready for breakfast. He poked his foot out from under the covers. This bedroom’s cold as kraut and it’s nice and warm here under the blankets. The tough guy yawned again, turned to his other side, and settled in. I’ll take me a little nap.

  Rap-rap!

  What the hell was that? Parris sat up in bed, eyes popped like poached eggs. Sounded like somebody banged on the wall with a baseball bat.

  The solution to the small mystery was provided forthwith.

  “Up and at ’em!” Daisy yelled from the hallway. “Breakfast is burning in the skillet, the coffeepot’s boiling over, and after you get your belly full there’s firewood that needs splitting, rusty fences that need mending, and cow pies that need kicking.” The old crone cackled and gave his bedroom door another hearty thump with her walking stick before hobbling off to the kitchen, where Sarah Frank was baking made-from-scratch biscuits and frying sliced Idaho spuds, big slabs of Virginia ham, and mouthwatering pork sausage patties. Also heaps of scrambled eggs.

  A Secluded Spot

  Best friends have ways of communicating without words. A sideways glance at the window, the merest nod, an eloquent silence—all speak volumes. Before breakfast was over, Scott Parris was informed by several such cues that Charlie Moon had something to tell him—but not where Daisy Perika could eavesdrop on their private conversation. After they had complimented Sarah on the fine meal and Daisy for her top-secret biscuit recipe, the rancher and the chief of police meandered to the parlor with their third cups of coffee, where they had a habit of sitting before the hearth, where famished flames tongued hungrily at select, succulent morsels of split piñon. Not this morning. On this occasion, the wily conspirators crossed the parlor and stepped onto the front porch.

  Daisy Perika was watching the sneaky menfolk from the hallway. That won’t do you any good. The tribal elder smirked at their vain effort to slip away onto the front porch and discuss matters not meant for her ears. I’ll creep over by the window like I always do, and hear every word you say.

  And so she did. (Creep over to the window.)

  But she didn’t. (Hear every word.)

  All Daisy heard was the breeze picking up and the happy
chatter of cottonwood leaves. The men who she supposed were on the porch were not present and accounted for. The spy arrived at the window just in time to see Charlie Moon open the door to the new horse barn. She watched the men vanish inside and scowled at having her plan foiled. What are they going in there for? To saddle up some horses and go for a ride, she supposed. The meddlesome old soul was right on the mark.

  After fording the frigid river and getting soaked from the knees down, the horsemen headed for the hill that had been called Pine Knob in one language or another for centuries.

  An amber-faced sun was smiling the chill off the morning when the riders got to the top of the lonely knoll where Charlie Moon had personally laid several bodies under the sod. A well-groomed grave with a simple marker cradled the remains of a young woman whose destitute mother could not afford a decent burial for her only child. One of the unmarked graves concealed the moldering bones of a friend the Ute had been forced to pass sentence of death on—at the drop of a hat. But that had happened way back when, and Mr. Moon was concerned with right now.

  As it generally did on the summit, the light wind was whining in the pines—except for the dead, lightning-scarred ponderosa that stood atop the hill like a fossilized sentry doomed to stand ramrod-straight at his last post until Time itself had ticked its last tock and faded away. It had no needles for the wind to whine in.

  The men sat easily on their mounts, the chill northerly breeze on their backs.

  After a suitable interlude of comradely solitude, the rancher stretched his lean right arm and pointed in a southerly direction. “On a clear day, you can just about make out the Columbine front gate from up here.”

  “Maybe you can.” I guess I ought to get me a pair of spectacles. The long-in-the-tooth white man sighed along with the breeze.