Death in West Wheeling

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  “Ain’t you comin’?” he axed.

  “In a minute.”

  The stolen car kept comin’. It passed Goode Swamp Road doin’ seventy—at a guess—an’ closed up the distance to the overpass without slowin’. The state trooper behind him lost his nerve an’ slowed down. Underhill shouted somethin’ I didn’t get.

  The stolen car came at me up the incline like a trick truck at the fairgrounds fixin’ to jump a line of cars. I stayed put an’ hit my siren—one short WROR.

  Then the car thief braked. The tires screamed an’ left heavy exclamation marks on the road. The car stopped three inches short of my door.

  Underhill an’ three other troopers swarmed ’round the car with guns drawed. The driver threw his hands in the air.

  To give the gravity of the situation time to penetrate the thick skull of the tow-head behind the wheel, I took my time gettin’ outta my car. So the state boys had him out an’ cuffed by the time I strolled up.

  “Gentlemen,” I told ’em, “this here’s Skip Jackson.”

  I make a deal

  “I ain’t talkin’ ’til I git a lawyer.” Skip folded his arms an’ stood with his feet braced like a yearlin’ mule. “I got rights.”

  I had to fight hard to keep from grinnin’. But the boy’d be dangerous as Ash if someone didn’t set him straight soon, an’ that wasn’t funny. “Is ’at so?” I said. “You been watchin’ too much TV, boy. Bein’ a minor, you got only whatever rights I say.”

  I could see his attitude waver a bit, so I figgered I’d throw him off by changin’ tactics. I sat back agin the edge of my desk an’ said, “What do you think I oughtta do with you?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Well, what’d you do to someone you caught stealin’ your car?”

  “Wasn’t your car.” I gave him a look, an’ he said, “Prob’ly kill ’im.”

  I didn’t come back at that, an’ after a time, the weight on his conscience did the job for me. He got red, then redder. Finally, he blurted out, “I jus’ needed a ride, an’ wouldn’t nobody pick me up. An’ the turkey was jus’ beggin’ me to take his car—leavin’ the keys in …”

  I nodded; made sense to me. “Why’d you leave the mission?”

  “I been hearin’ all kinds a rumors ’bout people disappearin’—Mr. D. an’ Angie. An’ I heard you found a dead guy—murdered—an’ I jus’ had’a find out what’s goin’ on.”

  I nodded again. “That still leaves us with what to do with you. You’re a minor, so it looks like it’s gonna be reform school.”

  “I’ll be good. Mr. Moody would give me another chance if you axed him.”

  “Mebbe. But why should I stick my neck out for a car thief?”

  “I was jus’ borrowin’ it. Didn’t you ever ‘borrow’ a car when you were a kid?’

  Well, that got me. “I plead the fifth.”

  He grinned. “I won’t do it again if you give me another chance.”

  “Your word on it?”

  “Cross my heart’n hope to—” I fixed him with a look. “My word.”

  “Okay. We just gotta convince the state police they oughtta drop the charges.”

  “You think you can?”

  “Mebbe. ’Course, you screw up again, they’ll kill both of us.”

  Two hours later, when he come back for his “prisoner,” Sergeant Underhill was still steamed.

  “Dan,” I told him, “it seems to me leavin’ your keys in is contributin’ to the delinquency of a minor chile. An’ if you prosecute for car theft, it’s gonna get all over that you left your car unattended against state law an’ department policy. Press’d love to get their hooks on a story like that. An’ if they did, County Welfare’d have to press charges.”

  “Whose side are you on, Deputy?”

  “I’m a officer of the law. I ain’t s’posed to take sides.”

  “Well, who’s gonna tell ’em?”

  “I am,” Skip piped up.

  “Stay outta this, young ’un,” I said. “Well, Dan?”

  He looked at me like I was a shady car salesman with a lemon to unload. “What’d you have in mind?”

  “Skip here’s a genuine phenomena—first member of his clan’s got a shot at goin’ to college. An’ bein’ as he ain’t stupid, I figger he won’t blow it by stealin’ no more cars.”

  “What’s to guarantee that?”

  “What if I agree to be his parole officer?”

  Underhill shook his head. “He doesn’t need a parole officer. He needs a keeper. The Reverend Mr. Moody said don’t bring him back.”

  “Okay.”

  “You nuts?”

  “I’ll try almost anythin’ once. You agree to suspend charges, I’ll take custody ’til he’s eighteen.”

  “What about Child Welfare?”

  “They’ll be happy to have someone they can sucker into takin’ ’im.”

  Underhill thought about it for all of thirty seconds. “Done! God help you.” He turned to Skip, whose jawed nearly dislocated fallin’ open. “Just remember, we’re only gonna suspend charges. You keep your nose clean or we’ll throw the book at you.”

  Which is how, in the middle of everythin’ else, I become a foster dad.

  Ransom Thomas

  “Homer, I ’membered the name on that missin’ Wanted poster.” Nina was all out of breath from runnin’ up the stairs to my office. She was a little heated, an’ glowed. I had to catch my breath. “It was Ransom Thomas. I ’membered ’cause he’s distant cousin to the Okra Thomases an’ a even more distant cousin to Ash Jackson. Ash’s ma was in fer some stamps an’ happened to mention one of her nieces on the Thomas side was fixin’ to tie the knot.”

  Now that she mentioned it, I did vaguely ’member seein’ that name on the poster the day I’d axed Nina to lunch. I’d been preoccupied or I’d’a noticed the face, too. No matter. I could get the particulars faxed to me by the state cops, along with a better pi’ture’n the original. I said, “Much obliged, Nina.”

  “Much obliged? That’s all you got to say?”

  “See you later?”

  “Humph.”

  She stalked out, an’ I called the state police. A half hour later, my fax machine spit out a piss-poor pi’ture of Thomas. He looked about nineteen an’ scared. I wondered what a bank surveillance pi’ture of him robbin’ the bank’d look like. Prob’ly make you wonder why he wasn’t laughed outta the bank when he announced the stickup. He didn’t look like anyone I’d seen lately, but I made a couple copies anyway. Just to get on Nina’s good side, I dropped the first one off at the post office. An’ to be on the safe side, I axed about Thomas when I made my rounds.

  manhunt

  Besides marshalin’ the force of numbers, buildin’ a posse is a good way to get all the hotheads together where you can keep a eye on ’em. I spent a hour playin’ with the state police identi-sketch computer, endin’ up with a fair likeness of the Arnold impersonator. Armed with that, an’ my pi’ture of Devon, an’ a year-old school picture of Angie—enlarged ’til it looked like someone else—I recruited my posse. No one sober was turned away. I even took Ruthless Groggins.

  We started at Ash Jackson’s place. We searched it through an’ through, then searched every shed, abandoned barn, an’ unlocked cellar in the town. We found stolen property, a missin’ dog, an’ a toddler that’d wandered off from his mother. By late afternoon, we positively knew where all of my missin’ persons wasn’t. An’ my posse was all adventured out, ready for a cold one an’ a evenin’ of TV. We ended up at Diamond Jim’s, where I bought a round of beers. Rye was just standin’ another round when my pager went off.

  The number was familiar—my sister Penny’s—an’ I answered, though I figured it was likely another hassle. She told me she was takin’ Skip home with her for dinner an’ she’d see he did his homework after. I told her I had a few things to finish up at the office an’ I’d be along. Also, I owed her one. Truth is, I’d forgot all about bein’ a new dad.

&nb
sp; That left me with nothin’ to stop me askin’ Nina out to dinner. I was standin’ on the porch with my hat in my hand when she come out to lock up at five. I axed would she do me the honor of breakin’ bread with me, an’ she was so flabbergasted, she forgot to say no.

  When we got back to the post office, I noticed the light on up in my office. Whatever I’d planned for the rest of the evenin’, investigatin’ a burglary wasn’t it, but I was sure I’d locked up ’fore I left. An’ the town hall ain’t all that secure a facility. So I headed over to see what was up. Even though I told her not to, Nina tagged along.

  The back door’d been kicked open. Whisperin’ to Nina to at least stay behind me, I took the steps two at a time. Nina stayed right on my heels. So, when I pulled up short, just inside my open office door, she run right into me.

  I was beginnin’ to feel like someone in a rerun of the movie Groundhog Day, like I’d played the scene so many times I was goin’ crazy.

  Nina said, “Homer, what?—” then “Homer, he’s got a gun!”

  The man sittin’ in my chair, with his feet on my desk—again, pointin’ his .357 at us said, “With you beatin’ the bushes all over town, I had to hole up where nobody’d think to look.”

  “Well,” I said, “you can’t stay outta sight with every light on in the place.”

  “Actually, Deputy, I was keepin’ the light on for you. We gotta talk.”

  a hostage situation

  “I thought I heard you was dead,” Nina said to him.

  “Rumors of my death’ve been exaggerated.”

  “Well,” I said, “you ain’t Lazarus. An’ I got it on good authority agent George Arnold—the real one—is dead.”

  “You’re too smart for your own health,” the man who wasn’t Arnold tole me.

  “I been tole that. You want a drink?”

  When I stepped over to the filin’ cabinet, he shook the .357 an’ said, “I want Ash Jackson.” He put his feet down an’ stood up to help hisself to my gun, which he shoved in his belt, an’ the liquor in my filin’ cabinet. “Where is he?”

  Starin’ down the barrel of a gun don’t bring out the cooperative in me. I said, “He went out to shit an’ the hogs ate him.”

  Hearin’ myself say that made me think—what if it weren’t pigs, but bears? Maybe I’d been thinkin’ about this whole disappearin’ thing backwards. What if it weren’t Ash shot Devon, but Devon somehow’d shot Ash? It’d prob’ly be self-defense, but Devon mightn’t want to take his chances with our local law, particularly with Ash havin’ so many relatives in the county. Devon killin’ Ash’d solve a lot of questions in the case without contradictin’ anythin’ Rye’d tole me ’bout what went down that night. It’d also explain why Angie Boone might be in Ash’s truck, in Okra, weeks after Ash an’ Devon disappeared. If Devon’d killed Ash, he’d of had to have help gettin’ outta there when he ditched his car to make it look like Ash had killed him. Why not from his special friend Angie, the mebbe mother of his chile? With Ash outta the way, they could’ve used his truck ’til they run outta gas money. Then they could’a ditched it—someone did. Which left me with a new question: Where were they?

  “Earth to Homer!” Nina shoutin’ brought me out of my thinkin’ spell.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Homer, Mr. ATF agent, here, axed you a question!”

  “What’s that?”

  The phony Arnold sneered. “Can you give me a single reason why I shouldn’t put an end to your sorry career as a comedian with a bullet through your skull?” But he was pointin’ the gun at my chest.

  “Well,” I said, tryin’ hard to think what he’d do if he suspected what I suspected happened. “If you do that, you’ll never find out what happened to Ash.”

  “Where is he?”

  In Hell, I thought. But I wasn’t ready to say so just yet. “I believe Nina’s got his forwardin’ address at the post office.”

  “An’ I s’pose you think I oughtta march the two of you right over there—in the dark—to get it?”

  “I plead the fifth.”

  He cocked the gun he had pointed at me.

  “You shoot him, you’ll never git the address!” Nina said. “’Cause I’ll know you’re jus’ gonna shoot me soon’s you have it. So I’ll never give it to you.”

  The Arnold impostor thought about that long enough for me to soak through my tee shirt an’ Kevlar underwear with sweat. Finally, slowly, he uncocked the gun. But he kept it pointed at my chest. He axed me, “Where’s your handcuffs?”

  “On the back of my belt.”

  “Put your hands on top of your head an’ lace your fingers together.”

  I did.

  “Now stand real still.” He redirected the gun toward Nina. “You, bitch, stay put or I’ll kill you.”

  Nina’s jaw clenched an’ she shoved it forward but she didn’t say yes or no.

  Our captor walked ’round the desk ’til he was behind me. I didn’t turn round to see exactly where, but I could feel my back hairs risin’. Mr. Not-Arnold took the cuffs outta their holder an’ dropped ’em on the desk. He went back where he’d been b’fore an’ said, “Put one of them on your right wrist, Deputy.” He didn’t have to ax was I right-handed. He’d noticed.

  I did what I was told.

  “Now, bitch,” he said to Nina. “You back up ’til you’re butt-up-tight against the deputy.” When she done that, he sniggered, then said, “Now, Deputy, put your right arm round her waist.”

  It was one order I didn’t much mind takin’, an’ I think Nina could feel it, cause she blushed redder’n a cherry tomato.

  “Now, Deputy,” the artificial Arnold said, “put that other handcuff on her left wrist.”

  I could see where he was goin’ with this. If you got one set of handcuffs an’ two prisoners to transport, makin’ ’em walk right on top of each other, or cuffin’ ’em so that one’s gotta walk backwards in order for ’em to walk side by side, makes great sense. Makes it hard for ’em to run off. I couldn’t help myself. I said, “Pretty slick.”

  He grinned. “Learned that from a little son-of-a-bitch sheriff’s deputy in Cook County jail. Some day I’m gonna go back there an’ kill ’im.” He suddenly noticed Nina’s left hand was still free, an’ that put a end to his good mood. He recocked the gun an’ snarled, “I ain’t got all week.”

  I reached ’round Nina with my left hand an’ closed the handcuff on her wrist.

  He said, “That’s better.” He walked ’round behind us an’ put the gun to my head.

  This time, I could feel Death’s cold fingers squeezin’ my heart. He noticed my discomfort. He laughed an’ tole us, “Put your hands up over your heads.” When we did, he squeezed the cuffs tighter ’round our wrists, all the time keepin’ the gun to my head. I didn’t try nothin’. Besides, Nina was still in his line of fire.

  “Now put your hands down in front of you. Hold hands like you’s sweet on each other.”

  That wasn’t hard to do, neither. An’ if Nina didn’t like it, she never let on.

  rescue

  “He’s gonna shoot us, ain’t he, Homer?”

  “Looks that way.”

  She sagged agin me a mite. It was the nearest I ever seen to Nina showin’ signs of weakenin’. After a bit she whispered, “Ain’t no one I’d rather die with, Homer.”

  “Don’t think ’bout that,” I whispered back. “I need you to keep your wits sharp.” I had another thought an’ whispered, “Too bad you ain’t got a hairpin—we could use it to get outta this.”

  “Would a hat pin do?”

  “Might.”

  As Not-Arnold said, “Shut up, you two!” she magicked a hat pin from somewhere in her clothes.

  It wasn’t easy tryin’a jimmy the ratchet on the handcuff on Nina’s wrist an’ walk with her pressed up agin me, but by the time we’d got over Cross Street, I’d managed. As the cuff dropped loose, I put my cheek against her head, so my mouth was by her ear an’ whispered, “Soon’s we’re
through the door, run for your twelve-gauge.”

  She didn’t say nothin’, jus’ nodded.

  We went up the steps an’ stopped at the door. Our jailer said, “You got your key, bitch?”

  Nina said, “Yes,” sulky like. She was still holdin’ the loose cuff in her left hand, while she dug around in her pocket with the other. She pulled out the key an’ unlocked the door.

  “Get inside,” False Arnold said.

  We did. The room was dark, an’ soon as she was through the doorway, Nina dodged forward an’ ducked behind the counter. I stepped aside an’ switched on the light.

  Nina come up over the counter with the gun cocked an’ aimed.

  “Arnold” didn’t even raise his gun. He stepped into the room an’ laughed. There was a gut-flippin’ click when Nina pulled the trigger, an’ the hammer fell on a empty chamber. Nina froze. Judgin’ by the look on her face, she was scared shitless. She hadn’t shot him but she’d sure as hell pissed him off.

  He pointed his gun at me an’ kicked the door shut. “Put your hands out to your sides an’ git up against the counter. Quick!”

  I done what he said.

  “Turn around.”

  I turned.

  “Now, spread your legs.”

  I spread ’em.

  “Put your hands behind your back.”

  Agin, I followed orders.

  He held the muzzle of the gun agin the back of my skull while he snapped the loose cuff on my free wrist. I felt a wave of collywobbles comin’ on, but I kept my mouth shut.

  He grabbed the back of my collar an’ jerked me ’round the end of the counter, keepin’ the gun against my head.

  “Throw the gun over by the door, bitch,” he tole Nina.

  She turned white as paper. She tossed the gun where he said.

  Tryin’ to get his attention off her, I said, “He must’a stole the shells when he took the poster.”