Clouds Without Rain

by Gaus, P. L.

  “Rather strange,” Branden commented.

  “Oh, it won’t be long, Mike. Just a few more days.”

  Branden said, “I’ll see you Wednesday,” and moved toward the door. With his hand on the knob, he turned back to DiSalvo and asked, “Do you know anything about Britta Sommers’s business dealings with Weaver?”

  “No,” DiSalvo said. “And if I did, I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  “Why not?”

  “She served as his trustee. There’d be ethical problems.”

  “She’s missing, Henry. You know her house was torched last Thursday.”

  DiSalvo nodded, frowned, and rubbed nervously at the back of his head. “She did sell some land in Weaver’s last deal. A parallel transaction. Nothing that could be construed as improper.”

  “Is that land deal final?”

  “All the ink is dry, if that’s what you mean. The papers have been filed.”

  “Any chance of reversing the deal?”

  “No.”

  Branden thanked him and let himself out. Once down to the street, he decided to visit Bobby Newell and walked the three hot and noisy blocks to the jail. Ellie Troyer sent him through to the sheriff’s office, and Branden found the captain in uniform, standing with a large mug of coffee at one of the tall office windows facing the square.

  Newell turned from the window, and before Branden could say anything, barked, “Arden Dobrowski has filed charges against you, Professor.”

  Branden laughed and said, “What charges?”

  “Says you hit him.”

  “The man deserved it, Bobby,” Branden scoffed.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me, but he’s filed charges.”

  “Is he pressing those charges?”

  “Not at the moment, but he’s coming in this afternoon to talk about it, and you had best be hoping I’ll be able to talk him down.”

  “Can’t be bothered,” Branden said and sat casually in a chair next to Robertson’s cherry desk.

  Newell parked his muscular frame on the corner of the desk near Branden and said, “I think you ought to back out of the Weaver/Sommers case for a while. She’s still missing. We’ve tried to find her, but she’s left town or something.”

  “That doesn’t mean she’s mixed up in the Weaver murder,” Branden said.

  “With her house burnt up?”

  “If anybody is mixed up in the Weaver murder, it’s Larry Yoder. Have you got a warrant to search his place yet?”

  “All we have is your word that his parents said something about what Yoder might have said, drunk a few days ago.”

  “Talk to his parents yourself.”

  “Yoder’s father has not been cooperative.”

  “It’s his mother who will talk,” Branden said. “What about his psychiatrist? I tried him once, with no luck. Maybe you could get something out of him.”

  “He probably won’t tell us a thing either.”

  “Yoder’s not going to be in the hospital forever,” said Branden. “What have you done about him?”

  “Wilsher sent Armbruster up there yesterday with a letter announcing our official intent to arrest Yoder once he is discharged from the hospital.”

  “You think they’ll honor that?”

  “They usually do. I’ve asked for a confirming letter of reply.”

  “Any other leads?”

  “Yes,” Newell said, and stopped.

  “Well?” Branden pressed.

  “I want you to take a breather, Mike. Walk a buggy over north of Walnut Creek, until we sort this out.”

  “You think we’ve still got a chance at those kids?”

  “It’s possible. Anyways, I want you to take the rest of today. Let me cool off Dobrowski and follow up some leads.”

  “What leads?”

  “You’re in a buggy this afternoon, right?”

  “OK. What leads?”

  “It was a 30-06.”

  “Seems plausible. But how is that a lead?”

  “That bullet you had Missy Taggert pull out of Weaver’s buggy horse? Well, Professor, there is a photo on Weaver’s wall. Weaver, Yoder, and Jim Weston out West with the elk they shot. We’re talking to Weston now, and it turns out the three of them used to drive a van out to Colorado each year and hunt. Weston was the driver, and Yoder was something like a hired hand.”

  “So?”

  “So, it looks like we might just get that warrant, after all. In the picture under the elk, Larry Yoder is holding what Weston says is a 30-06. One of Weaver’s rifles, and it’s not on the rack in Weaver’s study.”

  25

  Monday, August 14

  4:15 P.M.

  IT TOOK the professor the better part of the afternoon to suit up in Amish costume, collect his camera, gear, and revolver, borrow a horse and buggy from the Hershbergers, and start walking the rig along Township Lane T-414. The temperature had climbed to ninety-six degrees, skies were clear, and the sun was as bright as in the painted desert.

  Giving the horse rein to set its own pace, Branden slouched against the right side of the buggy, with his arms crossed over his chest, seeming to nap. With his weight off-center, the rig leaned heavily to the right, and, more often than not, he was three-wheeling, the left rear wheel raised off the pavement.

  Satisfied that he would appear vulnerable to teenage bandits, he traveled the gravel lanes of Walnut Creek Township peacefully for about an hour, mulling over the Weaver/Yoder case.

  On one stretch of lane, a girl in a pink dress and white prayer cap passed on a mountain bike, blue plastic grocery bags hanging from the handlebars. A blacksmith shop came up on the right, set close to the lane. Behind, there was an aluminum-sided, white split-level house, with laundry hanging on lines at the side, and a long run of fence made of wide brown boards, separating house from pasture.

  A little farther along, he pulled back on the reins, stopped the horse under the shade of a spreading maple, climbed out of the buggy while still holding the reins, and rubbed the heel of his left hand hard against the small of his back. Then he arched backward and rolled his slender torso left and right. Up straight again, he rubbed at his back with his right hand, and then he leaned forward and slowly reached for his toes, first on one side and then on the other. When he straightened up, he walked in front of the horse and tied the reins to a fence post overgrown with tall, dried weeds and grasses. Next to the fence post, the trunk of the maple had grown outward to encase the rusted barbed wires, pushing the ancient fence out several feet toward the road.

  Branden reached in to the floor of the buggy and pulled out a narrow plastic bottle of water. As soon as he had finished that one, he started on another. He had brought five for the trip and now wished it had been a dozen. He stepped clear of the buggy, slapped his straw hat against his shins to knock the dust off his pants, and then laid the light-cream hat back softly on his head. As he stood enjoying the shade, he studied the lane, first in one direction and then in the other, and at last untied the reins, climbed back in, and headed off at the same slow pace.

  As he rode along peacefully, deep in thought, he barely registered the monotonous crunch of the buggy wheels on gravel and the horse’s slow, deliberate footfalls. The dust and the sun gave a hot, dry, stinging quality to the air. From time to time he would linger under an overhanging tree, where the shade cut the glare and the heat.

  A young boy came shuffling along barefoot in the gravel, dressed in blue denim trousers with denim suspenders, a blue cotton shirt with the collar open, and a cream straw hat with the top broken out. The next farm along the lane had cinder-block silos with silver metal domes. Two girls were turning into the drive, pulling a wagon that held several bags of groceries and their sleepy younger brother. The girls were both attired in rose dresses, laced white aprons, and black bonnets.

  As Branden started a left turn into the Shetlers’ driveway to water the horse, a car horn sounded behind him. He pulled himself across the seat and looked around the side curtains of t
he buggy to see Ricky Niell parking a cruiser in the shade of the berm. Branden pulled back on the reins and set the hand brake. He stayed on the buggy’s seat, and Niell strolled up to the left side. As he wiped the inside of his hatband with a handkerchief, Niell asked, “Hot enough for you?”

  Branden laughed and handed Niell one of his water bottles.

  “Thanks,” Niell said, and set his black and gray summer hat back on his head. He unscrewed the lid, and after several big swallows, Niell said, “That camera’s not going to do you any good, Professor.”

  “I had planned on waiting until they were off a ways, and then using the zoom lens.”

  “All you’ll get is their backs,” Niell said, “or their masks. Anyway, it’s too dangerous for you to ride decoy anymore.”

  “How so?”

  “I need to show you, Professor,” Niell said. “You think you can get that rig back up a hollow? Dirt road most of the way.”

  “I can try.”

  “Maybe you’d better leave it here, and I’ll take you,” Niell said.

  Branden walked the buggy into the drive, asked permission at the house to leave the horse tied up there, and fetched his revolver before getting into the cruiser with Niell and driving off.

  After several turns onto narrow country lanes, Niell pulled up a rise on a weedy track into the woods. He crested a hill beside an overgrown fence line and followed the track through the timber into a little valley, heavily wooded, with large boulders protruding from the floor of the forest. The trail crossed a small stream bed, climbed steeply, and took a sharp turn left before leveling out onto a straight path into the back of the hollow. Niell slowed to a crawl, hit the top lights and siren, and pulled forward cautiously, saying, “I don’t want to surprise anyone out here.”

  After a quarter of a mile, Niell pulled the cruiser over beside a small shed made of dilapidated boards with a flat, rusty tin roof. Niell shut off the engine and nervously tapped the steering wheel. “I’d like to know what you make of this,” he said to Branden.

  Branden and Niell got out and took a walk around the outside of the shed. The walls were covered with graffiti in red and black spray paint. One section of wall displayed a goat’s head inside a pentagram, with “Satan Rules” in bold letters underneath. Other places had what appeared to be the lyrics of twisted songs, heavy metal, Branden thought. One inscription read, “Evil I love.” Another, “God died with Satan.”

  Returning to the front, Branden pushed in on a swinging door and found the inside to be similarly painted with drawings of grotesque animals, heads mostly, with horns. The back wall was carefully decorated in red spray paint with a horned monster, full frame, with claws and gnarled legs.

  The floor was a mixture of dried earth and cinders, and in the middle, a large circle surrounded a triangle, etched into the dirt with lime. In one corner of the triangle, a large post was set firmly into the ground. In a far corner, a mountain bike was propped against a wall, and a goat’s-head mask hung from the padded seat.

  Niell stepped outside first, obviously on edge.

  Branden soon followed and asked, “How did you find it, Ricky?”

  “A kind of triangulation,” Niell said. “I interviewed all of the families who had been robbed in their buggies. Asked which way the robbers came from. Which way they rode off. Whether they made any turns into lanes the folks could see. Then I drew it all up on a map and boxed in an area where they always seemed to come from, or go to. It took another day and a half, but I finally came up this trail and found the thing.”

  “We’ve got something more than misguided teenaged robbers on our hands,” Branden said.

  “I know,” Ricky said. “I’ve got to turn it all over to the captain. This place gives me the creeps.”

  As Niell drove back to the house where Branden’s buggy was parked, neither spoke. When they got out of the cruiser, Niell, in a foul mood, brushed dust off his uniform with a frown. He asked, “You got the Weaver case all figured yet?”

  “Not everything, Ricky,” Branden said and sat again on the buggy’s squeaky seat boards. “Some things don’t fit at all. Bits and pieces, maybe, but not all of it.”

  “Yoder must have shot at Weaver,” Niell said.

  “True,” Branden said. “But until he decides to talk, if he ever does, there’s no way to tell whether he aimed at Weaver or at the horse.”

  “Or at the buggy,” Niell said. “You know. Trying to intimidate Weaver into stopping the land sales.”

  “He had to know the land sales had all been finalized,” Branden countered.

  “All that does is change the motive.”

  “Revenge?” Branden said. He remembered the psych ward, and Yoder’s small frame strapped into his bed, tears welling up and spilling over from his troubled eyes. Pathetic. Knocked over the edge by the death of a horse, from what his parents said. Depression. A suicide watch. “Yoder doesn’t seem the type. We’ve probably got to consider the horse accidental.”

  “OK,” Ricky said, “but you still can’t tell if he wanted old man Weaver dead.”

  “Yoder’s manic-depressive. Bipolar at the very least. Psychotic, too, according to his doctor.”

  Niell shook his head. “Maybe he just wanted to scare Weaver, and with his bad luck, he hit the horse.”

  “Now we’ve got the Satanic angle,” Branden added.

  “You think maybe the two are connected?”

  “Can’t say. I’d be more inclined to think Weaver’s death is somehow connected with the fire at Sommers’s house.”

  “Maybe those kids came back to finish their work,” Niell said. “They once tried to rob him, you know.”

  Branden nodded, but added, “Then Sommers is worse than just missing.”

  “She could have set fire to her own house,” Niell said.

  “Why?”

  “To throw suspicion off her. For the insurance money. Maybe to destroy evidence of her dealings with Weaver.”

  “But she knows we’ve got all of Weaver’s files,” Branden countered.

  “Then where has she gone, Professor?”

  Branden had no answer. “They tell me she shouldn’t have had any business dealings with Weaver at all.”

  “Then that’s her motive for disappearing,” Niell said.

  “She did say she had most of her affairs in order. Had her ‘walking away’ money in hand.”

  “We’re never going to see her again,” Niell asserted.

  Branden’s cell phone rang, and as he answered it, Niell returned to his car and made a radio report.

  Back at the buggy, Niell said, “Ellie says the lieutenant wants me out at Yoder’s house trailer. Jimmy Weston gave them enough for a warrant to search the premises.”

  Branden stared absently at his cell phone and quietly said, “Looks like you were wrong about Sommers, Ricky. We’re going to see her after all. That was Dan Wilsher. They’ve found her in the trunk of Yoder’s car.”

  26

  Monday, August 14

  4:50 P.M.

  STUNNED into silence, Branden mechanically turned the horse. Niell drove off toward Yoder’s home, and Branden returned the buggy to its owners. Once the horse was put up, he stowed his belongings in his trunk, and drove to 515, headed south toward Walnut Creek. He turned west onto 406, which meanders the rocky hillsides along the north edge of the Goose Bottoms. The narrow road turned and rose, dropped and doubled back, following Goose Creek. After two miles or so, he climbed a steep gravel drive into the woods beside the road. The drive curved sharply and came out into a hilltop clearing, where Branden pulled right to let an ambulance pass slowly by, on its way down the hill. When he pulled ahead, he found a brown and blue single-wide mobile home on foundation blocks. There was a rusty metal shed at the left end of the trailer and a carport with a green plastic roof on the right. A small sedan was parked under the carport, its trunk open. A deputy was feathering a dust brush along the front edge of the lid, looking for prints.

  Bra
nden stopped on the drive, some ways back from the trailer, and left the engine running. The ambulance had no need to hurry, he realized. The trunk ahead would be empty. Britta was gone.

  Somehow, he had known it, at least on a certain level, all along. It had been foolish to have hoped otherwise. He had known it since his inspection with Niell of the rest of Britta’s house. Too much clutter there for a woman who had kept so immaculate an office. And had there ever been a good reason to believe she had burned her own house? At best, he had hoped she was hiding for some reason.

  He felt blunted and disoriented, unable to think. He drummed his thumbs compulsively on the steering wheel and fought an impulse to turn his car around and drive home. Her death left him feeling cheated and empty, like when photos of the recently deceased appear at ten-year reunions.

  Slowly, Branden pulled in at an angle beside Niell’s cruiser, in front of the trailer. As he climbed out into the heat, Dan Wilsher appeared in the doorway and waved him inside. Wilsher’s uniform was damp with sweat under his arms and on his chest and back.

  Inside, the short length of the trailer to the right of the door held a kitchen and a round kitchen table with a pink Formica top. Three metal chairs, with seat pads to match the color of the Formica, were pushed up under the table. At the table, Lieutenant Wilsher returned to his task, using forceps to drop long rifle cartridges into an evidence bag.

  “These are 30-06 rounds, Mike,” Wilsher said. “We found them scattered on the table and some down on the floor. We also found J. R. Weaver’s missing 30-06 rifle out back behind some garbage cans. I sent it in for prints and to test-fire a cartridge.”

  “It’s going to match the one Missy found in Weaver’s horse,” Branden asserted without satisfaction.

  “No doubt,” Wilsher said. He waved Deputy Armbruster over to finish bagging the cartridges, and he pulled Branden aside, to a small printer on a stand next to a computer table in the living area that adjoined the kitchen. He used his pen to lift the corner of a sheet of paper in the printer’s out-tray. Branden bent low to read the text on the underside and found it to be a letter addressed to J. R. Weaver. The first lines read: “I’m not going to warn you again. Stop the foreclosures.”