Buffalo Bill's Defunct (9781564747112)

by Simonson, Sheila

  WILLIAM (“Digger”) Meek had been booked in Montana for simple assault the previous April. He had since disappeared from sight. The Kalispell detective who phoned Rob said Meek’s girlfriend had refused to file charges.

  They talked awhile. Meek was a known associate of half a dozen white supremacy groups, but not a mover and shaker. He had once had the shit beaten out of him by a Colville tribal leader who heard him boast of grave robbing. Nobody involved in that episode, not even Meek, had been willing to file charges. He had spent six months in jail for an earlier assault. In his younger days, he had been fined repeatedly for possession of amphetamines. He was forty-nine years old. The Kalispell detective was sending fingerprints and an old photograph.

  Some of these details Rob already knew, but he was glad to have confirmation. The connection with Lauder Point was tenuous, though, no more nor less than Chief Thomas’s word. The Fish Commission investigator had sent an e-mail confirming that they hadn’t been able to prove anything against Meek.

  Rob brooded about the pothunter as he rode to the hospital with Tom in Tammy’s car. What was needed was a connection between Meek and Harold Brandstetter. Maybe Tammy would give it to him.

  He waited for Linda Ramos outside the two-bed room while Tammy shed a few audible tears behind the privacy curtain and Tom said nothing much. Busy care-givers stalked the halls, some pushing carts laden with sinister containers or stacked linens. The reek of disinfectant hung on the air. Rob hated hospitals.

  When Linda showed up, she looked tired. “My Mickey threw up all night.” Mickey was her five-year-old son, Miguel.

  “Good God, have you taken him to the doctor?”

  She gave him the pitying smile of an experienced mother. Mickey was on the road to recovery in the care of his abuela, she said, but she was exhausted. Not surprising. Besides dealing with a sick child, she had just moved over to the day shift.

  Rob commiserated. He also filled her in on the latest developments. When she heard about Dennis Wheeler’s keys, she scowled. When she heard that Meg was busy sorting papers and books in a quasi-official role, she laughed aloud. “I like her. She was too polite to ask dumb questions while we searched the house.” She gestured toward the hospital ward. “What about this one?”

  Rob glanced at his watch. “We give her five minutes, then we wring her dry.” He handed Linda the recorder. “Always assuming she doesn’t demand a lawyer.”

  “The son is here?”

  “Our dog-sitter,” Rob assured her.

  Linda grinned.

  Tom came out almost at once, said hello to Linda, and told them his mother was getting dressed. He’d brought her clothes and makeup.

  “Is she okay?” Rob asked.

  Tom made a face. “I guess so. It’s hard to tell. She wants me to stay in Klalo for a while.”

  “Can you do that?”

  He shrugged. “My boss won’t like it, but it’s not as if I’ve got a high-end job.”

  “You going to college?” Linda asked.

  He flushed. “I’m taking a class at the Culinary Institute. I want to be a chef.”

  Linda gaped.

  Rob said, “Good idea.” He tried to imagine how Hal would have reacted to a son who devoted himself to the perfect soufflé. Maybe that was the point. Maybe Hal had reacted and Tom had left.

  When Tammy was finally ready to receive them, Rob wondered if he’d been wise to wait. She was composed and almost confident. The shiner gleamed purple beneath a coat of pink makeup base. He sent Tom off to wait in the hospital cafeteria.

  He introduced Linda, who set up the recorder on the formica top of the bedside table, pulled a chair from beside the untenanted bed, and took out her notebook. She always made useful notes on visceral responses—eye dilation, clenched muscles, color rising and falling. She also indicated which questions she thought ought to be repeated.

  Rob remained standing as he went through the preliminaries. When he read Tammy the Miranda Warning, she said she didn’t want a lawyer.

  She was sitting in the “death-watch” chair with the pale light of day shining on her from the side. She wore pull-on pants and a flowered top. Her dim brown hair was neatly combed, but she needed a haircut. She kept her hands folded on her lap.

  “I’m sorry to have to question you, Tammy.”

  She inclined her head, self-possessed, forgiving.

  “Tell me about Friday. When did you go to work?”

  Her eyes widened, or the good one did. He’d surprised her. He was ready to bet she had meant to tell him she couldn’t remember anything.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “I have a four-day week. Hal wanted it that way. On Fridays, I shop for the next week at Safeway and the bakery.”

  “And the liquor store?”

  Her jaw set. “And the liquor store. Three fifths of vodka, two jugs of Collins mix, and a bottle of Jim Beam. Want the receipt? I have it here.” She tapped her handbag. “Hal always checked the liquor store receipt.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” And the clerk’s word. “Did you come straight home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was Hal there?”

  “He’d got up. He wanted lunch.” She snorted. “Two Hungry Man dinners and a quart of chocolate chip mint ice cream. Same thing every day. He was easy to shop for.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I made myself a sandwich and a drink—vodka Collins. Then I stuck the dishes in the washer and set up for dinner. I laundered some clothes.”

  “Where was Hal?”

  “In his office. He had DSL and spent a lot of time on the Internet.” She shut her eyes briefly, opened them, and said, “We were going out after dinner to the Timberland Tavern. I called my friend Betty Krause to see if she and her husband would be there. I don’t like the Timberland on Friday and Saturday. It’s too rowdy. Betty wasn’t in, so I left a message. Hal hates, uh, hated Betty. When I hung up he started in on me.”

  Rob waited.

  “He slapped me around.” She touched her black eye and went on, toneless, “I made myself another drink. When I worked up the courage, I said I didn’t want to go out, that I’d stay at home and watch a movie on the DVD. He slapped me around some more, but we were interrupted.”

  Rob waited. He half sat on the second bed. Outside, an orderly pushed a metal cart heaped with soiled linens. The RA. system called a doctor in hospital code.

  Tammy shot Rob a sideways look out of the good eye. “Somebody called on the cell phone.”

  “Who?” He kept his voice unemphatic with an effort.

  She shrugged. “No idea. A man. Hal went into his office and didn’t come out.”

  “What time was that?”

  She shrugged again. “Midafternoon. I fixed the pot roast and had another drink.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “I dunno. I was pretty foggy by then. I served dinner around six-thirty. He hogged it down, as usual, and then he complained about it, as usual, and somewhere in there he gave me a black eye. Oh, yeah, that was after he went into the backyard to check on the weather. He got a faceful of rain and stepped on a dog turd.”

  Linda shifted in her seat and made a note.

  “He yelled at me to walk the dog. Then he left.”

  “In the SUV?”

  “Of course in the SUV. Hal weighed three hundred and twenty-two pounds. You think he could fit into my Toyota? I shoved Towser out the front door, climbed into my night clothes, and got some ice for my eye and the vodka bottle. You know the rest.”

  “The timing’s confusing me. When did he leave?” Rob stood again, walked to the foot of the bed, and turned back.

  “I wasn’t looking at the clock.”

  “After dark?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “He may have. I wasn’t listening.” She bit her lip. “Portland. He said something about driving to Portland.”

  “Where in Portland?” It was a
n hour-and-a-half drive to reach Portland Airport, another half hour to downtown. If Hal had left before eight… “Where?” he repeated.

  “I don’t know.” She drew a long, shaky breath. “After you showed up with Towser and the short woman, I dived into the bottle. I don’t remember anything after that. I was drunk, so sue me.”

  “You were beyond drunk.” Rob could’ve bitten his tongue. The censorious tone was not useful. And not fair.

  “I think Sheriff McCormick came by here last night, but I was still pretty muzzy. Is Hal really dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you, Jesus.”

  Rob rolled his eyes at Linda. “Are you sure you don’t want a lawyer, Tammy?”

  “Absolutely. I didn’t kill Hal, but I’d like to give the man who did a big, spitty kiss.”

  “The man? What man?”

  She shrugged. “Man, woman, whoever.”

  Rob decided to come back to that later. “Tell me about Hal’s friends.”

  “Hal didn’t have friends, he had toadies. Sycophants.” She smiled a gentle smile. “Hey, yesterday I couldn’t have pronounced sycophant.”

  “His associates, then.”

  “Hal was a bully. That’s a funny word, bully. Bully for you. It sounds sort of harmless.” Her hands began working, clenching the loose fabric of her tunic.

  “He could be intimidating.” As soon as he made the banal remark Rob wished he hadn’t. The woman had been beaten routinely.

  However, she went on, her face as serene as if he had not spoken, “A bully is not just intimidating. A bully enjoys watching intimidated people crawl to him. A bully gets off on hurting people. A bully has no soul.” She leaned toward him, very earnest, hands pleating the fabric. “This country is run by the bullies, of the bullies, for the bullies. Listen to our so-called foreign policy. Look at the mentality of business leaders. Listen to rap lyrics. Watch a football game.”

  “You didn’t agree with Hal’s political ideas?”

  “He had slogans, not ideas.” Her lip curled and she leaned back in the chair. “And all the wannabe bullies clubbed together to make him a county commissioner. I got drunk for a week after that election.”

  “As I recall, he had strong backing in the Sport Fishermen’s Association.”

  She nodded. “And the gun clubs and the loggers and every tavern between here and The Dalles, plus the preachers who were disappointed when the world didn’t end on January first of that year, and at least two talk show hosts. You want me to name names?”

  “Yes.”

  She did. They discussed Hal’s supporters, but there were no surprises. The board of county commissioners was nonpartisan. Neither major political party had endorsed Hal, nor had the unions.

  Commissioners were paid only a token salary, so they had independent sources of income or they didn’t run. They tended to be lawyers or real estate developers. Some fools had seen Brandstetter’s unexpected victory as a refreshing change. It was a change, all right.

  When she wound down, he said, “Where did Hal get his money?”

  “For the campaign?”

  “For that and in general.”

  “He got some funds from right-wing action groups for travel and advertising. The gas station’s in a good place for tourists, so it’s profitable. He paid a manager to run it but stayed in the black, and then there was my income.”

  A nurse’s aide stuck her head in the room, said oops, and withdrew. Linda flipped a page in her notebook.

  Rob said, “You’re a freelance bookkeeper?”

  “I’m a good bookkeeper. I have clients here and in Two Falls. Hal was always pushing me to take on more.” She gave a sharp, unamused laugh. “I kept the books for half the small businesses in town, but Hal wouldn’t let me look at our finances. He gave me a fucking allowance. I don’t even know if he had life insurance. Probably not. He thought he was immortal.”

  Rob remembered Hal’s computer, still to be accessed. “What did he use, Quicken?”

  “Yes. Password ‘Perot.’”

  Rob suppressed a grin. “As in H. Ross?”

  “He thought I didn’t know it. The sucker wrote his passwords down, kept them in the family Bible, the one in German that he couldn’t read. Not that he wanted to. At least he wasn’t religious.” She said that dispassionately, as if Hal’s religious sentiments would have been another blow but not a serious one.

  Though Rob would have figured the passwords out eventually, knowing them would speed things up. “You didn’t access his computer at all?” He found that hard to believe.

  “I showed him how to use the computer when he first got it.” Her voice took on a ragged edge. “After that, I didn’t enter the room. He told me if I did, he’d kill Tommy. He would have, too.” Her hands twisted.

  Linda drew a breath.

  Rob turned the revelation over in his mind. It was sickening but plausible. It also gave Tammy a strong maternal motive for murder, stronger than self-defense.

  Linda shifted again on her chair, jotted another note. In the hall, two people held a brief conversation and the P.A. system crackled with code.

  “I use a laptop for business,” Tammy was saying in dull, mechanical tones. “I sit at the kitchen table when I have to bring my work home.”

  Rob nodded and stopped the recorder. He flipped the cassette over, reinserted it, and pressed Record. “Did Hal have other sources of income?”

  “Sometimes he was flush. I never figured that out. He gambled, mostly poker, and he used to cackle about ways to cheat the 1RS. He hated income tax. That’s why we live here.” Washington has no state income tax. Oregon does.

  “Any other sources of money?”

  Tammy’s forehead creased with concentration. “There were the swap meets. He liked swap meets. He bought and sold guns for cash. And vintage cars, through the station.”

  Bingo. “Did he do any pothunting?”

  “Like digging up Indian burial grounds? No. He had friends who did when he was a kid, and his father collected arrowheads. Hal got those when the old man died.”

  “You’re sure he didn’t go out prospecting for pots?”

  “Can you imagine Hal hiking?”

  “With difficulty.”

  She gave a small snort of laughter, genuine this time. “Hal could talk sports like nobody’s business, but he never did anything to keep in shape after he left school.”

  He’d been the star center of the Klalo High School football team, if Rob remembered correctly.

  Tammy said, “I was hoping he’d have a heart attack.” The P.A. system paged Dr. Rowland.

  Rob rubbed the spot between his eyebrows where a headache threatened. “Did Hal know any pothunters?”

  “One of his cronies made money selling arrowheads and thunder eggs, but I haven’t seen him around lately.”

  Rob held his breath.

  She shook her head. “I can’t think of his name. Bill something.”

  Rob opened his mouth to say William Meek, closed it with a snap, and waited. No leading of witnesses. When she didn’t say anything more, he ventured, cautious, “Did the man have a nickname?”

  “Besides Bill? I don’t think so. God, that must’ve been ten years ago, before Hal got respectable. They used to sit in the backyard with a case of beer and chant politically incorrect names for all the people they hated, which was anybody not male and not white. All women were cunts and bitches except for the few who were feminazis.”

  “Do you remember what Bill looked like?”

  “Scrawny and short. I’d recognize him but he’s hard to describe—hair-colored hair, mean little eyes. He wore jeans with a big cowboy buckle.” She shook her head again.

  Rob decided to wait until the Kalispell photograph arrived before he pressed her, but he began to feel optimistic. Two nurses walked past the room in jocular conversation. A phone rang three times.

  Rob shifted gears. “Did Hal associate with Dennis Wheeler?”

  “Dennis? One o
f the toadies. Dennis thought Hal was some kind of prophet.” Tammy frowned. “I haven’t seen him hanging around much in the past year, though. Maybe Darcy straightened him out. Dennis is a blowhard, but she calls the tune. Lucky Darcy,” she added, bitter.

  “What about the other neighbors?”

  She shook her head, no. “The girls across the street thought Hal was funny at first, but that didn’t last long. He despised women, and they must’ve caught on. The Iversons next door to them are Democrats, real liberal. They once had a Kerry sign in their yard. Hal snuck out and knocked it down a couple of times, but Mrs. Iverson put it back up. She keeps calling Animal Control when Towser runs loose.”

  “That has to stop, Tammy.”

  She looked down at her clasped hands. “I know. Tommy will exercise him on the leash. I can’t anymore, he’s too strong for me. I would’ve kept him in the yard, but Hal enjoyed letting Towser out into the street, stirring people up, especially Jim Browning. Jim’s a retired Marine, you know, and Hal tried to recruit him.” Her mouth quirked. “Jim told him to fuck off.”

  Rob glanced at his watch. Ten-thirty. The doctor would be showing up soon. “Okay, Tammy. Let’s go through it again.”

  She made a face but didn’t resist. He let Linda ask the questions while he considered what he’d learned. The phone call was crucial. They had found Hal’s cell phone in his coat pocket. There would be a record of that phone call and others. Rob wanted to get on it, and on the trip to Portland. Where in Portland? The city sprawled. He wished he didn’t have to interview the Tichnors that afternoon.

  When Linda came to a pause, he said, “Did Hal know Emil Strohmeyer’s grandsons, Tammy?”

  Tammy looked bewildered. “Well, yeah, both of us knew them. We hung out together summers when we were little kids, a bunch of us. Carol, too. I guess you were too young to join in. Hal grew up in the house we live in now. I lived over on Alder. We played kick the can.”

  Rob had not come to live with his grandparents until he was nine. Hal, Tammy, and the three Tichnors would have been in high school by then, maybe college. Odd that neither Vance nor Carol had said anything about Hal’s death.

  “When did they stop spending their summers in Klalo?”