Riverwatcher

by Ronald Weber

  “Willard Stroud will need a formal statement, Billie. But that can probably wait until tomorrow. In the meantime, he needs some preliminary information. You know how men think—that it’s easier talking to another woman.”

  “It is.”

  “Law of averages,” Mercy said, and smiled at her. “Some things they get right.”

  They sat together at the dining table at the end of the galley kitchen. Through the window at the side, Billie could see Burt talking with the sheriff’s deputy beside the patrol car parked at the entrance to the first loop road. When she turned from the window, she realized Mercy was waiting for her, blue eyes looking back beneath a mound of gray-streaked hair. “Please,” she told her. “Ask anything you want.”

  “A small thing is what you called Charlie. Odd Fellow. Stroud wondered about that.”

  “It’s foolish.” Billie resisted an impulse to look away, to look at her hands folded together on the table, to look anywhere other than back into Mercy’s eyes. “Burt and I make up names for people—for the campers—that seem to fit them. It’s a way of passing time. I know it’s foolish.”

  “I don’t think so,” Mercy said. “The name was certainly right for Charlie.”

  “We never used it—not to him. It was just between ourselves. The first day we came as the host couple, Burt found a man already here, staying alone in a tent at the end of the second loop. That seemed odd. We didn’t know his real name, so Burt called him the Odd Fellow. The name slipped out when I was talking to the sheriff.”

  “So it started with Burt—what you called Charlie. But you two eventually learned his name.”

  “He introduced himself to us. After a day or two, he did. He was so polite and pleasant. But it was strange, in a way. We were the host couple, the first for the campground, but he’d been camping here for years. It was as if he was the real host. Burt didn’t know what to make of it.”

  “I remember,” Mercy said. “Burt came into the office, and someone told him the situation. Charlie had been coming to Rainbow Run since it was a no-fee, fisherman-only campground. He was an institution here, someone all the other fishermen knew, so when the campground was reorganized, Charlie was sort of grandfathered in by my predecessor, Cliff Klem. Charlie wasn’t held to the two-week camping limit. He could camp all summer—and hold off on the daily fee and write a check at the end of the season. The only other thing was he had to move to a regular campsite. He couldn’t keep camping back in the wild along the river.”

  “Burt was concerned.”

  “Of course he was. Charlie was an exception to the new rules. But Burt came around, as I recall, once he understood. Charlie could be a big help, given that he knew everything about the campground. And about fishing the river.”

  “Yes,” Billie said, but she knew, the moment she said it, something was wrong. Her tone was.

  “Charlie was always generous with fishing information.”

  “Yes,” Billie said again, but her tone still wasn’t right. From the look in her eyes, she knew that Mercy had noticed. “He was more my friend than Burt’s,” she tried to explain. But putting it that way made it seem that she and Burt disagreed about the Odd Fellow, and that wasn’t so. Yet there was something, still and all. Some . . . difference. She talked with the Odd Fellow about matters other than fishing or the campground, and Burt never did. She considered the Odd Fellow a friend, and she knew Burt didn’t. Didn’t exactly. There was that difference.

  “I don’t mean he and Burt didn’t get along.”

  “Of course you don’t.”

  “That there was ever any unpleasantness. It’s just—”

  “Sure,” Mercy said, “it’s the way you said. You were closer to Charlie than Burt was. Charlie could be a good friend. He had a lot of interests.”

  “Yes,” Billie said.

  “Was there anything in particular the two of you shared?”

  Billie peered at her hands. She wanted Mercy to understand, another woman, and she did. You could tell. But what she had to grasp next was more difficult to put into words, since Billie didn’t fully grasp it herself. “He always had books,” she began.

  “You can say that again. The ladies at the library in town, they all knew Charlie. That’s what you talked about, books?”

  “Not really. It’s just that he was usually reading when I came to see him. That’s what I meant. I didn’t know what the books were about. He’d close the one he was reading when I came.”

  Mercy said, “That’s something else the sheriff wondered about. You came to Charlie’s campsite early this morning. Was there a particular reason for that?”

  “No.”

  Mercy waited for her.

  “I mean, I came every morning. Almost every morning. He was always sitting in a camp chair, with a fire going if it was cool out, smoking his pipe, drinking coffee, reading. He always looked like he’d been up a while, waiting for me. We had coffee together and had a conversation.”

  “Why in the morning?”

  “It was a good time for both of us, I suppose. Burt sleeps late, so I’m quiet in the trailer. It’s a good time to get out, to walk. There aren’t chores yet in the campground. There—”

  Billie stopped herself. She wasn’t being entirely honest. She and the Odd Fellow—she and Charlie Orr—were both morning people, early morning people. That was the only explanation. They were both at their best then, the most alive and alert, qualities they had recognized in one another from the beginning. Billie had wondered, though, how he could be a morning person since he fished late each night. Burt did as well, but he wanted nothing to do with mornings except sleep through them. She herself went to bed early each night, usually just after Burt went out to fish, and had a good rest. That Charlie Orr could fish late and still be a morning person was one of the things, she had known, that would remain a mystery about him.

  “So most every morning you walked from here to the second loop and had coffee with Charlie.”

  “I brought my own.”

  “You had coffee and you talked. And that’s what you were planning on this morning, going to see Charlie while Burt slept in. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And there wasn’t anything unusual about the morning.”

  Billie shook her head. “There was a cleaned trout in the refrigerator, one Burt had caught. I put it in a plastic bag and arranged the bag in the freezer with the others while I was waiting for the coffee to brew. After that I poured a mug and left.”

  “And there wasn’t anything special you wanted to talk with Charlie about? Or he wanted to talk with you about? It was just—conversation?”

  “Yes.”

  “As far as you were concerned, it was a morning like every other?”

  “Yes.”

  “Until you found him.”

  Instantly, tears rose into Billie’s eyes, and this time she couldn’t force them back. She lowered her face into her hands, her shoulders trembling. Mercy reached across the table, touched her arm, massaged it, trying to help. But nothing could. She had to let the tears flow.

  *  *  *

  WHEN SHE EMERGED from the bathroom, water splashed on her face, Billie knew how awful she must look, eyes red and swollen, hair in disarray—not the way a campground host should look in front of a supervisor. She was going to apologize, say how foolish it was to keep crying, but Mercy stopped her before she could say anything.

  “There’s no reason to put you through this. Stroud can wait.”

  “Really,” Billie said, “I’m fine now.”

  “No, that’s enough.”

  Through the window, Billie could see Burt still talking with the deputy sheriff. She blew her nose into a Kleenex, tried to smile, said to Mercy, “I wish you’d stay. It’s better if you do.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes.”

  “Only long enough for a couple more questions. Stroud will want to know if you noticed anything, anything at all different, w
hen you walked to Charlie’s campsite. This morning when you went there. Did anything catch your attention?”

  Billie had already thought about that. In her mind she had gone over everything again and again, discussed everything with Burt, every possible detail. She shook her head.

  “Nothing with the other campers?”

  “I only saw Ordinary People. Another name,” she said when she could see that Mercy was confused. “A young man with a family in a new tent camper—in twenty-four. That’s the campsite number. He was trying to start a fire. His real name is Phillip.”

  “Did you speak with him?”

  “I would have on the way back. I usually did—talk to others—on the way back.”

  “Did Phillip happen to notice you?”

  “He might have. I don’t know.”

  Mercy was quiet for a while, simply looking back at her across the table. Finally she asked if Billie felt she could describe what she saw when she reached Charlie Orr’s campsite.

  “Yes,” Billie said, “I can.” She had noticed something—something strange—right away. Odd Fellow wasn’t there, beside the campfire. And there wasn’t any fire. She could always smell it when she reached the loop road. But there wasn’t any, and the fly of his tent wasn’t open. She thought he must still be sleeping, though that wasn’t like him, not in early morning. So she hesitated. She didn’t want to just walk up to the tent. But it seemed so strange, and she went closer—went under the tarpaulin strung over his picnic table—and that’s when she noticed a faint glow of light coming from inside the tent. She didn’t want to go any closer, not if he was still in there.

  Billie stopped, trying to read the expression on Mercy’s face. “I thought it wouldn’t be right. I might startle him. I would feel so foolish.”

  “Of course,” Mercy said. “He was usually outside when you arrived. Ready for you. So you started to leave?”

  But she hadn’t been able to. It was so strange. She just stood there, under the tarpaulin, until she noticed the angle of the tent. It leaned to the side—as if one of the support ropes had come loose. From the inside he would have noticed, would have come out and done something. But it was so—so still inside. So quiet. Finally she had moved off to the side, all the while looking at the tent, then saw in the sagging wall a perfect pattern of holes. She had stared at them. Only seconds might have passed, but it seemed to be a long time, staring at them, before the holes registered in her mind. A long, terrible time.

  “And then,” she told Mercy, “I threw the coffee mug in the air and began running back to Burt. I was screaming, and he made me stop. Made me tell him what was wrong. Made me say I was sure what I’d seen. Then he called 911 on our cell phone.”

  Mercy waited, very still, before she said, “And what you had seen were the shotgun holes in the tent wall?”

  “Yes.”

  “You never looked inside the tent?”

  “The fly was closed.”

  “You never opened the fly and looked inside?”

  “Oh, no. No.”

  “The holes told you—”

  “And the quiet.”

  “They told you—”

  “That he was probably dead inside.”

  Mercy patted Billie’s hand. “One more question. Did you or Burt hear any gunshots last night?”

  “After I went to bed, all I heard was Burt come back late in the truck. I heard him rummaging around the kitchen before he came to bed. He didn’t say anything that I remember. This morning, afterward, going over everything in our minds, he said he’d heard noise in the night that sounded like firecrackers.”

  “Firecrackers,” Mercy repeated.

  “It’s not unusual. It’s still July, and campers have them left over.”

  “Did Burt tell Stroud about this?”

  “One of the deputies, he did. It could have been the gun he heard, couldn’t it?”

  “But Burt isn’t sure what the sound was?”

  “No, he said it could have even been a dream.”

  *  *  *

  WHEN HE SAW Mercy Virdon leave the fifth-wheeler, Burt Berry came over to her vehicle and waited by the door. “You get what you needed from Billie?” he asked when Mercy arrived.

  “Willard Stroud will want more. I’ll try to hold him off a bit. She isn’t in good shape.”

  “Not so good,” Burt agreed. “She’s never stumbled into something like this.”

  “Who has?”

  “That’s so.”

  Mercy said, “Billie said you heard firecrackers last night.”

  “Maybe I did. Sort of an explosion. Firecrackers were the only things I could think of.”

  “What time?”

  “After midnight, all I could say.”

  “You didn’t do anything?”

  “Well, no. I wasn’t sure I heard ’em for one thing. Another is it happens sort of regular, firecrackers going off here. You get used to it.”

  “So Billie said. But firecrackers that late at night?”

  “People sit up around a campfire, drink beer, get themselves a little snockered. You know how it goes.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Mercy said stiffly, “I don’t. Besides, fireworks are illegal on state land. There’s a sign posted on the bulletin board at the entrance. You know that.”

  “That’s so,” Burt said, and looked away.

  “You’ve got to crack down, Burt. Fireworks could set off a fire out here.”

  “That’s so.”

  “If campers won’t follow the rules, call our office. We’ll crack down.” Mercy stopped abruptly. It wasn’t the time to be lecturing Burt about his duties. “So,” she began again, “you heard what sounded like firecrackers, but you weren’t sure.”

  “Knowing what I know now,” Burt said, “I’d of got up, checked around. Maybe I’d of run into whoever did it. Other hand, maybe it’s luck I didn’t, somebody with a shotgun shooting up tents.”

  “He only shot up one,” Mercy corrected him.

  “Makes you wonder why he picked it. Except maybe he didn’t. Could be he wanted to shoot up something, and it was the first he came to. The campground sign out on the Downriver Road—idiots come by, shoot it up all the time. You wonder whether they pick the sign or they’re just shootin’ anything around.”

  “Random violence,” Mercy said.

  Burt nodded. “That’s the name for it.”

  “And that’s why, after what Billie saw this morning, you didn’t go down to Charlie’s tent to see for yourself?”

  “Didn’t think it wise. Billie’s seen that shot-up sign. She knows what bullet holes look like.”

  “So you did the sensible thing and called 911.”

  Burt nodded. “Only time I ever tried that number.”

  *  *  *

  WHEN WILLARD STROUD saw the Suburban, he left Zack Cox and moved from the campsite to the edge of the loop road, waiting for Mercy. When she stopped, he opened the passenger door, got in beside her.

  “Don’t suppose you brought any smokes.”

  “Information,” Mercy said. “I’ve been talking to Billie and Burt. The deputy up there said you were still here.”

  “Finishing up.”

  “And?”

  “If you mean did we find anything new, no.”

  “You didn’t tell me before about Burt hearing firecrackers in the night.”

  “I didn’t know before he told one of my boys.”

  “Fireworks are illegal on state land. There’s a sign posted at the entrance.”

  “Lots of things are illegal. They still happen.”

  “All right,” Mercy said. “So what do you think?”

  “Your man Berry may have heard the shotgun blasts that killed Charlie. The other campers are being interviewed. We’ll find out what they heard. But what’s it amount to? All it does, someone else heard, is help narrow down the time of the shooting.”

  “Billie didn’t hear anything. All she remembers is Burt coming to bed.
He was out night-fishing.”

  Stroud said, “What else she say?”

  He listened as Mercy went over the conversation. When she finished, he asked her to tell him one thing more. “You the one that picked those people to run the campground?”

  “The parks division in Lansing does. That’s who would-be hosts apply to. I have a veto if I want to use it. Rainbow Run is the only camping area on the Borchard of enough size to qualify for a host couple.”

  “So you know their backgrounds.”

  “Not beyond what the application says. They’ve been here a half-dozen summers, so I’ve gathered a little more.”

  “And?”

  Mercy stared at him. “For God’s sake, Stroud. You suspect Billie and Burt?”

  “Just tell me.”

  “They’re sort of professional campground hosts. Up here in summer, somewhere in Florida in winter. Retired, children grown. They’re nomads. They live year-around in the trailer.”

  “Why?”

  “Why are they nomads?”

  “Campground hosts. Why do that?”

  “Free camping in nice places. That’s the only payoff. And it’s something to do, an activity, and it gets them involved with the campers. Some people are like that. Congenial.”

  “You had any trouble with them?”

  Mercy shook her head. “I have to do a performance review after each season. Couple of sentences for Lansing. I keep saying the same thing: Burt and Billie are perfect for the job.”

  “Except they allow fireworks in the campground.”

  “That’s something we’ve got to work on. Otherwise, I meant.”

  “All right,” Stroud said, “now tell me this. What she said about talking every morning with Charlie. What do you make of that?”

  Mercy tipped her head to the side. “You’re a shrewd old dog, Stroud.”

  “I heard what you didn’t say.”

  “Billie was probably half in love with Charlie, if you want to know. She said it was morning coffee and conversation, but it was more than that. More she doesn’t recognize herself. But so what? I was half in love with Charlie. As Billie saw him, he probably seemed a hundred-and-eighty degrees removed from Burt. Every summer he was here, camped in the same place, willing to have coffee with her and talk. She didn’t have to live with Charlie, which might not have been a walk in the park, a man who camped in a tent all summer and read books all day and went fishing all night. Charlie’s life was one she could dip into, so to speak, and that gave her pleasure. She and Charlie had a friendship.”