Strawman's Hammock

by Darryl Wimberley

  “You remember when Daddy died?” Barrett asked quietly.

  “I remember when your mother killed him,” Pauline answered. “Why?”

  “Like you to run through your paper, see what you wrote. Would have been ’sixty-nine, ’seventy. Somewhere in there.”

  “Somewhere, indeed.” She kept her voice empty of surprise. “Am I looking for anything in particular?”

  Barrett shrugged. “I just never had the facts is all. Nothing except from family, you know. I couldn’t remember anything on my own.”

  “You were locked in a closet,” Pauline said kindly. “According to reports.”

  “Was Hezikiah Jackson mentioned?”

  Pauline regarded him a long moment. “I asked Sue about that, Sue Pridgeon? His father knew the sheriff at the time. There was someone there. She was described as a neighbor, which I did not print partly because I couldn’t get a name and partly because you-all were too isolated to have anything like neighbors. You must know there’ve always been rumors about Hezikiah. She’s practicing voodoo. Aborting babies. Prophecy. That kind of foolishness. But nothing connected with your father.”

  “You mind checking anyway?”

  “Why, Barrett? Do you recall something yourself? Has something—come back?”

  Barrett sorted the freshly printed cards in his hands.

  “Let’s just say I don’t want something hitting me from behind. Will that do?”

  “For now, certainly.” Pauline nodded. “I’ll look over a couple of years, see what we have. If Hezikiah’s mentioned anywhere I’ll pull it for you. How’s that?”

  “Owe you one.”

  “No, no.” She shook her head. “No favors, here. I look up things for people all the time.”

  * * *

  He headed next for Ramona’s. Laura Anne got them a table on the patio. The fresh breeze off the bay was more invigorating than a shower. Barrett breathed deeply. He was tired, but at least he wasn’t weary.

  “You better put a mark on your calendar for Wednesday.” Laura Anne leaned over his ribeye. “Six P.M. And I want you looking nice.”

  “Because?”

  “Because that’s when the investors from Atlanta are coming down to meet us. That’s why. That and a little over four hundred thousand dollars.”

  Barrett’s fork parked in midair.

  “Didn’t realize it was this soon.”

  “Knew you wouldn’t.” Laura Anne dimpled. “Once you get involved in a case, the house could catch on fire and you wouldn’t notice.”

  “But the case is over,” Barrett assured her. “Lou made it official this morning. He’s got Gary. He’s satisfied with the evidence. There’s nothing more I can do.”

  “You don’t look too happy about it.”

  “I’m a perfectionist. Makes me a pain in the ass.”

  “Oooo. Grumpy. Try some of that sweet tea.”

  Barrett gulped the iced tea from a quart-sized glass.

  “Four hundred thousand?”

  “Little over. With points.”

  “‘Points’? You’re sounding like a movie star.”

  “Yo’ mama.” She tossed her head. “Thurman’s got a contract ready to sign. And Barrett—I got a job.”

  “The high school? Teaching?”

  “Yes!” she squealed. “Full-time. Music and math! I start this spring.”

  “Good for you, L.A.!”

  Barrett leaned across the table to kiss her. She stopped him with a finger to his lips.

  “One other thing.”

  “There’s more?”

  “I want you to run for sheriff.”

  Barrett sagged back into his seat.

  “I just took a look at the cards.”

  “And?”

  “That’s cheap enough. But then I’d have to take leave to campaign. It’d cost. Not four hundred thousand…”

  “No.”

  “Prob’ly more like fifteen, twenty thousand.”

  “Make a budget. Stick with it.”

  “I won’t have Linton Loyd’s money.”

  “No.” Laura Anne winked. “You’ll have mine.”

  “You sure, Laura Anne? Last time we talked you didn’t want me running for anything.”

  “You don’t try, you’ll regret it, Bear. And I’ve about decided I don’t want any ‘what-ifs’ hangin’ ’round our heads.”

  “Well, young lady.” Barrett could feel a smile stretching across his face. “With news like this? Seems to me like we need to go home and celebrate.”

  They drove home along the beach. Laura Anne called to make sure that Thelma kept the boys in her trailer for the evening.

  “Coast is clear,” she remarked.

  “Yes, it is,” he replied.

  “Bear!”

  They didn’t make it to the bedroom. Laura Anne jerked a sheet from the wash and tossed it down on the living-room floor. Barrett’s hand snagged in her bra. She laughed.

  “Here.”

  She came out of her blouse and bra in one languid extension of arms and breasts and belly.

  “Homecoming weekend,” she said.

  He kicked out of his slacks, his shorts. He did not need any encouragement. He had been aching hard since they banged through the back door.

  “Oh, God, Barrett!”

  They made love on the living-room floor. Made love again. Then they showered. He lifted her into bed, that mile of golden skin.

  “Gonna sleep good tonight,” she murmured.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “But not just yet.”

  * * *

  When the phone rang at nine the next morning they were still in bed.

  “Ignore it,” Laura Anne said.

  “Betcha,” he mumbled. But then Midge Holloway’s voice scratched chalk over the machine.

  “Bear? You there? I have the final DNA analysis.”

  Barrett stumbled out of bed.

  “I’m here.”

  “You sound like a drunk.”

  “Just woke up.”

  “Get your coffee. Call me back in a half hour.”

  “You’re an angel, Midge.”

  “Recovering alcoholic actually. But close enough.”

  By the time Barrett had showered and spooned his honey into a fresh cup of coffee, Laura Anne was already at the domestic tasks of the day. She threw the sheet from the night before into the clothes hamper.

  “We oughta save that thing for a trophy,” Barrett said as he dialed Midge.

  Laura Anne’s laugh rippled through the house.

  “Midge here.”

  “Barrett.”

  “You sound chipper.”

  “Don’t ruin my day, Midge. It’s started too nice.”

  “No, no. Nothing new here, really. But you were so damned interested in the DNA.”

  “At this moment I could give a shit.” Barrett ran his hand down the back of Laura Anne’s long leg.

  “Too bad. You’re gonna get it anyway. The bottom line is: Gary Loyd’s DNA does not match anything we found in or around Juanita Quiroga. The hair found in Hezikiah’s shack is matched by DNA to the samples we took from his house.”

  “That’s it?” Barrett sipped his coffee.

  “’Bout what we expected, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It just bothers me that we can’t find a match for the semen,” Barrett groused. “At the very least, there’s the possibility Gary had an accomplice.”

  “Well, we’re back to her uncle. The Bull’s DNA did match semen found in the girl and on bedsheets in Hezikiah’s shack.”

  “I know, I know.” Barrett’s reply was sharp.

  “Well, Barrett, if you’ve got a suspect sitting around somewhere who we can match—”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then we are stuck, sweet pea.”

  “Bear—” Laura Anne interrrupted.

  “’Scuse me, Midge. What is it, hon?”

  Laura Anne pulled a shirt from the laundry.

  “I found this buried in your close
t.”

  A stain of chewing tobacco spread like blood from a gunshot wound on Barrett’s white shirt.

  “We need to throw it away. Or burn it.”

  Barrett went pale.

  “Barrett? Bear?”

  “One second, Midge. One second.”

  Barrett cupped the phone.

  “Do not wash that shirt!”

  “It’s ruined!”

  “Do not. And do not burn it, either. Midge—”

  He was back on the phone.

  “Yes, Bear.”

  “Can’t saliva carry a DNA signature?”

  “Depends. For secreters it can. Probably eighty percent of the population.”

  “Keep your fingers crossed. I’ve got another sample.”

  “Make sure you’ve got a warrant to go with it.”

  “Nope.” Barrett shook his head. “I don’t need one.”

  * * *

  The days crawled until Midge came back with the report that confirmed Barrett’s hunch.

  “Son of a bitch, Bear, we got a match. And there’s more.”

  Barrett called Lou Sessions to explain the finding. A call from the sheriff to Judge Blackmond followed. The Judge agreed that Barrett’s new evidence was admissible and directed that Barrett conduct the required interview and arrest. Sheriff Sessions handed Bear a warrant with no comment.

  * * *

  “Come on, partner.” Barrett rendezvoused with Cricket at Shirley’s cafe.

  Close to an hour later they pulled up to the twin construction trailers that were the pride of Linton Loyd’s deer camp. Linton was alone before his homemade gallows. There were no hangers-on this time to attend the compact man’s outdoor dissertations. No sycophants or weekend warriors. Linton was seated on a canvas chair, polishing his rifle’s walnut stock before the carcass of another deer. A pickle bucket brimmed with blood and guts. A pouch of the same chewing tobacco that weeks earlier had stained Barrett’s shirt worked now in Linton’s mouth as if he were a shortstop.

  Barrett approached the armed hunter with Cricket flanking. Loyd did not alter the rhythm of his labor. Did not even acknowledge the presence of the uninvited guests who had invaded his camp.

  “Need to put the rifle aside, Linton,” Barrett directed.

  “Why? You the new game warden?” Linton smiled through his wad.

  Cricket freed the safely of his Clock.

  “Right about now would be a good time.”

  “Shit.” Linton laid his thirty-ought carefully aside. “You boys don’t have nothin’ on me.”

  “Got your Red Man,” Barrett countered. “You spit it all over my shirt, Linton. Remember? That gave me the sample I needed to match your DNA to semen recovered from Juanita Quiroga.”

  Linton chewed reflectively.

  Barrett reached down to collect the rifle.

  “One way or the other you had sex with that girl. And then you got the drips. No big deal. A little clap. But when you went to get that little problem taken care of they took some blood, and next thing you know you’ve got your very private doctor calling to tell you you’re postive for HIV.”

  “Medical records are sealed.” Linton frownd.

  “Your medicine cabinet isn’t,” Barrett countered. “We’ve already been out to the house, Linton. We found the prescriptions. Quite a cocktail. It must have been a kick in the nuts; first you’re taking some simple antibiotics for the clap, then you find out she’s made you HIV positive, and then you find it’s gone to AIDS. It wasn’t too long after that, was it, Linton, that you killed her?”

  Loyd spit carefully into the spitoon offered by the pickle bucket. A stream of Red Man contaminated the deer’s innocent leavings.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Linton Loyd, you are definitely under arrest…” Barrett pulled out the cuffs. “… for the murders of Juanita Quiroga, Hezikiah Jackson, and your son.”

  “I didn’t kill Gary. I didn’t kill anybody.”

  Bear stood him up. “Be careful what you say, you son of a bitch. It will be used in court.”

  * * *

  Thurman Shaw moved to have the evidence of Linton Loyd’s DNA thrown out, even though he knew the motion was doomed. Judge Blackmond informed Thurman Shaw and his client that the sample from the saliva in the Red Man that Linton Loyd voluntarily spit on Bear’s shirt was thoroughly allowable as evidence, as was the evidence gained from the warranted search of Linton’s art deco home. A computer in Linton’s study was loaded with the same PhotoLab software as that found on his son’s hard drive. The files on the father’s Gateway had been deleted, but anyone who could use Norton Utilities could have pulled them up, and the folks at FDLE were considerably more sophisticated than that.

  Experts confirmed that Linton had been producing pornographic material on his personal computer for more than three years. Juanita Quiroga modeled for dozens of those scenarios. She was bound with leather and chains in a variety of locations—motels, deer camps, once even in Linton’s own bedroom.

  Barrett and Cricket Bonet interrogated Linton Loyd in the presence of his feisty attorney. With Thurman Shaw editing his remarks, Linton admitted that he created the BruteMaster site, and admitted sexual relations with Juanita. But that was all.

  “You’re not doing yourself any good, Linton.” Barrett straddled a chair.

  “Aren’t I?”

  “Jury’s not going to sympathize with a man killed his own son.”

  “Thought we were talking about the whore here.”

  “But Gary found out about the whore, didn’t he, Linton? From his foreman, I’d guess. Or maybe he checked it out for himself, drove the Humvee out to that shack. Watched one of your bondage sessions, you and your buddies and Hezikiah having it all over each other. Letting that girl have it over you. The Brute Master.

  “Maybe that’s when Gary knew for sure that his own overbearing, macho daddy—pillar of the community, model citizen, Rotary Club president—was a pervert and a pornographer. And that’s when he made you sign over the straw-baling business, wasn’t it, Linton?”

  “Don’t know what you mean by ‘sign it over.’ It was his business.”

  “Come on, Linton, Gary had no more idea how to make money out of straw than Rapunzel. It was you started that business. It was you made it profitable. But then Gary took a peek at your nightlife and he had you by the balls, didn’t he? ’Cause Gary knew that if your perversions became public, you’d be ruined. Your wife, your political connections, your customers—they’d cut you off in a minute.

  “So he blackmailed you. Your own son. The only way you could shut your little boy’s mouth was to pay him off. That’s how Gary really got into the straw-baling business, isn’t it, Linton? He made you give it to him.”

  “If that’s true why the hell would I have to kill him?”

  “Because at some point pictures weren’t good enough for you, Linton. Each fantasy, no matter how elaborately staged, left you a little disappointed, didn’t it? Maybe even angry. And then that little bitch gave you AIDS, didn’t she, Linton? You made her die slow and hard and you were more than willing to let El Toro take the blame. But Gary knew better. ‘What did he do? What did he do?’ Gary wasn’t talking about the Bull at all that day at the trailer, was he Linton? He was talking about you.

  “And once he knew, you couldn’t trust him to shut up, could you? Not for all the straw in the world. So you met him out on the boat. Little father-to-son talk. You got him drunk. You got him distracted. And then you killed him.”

  “That’s conjecture, Barrett,” Thurman Shaw attempted to intervene. “Be nice to see some kind of proof.”

  “All right.” Barrett turned again to Linton. “Where do you get your balers welded and repaired, Linton?”

  “What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?”

  “Rolly Slade does your work, doesn’t he? Probably only a handful of folks go in there can get past Rolly’s dog, but you could, couldn’t you, Linton? That dog’d come to you jus
t like a puppy.”

  “I like rottweilers.” Linton cracked a grin. “And whores. No crime in that.”

  “No crime giving a dog a bone. But now you start chaining up little girls for him to gnaw, the court gets entirely unsympathetic.”

  “Last time I cuffed that girl on anything she was giving her uncle a blow job through a rubber. Son of a bitch was eat up with clap, she blowed him anyway. Hell, you got the pictures.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Not a law in the world against taking pictures.”

  “That the way Elizabeth sees it, Linton?” Cricket chimed in. “Your wife? The woman who made you, saved you, backed you … bailed you out! How’s she feel about your small perversions? One more reason for you to kill your son; maybe Gary was set to tell Lizzy what Daddy did nights. Or maybe he just saw what you were doing with Rolly’s dog.”

  “Kiss my ass.”

  Barrett threw a photo onto the table. Not a digital photo, but a fast-filmed glossy displaying Hezikiah Jackson, naked from the waist down and hanging from her back porch.

  “Easy enough to get Gary on the water, wasn’t it, Linton? Get him drunk and put a bullet through his head. Fit the gun into your son’s hand, discharge another round so there’d be grains of powder consistent with suicide. But Gary wasn’t the only one knew what you did to that girl. Hezikiah Jackson knew, too.

  “Hezikiah was treating El Toro for his disease, we know that. We found strands of Juanita’s hair in her kitchen. And I saw Hezikiah’s potion pot planted in one of your scenarios. Did she participate, Linton? Or on the day you turned Rolly’s dog on your little whore, while you were busy with your pictures, did you look up to see her standing at the window?”

  For the first time Linton squirmed in his chair.

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “No? You mean you killed a whore, killed your son, but an old beat-up nigger woman, she just wasn’t enough sport? Give me a break, Linton, we know you were out there!”

  “I believe this little talk’s about over.” Thurman Shaw muzzled his client. “You got a lot of smoke, Barrett. But it’s all circumstantial.”

  “A jury will see those pictures, Thurman,” Barrett promised. “If you want to take a chance on what they will conclude from that—! Then have at it.”

  “He cain’t prove a thing. Can he?”

  Barrett leaned into Linton’s handsomely lined face.