Past Dying (The Alan Graham Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “Now, if my deputy can go, I think he’s a little worse for the wear.”

  We were back in the parking lot, standing beside Jeff’s Bronco, before he spoke again. “Goddamn, Alan. I gave you the credentials to get Chaney off your back. I didn’t know you’d start pretending to be a real deputy.”

  “I didn’t plan to.”

  “You should’ve called me when Hightower called you last night. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Bad move,” I agreed. “Lucky you were close enough to come here and bail me out”

  “Damn straight,” Jeff swore. “Well, what do you make of it?”

  “Sounds like Hightower was involved with Jacko in some kind of antique stealing ring,” I said. “And Jacko’s killer decided it was too dangerous to leave him alive.”

  “That’d be my guess, too. That’s why I want to be at High-tower’s place when the locals search it. So where to now for you?”

  I looked at my watch. It was barely eleven and the crew would be finishing up the week at the dig. Sam’s operation was already under way. There was nothing I could do back home, and I dreaded the wait at the hospital.

  “Maybe I’ll drive over to Lordsport,” I said.

  “Okay. I got a few more things to do here with these boys and I’ll be along. But Alan …”

  “Yeah?”

  “Keep all this under your hat for now. And for God’s sake try not to find any more bodies.”

  I ate at the Sonic in Ferriday, in no hurry to get to Lordsport. My mind wasn’t on archaeology and I knew that if I went to the excavation I’d only blunder around aggravating the ultra-meticulous David. Better to stay out of the way.

  I approached the bridge and slowed as I saw a line of cars waiting. The middle of the bridge was lifted to allow a barge through, and I gazed absently at the little square bridge tender’s cabin nested among the girders. It was the first time I’d seen the bridge raised and I hadn’t realized what a traffic jam it created. As I waited my eyes wandered over to the lonely little shack of Jeremiah Persons. If I could find Jeremiah, maybe he’d have some ideas. Where had Mayor Stokes said he was from? Winnfield? Tallulah? The mayor hadn’t been sure but something stuck in my mind, if I could just get it free …

  The center of the bridge began to go down and two minutes later the cars ahead of me started forward. I saw the bridge tender coming down the ladder as I passed and wondered idly if he got paid by the barge.

  I rolled down the west side of the bridge, passed the old white Methodist church on the left, and slowed for the curve by the courthouse. A couple of orange-suited prisoners were picking up trash from the courthouse lawn, and I involuntarily slammed on the brakes as I recognized Luther Dupree.

  I pulled in at the food mart and walked over.

  “Luther, what in hell?”

  The little man shrugged: “It’s that game warden, Mr. Pope. I told you, he’s been after me ever since I beat him in court on that fishing thing. This time he’s claiming I poached a deer from the preserve. Hell, I don’t have to go to no damn preserve for a deer; they’re all over the place. Look, Mr. Alan, if you could talk to the judge …”

  I threw up my hands and walked away. Now I especially didn’t want to go to the excavation. I’d hear enough when I got back to Baton Rouge. I felt sorry for Alice Mae, but I could only go so far …

  I looked at my watch again. Just after noon. Maybe I could get Pepper at the university. I punched in the number on my cell phone, but after four rings the departmental secretary came on and told me Dr. Courtney wasn’t in. I tried my own office then and Blackie answered.

  “Anything happening?”

  “No, the firemen did a good cleanup.”

  “What?”

  “Joke.”

  “Asshole. Any word on Sam MacGregor?”

  “I heard he was sick. Is that true?”

  “Where’s Marilyn?”

  “At lunch. Oh, there was one call for you.”

  “Yes?”

  “David. He was pissed. Something about a game warden taking away last night’s supper before they could eat it.”

  “Goodbye.”

  I put away the phone and sat quietly in the Blazer, thinking. I had time on my hands. Jeff Scully was headed up to Port Gibson, and that would take the rest of the day. I wondered what I’d find if I went back to his cabin?

  EIGHTEEN

  I drove back over the bridge and turned onto 621 at Stanton, winding along the side of the game preserve until I reached the narrow gravel road that led to Jeff Scully’s cabin. A mile off the blacktop was an iron pipe gate, and I parked at the side of the road.

  On Monday, when Luther and I had come through on foot, the gate had been open. I hadn’t asked Jeff about that. I examined the heavy lock, then climbed over the bars and dropped into the drive.

  The cabin looked the same as it had before, only then I’d been too shaken to examine it. I had only impressions, and I wasn’t sure whether coming here now would reinforce or destroy them. In fact, I wasn’t sure what I expected to find here at all.

  I went up the drive toward the porch, acutely conscious of the fact that anyone with a rifle could pick me off from either the house itself or the sides of the clearing. But there was no sound besides my feet crunching the gravel. I stepped onto the porch and bent to look in through one of the front windows. My breath fogged the glass and I wiped it with my hand. The interior was dark and all I could see was a couch, some chairs, and a fireplace. I went to the front door and tried it but it was locked.

  I straightened and walked around to the back, studying the ground. There’d been no rain in the last few days, and in the bare spot behind the woodshed I saw the marks of raccoon, deer, and a wolf or large dog. But there were no shoe prints.

  That meant that when the deputies had come to check out the shooting, they hadn’t looked too hard behind the house. Maybe, because the land belonged to the sheriff, they hadn’t looked too hard anywhere.

  I tried the back door but it, too, was locked. I went to each window in turn, and on the north end of the house I found that when I pulled up on the windowpane, the window moved upward, leaving a space just large enough to slip through.

  I reached inside, then stopped: What was I thinking? This was Jeff’s house and he trusted me. What kind of a friend would I be to break into his place in his absence? Guilt flooded me and I eased the window back down.

  Without going through the contents of the cabin, there wasn’t likely to be much to find up here. Unless I went back to the hole that poor Berry Capshaw had dug in the hills.

  I walked to the rear of the clearing and found the trail Luther and I had used. A few minutes later I was passing the POSTED signs that indicated Jeff’s property and confronting new ones that said INTERNATIONAL PAPER.

  It was chilly, though not as cold as the first time I’d been here. The sky was light gray with scudding clouds, and when I sniffed I thought I could smell rain.

  I hurried my pace, wondering what excuse I’d give if somebody surprised me back here.

  But why did I have to worry? I had the credentials Jeff had given me. I was a duly appointed officer carrying out an investigation.

  Okay, Graham, just keep believing that and see how long you stay alive.

  The clearing was just ahead and I made my way to the edge of the hole and looked down into the pit.

  Calvin Capshaw had been right: His son had been a fool. Only a fool would troop up here with a shovel and dig a hole that yielded nothing but gravel. All for the mythical Bowie silver.

  I stepped back and walked around the clearing, eyes on the ground. Maybe someone had dropped something. Maybe I’d find another peso fragment. Maybe …

  But after ten minutes of searching I turned up nothing but a cellophane cigarette pack cover. I went back to the hole and stared down again. I wondered how far Berry Capshaw would have dug if he hadn’t been run off. How far is far enough when your head’s filled with dreams of wealth?

 
; A branch cracked behind me and I turned. As I did, my foot slipped and I felt myself tottering on the edge of the hole. Earth and gravel cascaded away under my feet and I reached out, barely righted myself, and managed to leap away from the edge.

  I looked in the direction of the sound but there was only a squirrel, complaining noisily from a limb ten feet up.

  I was sweating now, and I realized I was in no state to be walking alone in the woods. Finding Hightower had unnerved me, and though I’d come here to try to clear my head, I was still too jittery to know what I was doing. And falling into a ten-foot hole was the last thing I needed.

  A raindrop spattered the ground in front of me, and I felt another on my arm. In the distance I heard the rumble of thunder.

  I hurried back down the trail, aware that the air was growing darker. Jeff’s cabin watched me with hollow eyes as I passed. The rain was driving now in a steady patter. I came to the gate and pulled myself over, feet slipping on the steel bars. I dropped safely onto the other side and grabbed the top of the gate for support. My eyes settled on the gatepost, where a smudge of blue paint overlay the aluminum, waist high. I hadn’t noticed it before and now, despite the rain, I considered it for a long ten seconds. Then I went back to the Blazer, backed up far enough to turn around, and headed back to Lordsport.

  By the time I reached town there was a full scale thunderstorm under way, with yellow bolts of lightning forking overhead and leaves flying by on the wind. I pulled in at the courthouse and ran in the back way, past the sheriff’s office, taking the elevator to the second floor. I went into the clerk’s office, where the conveyance books were arrayed on tables to the left, with a counter to the right. The young black woman on duty smiled as I came in shaking off the raindrops.

  “Nasty, isn’t it?” she said.

  I smiled back, nodded, and went to the books.

  By the time they closed I had the chain-of-title for the land where Berry Capshaw had dug his hole.

  I thanked the attendant, who asked if I was really going to leave in this storm. I told her I was that crazy and took the elevator back down. Five minutes later, with my clothes dripping, I stopped in the camp drive and ran inside.

  The crew was gone for the weekend and I had the place to myself. For a long time I sat quietly in the dark, listening to the thunder crash outside. Finally, I reached for the phone to call Pepper. There should be definite word on Sam now.

  I tried my house in Baton Rouge. After four rings I heard my own voice saying to leave a message so I said where I was and asked Pepper to call with a report as soon as possible. I apologized for staying over, but explained that I didn’t want to drive in a storm, after dark.

  I turned on the light, got out my notebook, and began to go over what I’d found out.

  The land in question was part of a four-hundred-and-thirty-five acre tract owned by International Paper. In 1940, however, two hundred acres had been sold to I.P. by one Abner Corvin. The other two hundred and thirty-five acres had been formed from seven or eight smaller holdings bought over the years from different individuals. Ignoring the smaller tracts, I’d followed the larger holding through a series of successions to 1870, when it had passed, at a sheriff’s sale, from the widow of a man named Harold McElwain. Like many in the aftermath of the Civil War, she’d been unable to pay the taxes. But the McElwains had owned the tract for over a third of a century, ever since the day, in December 1833, that title passed from one James Bowie to one Martin McElwain, for one thousand dollars. And Bowie’s title had been confirmed by the General Land Office, on the basis of a Spanish grant purchased for fifteen hundred dollars from the original grantee, a man named Josiah Loomis.

  Two things stood out: If Bowie had fabricated the title and forged the name of Loomis (or invented him altogether, which some of the records suggested he had with other titles), then the fraud had gone undetected. But secondly, if he had bought the land to salt with silver, he’d failed miserably, because he sold it for less than he’d paid.

  I put aside the notebook and went back to the telephone. This time Pepper answered.

  “It’s storming,” I said. “I can’t get out tonight.”

  “I saw the weather on the news. Best for you to stay put,” she agreed.

  “What’s the news on Sam?”

  “He’s in the coronary surgery unit now. That’s where they put you after a bypass. If everything goes well he’ll be back in a regular room in a couple of days. The first forty-eight hours are the most important: There’s always the chance of a stroke.”

  “I wish I could be there. But there’s been a complication besides the weather.” I told her about Hightower. “Somebody must’ve been afraid he was going to spill his guts.”

  “Lord,” she breathed. “I don’t guess there are any suspects yet.”

  I thought of Jeff, just a few minutes away from the crime scene when they’d called, and thirty miles outside his jurisdiction. “No.”

  “Will you be okay there at the camp?” she asked. “Should you go stay with Jeff?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m fine here,” I assured her. “Snug as a bug.”

  “And if the river goes over the banks?”

  “Never happen,” I said.

  “And you once accused me of being reckless.”

  “That was when you wanted to take a fifteen-foot boat into the Mississippi River to look for that Tunica boy.”

  “Seems like a long time ago,” she said. “Yeah.”

  Silence, then: “I wish you were back here.”

  “I wish I was, too. But I’ll leave as soon as it’s light. The rain should pass through tonight.”

  “Don’t leave the doors unlocked, and for God’s sake don’t find any more bodies.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  I hung up the phone and was wondering what there was in the house to read when the power went out.

  For a long minute I sat in the darkness, listening to the rain pelt the roof. It was chilly inside the old house, so I felt my way to the space heater and then realized I needed a match. I blundered into the kitchen area, feeling my way through the cabinets until I located a box of matches. I lit one and made my way to the heater. I turned on the jet, stuck the burning match into the grate, and was reassured by a whoosh as the heater lit. I did the same thing with the heater in the main bedroom.

  I checked the bedroom window, made sure there was two inches of space between the bottom of the window and the sill, and then went back into the living room. I could call Jeff, see if he’d found anything in Port Gibson. That is, if he was back.

  Or did I have another reason for wanting to talk to him? Was it to see if he said something that would put an end to my suspicions, provide some explanation for why he’d been across the river in Mississippi this morning and who he’d been seeing on the sly if it wasn’t Carline Flynn?

  I lifted the receiver and put it to my ear, but the line was dead.

  I thought of running out to get my cell phone from the Blazer but the rain was unremitting. For tonight, then, I was isolated. I decided to turn in early.

  NINETEEN

  When I awoke the atmosphere was chill, as it had been on those long-ago school mornings of my youth. As I snuggled under the covers, vaguely aware of the gray dawn pressing against the window, I had the temporary sensation that I was still in the fifth grade, in the old house on Park Boulevard, waiting for my father to come up the stairs and tell me that this was the final call. I stretched and the sensation dissipated. I sat up slowly, my skin prickling from the chill. The rain had stopped but there was still a dripping outside, from the trees and eaves. I padded over to the heater, turned it up, and then went into the front room and did the same.

  I’d had strange dreams again last night, but I couldn’t remember what they were. I knew I’d woken up once, sweating, and shouted into the darkness.

  I washed up and found some eggs and bacon and half a carton of orange juice. By the time I’d finished breakfast and wash
ed the dishes it was seven-thirty. I tried the telephone. The earpiece emitted a dial tone. Next I opened the front door and looked out. Water was standing in the yard but there was no sign the river had spilled over its banks. Mainly just a godawful mess for the crew when they came back Monday and had to pump out their excavation units.

  If I left now I could be home just before ten. I’d have most of my weekend in front of me and I could check on Sam at the hospital. I threw on my jacket and was starting out the door when I heard the sound of tires on the gravel drive, looked up, and saw Jeff’s Bronco. He got out, clapping his hands together and blowing out clouds of vapor.

  “I wondered if I’d catch you,” he said. “I called last night but the lines were down.”

  “I’m headed back to Baton Rouge,” I said. “Unless there’s something up here I’m supposed to do.”

  Jeff shook his head. “Nothing that comes to mind. Look, Alan, I appreciate what you’ve done so far. If I’d known what was going to happen with Hightower, I wouldn’t have involved you.”

  “A typical day in the life of an archaeologist,” I said. “It’s just that the dead people I generally deal with have been dead a little longer.”

  “Right.” He shook his head. “I was looking at the coroner’s preliminary report on Hightower. Twenty-five knife wounds, nine inches deep, with a blade an inch and a half wide. Somebody did everything but skin the poor bastard.”

  “Well, at least I’m not the one who had to count the knife wounds.”

  “That’s two of us.” He stuck out a hand. “Well, thanks again.”

  “Sure. By the way, was there anything interesting at High-tower’s shop?”

  “At his shop, no. He was pretty careful. But at his house there was a shitload of stuff from burglaries all over the place. He may even be connected to a murder—besides Jacko’s, I mean.”

  “Oh?”

  “Old man in Columbia had his place broken into, his guns were stolen, and he was beaten to death. Happened last October and it never was solved. Now it looks like Hightower may have put Jacko up to it, because we found one of Mc-Elwain’s rifles in Hightower’s house, and I’ve had it on my stolen list ever since the sheriff at Columbia sent out the bulletin three months ago.”