Past Dying (The Alan Graham Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  I ignored him, just shuffled forward like an inmate being led the last mile, except that when the big door opened I didn’t see a gallows but Ross Flynn, standing with his arms crossed. He regarded me for a long second and stroked his drooping mustache. “All right, you can get your things. My office isn’t going to prosecute the charges. But if you’re smart, you’ll go home right now.”

  Before I could say anything the deputy led me back to the green room, where my clothes sat on the table. “Just leave the jumpsuit there,” he said.

  When I’d dressed, the same deputy handed me my keys.

  “It’s seven-thirty. You can get breakfast at Brocato’s in Ferriday. That’s in Concordia Parish. In case you don’t know how to get there, one of our cars will follow you to the parish line. Have a good day, now.”

  As we walked out into the hallway I noticed the display case on the right, the one that had been empty before, now held the big Bowie knife that had been stolen.

  “When did you get your knife back?” I asked.

  “Yesterday,” the deputy said. “The sheriff brought it back from Mississippi. They found it in the house of that antique dealer that got murdered.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  The cruiser followed me all the way to the Tensas River, at Guyton, which was the parish line. And at the parish line, to my surprise, a Concordia Parish cruiser took over.

  Ross Flynn’s work, I told myself: The two parishes were his district. Also Judge Galt’s.

  I kept going at Ferriday, and it wasn’t until I was on the four-lane stretch into Vidalia, with the bridge to Natchez in sight, that I called home on the cell phone. To my relief Pepper picked up immediately.

  “I meant to come home but there was a little complication,” I explained. “Did Dogbite call you?”

  “Yes, he did, Alan, and I was frankly, well, shattered. To find out you’d been charged with, well, with molesting that poor young woman, after all we had together, and I thought I knew you …”

  “It isn’t funny, damn it.”

  “I didn’t laugh when I heard it. How do you think it feels to learn that the man you’ve given your most intimate secrets, shared a bed with, loved, has this, this hidden vice, this—”

  “Enough. You could at least have come up.”

  “Why? Jeff said it was under control.”

  “Jeff?”

  “Sure. He said it was a put-up job by Chaney Reilly and Jeff was using it to smoke out the disloyal people in his own department. He figured they were doing it to embarrass him and he couldn’t intervene directly on your behalf so the best thing he could do was let you sit in jail overnight while he talked to the D.A. He said the D.A. knew it was all a sham. Besides …”

  “Yes?”

  “Jeff said you’d been taking that badge he gave you a little too seriously and he wanted to teach you a lesson.”

  “Did he? And did he say anything about a woman named Tally Galt?”

  “The judge’s wife?”

  I told her about my conversation with Tally. “I don’t think Jeff’s being completely honest,” I said. “I think he doesn’t dare get too close to me because he’s afraid his affair with Tally will come out.”

  “Well, he’s your friend. Or was.”

  “Yeah.” I drove on for a while. “So how’s Sam?”

  “Asking for you. When I told him you were in jail he said he’d trade his hospital room for your cell.”

  “Sounds like he’s better.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “You sound doubtful. Is there something you aren’t telling me?”

  “Well, they’d kind of hoped he’d bounce back a little faster, but he’s still in bed, won’t let ’em raise him up at all. And he gets a little confused sometimes.”

  I didn’t like the sound of it. “I’ll be back soon,” I said, as if my being there would change things.

  “I hope so,” she said. “Seems like you get in trouble when there’s nobody to look after you.”

  “Yeah.” I was rising up onto the bridge now and the Mississippi was below. The phone transmission changed to static as the bridge girders flew past. I sneaked a look down at the river, wondering if any of the Vidalia sandbar was still left.

  “Are you still there?” Pepper asked as I came down the other side, into Mississippi.

  “Yeah. I was just going over the bridge.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “I was thinking about something. You remember the display case that was burgled in the courthouse?”

  “You told me about it.”

  “Somebody stole some old artifacts connected with the Morgan House hotel. One of them was a replica Bowie knife.”

  “And?”

  “When they let me out just now I passed by the case and the knife was back. The deputy told me it was with High-tower’s things.”

  “So?”

  “Why would anybody steal a replica knife worth twenty bucks?”

  “Are you sure it’s a replica?”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve been doing some reading about Bowie and the Bowie knives. Did you know it was really invented by Jim’s brother, Rezin? He got a blacksmith over in Avoyelles Parish to make it for him. It was just a plain butcher knife, nothing special—a wood handle with a nine-inch blade, one to two inches wide. Rezin used it for hunting but when Jim got at cross purposes with Major Wright and his faction, Rezin insisted Jim should have it to protect himself, and that’s the knife Jim used in the sandbar fight in 1827, and the knife he always carried after that. But between 1830 and 1841, when he died, Rezin Bowie kept improving the design, and all kinds of blacksmiths and cutlers and surgical instrument makers got into the act. Some of the Bowies that were turned out on Rezin’s design were pretty elaborate, Spanish notches in the blades, coffin-style handles as they were called, initials on silver plates in the handles. Did you know there was even a famous knifemaker in Baton Rouge at the time, a blacksmith named Daniel Searles? His shop was where the Centroplex is today. He made a Bowie knife to Rezin’s special order. It was the first one with a guard on it and all the Bowie knifemakers after that adopted the design. So your display knife could really be one of the originals.”

  I shifted the phone to my other hand and pulled into a gas station on the right.

  “Not exactly,” I said, stopping beside one of the pump islands. “The maker is Western. It says so on the blade. If you look through my old chest in the attic you’ll probably find one just like it. I bought it when I was about eighteen. They used to sell them in sporting goods stores. It’s really a short sword, and it fits what everybody’s idea of a Bowie knife should be. But old it ain’t.”

  “So maybe it was stolen by mistake. It doesn’t sound like Jacko’s crew knew what they were doing.”

  “Yeah, by mistake.” The words resonated in my memory. I told her what Lisa Reilly had told me, about how Jacko had been talking to someone on the phone the night before he disappeared; that there was some kind of argument; and that she’d heard Jacko say something about the wrong one.

  “So maybe they were arguing about the courthouse knife,” she said.

  “Seems likely. Hightower would have recognized that it wasn’t genuine.”

  “So it wouldn’t have had anything to do with the McElwain killing.”

  “No.” I reflected for a moment. They were close, but somehow the pieces didn’t quite fit the holes …

  “Well, maybe it’ll make sense when you’ve gotten a chance to rest,” she said.

  “Yeah. Look, I’ve got to pump some gas now.”

  We signed off with expressions of mutual affection and I turned to the gas pump.

  Home was less than two hours away. That was where I ought to be. It was where my duty lay. Sam was sick. I could do more good there than blundering around in a place where I was no longer wanted.

  All at once I realized my head was aching. Probably hunger, I told myself. Shoney’s was five minutes ahead, on the south side of town, on
Highway 61, and its breakfast buffet would still be open. I might as well eat there. There was no way I’d ever figure this one out because no one was talking and the only people who might know the truth had dropped out of sight.

  Miss Ethel and the odd recluse she’d befriended named Jeremiah.

  The only reason for them to have vanished was that one or both of them had seen something. But nobody seemed to know where to look for them, and I almost had the sense that people were just as happy for them to stay in hiding.

  What had Snuffy Stokes said? That Jeremiah had relatives in Winnfield or Tallulah? The two cities were in opposite directions, one sixty miles to the west, and the other at least that far to the north. Obviously, Stokes had no idea.

  My head started pounding again. I went into the station to pay and picked up a small bottle of aspirins and a bottle of water. I went back out into the parking lot and started to open the aspirin bottle. And stopped …

  All at once I remembered the medicine bottle Jeremiah Persons had shown me that day by the river, the medicine the doctor had prescribed for Jeremiah’s headaches. I tried to visualize the label. It was from a chain discounter. Wal-Mart. That was it. The Wal-Mart in Winnfield … No, Winnsboro. Of course. The first major town north of Carter Crossing, just twenty-five miles up Highway 15, in Franklin Parish …

  I swallowed two aspirins with a gulp of water and climbed back into the Blazer. There was a map on the seat beside me.

  As far as the deputies were concerned I was safely in Mississippi now, headed home. If I made a U-turn, crossed back into Louisiana, it would be just twenty minutes to Carter Crossing and ten minutes beyond that to the Franklin Parish line.

  Maybe I should call Pepper, though. She’d try to talk me out of it, and I wasn’t sure I didn’t want her to succeed. Yes, at the very least I ought to give her a chance …

  I reached back into the glove compartment for the cell phone and my hand touched something I hadn’t noticed before. As I drew it out I recognized it immediately and my hand started to shake.

  The credentials Jeff had handed me. He said he’d revoked them, but somehow they hadn’t searched my vehicle. Or maybe they had and someone had replaced them where I’d see them when I left town.

  Someone …

  TWENTY-TWO

  I grabbed a bag of Trail Mix for breakfast and headed back over the bridge into Louisiana. This time I didn’t see a police car the entire time, and fifty minutes later I was entering Winnsboro, a cotton center with a four-lane that hooked around the west side of town. I found the Wal-Mart on Highway 15, on the north outskirts, went to the pharmacy, and showed my deputy’s badge.

  “Did you fill a prescription in the last month for a man named Jeremiah Persons?”

  The druggist went to his computer, input the name, and then came back to the counter.

  “On January fifth. Motrin 500 milligrams. That’s a formulation for arthritic pain. It’s like regular Motrin except in a stronger dose.”

  “Do you have an address for Jeremiah Persons?” I asked.

  He went back to the screen. “Yes, it’s in Lordsport.”

  I tried to hide my disappointment.

  “Do you have anybody named Persons in town?” I asked. “I understand he has kin here.”

  “Let me see.” The fingers played on the keyboard again and he came back with a sheet of paper. “Tawanda Persons lives out on Highway 15, about a mile south of town, it looks like. That’s the only Persons I have in the computer.”

  I took the paper. “Thanks.”

  “Is this Jeremiah wanted for something?”

  “Just for questioning,” I said.

  He squinted over the counter: “Are you sure you’re a deputy?”

  “Don’t I look like one?” I asked and left before he could answer.

  The home of Tawanda Persons was a white frame house half a mile from the main road. It was hidden at the end of a gravel lane and I wouldn’t have known it was there if I hadn’t asked first at a house close to the highway. Even then, I had to show the badge to get the woman who came to the door to point out the way. And I was sure that by the time I was back to the Blazer she was already on the phone to people in the house at the end of the lane.

  I was even more sure they’d been warned as I approached and saw a thin haze of dust over the lane, which did not end at the house itself, but seemed to stretch out into the fields beyond.

  As I got out a hound rushed out to bark at me but when I raised my hand it slunk away, growling.

  The house looked deserted but a thread of smoke from the brick chimney told me otherwise. I looked around the yard. There was a garden plot to one side with a scarecrow and a well with an iron pump handle. A couple of chickens pecked halfheartedly at the short winter grass and I suspected that there were more chickens nesting in the barn.

  There was no car in the yard but plenty of tire tracks and a spot of oil on the hard ground.

  I went up onto the porch, between a pair of rocking chairs, and knocked.

  The weather had turned cooler during the night and I had my jacket zipped to my chin. I knew that if they wanted to play a waiting game they could probably wait me out.

  I knocked again. Still no response.

  With the woman in the house on the highway watching for me to leave, there was no way I could drive partway down the lane and wait for them to come back. And if I went as far as the highway, the woman in the first house would be watching to see if I tried to double back.

  Good system. You could almost disappear out here.

  The only thing to do was take the field road. It might wind around and eventually come out on the highway but I knew it was more likely it would dead-end in a field.

  I followed the road to the end of the tree line and when I turned left I saw a white Chrysler, caught in a slough, its rear wheels spinning futilely.

  I got out slowly and walked toward it, keeping well to the side as the rear wheels threw up a fine spray of mud.

  “You’re going to ruin your tires,” I said, but the windows were up and she couldn’t hear me, just kept trying to drive the car out of the ditch until she looked over, saw who I was, and then gave up.

  I waited while she opened the door.

  “Well, you don’t have to just stand there, Dr. Graham,” Ethel Crawford said. “Can’t you see we’re stuck in this hole?”

  “I have a come-along,” I said. “Just stay where you are to guide the wheel and I’ll pull you onto the dry ground. Then we’ll sit down and talk.”

  “Jeremiah got out at one of the hedge rows back there,” she told me as we sat under the tree in her car, with the motor running to keep the heat flowing in. “He doesn’t like commotion. Besides, it’s really me you want to see, I imagine.”

  “I imagine,” I said.

  “When you wouldn’t come up after I called you, and the deputy treated me like I was senile, I didn’t know what to do. I had nowhere to go. I went to see Jeremiah and he told me he’d bring me here, to his mother’s.”

  “He has family, then?”

  “Oh, yes, but Jeremiah’s independent. He likes to be alone. It’s something he says happened as a result of the war.”

  “Vietnam?” I asked, and she nodded.

  “They used to send him on missions in the jungle. I think he suffers from that stress business. Being around people for too long makes him nervous. But I guess I don’t threaten him and I don’t talk all the time when I’m with him so we get along fine.”

  “He’s been hiding you.”

  She nodded. “I’ve been treated very well.”

  “But you can’t stay here forever.”

  “No.”

  “There’s still a killer at large.” I told her about the murder of Clovis Hightower. “We need to stop it. Now.”

  “Well, it might never have gotten this far if people had listened to me to start with.”

  It was my turn to nod. “You’re right. But I guess it isn’t too late to start.” I sh
ifted in the seat to face her: “You found out something that frightened you. Maybe it’s time to tell me what it was.”

  There was a long silence while she thought and finally her head gave a tiny dip of acknowledgment.

  “It was that night, I think it was a Friday, after you left. I couldn’t sleep so I got up. Sometimes I walk at night. Lords-port’s a small town, you can do that at night without having to worry about getting robbed or worse.”

  I waited while she found the right words.

  “It was later than I thought. After one. I bundled up and walked around the block and I didn’t see a car pass. And I guess I was thinking about all that had happened and about finding the car with that Reilly boy in it and I just sort of naturally walked down past the courthouse and up and over the bridge.”

  I tried to visualize it, the plump, little librarian hurrying along the silent streets and then up, over the ancient structure with the skeletal girders, and the little bridge tender’s box with black windows like hollow sockets …

  “I stood in the middle of the bridge, looking down and trying to remember, but nothing came. Everything was quiet and all I heard was the water against the banks and the wind in the trees. Then I thought, ‘Well, maybe I need to go down to the water’s edge and look out from there. Maybe I’m in the wrong place.’ I mean, the bridge is all iron and there are those that say metal can interfere with brain waves and I thought maybe I should go to where there wasn’t any … metal, I mean.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “So I walked to the end of the bridge, away from the town, and then I went down the little hill, to where you put the boat in the other day and I stood there for a minute. I was thinking about that night, driving back from Ferriday, and hearing that splash in the water, and how if I’d just had my head turned a little differently, well, maybe I’d have seen what it was and maybe that dead Reilly boy would have been found a little sooner. And I was thinking, too, that maybe whoever had killed him had been there that night, when I crossed, and that if I had seen and stopped, well, maybe it wouldn’t have just been the Reilly boy who was murdered. It gave me the chills to think about and it was already a cold night.”