Past Dying (The Alan Graham Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  Raines gave a little whistle. “Well, that settles that.”

  “You gonna tell my paw?” the girl asked.

  “I don’t see any need,” I said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Then what you gonna do?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “You can go on mopping. The crew will be back tomorrow.”

  She wiped a strand of brown hair out of her eyes. “Thank you, Mr. Alan. You’re real good to me.”

  We stopped at the highway.

  “How did you know she’d be at your camp?” Raines asked. “You said we were going to her place.”

  “We were but I just happened to see the truck when we passed.”

  “Lucky.” He scratched his jaw. “Okay, so the girl was all dressed up for the cold and she scared Miss Ethel, and that’s what the old lady saw, not some killer, and our man Jeremiah was sitting up there in the bridge house with a bottle and saw it all but didn’t want to get involved. Fine, but does that lead us any closer to who did the crimes? Jacko killed the old man in Columbia and stole everything he could get his hands on and the piece of silver was just something he scooped up, along with the watch, right?”

  “That’s how I make it.”

  “But somebody killed Jacko and then they killed this fellow Hightower, over in Natchez. How do we find out who did that?”

  “Let’s see Ross Flynn,” I said. “I think he can help us on this one.”

  Ross Flynn’s office was across the street from the courthouse, on the high ground shadowed by the hills. While a chubby blond secretary worked on the word processor outside he listened to us in his private office, which had once been the bedroom of a house. From one wall a stuffed badger looked down and on the other was a mounted lever-action carbine. Flynn sat back in his swivel chair, boots on his desk, staring at the smoke curls made by his cigar.

  “Why didn’t you go to the sheriff?” he asked. “This is his job. I just prosecute cases.”

  “This is a rural parish,” I said. “I’ve seen how things work. They work the way you, the sheriff, and Judge Galt want them to.”

  Ross Flynn took out his cigar and pinned me with his eyes. “You got a hell of a nerve coming back. I could just as easy reinstate those charges.”

  “You could,” I said. “But you won’t. I think you’re a fair man and you want to see the guilty person caught.”

  “I still have to go by the law.”

  “But you have some flexibility when it comes to procedure. For instance, if a member of somebody’s family has a problem, there are ways to handle it without going through the legal motions.”

  Flynn’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Maybe somebody owes somebody else, so if somebody gets a request to handle a case a certain way, to arrest somebody who’s making trouble …”

  “What are you talking about?” Raines asked.

  “You were just repaying Jeff Scully a favor,” I said. “Well, the favor’s repaid.”

  “Hell, I thought Jeff was your friend.”

  “I thought so, too. And maybe he still is. But he’s in too deep.”

  Flynn sighed. “Yeah, I guess so.” He sat forward in the chair. “I hope this works.” He lifted the phone, then put it down. “I guess we ought to just walk over there. No need to warn folks by calling first.”

  We walked across the street to the courthouse and took the elevator down to the sheriff’s office.

  “Sheriff in?” Flynn asked the deputy on duty.

  “He’s in court, I think. You can catch him there.”

  “Never mind.” And Flynn told him what he wanted.

  The deputy shrugged. “I reckon we can do that. You want to wait in the interview room.” He glanced over at me. “You need security for him?”

  “Not right now,” Flynn said dryly. “He’s in my custody.”

  The green room hadn’t changed any and a chill went through me when I remembered my recent experience. Flynn took the interview chair but Raines and I stood up.

  “I’m not sure about having him here,” Flynn said, nodding at the reporter. “This ain’t a public spectacle.”

  “You can trust me,” Raines said. “All I want is first dibs.”

  “Yeah,” the D.A. said. “Well, remember, if you screw up the investigation, your ass is mine and—”

  The door opened and Jeff Scully, with his tie loose at the neck, stood staring at us.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded. “Ross, what are these people doing here?”

  “Chill out, Jeff,” the lawyer drawled. “We’re just borrowing your room.”

  Scully frowned at me. “What do you want here, Alan? I thought I told you to go home.”

  “You did. And you also left those credentials in my glove compartment.”

  “My mistake.”

  “Sure. But just in case I needed to use them, they were there, and if I screwed up, you could deny everything. Jeff, you’re a better politician than I thought.”

  Before he could answer there was movement behind him, and a small figure in an orange jumpsuit stood beside him in the hall.

  “Come on in, Luther,” Flynn called out. “We’re having a pow-wow and you’re invited.”

  The little man limped in, a lopsided grin on his face.

  “Mr. Alan,” he greeted me and looked around at the others. “Look, I ain’t mad at Mr. Alan here, ’cause I don’t believe he did nothin’ to my little girl, and whoever said he did, well, I’ll deal with ’em when I get out.”

  “This isn’t about Alice Mae,” Flynn drawled.

  Scully moved into the room behind Luther and shut the door. “Well, suppose somebody tells me just what it is about?”

  “If Mr. Pope is saying I killed more’n that one doe, he’s a damn liar,” Luther declared.

  “This isn’t about a doe,” I said. “It’s about a watch.” I held up the old gold Bulova that Alice Mae had worn. “Alice Mae says she got this from Jacko Reilly.”

  Luther frowned and scratched a grizzled jaw. “That’s right. I didn’t want him giving her nothing. But after it was done, what could I do? Why? Did he steal it?”

  I nodded. “From a man in Columbia. A man Jacko murdered.”

  “Damn.” Luther hit his thigh with the flat of his hand. “I knowed it wasn’t no good to have him around her.” His eyes narrowed. “Look, you ain’t blaming nothing on her, are you?”

  “Well, it is kind of interesting isn’t it?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “That Jacko was around her at all.”

  “It’s a small town. I can’t watch her all the time.”

  “Of course not. But when would she have a chance to meet him?”

  “What are you saying?” Luther looked from me to the seated Ross Flynn.

  “I think you know,” Flynn said.

  Luther’s eyes narrowed and he rubbed his mouth with an arm.

  “It was Jacko’s own fault, was what it was,” he said. “I never kilt nobody. But like they say …” He grinned. “Shit happens.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  “Do you know what you’re saying?” Scully asked. “I reckon I do,” Luther said. “I was there when it went down.”

  “Wait a minute.” Ross Flynn held up a hand. “If we’re going in this direction—”

  “You gonna read me my rights?” Luther asked. “ ’Cause I figure I know ’em by now, but you can go on and do it again.”

  “Damn,” Flynn swore.

  “I don’t need no lawyer. Except for the burglary thing. I reckon I was with Jacko when we did that one but I ain’t hurt nobody, that was pure Jacko, and all I done was stay with the car, outside. It was Jacko gone inside and I reckon he was the one killed that fella. I didn’t know nothing about nobody dying until later.”

  “What were you after?” I asked. “You went to Tom McElwain’s place to get something.”

  “Sure did. Jacko had a deal with this fella in Mississippi that sold antiques. Fella said he
’d give Jacko a lot of money to go to Columbia and bring back a certain thing, because there was somebody willing to pay top dollar. Jacko paid me two hundred to go along, and said there’d be more afterward.”

  “This thing McElwain had,” Flynn said. “What was it?”

  Luther coughed. “Well, it was supposed to be a knife.”

  “A knife?” Flynn asked.

  “Not just a knife, don’t you see? The knife.”

  Flynn sighed. “And what knife would that be?”

  Luther shook his head disdainfully. “Well, the original Bowie knife. The one used by Jim Bowie. The one he killed them men with at the sandbar fight. The knife that was made out of a meteor, like in that movie I seen. The original Bowie, that’s what knife.”

  The district attorney gave me a disbelieving look and I just nodded. Luther wasn’t finished.

  “See, somebody told this Hightower dude that old McElwain had this knife and Hightower knew it would cost too much to buy it, so he figured to just steal it. He didn’t know Jacko would kill nobody. That’s ’cause he didn’t know Jacko’s temper. That was the damn thing about it all.”

  “What?” Flynn asked.

  “That there weren’t no knife. It was all made up. You didn’t have to do more than set foot in the old man’s house, with all the junk in there, to see that.”

  “I thought you stayed outside,” Scully said then.

  “Well, I got tired of waiting and looked in through the window while Jacko had the old man tied up.”

  “Let’s get this straight,” Flynn said. “You say there was no knife.”

  “Hell, no. All that was for nothing. Oh, Jacko got some guns and a lock box that had some coins and stuff in it, but there weren’t no knife, and Jacko was in there for over a hour, so I reckon he turned it upside down.”

  “What happened next?” Flynn asked. “What did you do?”

  “Me? Two days later I got caught by that state trooper and I’m here to tell you that was the biggest goddamn frame-up that ever was, because ain’t nobody can get drunk on two damn drinks and—”

  The D.A. held up a hand. “Stick to the point, Luther.”

  Luther rubbed his jaw again. “I’m trying. Don’t you see, if I hadn’t of got locked up, we never would’ve got the other knife.”

  “What other knife?” the irate Flynn demanded.

  “Well, the one that was in the case outside in the hall there,” Luther declared.

  “You stole the things out of that case?” Jeff Scully asked. Luther Dupree shrugged. “We needed a knife to pass off on Hightower. I was in jail and Jacko come and told me how easy it was to get out at night, with the deputy sleeping, and half the time they didn’t even lock the cells if you wasn’t in for nothing serious, and so I just took the stuff one night and snuck out and handed it all to Jacko in the street out there and went back to jail afterward.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Scully swore. “And Jacko took the knife to Hightower.”

  “Something like that. But Hightower wasn’t stupid. He said it was the wrong one and he wouldn’t pay. They had a terrible argument, Jacko said.”

  “The wrong one,” I repeated, but nobody heard me.

  “So what happened then?” Flynn persisted.

  “Well, Jacko didn’t have his money and Hightower didn’t have his knife. Oh, Jacko give him some guns and things we stole but that wasn’t what Hightower was after. But Jacko said it was his fault sending us to a place on a wild goose chase and he had to kill a man and it wasn’t something he liked to do and he figured since it was Hightower’s fault, Hightower owed him for the trouble.”

  “Of course,” Jeff said.

  “So Hightower said he’d come over here and they’d meet at the rec area outside town and work something out.”

  “Only they didn’t,” Flynn said.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Hightower killed Jacko,” Flynn said.

  “Yup.” The little man leaned forward. “I was there, see? I seen it all.”

  “I thought you were still in jail,” Flynn said, then gave the sheriff a sour look. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You had the keys to the place.”

  “You might say that.” Luther shrugged. “It was late, wasn’t nobody out, and Jacko said he wanted me along in case Hightower tried anything funny. I was supposed to wait in the bushes at the rec area and watch and make sure everything went right.”

  “But instead things went wrong,” Flynn said.

  “Well, Hightower didn’t want to give him more than a couple hundred dollars more, said some pretty hard things about old Jacko. Not that they wasn’t true. I can’t say I liked Jacko all that much myself. He was always sneaking around and trying to make up to my Alice Mae, and her with no more sense of what men are all about than that table there. No, Jacko was a hard man to like.”

  “Exactly what happened?” Flynn asked.

  “I was outside the car. All’s I heard was arguing and then there was some pushing and shoving and the door opened and Hightower come out and he had a knife in his hand. He throwed it down, like it was dirty, and from the moonlight I could just barely see Jacko in there, limp as a dead otter.” He licked his lips. “I don’t reckon you got any water, do you? Whiskey’d be better but I’ll take water.”

  Jeff turned and called to someone down the hall for water.

  “Hightower rolled the car into the water?” Flynn asked.

  “Yup. Started her up and drove outa there and I walked up to the main road and all I seen was his lights disappearing at the side of the bridge. I didn’t know what he was up to, but I didn’t figure I wanted to know, neither. Hightower’s car was at the rec area and I knowed he’d be back, so I just waited a little while. Pretty soon another car comes down the road, slow like, from the direction of Carter Crossing, and when it gets to the bridge it slows down and stops. Then it goes on and a little while later I see somebody walking toward me up the road and I knowed it was Hightower. When he passed by I seen a look on his face like nothing you ever seen in your life. Like his face was just a mask. Like he was dead hisself. In a little while his car started up and he drove away. I picked up the knife and wiped it off and I walked on back to the jail and locked myself in. Well, can’t never tell when a knife’ll come in handy, in that place.”

  Flynn pushed back his chair. “That’s all real neat, Luther. There’s just one thing missing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Somebody killed Hightower.”

  Jeff handed Luther a paper cup with water in it and Luther nodded.

  “I was feared you was gonna ask that.”

  “Well?” the lawyer said.

  “Hightower was running scared. He actually told me on the phone he was thinking of doing a deal with the law and him the killer, if you can believe it.”

  “That’s why he called me,” I said. “He wanted me to be a go-between, to help him plea bargain.”

  “And he’d of claimed I was the one kilt old Jacko, the bastard. He’d of sold his soul for six months in jail. They’s some pretty low people in this world, I’m telling you.”

  “So you solved that problem by killing him,” Flynn said. He gave Jeff a sour look. “On one of your little furloughs from the jail.”

  “Well …” Luther began and then, in a move surprisingly fast, threw the water in Jeff’s face and darted out the door.

  It was a full second before anybody could react, and then Jeff and I raced after him. He shot through the sheriff’s office and out the door and into the parking area.

  We would have caught him if it hadn’t been for the mop bucket in the middle of the hallway. Somehow Luther had dodged it, but Jeff, in his pursuit, stepped into it and fell headlong onto the hard tiles. I stumbled against him, just managed to keep from falling, and then squeezed past as he raised himself to his hands and knees with an oath.

  Luther was at the highway now, heading left, toward the river.

  I’d never been a sprinter myself, but I figured
I could catch a man with a limp.

  “Luther!” I yelled but he kept going.

  What I didn’t see was the man coming out of the courthouse just then, a burly man with longish gray hair and glasses, and a bulge under his flapping coat.

  Chaney Reilly.

  He saw the pursuit and broke into a trot, heading toward Luther and the bridge on a converging course.

  Behind me I heard somebody yelling and I recognized Jeff’s voice: “Reilly, leave it alone!”

  I was steps behind the panicked Luther, at the foot of the bridge, and I was already panting as I started up the grade.

  At any second now a car might come from the opposite direction, and Luther was in the middle of the road …

  “Luther,” I called again but he wasn’t listening. Instead, incredibly, he was headed for the side of the structure, and the ladder that went up to the bridge house.

  “No!” Jeff yelled behind me and I started to turn around, tell him there was nothing to be alarmed at now, Luther had trapped himself, couldn’t go anywhere else, but then I realized, from movement in the corner of my eye, that it wasn’t Luther he was yelling at, but Chaney Reilly.

  I wheeled, saw the pistol in Reilly’s hand, and, as if in slow motion, saw it being raised.

  “Reilly!” But he didn’t seem to hear, just raised the weapon inexorably, and even as I rushed toward him I saw the gun jump in his hand, heard the explosion, and knew it was too late.