by John Clausen
“What’s that one’s name?” Claire asked as they saddled and bridled the two horses.
“That’s Bing…like Bing Crosby.”
“How’s his White Christmas?”
“Can’t say. He’s named for his daddy Poco Bingo, who was named for his daddy, who was a famous quarterhorse called Poco Bueno...big time studhorse out of Texas. The King Ranch, I think, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. Only reason I could afford him was that his mama was some old Montana range horse Poco Bingo got next to one spring. She didn’t have much of a pedigree.”
“Are you telling me the poor thing is a love child?”
“’Fraid so. Don’t speak of it though…Bing’s kind of sensitive about his mama. And then, of course, they gelded him…so that’s a whole other thing. Guess you could say the boy has some issues. Speedy horse, though, even if he doesn’t look like much.”
They rode around behind the barn toward the river. Guthrie noticed a pile of mangled two-by-fours and some chewed up, heavy cardboard by the muddy bank of the river.
“Looks like Teddy found a new chew toy,” Guthrie said, riding past the pile. “Wonder what it was when he got started.”
“We could go look,” Claire suggested.
“Not worth it. Last time I rode that close to the river I damn near didn’t get back out. Very slick down there. Gets all chewed up by cattle watering down there. Mud’s probably four feet thick…and loose as hell.”
He tapped Bing in the ribs with his boots and shot up onto a trail that was canopied by the trees along the river. Claire followed him on the pinto; the mare seemed content to just follow Guthrie and Bing without any urging.
“This is a great spot, Guthrie. You ought to have kids…hardly anybody gets to grow up with real horses.”
“Maybe,” he answered with a shrug. “But that usually means a wife…and who’d have me? Gone most of the time. Sometimes I don’t even get home at night. Have to have one of the neighbors feed the animals. You tell me…does that seem like a life for a woman?”
“Guess that would depend on the woman. Must be somebody somewhere.”
“Doubt it. How about you? You’re probably worse than me…always flying off somewhere to catch a story. You’ll be done here soon, I suppose. Then where? Europe? The Middle East? Don’t you TV news readers span the globe?”
“Not really…it’s not always glamour capitals like Tulleyville or Paris. But you’re right…not much time for a family. Still, though, haven’t you ever wanted the wife-and-kid routine.”
“Nope…at least it hasn’t happened yet. Tell you what, though, you’ll be the first to know if it happens. Just leave me an email address.”
Chapter 22
Odell Scrum sat glaring at Gary Wong from the table he and Harlen Ackerman always used as a meeting place. Whenever Scrum and Ackerman had met, Gary had always waited on the table personally. Now, when the lawyer walked into the Tulleyville Grill, he got the same “Check it out” and spatula wave at the menu that all of the other diners got.
Today, he’d ignored the greeting and stalked over to the table to wait for Gary to serve him. Twenty minutes later, he was still waiting and getting angrier by the second. At least six of what Scrum considered lesser citizens had arrived, checked out the menu, picked up their orders, and were eating contentedly.
He didn’t know exactly what to do. On one hand, he wanted to rage at the round little Chinese man…maybe even slap him around. On the other, he didn’t want to let anybody know that the snubbing was getting to him. Finally, he got up and walked stiffly to the door. He looked back at Wong, who was watching him go.
“If anybody comes in looking for me,” he said loudly, “I’ll be over at the Sportsmen’s Café having a real lunch.” Then he left, slamming the door behind him. A few of the patrons chuckled quietly.
Gary looked at the door with emotionless eyes. “Check it out,” he said waving his spatula at the menu. “Check it out.”
The door opened again and Claire Norgard came into the room. “Check it out, Gary,” she said playfully. Gary came out from behind the counter and grill to show Claire to the seat most recently vacated by Odell Scrum. “Special table for special lady,” he said with a wide grin.
“Why thank you, Gary. You could turn a girl’s head. What’s good today?
“All good…”
“Well then make me something good…just surprise me.”
“Okay,” he said, and left the table the happiest man in Wallace County.
A few minutes later, he emerged from the kitchen with a steaming plate of lo mein noodles, a large glass of orange juice, and a small cardboard box about the size of package of cigarettes. He set the food down in front of Claire, but kept the box in his hand. She looked at it inquiringly.
“Something else very special,” he said, putting the box on the table beside her plate. “Look after you eat. I think you will like it.”
Claire tucked the box into her purse and began eating.
Chapter 23
When the assembled drinkers in Nolen’s heard the news that somebody had shot at Eugene and Pooch Eye…and that Ben Mooney’s rifle had been stolen from the deputy’s office, they were convinced to a man that the town’s official psychopath had finally gone too far. They were curious as to how Hornsby would make the arrest and whether or not it would involve bloodshed.
“Nobody is gonna take him alive,” Johnny Sorenson told Pooch Eye, whose stock on the gossip market had risen sharply since the shootings.
“Who says they need to?” muttered Droop. “The crazy sonofabitch is a murderer. Shoot him in the head and be done with it.”
Pooch Eye looked at Droop with disdain. “I guess we ain’t in America any more, huh, Droop?”
“What the fuck you mean by that?”
“I ain’t heard anything about a trial…did I miss that? Wouldn’t be you got some kind of a hard-on about Mooney ‘cause he knocked you on your skinny ass awhile back? What I’m saying is that we got rules for this kind of thing. Innocent until proven guilty…you ever heard of that, Droop?”
“You’d be thinkin’ different if you’da got shot.”
“That’s another thing, Droop. You ever heard of Ben Mooney missing?”
“You his fuckin’ lawyer, Pooch?” Johnny Sorenson snapped. “Cause it sure sounds like it.”
Pooch Eye leaned forward and swung an elbow into Sorenson’s left eye, pushing hard and getting his hip into the act. Sorenson dropped to the floor holding his eye and Pooch Eye turned toward Droop. “You want some, too?”
Droop stepped behind Jimmy Nolen, who had come out from behind the bar with the surprising agility that some fat men can muster. “That’s enough of that shit, Pooch. Get out of here, both of you. You wanna wail on each other, you can do it out on the street. Now beat it.”
Pooch Eye and Sorenson left the bar at the same time.
“Jesus, Pooch. Didn’t have to do that. You smacked the hell outa my eye.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Old Droop was pissin’ me off and then…”
“You coulda hit him in his damn eye.”
“Nah, he always stays out of swattin’ range when he’s showin’ his ass.”
“I gotta remember that,” Sorenson said, gingerly touching his damaged eye. “If you get the urge to do that again, I wish you’d aim somewhere besides my damn eye. I’m gonna look like a fuckin’ raccoon tomorrow.”
“I got a bottle of schnapps at the house. Wanna come over and have a couple shots? Kill the pain.”
The two men got in Sorenson’s pickup and headed for Pooch Eye’s house. As they left town, they noticed that Eugene Hornsby was working at the desk in his office.
“Seems like he’d be out arrestin’ people,” Sorenson said, “what with all this shootin’ and stuff.”
“You leave him alone, Johnny. Man’s got some guts. Wasn’t even shook up when we got shot at. I was shakin’ like a dog shittin’ razor blades, but he was calm as hell. Just whipped out
that big pistol of his and popped a couple rounds off. Shot real high, though. I don’t think he was tryin’ to hit anybody.”
As they went by his office, Hornsby looked up and recognized the pickup. Couple DUIs waiting to happen, he thought. Maybe he should go out and do a little patrolling. He had been arranging his notes on his cases. He was looking at an attempted murder, the gunman shooting at him and Pooch Eye out at the bridge, a possible dead body floating in the river, and now the break-in at his own office. It occurred to him that in a tiny town like Tulleyville it was highly unlikely that all those crimes were unrelated. Ben Mooney looked good as a suspect, but he really couldn’t come up with a good motive for Mooney to shoot Ackerman. He’d never heard of the two of them getting crosswise with each other. And besides, Mooney was not the kind of guy who lurked around waiting to ambush people he disliked. As a rule, he expressed his feelings immediately. Eugene figured that Mooney might have been the one who shot at Pooch and him at the bridge as a way to express his outrage at having his rifle confiscated. The fact that he missed might just mean that he wanted to scare them rather than kill them. Eugene knew that if Mooney had been the shooter and had wanted them dead, he would have succeeded without much trouble.
The River Rats were another matter. They definitely had a motive to shoot the man who was planning on damming their precious river and flooding their cemetery. The problem was, though, that Eugene considered them too incompetent to pull off anything major. Like most people in town, he considered their “Dam the River and Die” slogan to be more hyperbole and bluster than an actual threat. Try as he might, he couldn’t see Ottis and Darrell and his own dufus brother Droop killing anybody on purpose. Maybe in a bar fight or with an automobile on a drunken night, but not with a gun and in cold blood.
That left a problem. He had shootings and a burglary without any obvious suspects.
Chapter 24
Never in his long career as a public official had State Senator Boyd Cameron been so ill prepared for a media interview.
When Claire Norgard had called his office to arrange an interview, he’d told his administrative assistant to say he was out of town. When she told Ms. Norgard that innocent little white lie, the semi-famous newswoman said, “Listen, Ms. Pinocchio, why don’t you ask the senator if he’d rather have me come down to his district with a full investigative news crew…or have an interview with me this afternoon?” She had followed the senator to his Porterville office that morning and knew full well that he was not out of town.
When Senator Cameron came on the phone, he was absolutely oily.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Norgard. My assistant was under the impression that I was out of town. Of course I’d love to sit down and chat with you this afternoon. Where would you like to meet? I know a very nice little steak house on Highway 52…not far from my office and the steaks are excellent.”
“If it’s all the same to you, senator, I’d rather meet you out at the proposed site of the Big Hungry Recreational Project. I’ll meet you at that little trailer office that’s set up by the Future Home sign. Can you get there about 2 pm?”
Claire had arranged for her station to send her favorite cameraman out to Tulleyville for a couple days just to get some preliminary shots in the can. She and Pete Morten, the camera guy, were set up near the trailer office when Boyd Cameron arrived flanked by two guys who looked like they might have played football with her dad.
Cameron got out of the car and marched up to Claire with a huge, toothy smile pasted on his face and his hand stuck out in front of him in a classic politician’s “press the flesh” position.
“Glad you chose this place, Ms. Norgard. I’ve always liked the Big Hungry region. Used to hunt deer in these parts when I was a kid.”
“Thanks for coming, senator. We’re set up here.”
Claire steered him toward the trailer. She noticed that the two bodyguards, or whatever they were, were moving toward Pete’s camera as if they were curious about how it worked. Pete had met just about every kind of character over the years, so when they came up to him with questions, he quickly and patiently answered them.
“Okay, senator, let’s begin with a little background on you. How long have you been a state senator in North Dakota?”
Cameron relaxed visibly at the question. He was used to talking to rather dim on-air personalities and to answering stupid questions. He could feel his confidence building. He’d been extremely nervous at first, although he was enough of a professional liar to conceal it. The way Claire had threatened him with an investigative crew made him think she probably had something on him. Then, when she said she wanted to meet at the Big Hungry Recreational Project trailer, he had almost fainted. Obviously, she knew something or suspected something. He’d called Odell Scrum for advice on how to handle the situation and the attorney had urged him not to go to the interview alone. Cameron had agreed and arranged for his two associates to go with him to the interview. Scrum asked him just what kind of associates they were. “Don’t worry,” he told the attorney. “These guys are professionals. They’ll know what to do.” Both were retired highway patrolmen, he said, from North Carolina. He didn’t mention why they had retired.
As the barrage of inane background questions continued, Cameron was beginning to think he wouldn’t need any help at all with this interview. Claire Norgard, he decided, was an overpaid, no-talent figurehead…a ninny who stood in front of a camera and spoke words written by other people. Typically, he didn’t see himself or the irony in that observation.
Claire, of course, was no ninny. She and Pete had been through this same ritual before. They had arrived hours earlier and had completely scoured the place for the best spot to shoot the segment. They had already taped the intro piece and were really only here for one question and the action it would engender.
The intrepid Ms. Norgard had, of course, already researched the senator thoroughly. The questions she was now asking him were designed to do just what they were doing…soften him up and make him feel safe and confident. She led him through his own biography, which he imparted with great relish, and then let him roll on through the many benefits the developers were certain would rain down upon the area once this magnificent project was completed. More jobs were on the way, he intoned, good jobs that would pay well. And think of the recreational opportunities…the sheer fun of it all.
When at last he wound down from his canned speech, Claire moved up to him with the microphone clutched in her hand.
“Thank you so much, senator, we’re almost done now. Just one more question.”
“All right, young lady,” the senator answered. “Ask whatever you want. This has been a very enjoyable interview.”
Pete, knowing exactly what was coming, zoomed in on Cameron’s movie star face as Claire posed her question.
“Senator, we have evidence – taped conversations, in fact – that proves you have been taking massive bribes in cash and services from the developers of the Big Hungry Recreational Project.”
Pete chuckled quietly to himself as he watched the senator’s mouth drop open and his beautifully tanned skin turn pale.
Claire continued without pause. “The figures we’ve uncovered indicate that you’ve received at least four hundred thousand dollars, as well as gifts of land, luxury travel, and paid female companionship.
“Could you comment on that, senator?” She stuck the microphone under his nose and waited.
Boyd Cameron had never felt so naked in his life. He stared at Claire Norgard and felt his whole life shifting away under his feet. He was dizzy with shock.
“There must be some mistake,” he croaked. But he knew that the figures she had mentioned were not only true…they were actually quite conservative. Pete Morten recorded the sweeping changes on his face as he went from shock to fear to the indignation that every experienced politician can summon at will.
“You’re mistaken, Ms. Norgard, and if you broadcast that pack of lies and speculations I will personal
ly sue you and your station into the poor house.”
“Would you like to see a transcript of one of those conversations, senator?”
“Give it to me,” Cameron responded, grabbing the sheaf of papers out of Claire’s hands. He quickly read over the transcript and looked up at his two companions. He nodded briefly and one of the two men hit Pete Morten on the temple with a small blackjack. Pete crumpled and the man grabbed the camera. The other man came wordlessly toward Claire as the senator grabbed her arms.
Claire quickly stomped on the senator’s foot and swung her elbow toward his face with all of the technique and force of a natural athlete who’d studied karate for 15 years. Cameron’s nose made a satisfying crack and spread out over his handsome face. She finished him off with a sharp kick in his shin and a knee to his groin. Cameron dropped to the ground moaning softly and holding his face. Blood was leaking out between his fingers.