by Michael Smth
Eva walked him to the door. “Sheriff Jess, wait. I don’t think it was Mickey Platt we saw on Saturday. Mickey is a nice boy. The man we saw looked…dangerous.”
“But you said you saw him at a distance, right? That’d make it tough to tell.”
“I only say, Jess, that if it’s not suicide and if Harry was at his home, it must be a stranger.”
“The killer?” Jess smiled and patted her hand. “Don’t you worry, Missy. Ol’ Jess is on the case. I’m lookin’ into every possibility.” He tipped his hat and left.
Jess stopped at home and asked Carrie to ride with him to the scene of the shooting. He said he wanted to look around some more, but what he really wanted was to talk.
Sailing down the snow-packed road, Jess tapped his ring on the steering wheel. “I’m figurin’ the stranger Crickette saw on the road Saturday was Mickey Platt, walkin’ home from work, and on Monday he was in Wayne Hatcher’s mail truck at the time of the crime. So all I’ve got is Scurfman, and Eva claims he wasn’t out of her sight long enough to pull off a murder.” He shook his head and sighed. “Leastwise, that’s what she thinks. S’pose she could be wrong. That’s what my gut’s saying—that it’s gotta be Harry. Too bad that ain’t enough to make an arrest.”
“Hmm,” Carrie murmured.
Jess banged the wheel with his fist. “Damn it, dearie, what am I missin’?”
Carrie scowled. “Harry’s a varmint alright. And he had it in for the Conroys. But his alibi seems tight. His story may unravel, but in the meantime, you’d best consider other suspects. Look, you have a victim who is dying. Why murder somebody who’s about to die anyway?” She tugged on her ear lobe. “If you want motive you’ve got Crickette herself. Pain’s as big of a motive as there is.” She nodded for emphasis. “But you seem dead set on ruling suicide out.”
“Funny you mentioning pain. Eva talked about it, too.” Jess sighed. “As to suicide, dang it, I ain’t dead set on ruling anything out. It’s evidence that’s turnin’ me toward murder.”
“OK, OK, don’t get all riled up. You asked my opinion. It’s just that the simplest, most obvious explanation usually ends up being right. But there are other possibilities. Like the killer who doesn’t know she’s dying. That’s your drifter. There’s someone wanting to stop her suffering.” She looked hard at Jess. “That’s Max. Or someone else who loved her. And last, I guess there’s the killer who wants to silence her. Don’t know who that could be.” She placed her hand on his arm and squeezed. “You keep plugging-away. Ask yourself, Who murders a dying woman? Keep a ready mind. The key’ll pop up when you least expect it.”
“I s’pose. It’s just that waitin’ makes me feel weak.”
With Crickette gone, there was little to keep Max in Hooker County. He decided to take his wife to Chicago to be buried and then move back there himself after he could get things settled.
Three days after her death, a memorial for Crickette was held in Mullen. But covered with the pall of homicide, the service brought closure to no one. Men tougher than boot leather, men who’d stared down their own death were bowed. Women who’d lost children to whooping cough or scarlet fever were bowed, too. Everyone knew killer storms and disease stalked the Sand Hills. Knew it and accepted it. But a human killer in their midst—maybe even one of them—that was new. Folks took to speaking in hushed tones. Locking doors. Childe Cavendish, who ran the American Dream saloon in Mullen, told Jess he felt guilty at how good business was.
Jess felt guilty, too. Folks were counting on him, and he was letting them down.
Whiskey in the Afternoon
The morning after Max returned from Chicago it snowed again. Jess was in his office pondering Carrie’s who murders a dying woman question when Max walked in.
“Lo, Jess. Came to town for groceries, so I figured I’d drop this off.” Max took a fat, rubber-banded envelope from his pocket. “It was in a cigar box in the parlor desk.”
Jess leaned towards Max. “Whatcha got, pardner?”
“Notes Crickette jotted after she got sick. Appears to be. Busted me up—just couldn’t get beyond the first couple words. Dunno if it’ll help.” Max looked like he hadn’t slept much. His suspenders hung from the waist of his pants like they’d slipped off his stooped shoulders. He tossed the envelope onto Jess’s desk and fidgeted with a button on the cuff of his sleeve. After a moment of silence, he blurted, “Anything more on that son-of-a-bitch?”
“You mean Harry, I reckon?” Jess said.
Max nodded sharply.
Jess crossed his arms. “Like I told you, Max, Harry’s got an alibi. Now I’m still kickin’ at it, lookin’ for holes ’cuz…well, Harry is Harry. But a snake that’s somewhere else can’t do no strikin’, and right now it appears Scurfman was at home when your wife…died.”
“Fuck his alibi. We both know he killed Crickette. Just don’t know how he done it. Bastard’s holed-up in that shack of his, laughing at us, figuring he got away with murder.” Max bit his lip. “What if I say he was hanging ’round our place that morning? That be enough to lock him up?” He stepped close to Jess and growled, “Give me an hour with the SOB—I’ll beat the fucking truth out of ’im.”
“That ain’t the way I do things around here, Max. No sir. If Harry killed your wife, I’ll trip him up, and you’ll get a chance to see him swing.” Jess’s eyes narrowed. “Now you listen up, son. Keep away from Scurfman. You let me handle this. Hear?”
Max pounded the desk and scowled. He snatched his checkerboard plaid coat and thrust his arms into the sleeves. He stormed to the door and yanked it open. With the wind howling behind him, he glared at Jess. “OK, sheriff, we’ll do it your way for now, but I warn ya, a man with nothing more to lose won’t sit on his hands forever.” He disappeared behind the door’s slam.
Jess decided to ignore Max’s threat, counting on the whipping wind to thin it to nothing.
Jess considered doing what he’d never done. He took out the bottle of whiskey he kept in the bottom right drawer of his desk. Sure, he did take it out occasionally, but only on Saturday afternoons, when the opera was on the radio, or on some evenings when it was especially hot or cold outside. Never on a weekday and never before 2 p.m. And this was both of those. For a moment he stared at the friendly amber liquid in the bottle. Murder, Harry, Max—it was a helluva lot for a man used to Hooker County as it had always been. In the end, he put the bottle away.
Jess picked up the envelope Max left and slid off the rubber band. Inside was a small spiral-bound notebook with a grimy cardboard cover. A faded sepia photograph was stuck inside like a bookmark. He held it in the light to see it clearly. A couple holding a baby. Jess turned it over and read the caption. Fritz und Birgitta mit Hille. 1924.
The first dozen pages of the notebook had been filled years ago, according to the dates. There were penciled shopping lists, drawings, numbers summed-up, and so on. Everyday things. Then came the Whiskey in the Afternoon pages Max mentioned. Recent. Pages that amounted to a journal of thoughts, each page dated and written in pencil or blue ink. Dates starting with November 19, 1956, the day Doc Fletcher gave Crickette her death sentence. As he flipped through the pages, Jess saw ink streaks on several of them—plainly made by teardrops. He’d never cried over a crime, but holding the tear-tracked notes in his hand, feeling Crickette’s despair, that about did it. The dozen recent pages were mostly about pain and worry. Then came two mid-January entries that leaped out and grabbed him. Scared the hell out of him. Made him retrieve the whiskey bottle and the stubby glass from the desk drawer. He poured a stout drink and tossed it down.
She’d written, Today I woke up knowing it. The time has come. Must make my plan.
The next page was dated two days later, January twentieth. The first lines were scratched in pencil. Pain getting worse and worse. I thought OUR dirty black secret was a trump card, but Eva threw it in my face. Was a blinding flash so much to ask? Henri, I remember NBH. After some white space, the next lines were neatly pr
inted in bold blue ink. TODAY EVA THREATENED TO DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO SILENCE ME.
It was the last entry. The next day Crickette was dead.
Jess’s hands shook as he stuck the picture into the notebook and shut it. He stuffed it back in the envelope, as if that might make it go away. He didn’t know what dirty black secret could mean. But reading about Eva and threats set his mind careening like a pebble pitched down a well—bumping off walls, getting darker every inch it went, and nothing good to come at the end of the ride. He poured a second glass of whiskey and gulped it down.
Jess threw on his coat and stormed from his office. It was snowing, and he was hatless, his coat unbuttoned. He didn’t feel the cold or at least it didn’t matter. He didn’t know where he was walking. He just had to get away from Crickette’s notes. From what they implied. Because, like having a pistol poked in your face, it’s not the poking that weakens the knees. It’s the implication. And that notebook’s implication sure as hell was weakening his.
In the wind’s howl, his conversation with Carrie kept kicking at him like a stark-loco stallion. Who murders a dying woman? Someone who wants to silence her.
By the end of his walk, something—perhaps the stinging sleet, perhaps the soothing rye—had calmed Jess. He phoned Max. “What’s the story on this notebook?”
“Came across it this morning, Sheriff. Crickette had stuck it in an old White Owl cigar box, like I told ya. Left it in the top desk drawer, right under the checkbook. Where I couldn’t miss it. You saw the old snapshot inside, right? Couple holding a baby? I never seen it before. Probably friends of Crickette’s from the old country, s’pose.”
“Did you read the notebook, Max?”
“Couldn’t stand to read the part after she got sick. Just couldn’t do it.”
“I can savvy that. Guess that’s all for now. You take care of yourself, pardner.”
Jess stroked the stubble of beard on his chin. He snatched the telephone to call Eva then hung it back up. What the hell would he say to her? He opened his whiskey drawer and his eyes fell on what lay there next to the bottle—that blasted slip of pink paper he’d found clutched in Crickette’s icy fingers.
It screamed at him, It was Eva.
For the first time in years, Jess locked his desk drawer. Though it was barely 4 p.m. he turned off the office lights and went home.
Wallener
The next afternoon, the winter gale was still pounding the Sand Hills. Jess sat in his office, trying to see the words in Crickette’s notebook as anything but damning. Until he could do that, asking Eva about them seemed like lighting the fuse on a case of dynamite set to blow the lives of everyone around him to smithereens. To break the tension, he turned on the opera broadcast—the Met was doing Bellini’s Norma. He might have preferred a Donizetti comedy to this story of a desperate woman with secret guilt, but the beauty of the music was soothing.
Before the third act finished crackling out the wireless, there was a knock on the door and a big stranger swept in with the wind. Hefty in size, but even heftier in presence. A man packing something invisible. Something you feel. Like the air in front of a big storm. You can’t weigh it or slap a tape measure on it, but you sense it. And like a storm from up north, this fellow didn’t smell local. Before he opened his mouth, even covered up as he was in his white Stetson and huge overcoat with the fur collar turned up, Jess knew this man was a long way from home.
His German accent, thick as pine tar, confirmed it. “Mr. Sheriff, I presume? Good day. May I introduce myself?” He waited for Jess’s nod. “I am called Wallener. Professor Wolfgang Wallener.” He bowed slightly. “Of the University of Heidelberg in the Federal Republic of Germany.” He handed Jess his card.
Jess turned down the volume of the radio. “Name’s Garrity, Hooker County sheriff.”
They shook hands. Wallener had a blacksmith’s grip.
“What can I do ya for?” Jess said.
“Mr. Sheriff, I visit on an academic matter. I seek information.”
“Professor, I’d be happy to help however I can. Give me your coat and hat, and we’ll pull you up a chair next to the stove. It’s not just cold out there. It’s damn cold.”
The professor’s coat was wool. And heavy, as if the pockets held bricks. The coat tree groaned as Jess hung it up. His hat was sized for a grizzly. And brand new.
Wallener stood over the stove, rubbing his palms together. “Your wind here is magnificent, Sheriff. In my steps from the train station, I thought it might slice off my skin.”
“Miss Agatha—that’s my mama—she likes to say, ‘Ain’t nothin’ between us and the North Pole but a few strands of barbed wire.’ What’s on your mind, professor?”
Absorbed in scanning the room, Wallener ignored the question. His eyes fixed on the bookcase next to the front window. Bear-like, he ambled over to the display on top of the case: Small Marine Corps flags crossed over Jess’s service citation.
Without looking at Jess, Wallener said, “Teufel Hund.” Said it almost as a gasp.
Jess leaned forward. “Pardon?”
Wallener turned to Jess and smiled for the first time. “Ein Teufel Hund. It means Devil Dog. It is how we called you at the Belleau Wood in 1918. You see, I was one of those facing you, a gunnery sergeant with a Maxim machine gun platoon of the 461st Imperial Infantry Division. We anticipated to sleep in Paris in those June days, but you Teufel Hunde made otherwise.” He strode toward Jess like the Hun had in France, but this time with a right hand, rather than a bayonet, extended. He took Jess’s hand, not to shake it but to pull him close, and whisper in his ear, “War, Mr. Sheriff Garrity—it is black business.”
“Can’t argue with that, professor.” Jess pulled his face back from Wallener’s, but his hand remained trapped in the man’s grip.
“We so admired your riflemen, Sheriff.” Wallener released Jess’s hand. “They could kill a fly—“ He snapped his fingers. “—at two kilometers.”
“Well, we had some good boys, but you fellers were fearless.” Jess was suddenly glad some Kentucky marksman hadn’t killed this particular Hun.
“Sheriff, such terrible days, but I often look back at them with warmth. How can that be?”
“If you find out, let me know.”
“Perhaps it was the men. Each depending on the other. Each ready to spend himself for his fellows. War is the closest men can come to each other. To nobility.”
They were quiet for a moment, like strangers fate brings together to show each other truth.
Wallener’s smile returned. “Sheriff, I cross the sea a pilgrim to honor your countryman, Mr. Hank Williams. This man’s music is my passion, and when he died, I pledged to make a pilgrimage to his grave. After these five years, I keep my pledge.”
Jess looked skeptical.
“Ja, ja, it is so. Should it surprise one? More so than the sheriff of a prairie land like the setting of a John Wayne western film who listens to European grand opera? I don’t think so. You and I like musical stories, and both opera and cowboys’ music are just that: Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. Girl dies.” Wallener shrugged. “Our musics conduct us to alien lands. When you listen to your Norma, you close your eyes and sail on the notes to Germania in the time of the Romans. Me, I listen to Hank Williams’ songs, and I shoot over the sea to a land as foreign and fascinating to a Heidelberger as is the moon. To the lonesomeness of a whip-o-will’s call. Or the ache of a tobacconist’s wooden Indian in hopeless love with a statue- maiden on an antique store shelf.” Wallener closed his eyes. “It is magic.”
“But you weren’t raised on cowpoke music back wherever in Germany, I ’spect.”
“I enjoy the opera, but I think I become less patient with age. Mr. Williams does in four minutes what Herr Wagner takes four hours to do.”
Jess chuckled. “One way to look at it. All the same, sure ain’t what you’d expect from a German professor and a flea-bit Hooker County lawman.”
“It reminds
ourselves—Beware of anticipations!”
“Speakin’ of anticipatin’, I anticipate you savvy that Hooker County is a long ways from old Hank’s grave. So, what brings you to these parts.”
“Ja, ja, sheriff, I know this well, that I am out of my way to Montgomery of Alabama. As you surmise, I make travel to your door with another reason. You see, from 1929 I am professor at my university’s Staatswissenschaft department. It means roughly political science. Since the last decade, my specialty is the late National Socialist regime’s hidden mechanisms. Covert agencies, programs, financings, and so on. My research trove is the dusty document stacks of government warehouses.” Wallener held up his meaty index finger, a teacher marking a key point in his lesson. “The Nazis were meticulous documenters. Compulsives. Foolish, considering the dark nature of their work, but they could not help it. Compulsiveness is in the German character.”
“I’m sure it’s interestin’ work, Professor, but I don’t see the tie-up to Hooker County.”
“Allow me to get to that directly, my dear sir. Since two years, I found a thick file with the intriguing title, Unsichtbarfrühaugen—UFA. It means in English something like Invisible Early Eyes. The documents indicate UFA was a program to place children, girls to be precise, into Poland, England, France and Belgium to make intelligence gathering long prior to war.”
Jess smirked. “You funnin’ me, professor? Little girls as Nazi spies? That’s tougher to swallow than rusty barbed wire.”
Wallener scowled. “Observe yourself, sheriff: The very suggestion of young girl as spies strikes you as absurd!” He leaned forward and tapped his temple. “Apparent absurdity, the plan’s genius. An effective genius, for the UFA girls were never exposed. It was a bold plan, but boldness was never in short supply in the Reich’s High Command. The documentary evidence is clear. The program began in 1935 when thirty-eight wards of the state, eleven-year-old girls, chosen for high IQ, were put through psychological screening for loyalty and other desirable characteristics. Nine were eventually selected. After indoctrination, they were trained in information collection and in the language and customs of their new homes. In 1937, using invented identities and forged documents, the nine were placed into strategic locations; two went to France, two to England, two to Poland, and three to Belgium.”