AHMM, September 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Sheriff's Department. How can I help you?” A contralto voice, capable and aloof.

  "This is Cyrus Auburn calling from Glosenby's on Passavant Pike—"

  "I have the address, Mr. Auburn. Go ahead.” As Auburn made his report he could hear Jan sobbing hopelessly behind him and, far away, the drone of the tractor.

  "They're on their way,” he told her after hanging up. Having no official status at this crime scene and being personally acquainted with the victim, he felt particularly uncomfortable and useless. “What did you mean when you said, ‘That crazy fool'?” he asked her.

  "I don't know ... I was probably just hysterical."

  "Were you thinking Jack might have shot himself?"

  "Oh, no. No, never. But he was always such a ... a warrior. He was never happy unless he was fighting for a cause—the more hopeless, the better. And once he sank his teeth into something, he couldn't let it go. He'd stand up to anybody, no matter how rich and powerful they were."

  "So who's he been standing up to lately?"

  "Well, Cole Blanchard, for one. He has a car and truck dealership and a tool rental agency in town, and besides that he buys and sells real estate and dabbles in local politics. He wants to lease some property of his to the county waste disposal system to use as a landfill. And Jack went all out to block that because any toxic waste that goes into the ground could contaminate the soil and the water table around here for generations to come. When we weren't printing business cards or wedding invitations, we were doing broadsheets and posters opposing the landfill."

  "I saw the signs along the road. Did this Blanchard ever threaten Jack that you know of?"

  "Probably. He came here one day last week and tried to pay Jack to drop his campaign.” Talking seemed to be helping her to calm down. She stood now looking out the kitchen window toward distant hills, where a green blur of trees waved in the breeze. “I'm sure Blanchard didn't pull the trigger himself, but I wouldn't put it past him to hire some hoodlum to do it."

  Auburn looked at his watch. “Jan, we're going to have to answer a lot of questions in the next few minutes. I assume you didn't hear a shot?"

  "No, but Alf started mowing just on the other side of the orchard early this morning."

  "When was the last time you saw Jack?"

  "At breakfast, probably a little after six. It was just getting light. He always got up early and worked all morning in the shop."

  "What time did Alf get here? Or does he live here?"

  "No, he lives in town. He comes in as soon as it's light enough to work."

  "Is that his Jeep out there?"

  "Yes. I hope you don't think he had anything to do with this?"

  "Has anybody else been around this morning? Besides the meter reader?"

  She turned away from the window and gave him a blank stare. “What meter reader?"

  "A man in a car from the gas and electric company was just leaving as I drove in. A big man—"

  "Bill Stull.” Jan nodded but still looked bewildered. “But I didn't see him this morning."

  "Are your meters inside the house?"

  A clatter of gravel outside and the revving of a car engine just before it was switched off announced the arrival of the Law. A long lean man wearing a star appeared at the screen door, gave it one perfunctory rap, and walked in.

  "Miz Glosenby,” he said, with a businesslike nod to Jan. “You've had some trouble here?"

  "Sheriff Heddles, this is—"

  Heddles looked through Auburn as one looks through a plate glass window. “Where is he?"

  "In the shop. Do you know the way?"

  "I can find it.” The sheriff's right leg was about three inches shorter than his left, so that from the waist up his body canted off at an angle like the stock of a rifle. His bronze complexion might have been the result of sun exposure, a circulatory disorder, overindulgence in alcohol, or a little of all three.

  In half a minute he was back in the kitchen. “Any idea when this happened? Hear the shot?"

  "No. We, I—"

  "Who found him?"

  "I did,” said Auburn. “At 10:34."

  Heddles gave him more of the plate glass treatment. “You are who?"

  "Cyrus Auburn."

  "That your car out there, Auburn? With the city plates? You stick around till I can get some ID and a statement."

  He whipped out a cell phone as if it were a revolver, called in a report to the coroner's office, hobbled into the shop for a second look, bustled out to his car, and returned with forms on a clipboard. Then, turning the breakfast table into a desk, he took a detailed statement from Jan.

  Auburn hadn't noticed that the sound of the tractor had stopped until, awaiting his turn to be interviewed, he looked out into the yard and saw Alf Chickering approaching the house in the company of a very large man in the uniform of a deputy sheriff, who looked like the exact image of the meter reader Jan had identified as Bill Stull.

  Auburn had once learned, in a course in physical anthropology, that emaciated or extremely thin people all tend to look alike because the absence of fat brings out the contours of the skull and facial bones beneath, while all very obese people also have roughly the same facial features because the excessive cushioning of subcutaneous fat approximates the shape of the head to a sphere. All the same, unless this deputy and the meter reader were twin brothers, the resemblance was uncanny.

  The deputy left Alf Chickering in the yard and labored up the steps to the kitchen door, abruptly shutting off the daylight with his enormous bulk. Sheriff Heddles went to the door to meet him.

  "Did you frisk him?"

  "Yes, sir. No weapons on him except this.” He handed the sheriff a big jackknife with a scarred bone handle.

  "Okay, go around to the window at the south end of this ell—the one with the hole in the screen—and look for a shotgun shell. I'll get with you in a few minutes, Chickering."

  After Jan had signed her statement, Auburn replaced her in the hot seat at the breakfast table. Heddles started a new form, conscientiously copying data from Auburn's driver's license and Public Safety ID. Meanwhile Jan made fresh coffee and poured cups for Auburn and Heddles. She had abandoned her jelly making.

  "Detective Sergeant Auburn,” said the sheriff. “Are you carrying a weapon?"

  "No, sir.” Since Auburn had dressed casually for this semi-official summer trip to the country, the only weapon he could have concealed on his person might have been a straight razor.

  "What was your relationship to Glosenby, exactly?"

  "We were old friends, from years back, but today's visit was business. I wanted to show him some old newspaper clippings to see if he could identify the papers they came from.” Heddles's hard-bitten expression took on a trace of scorn, as if Auburn had said he was looking for help with a crossword puzzle.

  "Did you have an appointment?"

  "No, sir."

  "So you got here what time this morning?"

  "Around ten-thirty.” Auburn glanced at his watch and was amazed to see that it was only a few minutes after eleven. “I passed a meter reader in the driveway as I came in. At least he was driving a car from the gas and electric company, and from what Jan says I gather his name is Bill Stull."

  "Did you talk to him?"

  "No, sir."

  "What did you do?"

  "Parked in the yard and came to the kitchen door."

  "Who let you in?"

  "Jan."

  "Anybody else here?"

  "Chickering. Taking a coffee break from mowing."

  "Did you talk to him?"

  "Just to say hello. I'd never met him before.” Auburn then recounted his discovery of Glosenby's body and went on to describe his findings at the scene, tentatively at first and then in increasing detail as he noted the sheriff assiduously recording his every word.

  "We may do things a little differently out here in the country than you do in the city,” said Heddles at length, “but we get pretty much the sa
me results in the end.” He put down his pencil and struck a reflective pose, as if he were trying to decide how far to unbend before a fellow lawman who might, after all, have committed this murder. “I've got two or three rules,” he said. “The killer is never a stranger to the victim. And you've got to nail ‘em quick and not let up until they make a mistake."

  The deputy appeared again at the kitchen door. “What'd you find?” asked Heddles. “Anything?"

  "No shell."

  "Bring Chickering in here."

  Auburn, presuming on the sheriff's more or less genial air, asked him a question. “Is your deputy related to Stull, the meter reader?"

  "My deputy is Stull, the meter reader. Besides that, he farms some land on the other side of Blueband Creek and he plays the piano at the First Methodist Church in Dampiere."

  The sheriff's poker face gave no clue as to whether he was reciting Bill Stull's accomplishments with pride or derision.

  Stull returned with Alf Chickering in tow. As he entered the kitchen, Alf swept off his hat and exchanged silent glances with Jan.

  "What do you know about this, Chickering?” asked Heddles, who remained seated at the table.

  "Only what Bill told me—somebody shot Jack?” His brow glistened with sweat and he gave off a pungent aroma of tractor exhaust and freshly mowed clover.

  The sheriff unfolded a piece of newspaper on the table. “Empty out your pockets right here."

  Chickering dug his hands into his pockets, scooped out their contents as if he were digging a trench with a backhoe, and dumped everything on the table in one heterogeneous pile. Heddles snatched up Chickering's wallet and began copying data on a fresh form. Meanwhile the pile grew, as coins, pieces of string, pieces of wire, scraps of paper, rusty nails, clods of earth, and wisps of dried vegetation came forth from Chickering's shirt and pants pockets. The fan blew two bits of aluminum foil and several small round disks of soft plastic to the floor. Auburn picked them up and returned them to the pile.

  Without inviting Chickering to sit down, Heddles subjected him to a much more rigorous questioning than the ones he'd put Auburn and Jan through. Chickering was forty-four and a native of New South Wales, which, he had to explain to the sheriff, was an Australian state and not one of the British Isles. He had begun working as a sheepherder at age twelve, had emigrated to the States about twenty years ago to escape a forced marriage, and was now a U.S. citizen. He had been working for Jack Glosenby as a general farmhand for the past eighteen months. He had seen and heard nothing unusual that morning, and stubbornly refused to speculate as to who might have murdered Glosenby.

  Heddles rummaged through the pile of personal articles on the table with a stiff, insistent forefinger, took possession of a ring of keys, and stood up. “Come in here with me, Chickering. I want you to see something."

  As Chickering followed the sheriff into the print shop, Auburn wondered whether Heddles had already “nailed” his killer. If so, what did he hope to accomplish by confronting the suspect with his victim? Was he expecting to see signs of remorse on that saucy, devil-may-care face? Testing the truth of the old adage, “The corpse bleeds when the murderer is near"? Whatever his intentions, he was risking contamination of the crime scene with trace evidence from the suspect.

  Heddles and Chickering returned from the shop almost immediately. The farmhand appeared badly shaken, probably more by what he was hearing than what he had just seen.

  "I'm not charging you yet,” said Heddles. He held up Chickering's wallet and keys before ostentatiously stuffing them into his own pocket. “But I've got my eye on you. Just like you've probably had your eye on Miz Glosenby, and Miz Glosenby, who's about twenty years younger than Jack, has probably had her eye on you.” Oblivious of his audience, he tossed off these comments as nonchalantly as if he had been discussing last year's soybean crop.

  Jan, nearly dumb with indignation, managed to whisper, “Seven years."

  "Come along with me, Sergeant,” said the sheriff, addressing Auburn. “You too, Stull."

  As they stepped out of the cool kitchen into the blazing noonday sunshine, Auburn was struck by the pervasive silence of the country, scarcely broken by the faint hum of traffic on the county road and the tweeting and chirping of a few birds and locusts that weren't taking their siestas.

  "Look around and see if you can find that twelve gauge,” Heddles instructed the deputy. “Don't forget the Jeep. Here, these might help.” He handed over Chickering's keys.

  While Stull set off on a tour of the outbuildings, trudging over the rough ground like a steer ready for slaughter, Heddles led Auburn around to the window with the perforated screen. The shop wing was almost completely surrounded by an apple orchard, but the window in question lay less than ten yards from the edge of a broad field of freshly mown clover hay.

  "What he probably did,” said the sheriff, pausing in his awkward stumping progress to survey the field, “was to stop his tractor right about there, leave the engine running to cover up the sound of the shot, sneak up to the window..."

  The ground beneath the window bore an abundant crop of sorrel, dandelions, chickweed, and other wild vegetation, some of it almost deserving the name of shrubbery. Someone, presumably Deputy Stull in his search for the shotgun shell, had trampled or uprooted some of the weeds and left a jumble of footprints in the soft earth.

  "It might be a good idea,” Auburn ventured to suggest, as Heddles marched up to the window, “if you could make some kind of record of those footmarks before too many more people stroll through here."

  The sheriff paused with his ungloved hand on the enameled steel sash of the window and favored Auburn with an austerely superior smile. “Like I said before,” he said, “we do things differently here in the country. Now, you take those footprints. It's no use trying to tell who made them, because everybody around here wears the same kind of boots. You wait till November, when Hooke's General Store in Dampiere has their annual sale, and you buy two, three good pair—steel toe, oil and acid resistant, non-skid soles—for forty-five dollars per.” He lifted his left foot and turned it over to show the sole, which had a tread like an airplane tire. “They sell out in one morning."

  Auburn forbore to point out that length of stride and pattern of gait vary markedly from person to person, that boots come in different sizes, and that tracks left by a pair purchased last November would by now be almost as distinctive as fingerprints, showing different patterns of wear, scrapes and gouges in the sole, pebbles wedged in the tread.

  "There's Doc Rushkin,” remarked the sheriff, as a heavy, low-slung vehicle, a cross between an SUV and a ‘50s-style hearse, rolled into the yard.

  The Lerner County coroner, sparely built and about seventy, bounded out of the driver's seat with energy to spare. Auburn suspected that, like Deputy Stull, he divided his time between official duties and farming. Heddles greeted the coroner with a mute wave of the hand and followed it immediately with a gesture indicating the location of the body, or rather of the route to it. Then, with Auburn in tow, he made a tour of the orchard and a circuit of the house, kicking every clump of weeds and leveling every mound of earth with the toe of his generic right boot from Hooke's General Store in Dampiere.

  When they got back to the farmyard they found Chickering examining the chrome trim of the coroner's car. Stull was nowhere in sight.

  "Look here, mate,” said Chickering, “what you said in there about me and Jan—that's all codswallop. I mean, I've got me own sheila in town, see—"

  Ignoring him completely, the sheriff led Auburn back into the kitchen. Dr. Rushkin was administering counsel and consolation to the widow, assuring her that Jack had died instantly and felt nothing. “Dead about four hours,” he remarked to Sheriff Heddles. He rolled a couple of shotgun pellets between his right thumb and forefinger. “Lead,” he said. “Number one buckshot."

  Heddles pulled his own specimen out of his shirt pocket and held it up to the window. “At least. Any guns here, Miz Glosenb
y?"

  "No. Jack didn't hunt, and gun control was one of the things he...” Her voice trailed off into silence.

  "If I can get some help loading him into the van,” said Rushkin, eyeing Auburn but addressing Heddles, “I'll run him over to Brant Memorial.” He shooed Jan away to another part of the house and brought in a folding stretcher and a body bag from the van. After being introduced to Auburn, he explained that the postmortem examination would be carried out by the Piedmont County coroner because Lerner County lacked the necessary facilities. “And anyway,” he added, “I'm just an old rhubarb and soda doctor."

  Alf Chickering wasn't invited to be a pallbearer. The first thing Heddles did when they went into the shop was to slide the big chair back in front of the window, aligning its legs almost perfectly with their former positions, as indicated by the depressions in the rug. He did this, of course, to make room for the stretcher, and yet it occurred to Auburn that here again he was doing a pretty efficient job of muddling up the physical evidence at the scene.

  After they had loaded Glosenby's remains in the van, Dr. Rushkin sat down at the breakfast table to read the statements that Heddles had taken from Jan, Auburn, and Chickering. “Mm-hmm, mm-hmm,” he intoned repeatedly as he looked them over and copied names and times into a notebook.

  Once the coroner had driven away, Auburn asked the sheriff if he was free to leave the premises long enough to run into town and pick up some fast food for everybody.

  "Don't get too far away. I might want to ask you some more questions. Might even need some help,” he added, in exactly the same way that a man suggests to his four-year-old son that he might need some help in driving the family car.

  "Oh, don't do that, Cy,” objected Jan. “There's plenty of food here. I can make some sandwiches in five minutes, and we've got our own fresh corn, green beans, apples...” While they worked together to prepare a cold lunch, she told him she'd called her parents in Indiana, and that they would be there by nightfall.

  Heddles and his deputy had vanished, intent on their own business or perhaps on their own lunches. Alf Chickering appeared at the kitchen door, as subdued in manner as a whipped dog, and didn't come in until he had asked if he might share in the “tucker” and had been invited in by Jan. The three of them ate in somber silence and with little appetite.