AHMM, September 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Did you see Deputy Stull here earlier today?” Auburn asked Chickering. “Before I got here?"

  "I did,” nodded Chickering. “You can spot that bit o’ lard a mile off. Mucking about down by the babbler, he was."

  "Down by the which?"

  "The babbler. The brook, mate."

  "He means Blueband Creek,” explained Jan. “Bill Stull owns the farm on the other side of the creek from us. Last winter Jack figured out that the creek has been gradually changing its course for years, and that Stull is farming land that belongs to us."

  "It sounds like a problem for a surveyor,” commented Auburn. “Or a lawyer."

  "Exactly,” agreed Jan. “Jack wanted Stull to go halves with him to get the boundary line verified, and Stull refused. They went round and round about it—you know how Jack loved a good argument."

  "But you didn't see Stull here this morning?"

  "No. I'm sure he didn't park out in the yard."

  "Could he have been talking to Jack through the shop window?"

  Jan was already putting away leftovers from lunch in the refrigerator. She paused in deep thought with her eyes closed. “I guess so, sure. Are you thinking—?"

  "He's thinking what I'm thinking,” interrupted Chickering, who had eaten almost nothing. “Bill didn't have a gun when I saw him. But that bloke is a right drongo, and as such, I wouldn't put it past him to shove a gun up to the window and blow old Jack into a dog's breakfast. Begging your pardon, love.” He stood up and began cramming his personal articles back into his pockets, including the clods of earth and sprigs of clover. “I'll be pegging it about the fields somewhere,” he said, “seeing as the field marshal copped me key to the tractor.” He slammed out of the kitchen without further farewell.

  During more than fifteen years in law enforcement, Auburn had dealt with dozens of bereaved and grieving people. He clearly sensed that what Jan Glosenby needed at this moment was privacy and not further condolences. On the assumption that Sheriff Heddles had completed his examination of the crime scene, he returned to the print shop for another look.

  The shop consisted of a single large room. Antique presses, racks of type, and worn and ink-stained workbenches occupied the central space, while cupboards and file cabinets, some oak and some steel, completely lined the walls. Stacks of printed materials—broadsheets, brochures, newsletters—filled open shelves in some of the cupboards.

  The stool on which Glosenby had evidently been sitting when he was shot still lay on its side on the floor, and under it the compositor's stick he had been using. Four or five dozen pieces of type that had spilled out of the stick gleamed in the early afternoon sun.

  No one had taken any photographs here. Auburn set out to remedy that omission, even though the body had now been removed and furniture had been shifted from its earlier position. He shot a dozen views with his cell phone, transmitted them to his computer at home, and then erased them.

  The grisly patch of blood and tissue on the wall had already attracted the attention of three or four flies, which had gained admittance through the hole in the screen. Auburn closed that window but left the other two open for ventilation. Avoiding several dark, sticky patches on the rug, he went down on his knees and began gathering up the type. He didn't pause to ask himself whether he was looking for clues, yielding to a passion for neatness, or just killing time until the sheriff released him.

  One column of type, already set, lay in a frame on the imposing stone. With a little effort Auburn was able to read the backward-facing letters and find the place in the handwritten copy hanging from a spike above the rack of type where the complete column broke off.

  Still kneeling, he began lining up the spilled pieces of type along the edge of the stone to match the next line of text: “...which are clearly motivated by his political and commercial agendas.” He quickly figured out that the pieces with no letters on them were slugs used to separate words. After repeatedly mixing up b, d, and p, he began to entertain a gentler view of printers who made typographic errors.

  So intent was he on his task, he barely noticed the arrival of another car in the yard, the slamming of its door, a distant hubbub of male voices. Only when he heard those voices approaching one of the open windows did he realize the ludicrousness of his position. If they looked in now and saw him kneeling on the floor at a crime scene where he had no jurisdiction, setting out little pieces of metal in a neat row...

  Feeling utterly foolish, he cowered lower and then crawled like a crab into a corner where he was invisible from the windows. Or so he hoped.

  One of the voices—strident, clipped, but no longer so autocratic—belonged to Sheriff Heddles. The other, a bass drawl, he didn't recognize. The two men approached the screen with the hole and, although that window was now closed, Auburn could hear them fumbling with the screen and no doubt making yet more tracks with boots from Hooke's General Store.

  A move into the shade brought them outside one of the open windows. After that Auburn could hear their conversation as distinctly as if he had been part of it. Heddles, showing a side of himself that Auburn hadn't suspected, deferred to the other as to a superior, and even seemed to be defending and justifying his procedure thus far. Eventually Auburn divined that the other man was Cole Blanchard, owner and chief advocate of the projected landfill.

  Blanchard spoke little, but what he said had the ring of authority, and incidentally made excellent sense. “I wouldn't arrest him till you find the weapon,” he advised. “If he pulled that trigger, you'll find powder residue all over his right hand. Just hold on to the keys to his Jeep. You say this black guy's a cop from out of town?"

  "Detective."

  "So what's he doing here?"

  "Said he wanted to ask Glosenby something about some newspaper clippings."

  "Uh-huh. You check him out pretty good?"

  "His ID checks."

  "How's the wife taking this?"

  "I haven't seen any tears yet."

  "Yeah, well, give her my sympathies,” said Blanchard, matching the sheriff's cynical, sneering tone. “I think I'll split."

  "Sure. I'm going to round up Stull and search the house."

  That was Auburn's cue to scramble out of the shop. As they turned away from the window, he peered over the sill and caught a brief glimpse of Blanchard from the rear. A short man in a black hat, strutting arrogantly and champing at a toothpick. Auburn was back in the kitchen pouring himself a cup of coffee when the sheriff and his deputy walked in without knocking. Ignoring Auburn completely, Heddles summoned Jan by shouting, “Miz Glosenby!"

  When he announced that they were going to search the house, Auburn decided to find occupation elsewhere. His offer to hand over his car keys so that they could check his trunk for the missing weapon was accepted by the sheriff with a curt and noncommittal nod.

  He walked across the yard and into the orchard with no particular goal in mind. The sun beyond the shade of the orchard was brutal. That was all right with Auburn, because he needed something to distract him from the frustration and exasperation he was feeling. Not only did the local political boss appear to have the sheriff in the palm of his hand, but Bill Stull, whom Auburn considered a prime suspect in the murder, was even now taking part in its investigation.

  As a boy Auburn had acquired considerable skill, during one summer spent in the country, in identifying and following animal tracks. His subsequent training and experience as a detective had turned him into a pretty good tracker of human spoor, at least in an urban setting. So he had no difficulty in distinguishing the footprints of the ponderous and plodding Deputy Stull from others, including his own, near the window with the perforated screen.

  Then, setting off across the dead level field of clover that Chickering had mowed that morning, where the tropical sun was already transforming the fragrant grass to hay, he found more of the same tracks in occasional patches of bare soil. These seemed to be leading in the general direction of the creek, where Chickering claime
d to have seen Stull earlier in the day. At length Auburn found himself on the bank of the creek. Here Stull had left a continuous trail in the damp, loamy earth.

  Broad but shallow, with a rocky bed, miniature waterfalls, and quiet pools, the creek meandered among ancient sycamores and cottonwoods. The shade here was refreshing, but swarms of mosquitoes soon drove Auburn back into the direct sunshine. He had lost Stull's track but wandered along the stream in a generally northeast direction, enjoying the temporary retreat from human society and its seemingly inevitable corollary, murder.

  Not that “civilization” had left this pleasant sanctuary unsullied. Beer and soda cans and broken bottles gleamed here and there amid the rippling water. Nondescript wads of paper and plastic had been trapped by fallen branches to form miniature dams. An occasional tree trunk bore mystic symbols in orange spray paint.

  Auburn had proceeded upstream more than a quarter of a mile before he found the shotgun. Wrapped in a black, heavy-duty trash bag from which only about six inches of barrel protruded, it lay among, or rather on top of, a patch of goat's rue. If it had been there more than a day or two, some of the tendrils and racemes would have begun to grow around and over it. Auburn paused only a few moments to fix the location and its surroundings in his memory and then began the warm trek back to the farmhouse.

  He found Chickering in the barn going over a large machine with a grease gun in one hand and a monkey wrench in the other.

  "When do you pick your corn?” Auburn asked him. “Most of the cornfields I passed have already been picked."

  "That's sweet corn, mate. Hybridized for the right taste and texture so you can gnaw it right off the old cob. Or for popping. It ripens early. We raise field corn. Sell the whole crop to a processer to make molasses, starch, corn syrup, or ethanol as a petrol booster. Are they still searching the house?"

  "I think so. Why didn't you tell Sheriff Heddles you saw Stull here this morning?"

  "What, with old Bill standing right there ready to deny it? Matter of that, why didn't you tell him?"

  "I did."

  Chickering eyed him sharply. “That straight?"

  Heddles evinced a certain amount of skepticism when Auburn reported his finding of the shotgun. “I was wondering where you'd run off to without your wheels,” he said. He handed back Auburn's keys. “Funny thing you just happened to find that gun. You say it's up by the creek?"

  "Yes, sir. An over-and-under double-barrel twelve-gauge. All but the muzzle tied into a plastic trash bag."

  "Just lying there on the ground?"

  "Down on the bank, a couple feet from the water."

  Heddles took off his hat, wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, and replaced the hat. “Come on."

  They traversed the freshly mown field in almost total silence, Heddles walking a half-pace in advance and sedulously scanning the horizon, apparently as an alternative to noticing his companion. When they arrived at the margin of the creek, he shuffled down the bank to squint at the gun in its bed of pink and purple blossoms.

  "Not much of a hiding place, is it?” Did his skeptical tone imply that any idiot could have found it or that he thought Auburn had stashed it there himself?

  "Probably just temporary,” suggested Auburn.

  After a moment of hesitation, Heddles picked up the gun and, pointing the barrel skyward, fumbled with the wrappings. “More than one bag,” he said. “Two, maybe three, one inside the other.” He felt the outer bag some more. “Loose shell in here. Empty."

  "That plastic might show some latent prints,” Auburn remarked.

  "Might,” agreed Heddles. “But if we can figure that out, so can he. You can bet he wore gloves."

  "It's pretty hard to fire a gun with gloves on,” objected Auburn. “Don't you think he wrapped the bags around the gun to keep from getting powder burns on his hands? That would explain why the ejected shell is inside."

  "I'd think it would be pretty hard to fire a gun in a bag, too.” Heddles scowled at the ground. “Hard to hit anything, anyway."

  "With a shotgun?” Auburn almost shouted. The heat and the bright sun were giving him a headache, and besides that, the sheriff was inducing the kind of pain that pills don't help. “At seven or eight feet you couldn't miss a grasshopper on the wing."

  Without replying, the sheriff turned on his heel and started back toward the house. Auburn accompanied him, keeping abreast this time. When they were about halfway to their goal he decided to broach the topic of Bill Stull although, or maybe because, their last exchange had stopped just short of open conflict.

  "Are you aware that Deputy Stull was here earlier today?"

  "I'm aware you said you saw him here."

  "I saw him driving down the driveway in his van. But Chickering saw him walking across the field and along the creek."

  "That's what Chickering says."

  "What does Stull say?"

  "I don't know. I didn't ask him.” Heddles's tone, frosty and defiant, effectively put an end to the conversation.

  The deputy in question was resting his huge frame on the kitchen steps when they reached the house.

  "Stull, did you see any bags like this?"

  "No, sir. Not like that. Not with those cord ties."

  "Well, we're going to look some more. Go lock this in the trunk. It's got to go to the lab just like this.” He glanced around for Auburn as if he didn't know exactly where he was. “I'll need a further statement from you, Sergeant,” he said, and immediately turned and started up the steps to the kitchen door, implying that, just now, getting that statement was not high on his agenda.

  Auburn stayed outside. It was now nearly four o'clock. His arrangements with Lieutenant Savage had been fluid. Recognizing that circumstances might make it impossible for him to get back to headquarters before five today, they had agreed that he should call in by mid-afternoon.

  Although his cell phone had functioned satisfactorily a few hours earlier, he now found it impossible to place a call. Since telephone transmission towers were usually located in proximity to major highways, he set off across a field of ripe corn in the direction of the county road, trying the phone again at intervals.

  "Public Safety Department.” Arch Willis, the dispatcher, always managed to achieve about the same blend of exuberance and culture as a commencement speaker at an Ivy League college.

  "This is Auburn. What's new?"

  "Not much. The guy with the black-and-white checked ski mask hit Seiffert's Market on Riverview."

  "In this weather? He deserves—” Auburn was about to say “a Purple Heart” but, remembering that Willis had lost a leg in Vietnam, he changed it to “a slot in the loony bin."

  "Who do you want, Cy? Records or the Lieutenant?"

  "Lieutenant."

  After a brief pause Savage came on the line. “Cy? How's that moonshine?"

  "Kicks like a mule. Actually I'm in the middle of a real mess up here. I walked into Glosenby's shop and found him dead—shotgun wound to the head. The sheriff—” He paused and looked back over his shoulder to be sure he wasn't overheard. “—is some kind of a Keystone Cop, and I think he half suspects me of the murder, or of knowing something about it. Mainly because I found the weapon for him."

  "Anything I can do to help?"

  "No, thanks. I don't think it's time to post bail yet. But I might be tied up here for hours yet."

  "Understood. Keep in touch. And don't hassle that sheriff."

  Auburn had switched off and pocketed his phone before he fully realized what it was that he had been staring at during most of his conversation with Savage: a crop other than corn, flourishing in neat plots among the cornstalks.

  A wall of stalks parted and Chickering drifted into view, a burlap sack in one hand and a machete as heavy as a meat-cleaver in the other. “All right, mate,” came his acidulous whine. “Don't get your knickers in a twist. I couldn't dash off without taking leave of the lovely Miss Warner, could I?"

  "The lovely Miss who?"<
br />
  "Warner, mate. As in Marie. Marie Warner, you follow? Grass, pot, weed. Canna-bloody-bis."

  As nonchalantly as possible, Auburn started backing away from him and reached for his cell phone.

  "Chuck that, mate,” Chickering warned him. He had dropped the sack of freshly harvested marijuana plants and now crouched two paces away, brandishing his machete and eyeing Auburn like a half-starved dingo. “Here, I've got nothing against you. All I want to do is hop it out of here with a whole skin. But don't push me. The field marshal already has the noose around me neck."

  "You had a sweet thing going here, didn't you, Chickering?” said Auburn. “Growing all the pot you could sell to the kids in Passavant right here because Jack and Jan never come out in the fields.” Instead of retreating, Auburn was now drifting sideways, trampling down cornstalks clumsily and noisily as he went. “But they were going to hire surveyors to straighten out their boundary dispute with Stull, and that would have led to the discovery of your secret garden and probably sent you up for a stretch. So Jack had to go."

  "Here, I didn't have anything to do with that. I loved Jack like a brother."

  "Sure, and maybe you love Jan like a sister. But you still pulled that trigger."

  "How do you make that out?"

  "The killer was probably somebody who knew Jan wouldn't be working with Jack in the shop today because she was making jelly. And since he moved a chair out of the line of fire before shooting through the window, he must have had access to the house—"

  "That don't prove bloody nothing."

  "The killer also wrapped heavy-duty plastic trash bags around the stock, breech, and trigger guard of the gun so he wouldn't get powder residue on his hands. The sheriff couldn't find any bags like that here at the farm, so the killer must have brought them from outside. When the machine that makes those bags punches out the holes for the drawstrings, the punchings are supposed to drop into a waste collector, but some of them always get caught in the folds of the bags. You had about a half-dozen of those punchings in your pockets this morning—"