by Rehder, Ben
Something was speaking to him now. An animal out there, mocking him, telling him it was only a matter of time … laughing at him.
His eyes never closed, but they stopped seeing.
He was long gone before the teeth sank into his flesh.
37
IT WAS A beautiful day for the ceremony—sunny, cloudless, temperature in the sixties. Marlin’s face bore little reminder of the events from eleven days earlier. There was still some minor discoloration around his eyes, but his nose was feeling much better and the wound on his back was healing quickly.
“You ready for this?” Bobby Garza asked. He was sitting across from Marlin in the coffee room at the Blanco County Sheriff’s Department. Garza had been at work for eight days and had been making his way around on crutches. It was good to have him back.
They could hear a marching band torturing some unrecognizable melody on the lawn of the courthouse across the street. After that, the mayor would speak, and then John Marlin would climb to the stage. He’d volunteered to be the one to bestow the honors on Red O’Brien and Billy Don Craddock. The city council had conjured up something called the Superior Citizen Award, and the two poachers would be the first ever to receive it. Marlin could barely stand the irony.
But this wouldn’t close the books on it all. None of them—Marlin, Garza, Tatum and the other deputies, even Charlie and his mother—would feel a sense of closure until they knew what had happened to Duke Waldrip, who had never been found. After several days of combing the woods, the search party assumed they would stumble upon a body eventually, but they never did. Had Duke escaped? They might never know.
They knew what had happened to Kyle Dawson, though. He’d been electrocuted, most likely by the toaster that had been found with his body. The hot tub behind his house seemed the most likely scene of the crime, considering that he’d been wearing a swimsuit—and Duke Waldrip was the chief suspect. All his bullshit about Cheri just didn’t add up, and she had volunteered to take a lie-detector test. Actually, she’d taken two, and she had passed them both. There was one odd fact, though, that couldn’t be explained. Henry Jameson had lifted a number of partial fingerprints off the extension cord that presumably was used to plug the toaster in. Some matched Duke’s. Some matched Kyle’s. None matched Cheri’s. But right at the end of the cord, on the plug, Jameson found the largest print of all. And it matched Gus Waldrip’s. Gus Waldrip. Of course, he was nowhere to be found. Maybe he’d reappear someday and they could question him. For some reason, Marlin didn’t think that would ever happen.
They had no doubt it was Duke who had shot Garza, but there was never any physical evidence to support it. It was merely the most logical conclusion, and there were no other suspects. The Houston Police Department had filed that case as “open but inactive.”
Likewise, they were certain it was Duke—not Kyle—who killed Oliver Searcy. Charlie had been given a few days to recover from the trauma, and then a social services worker had gently questioned him. He’d skipped school one day—which he swore he rarely did—and that was when he’d seen Oliver Searcy with Duke Waldrip. Charlie had been in the house alone, watching television, when he’d heard a truck pull up outside. Then another. He ran to his room and peeked out the window. Duke was out there with another man in camo. Charlie had gotten a good long look, and Marlin felt the boy’s identification of Oliver Searcy was indisputable. Duke, who had come home to retrieve a rifle, never knew Charlie had been home that day. He never knew there was a witness who could verify that he had hunted with Searcy. He never found out, apparently, until that morning eleven days ago.
“Quit dwelling on it,” Garza said, and Marlin looked up at him. “Won’t do any good anyway.”
“Well now, those are some words of wisdom,” Marlin replied.
“Don’t get all ornery on me. All I’m saying is, we’ll find him or his body. You know we will.”
The band fell silent and Marlin could hear the mayor’s voice over a loudspeaker.
“Better get out there,” Garza said, “It’s redneck-appreciation time.”
Marlin slowly stood.
Garza put his weight on one leg as he hoisted himself out of the chair and onto his crutches. “I got an idea. Tonight, let’s load up some sandwiches and go hunt for the chupacabra. There’s bound to be some kind of reward, don’t you think?” He pronounced it ree-ward.
“And right after that,” said Marlin, playing along, “we can throw a net over the Sasquatch. Maybe track down a unicorn.”
“That’s the spirit.”
They got to the front door of the building, and Marlin opened it to let Garza through. As the men walked down the sidewalk and began to cross the street, the crowd rose and began to applaud.
Epilogue
THE DAY AFTER the ceremony on the courthouse lawn, a dog returned to its home north of Macho Bueno Ranch with a bloodstained rag in its mouth. Closer examination revealed that the rag was a portion of a shirt much like the one Duke Waldrip had been wearing twelve days earlier. John Marlin, Bill Tatum, and a small group of deputies searched a wooded area behind the dog’s home the next afternoon. In a ravine half a mile away, the search party found more shredded clothing, and then a badly decomposed partial corpse. DNA testing revealed that the body was, in fact, that of Richard Anthony Waldrip. The medical examiner, Lem Tucker, noted several fang marks on the remaining bones.
Four days later, a fourteen-year-old named Tiffany Sloan, driving without a license, hit an animal with her mother’s car on Flat Creek Road. John Marlin and Trey Sweeney quickly identified it as a spotted hyena. After much debate, the animal was sent to the forensics laboratory at the Texas Department of Public Safety in Austin. The contents of the stomach were extracted, but testing for human remains proved inconclusive.
Immediately after the ceremony, Red O’Brien and Billy Don Craddock approached John Marlin and professed that their poaching days were over. “This doing the right thing is kinda cool,” O’Brien said. Billy Don nodded vigorously in agreement. One month later, John Marlin arrested them for shooting three whitetail deer out of season.
Sheriff Bobby Garza discarded the crutches after nine weeks, three weeks short of the twelve the doctor had recommended. Two months later, he began a rigorous regimen of rehabilitation therapy. Today, his limp is nearly unnoticeable.
After inheriting Kyle Dawson’s estate, Cheri quit her job at the strip club and went into a pricey rehabilitation facility. She has slept with most of the male counselors, but she was stone-cold sober each time. She plans to attend college and earn a teaching degree.
In November of that year, Mike Hung won Actor of the Year at the Adult Entertainment Awards. As he gave his acceptance speech, right after he thanked “all the little people,” his glass eye popped out of its socket, rolled down the stage toward the audience, and caused pandemonium as scantily clad porn starlets screamed and fled in horror. Hung and Marty Hoffenhauser went on to produce three more films together, grossing a total of more than twenty million dollars.
In February, Rudi Villarreal met John Marlin in San Antonio, just as planned. But she hadn’t been simply enjoying a long vacation; she’d struck a deal with the Blanco County Record, and they’d agreed to run a lengthy article, written by Rudi, about deception and dishonesty within the media. When she asked Marlin if he would be willing to be interviewed regarding the false broadcast on Hard News Tonight, he readily agreed. Her reputation opened many doors for her, and she was able to go on record with many high-profile politicians and celebrities who had been libeled or slandered by disreputable and legitimate media outlets alike. Her article garnered national attention and became a frontrunner for the Pulitzer Prize. Shortly afterward, she took a position with the New York Times. She and Marlin talk often on the phone, and Marlin is planning to visit her soon in her new apartment in Manhattan.
In the spring of that year, Kate Fulmer, a college student and part-time volunteer for an organization called People 4 People, worked ten ho
urs a week at a soup kitchen in Lincoln, Nebraska. On her second day, she noticed a quiet man sitting by himself in one corner of the room. Kate approached him and made small talk, which became a daily routine, and the two quickly became friends. He was an odd individual, who, on occasion, would stare into space and blurt out a bizarre amalgam of words. All in all, despite his peculiarities, he seemed to be a content person, a gentle and peaceful man who smiled often. That’s why Kate was so surprised when, on his ninth day at the kitchen, he casually mentioned that he had intentionally electrocuted a man. Further, he said, he had arranged it so his brother would take the blame. Initially, Kate assumed he was either delusional or joking. He flatly said he wasn’t. Kate, starting to believe him, asked why he had done it. He said that both men had made fun of him. Also, he said, they were mean to animals, which was why he had let some of their animals loose. And then he giggled and said something confusing about sousaphones. Maybe he is joking, Kate thought. You could never tell with these people. The man continued to laugh as Kate rose and made her way back behind the counter. She wondered if she should call the police and report what the man had said. But it wouldn’t have been any use anyway. He left a few minutes later and she never saw him again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ben Rehder lives with his wife near Austin, Texas, where he was born and raised. His Blanco County mysteries have made best-of-the-year lists in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and Field & Stream. Buck Fever, the first in the series, was nominated for the Edgar Award.
KEEP READING FOR AN EXCERPT FROM
BEN REHDER’S NEXT BLANCO COUNTY MYSTERY
GUILT TRIP
ON FRIDAY, MAY 7, a beautiful spring morning fairly bursting with promises of hope and renewal, Texas state senator Dylan Herzog received a phone call that grabbed him by an extremely sensitive part of his anatomy and yanked him to a place he definitely didn’t want to go.
Before the unwelcome interruption, Herzog had been minding his own business, thumbing through a copy of Esquire, contemplating the possibility of cheek implants. A senior aide named Rusk was in Herzog’s office with him, both of them moving slowly, sort of easing into the morning. They were seriously hung over, having spent the previous afternoon on a cabin cruiser with a couple of hard-drinking lobbyists and their bikini-clad dates. These were young ladies with scruples; their tops hadn’t come off until the third round of margaritas.
“You seen this yet?” Rusk asked, hefting a document three inches thick.
But Herzog was too distracted by the article, a somewhat facetious piece on cosmetic surgery. For a price, you too could look like a Hollywood hunk! There were before-and-after shots: Some loser who’d spent a cool twenty grand for a complete makeover. Hair plugs to give him a thick mop like Hugh Grant’s. Liposuction for the trim waist of Russell Crowe. And cheek implants for the Brad Pitt look. But now, in Herzog’s opinion, the patient simply looked like a hairier, skinnier, cheekier loser.
Rusk repeated his question, and Herzog glanced up. “Seen what?”
“The prelim report on the red-necked sapsucker.”
Herzog tossed the magazine aside. Cheek implants? The very idea. He was a devastatingly handsome man as is, even if he was approaching fifty. “The red-necked…?”
“Sapsucker.”
“What about it?”
“They want to move it from endangered to threatened, but they need more funds to continue the study.”
Screw the sapsucker, Herzog was about to say, but right then Susan buzzed in on the intercom.
“Senator Herzog, there’s a call for you on line one,” his executive assistant said, sounding somewhat less chipper than normal. Herzog frowned at the phone. He had asked her to hold all calls unless it was important. And for God’s sake, he’d told her, don’t put the wife through.
“Who is it?” he snapped, running a hand through his hundred-dollar haircut.
“Well … he didn’t say.”
“Didn’t I tell you—”
“You need to take this one, Dyl.”
Herzog shot a quick look at Rusk, thinking: Jesus, how many times have I told her not to call me that in the office? He lifted the phone from its cradle.
She whispered: “Sorry about that, but it’s some guy … he didn’t give his name. He says he has photos—”
“Aw, Christ,” Herzog said, wondering why she would interrupt with a call from a person he didn’t even know. And why was she whispering? “Just take a message, Susan, and tell him—”
“Of us!” she hissed. “He says he has photos of us.”
And just like that, everything changed.
Herzog sat up straight. His forehead suddenly felt like a furnace. A million invisible pins pricked at his scalp. The hair on his neck would have stood on end if it hadn’t been meticulously trimmed with a GroomMaster Deluxe. He tried to smile at Rusk, who was looking more curious by the minute. Everything okay? the aide mouthed. Herzog nodded.
“I wasn’t going to put him through,” Susan said gingerly, “but when he said that, well…”
Herzog stared down at the red blinking light on the phone’s base. The caller was waiting patiently. “What were his exact words?”
“He said he’d been watching us … and he has photos. He sounds pretty creepy, Dyl.”
“Okaaay,” he said, drawing the word out, giving himself time to think. But it most definitely was not okay. He covered the mouthpiece. “Can you give me a few minutes, Ken?” Rusk gave him a questioning look, but nodded and left the office.
Herzog took a deep breath, then pushed the red button and mustered up as much bravado as possible. “Who the hell is this?”
There was a moment of silence, then a harsh backwoods twang: “Mind you damn manners, Herzog, or every newspaper in the state’s gonna know you cain’t keep your pecker in your pants.”
Play it tough—that’s what his instincts told him. Herzog had dealt with his share of blowhard rednecks before, and they usually backed down when he got firm with them. Besides, the caller might be bluffing. “I don’t know if this is a sick joke or what,” he said, “but if you think—”
“Have you checked your mail this morning?”
“No, I haven’t, but I have no intention—”
“Just shut the hell up and check with your secretary. She seems to take care of all kinds of little things for you, know what I mean?” There was a taunting quality to the caller’s voice.
With one hand, Herzog began to rummage through his overflowing inbox. “You leave her out of this,” he demanded. “My relationship with Miss Hammond is purely professional.” He meant to issue the words in a bark of indignity, but they came out in a frantic squeak.
“‘Purely professional,’” the caller mocked. “I wish I had me a setup like that. Now you just find them photos and we’ll all see how professional it really is. I sent you a little care package on Wednesday. Would’ve been in yesterday’s mail, today’s at the latest.”
And it was. Herzog found it buried in the middle of the pile: a plain manila envelope, Herzog’s name and address in block letters, with the word PERSONAL below that. The return address said Kimberly Clark. Why did that name sound familiar? “I’ve … I’ve got it right here,” Herzog said.
“Well, hell, boy, don’t be bashful. Take a look.”
Herzog swallowed hard, tore the envelope open, then braced himself and pulled the contents out.
Oh my God.
He felt an iron fist grasp his balls and squeeze. Sweat was beginning to trickle from every perfectly exfoliated pore.
The photos were grainy and of poor quality, but they did the job. They had been taken through the rear windows into the living room. His stomach went queasy. Someone had been spying on them from Susan’s backyard!
The first shot wasn’t too troublesome—just him and Susan kissing, fully clothed. He even remembered the night, Friday of last week, when his wife was out of town.
Herzog flipped to the second shot and a
wave of nausea churned in his abdomen. Much more incriminating. Now they were undressing—Herzog unbuckling his belt, Susan with her blouse off, her skirt at her feet. The important question was, how long had the photographer hung around? Was the last shot worse than the first two? After all, Herzog had certain, well, “predilections” that the average constituent simply would not fully understand. He might be able to survive a run-of-the-mill infidelity scandal, but if these photos ventured into—
His thoughts were interrupted.
“That gal’s sure got some nice titties,” the caller said. “Them store-bought or what?”
Herzog couldn’t answer. He was beginning to hyperventilate. Everything depended on the third shot, and he couldn’t bring himself to look. His hands were trembling and his eyes had watered up. Why was this happening? He played golf with all the right people, greased all the right palms, followed the code of the modern-day politico. For God’s sake, he was supposed to be governor some day! “Who are you?” he managed to mumble. “Why are you doing this?”
“We’ll get to that. But first, have you seen ’em all yet? That last one’s a beaut.”
Herzog summoned up his courage, what little was left, and flipped to the final photograph. He almost passed out at his desk. A bolt of pain stabbed from temple to temple.
The shot was from later in the evening, after they’d both had plenty to drink. Susan was wearing her black leather outfit—corset, thigh-high boots, and a G-string. A riding crop completed the fetching ensemble. But that wasn’t the worst part. Not by any stretch of the imagination. What Herzog was wearing made the photo an unmitigated disaster.
Dylan Albert Herzog—the distinguished representative of Senate District 32, chairman of the Natural Resources Committee—was now on foreign soil. Rather than being the one in power, the one who commanded others to jump through hoops, he was at the mercy of a stranger at the end of a phone line. It was his worst nightmare. “What … what do you want?” he chirped.