“Oh, it's nothing much,” Early said.
“Somehow I don't believe that.”
“Well, believe it.” He pulled down his hat from where it hung next to the door.
Thelma put her hand on Early's arm. “Jimmy, you're not going out.”
“I'm just going to ride with the trooper. I'd promised him.”
“Gonna show him how we state police do traffic stops,” Plemmons said.
“I won't have this, Jimmy.”
“Look, this is a nothing thing.”
“Then you can do it another time.”
Early shrugged at Plemmons.
“I saw him at a bar in Junction City,” the trooper said. “We could wait a week, but he might not be here in another week.”
“He, who?” Thelma asked, moving into the doorway.
“The colonel Judith was seeing.”
CHAPTER 12
* * *
August 26—Friday Night
The Traffic Stop
“Your bank robber?” Plemmons asked as he drove his cruiser through the Flint Hills, skirting the vast military reservation to the west. “How many times you gonna let the old boy get away?”
“Look, super trooper, I didn't plan it.”
“Guess you didn't. Those hands of yours look to be pretty useless, so better hope young Mister Estes doesn't come trotting by where we're going to be.”
Early squirmed in the shotgun seat. He glanced ahead into the light thrown forward by the cruiser's headlamps in time to see a skunk wander off the side of the road. “Watch—”
“I see him,” Plemmons said. “I have no desire to get my car stunk up.”
Early settled back. He twisted quarter to the trooper in the semidark of the cruiser's interior. “If Sonny does happen by, guess you'll have to catch him.”
“I expect I will if I'm to save your reputation, which is getting about as tattered as your body.”
Plemmons turned from the county road onto the main highway—US Eighteen—at Ogden and stepped down on the gas pedal. His cruiser ate up the miles as it rolled on to the southwest, toward the city—Junction City—that welcomed the soldiers from Fort Riley and the payday money they brought with them. Friday and Saturday nights, the Junction's main street was thick with men in uniform, rambling from one establishment to the next. The city police and the post's MPs found business equally good and, on those nights, frequently filled their jails.
The trooper took his foot away from the accelerator when he topped a hill and the lights of the Junction opened out before him. At the bottom of the hill, he slowed and turned off onto a graveled side street, turned again, and parked under a maple tree, his car aimed out toward Eighteen. He cut the lights and the motor, then checked his watch in the glimmer coming from a street lamp on the corner.
“How much time we got?” Early asked.
“Oh, I'd say about ten minutes, assuming he's still there. The MPs ought to be making their rounds, telling everybody to close up.” He rolled down his side window and stuck his elbow out.
Early worked at the handle on his side and did the same. With both windows open, the two officers of the law found themselves serenaded by a chorus of tree frogs.
“Little devils get kinda loud, don't they?” Plemmons said. He took a pouch of Red Man from his pocket and held it out to Early. “Have a chew?”
“You know I don't.”
“Just being polite.” The trooper stuffed a wad in his mouth. After he rolled the top closed, he put the pouch back in his pocket. “Want to listen to the radio?”
“You won't get much here.”
“Never know. A night like this we ought to have some pretty good skip.” Plemmons turned on his ignition, and the radio in his cruiser's dash. He rolled the tuner down toward the low numbers, where the fifty-thousand-watt stations were, catching a blip here and a burst of static there, then came a strong signal and big-band music, music that played on to a crescendo and applause.
That's the Benny Goodman Orchestra, said a voice from the radio's speaker, and our concert under the stars, KCMO broadcasting from the Starlight Amphitheater in Swope Park.
“Kansas City,” Plemmons said. He spit a gob of tobacco juice out the window. “Tomorrow night, it's the symphony—Vivaldi. Wish I could be there.”
“You like that stuff?”
“Cactus, you think I was a cowboy like you?”
“I just assumed.”
“Look, you grew up with fiddles, I grew up with violins.”
“I'll be damned.”
Plemmons glanced at the traffic coming out on Eighteen, traffic passing under the street lamp. “Well, looky there. A black Ford.”
“You really think that's him?”
“We'll find out when I get behind him and we see his license plate.” The trooper flipped out a notebook and glanced at a number. He stepped on the starter button as he tossed the notebook aside. The engine roared and Plemmons rolled out into the intersection and the parade of vehicles moving toward the post.
“There's four ahead of you,” Early said.
“Not to worry. I got a motor they don't have.” Plemmons pressed the accelerator to the floor, and his cruiser's V-Eight responded, bellowing through cutouts that let him have maximum power. He swung into the passing lane, his attention on the cars as he shot by them, counting them . . . one . . . two . . . three . . .
“Truck ahead!” Early yelled, flailing a hand at headlights and an array of running lights looming up in the windshield.
Plemmons's mouth stopped in midchew. He tromped on the brake pedal, throwing Early into the dash. Plemmons whipped the cruiser into the traffic lane, and the semi trundled by. He stepped down on the accelerator again, swung out around the fourth car, and held his speed while distant taillights grew. Plemmons slowed only when he came up within spitting distance of the black Ford's bumper.
“ 'At's our boy. 'At's the license number.” He flipped up the toggle switch for his bubble light, then popped his siren three times. Brake lights came on ahead of him.
“An honorable citizen. He's gonna stop.” Plemmons slowed his cruiser as the car ahead slowed, and pulled off onto the gravel shoulder when the other car did.
“Watch how the big dogs do it,” Plemmons said as he grubbed a long-barreled flashlight from beneath his seat. He stepped out and strolled forward, slowing enough to swing his flashlight at a taillight, and the taillight went out. Plemmons snapped his flashlight on as he continued up to the driver's window. There he shined his light in the driver's face. “Your license, please,” he said.
Early opened his door. He slid off the seat and limped around to Plemmons's side of the cruiser, the bubble light rotating, its red light flashing across his back, the air smelling of exhaust coming from the rear of the black Ford. Early saw a hand come out of the driver's window, holding a wallet open. “I heard glass break,” a voice said. “You bust my taillight?”
“Wouldn't think of it, sir,” Plemmons said as he took the wallet. He put his light on it. “A colonel, huh? Name's Taggert I see. Sir, you ought to know better.”
“What? I wasn't speeding.”
“That you weren't, but you were running with one taillight, and you're drunk. I can smell liquor on you.”
“A couple beers.”
“Oh yes, I've heard that ‘couple beers’ stuff before. Step out here.”
Plemmons moved back from the door. Again he held his light on the occupant as the man came out in Army tans and eagles on the collar points of his shirt.
The trooper studied the colonel, a bit shorter than he, thicker, and shoulders not quite as square as one expected of a military officer. “Having a little trouble standing, are we, sir?”
“Of course not.”
“Turn around, sir, and face the car.”
“This some kind of drunk test?” the man asked as he shuffled around, getting his back to Plemmons.
“Might call it that, sir. Put your hands behind you, please.”
&n
bsp; “Well, this is the damnedest—”
“That it is, sir.”
Early saw the hands come out, and he watched Plemmons snap a pair of steel manacles around the man's wrists.
“What the hell you doing?” Taggert asked as he tried to twist around.
“Get your attention.” Plemmons spun him the rest of the way. He slammed him back against the car and braced a forearm against the man's chest.
Taggert spit to the side. “I'll have your badge for this.”
“Afraid not, your bird colonelship. You're not on the post. Out here you're on my state highway, and I've got the rank.”
“Do I know you?”
“Yessir, you do. Trooper Daniel Plemmons. Met out at the Sunset Cemetery after the funeral for the Smitts woman, and that gimpy old man at the end of your car is Riley County Sheriff James Early.”
“I'll have his badge too.”
“Huh-uh,” Plemmons said. “Not gonna happen. Last time we met, you didn't want to talk to us.”
“Hell with you.”
“Wrong thing to say, sir.”
“You been in the military?”
“Gunnery sergeant, Marines. The sheriff an infantry corporal, last with the Big Red One in Germany. You get over there?”
“As a captain, yes.” Taggert worked his face into a sneer. “Burns your butts, doesn't it, that neither of you two clods could get into the officer ranks.”
“Sir, you're off the post. You're in civilian country. Careful what you say.”
“You can't talk to me like this.”
Plemmons leaned hard on the colonel's chest. “Sir,” he said, an edge in his voice, “listen to me. If you have any desire to get home tonight, you talk to us.”
Plemmons slammed the barrel of his flashlight down on the black Ford's roof, just to the right of Taggert, and the man flinched. Then Plemmons whipped his flashlight over the colonel's head and brought the barrel down a second time, on the other side of Taggert, grazing the man's arm before the flashlight sent paint chips flying from the car's roof. And again the colonel pulled away from the blow.
“We got an understanding now?” Plemmons asked. “If not, you smell that kind of rotten, garbagey smell? We got a swamp off here to the side of the road with a nice patch of quicksand in it, oh, about eight yards across. We march you into that, they'll never find your body.”
The trooper again turned his light into Taggert's face, and Early saw fear.
“What do you want to know?” the colonel asked.
Plemmons, flushed, turned to Early. “What do we want to know, Cactus?”
Early hobbled up. “Colonel, Judith Smitts was pregnant. Is a blood test going to make that baby yours or her husband's?”
“Omigod.”
“You didn't know?”
“It could be mine, but, no. No, I didn't know.”
“You ask her to leave Bill?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“She wouldn't.”
“That make you mad?”
“Yes. No.”
Plemmons slammed the barrel of his flashlight onto the car's roof again.
“Yes,” Taggert said, shrinking from the flashlight, “yes.”
“You kill her?” Early asked.
“My God, no.”
The sheriff studied Taggert, then turned to Plemmons. “You believe him?”
“Nope. I think he did it. Let's take the bastard out in the swamp and kick him in the quicksand.”
“No trial?”
“Why waste the time?”
“Let him up,” Early said. He leaned against the black Ford, his bandaged hands crossed at the wrists. “Colonel, you haven't made any friends here tonight. If you decide to ask for a transfer and skip, you will see how fast a U.S. senator from Kansas can get you yanked back here and into my jail. If we have an understanding, nod your head.”
The colonel nodded, his head movement almost imperceptible.
Lights came along the highway from Junction City. As they neared, a bubble light flicked on, adding its sweep and rhythm to that of Plemmons's bubble light.
“Looks like we got company,” Early said. “Cut him loose, Dan'l.”
“Can't do that. He smells of booze. He's a danger to others on the road.”
A vehicle pulled up beside the colonel's car, Plemmons, Early, and Taggert, a Jeep with MP markings. Someone in the passenger seat called out, “Trouble here?”
Plemmons turned to the voice. “You got that right,” he said. “We stopped one of your boys, a Colonel Taggert. He's drunk. How about you drive him to his quarters?”
“We can do that.”
An MP, a sergeant built like a wrestler, stepped out of the Jeep and into the light cast by the headlights of Plemmons's cruiser. He snapped to attention, bringing up a smart salute to Taggert. “Sir, Sergeant Russell. If you'll ride with my corporal, I'll drive your car back to the post for you.”
Taggert mumbled something. Plemmons removed the handcuffs and nudged him toward the Jeep.
“Sergeant,” the trooper said, “the colonel's car has a busted taillight.”
“I noticed. I'll drive by the motor pool and have it fixed.” He fingered the indentations in the roof, glancing at Early. “Something happen here?”
“How's that?” Early asked.
“These dents.”
“Hail maybe. This is Kansas.”
“Yes, sure.” The sergeant slid in behind the steering wheel. “Does smell like a still in here. Sir? I didn't catch your name.”
“Early, sheriff of Riley County.”
“Well, thank you, sheriff, for stopping the colonel. We kinda keep an eye out for him. He's got a reputation for tipping a few too many.”
The Jeep pulled away into the night, and the sergeant in the black Ford. Plemmons strolled up to Early standing in the glare of the cruiser's headlights, the bubble light still swirling away, the sound of it like someone grinding coffee beans. “What do you think?” he asked.
“Damn, you're rough as a cob.”
“You don't tell anybody, I won't tell anybody. But I did get you some answers.”
“Nothing that would warrant an arrest.”
“Maybe, but I still like him for the deed.”
“Dan'l, you're one suspicious sort.”
“That's my job. That's where we're alike, Cactus, both of us damn good investigators.”
Early turned toward the side of the road, the smell of the swamp, like cabbage moldering, more apparent as a breeze whispered in from that direction. “There really quicksand out there?”
“Yup.”
“How do you know?”
Plemmons let off with a wicked laugh. “I've thrown a couple desperadoes out there. Of course, I had a rope on them at the time.”
CHAPTER 13
* * *
August 26—Friday Night Late
Wasted Death
“You feel like a big man now?” Thelma asked as she laid the gauze-strip bandaging aside.
“I only asked a couple questions.”
She manipulated and massaged Early's index finger. He ground his teeth.
“Can't you take it a little easy?” he asked.
“Doctor Grafton wants you to straighten your fingers. Now work with me.” Thelma bent the finger back against the curvature it assumed after the rope had torn against the skin of Early's palms and fingers.
“Oh damn, it hurts.”
“And I'm supposed to feel sorry for you? Come on, put your grit into it.” She let off on the index finger and massaged the middle finger, sweat beading out on Early's forehead. “Your state trooper sure terrorized that colonel.”
“Look, he didn't want to talk to us.”
She pressed against the curvature of the middle finger, then attacked the next before he could cry out. “What he did was despicable.”
“Bit extreme, maybe.”
“You could have stopped him.”
“I didn't let him throw the man in t
he swamp.”
She pressed his pinky finger straight.
Early sucked wind. “Lord, woman, that's awful.”
“Do you want help?”
“I suppose.”
“Then don't get me upset. I'm pregnant.” Thelma massaged at the thick muscles in Early's palm.
With his free arm, he raked the sweat from his forehead. “What's having a baby got to do with anything?”
“It makes some of us cranky.”
“Ooo, I can attest to that.”
“I want you to close your fingers into a ball, then straighten them.”
Early, at the kitchen table, focused on his hand. He squeezed with all the effort he could muster, and his fingers moved together all of half an inch.
“Well, that's something,” Thelma said. She glanced up into his face, her own features softening. “Now relax, then straighten your hand.”
Early watched his fingers return to their clawlike curvature. Then he bore down. His hand shook as his fingers pulled against the curvature, not fully straight but something of a third of the way toward it.
“That's good for a first effort. Relax now, and let's work on your other hand.”
“We gonna do this every night?”
“Every night for as long as it takes.” Thelma unwound the wrapping on the hand that had avoided her attention. She examined the burns. “Jimmy, what you've done.”
“Guess it's kinda like throwing a steer. You're committed once you start.”
“I don't understand you,” she said as she massaged one digit and then the next.
Early's jaw tightened. “Hon, ya know you're going to get beat up some, but if you let go, that steer's gonna kick your ribs in. If I'd let go of the rope—”
“You'd have fallen, yes, I figured that out. Straighten that index finger.”
“It don't wanna move.”
Thelma pressed against the curvature.
“Oh jeez—”
“Buck up, mister.”
She attacked the next finger and Early, his lips taut as cords, inhaled a world of air through his nostrils.
“You think he did it?” Thelma asked.
“Did what?”
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