Die Laughing 2: Five More Comic Crime Novels

by Ben Rehder

  “Endearing as this exhibition is, there’s really no point,” Rick said. “Nothing physical happened. We just talked. Oh, and we took a walk in the woods around two in the morning.”

  “What?” Traci’s torso wagged side to side as she said, “You did not go into those woods with another woman at two this morning.”

  It made Rick laugh. “I did so,” he said, wagging his own torso. “And her name was Terry Jackson.” He paused. “Sheriff, Terry Jackson.”

  Traci’s eyes widened. “The sheriff is a woman?”

  “And black to boot,” Rick said. “And if she’s to be believed, she’s no fan of Chief Dinkins either.”

  Rick told Traci about Sheriff Jackson’s visit and what he had seen them pull from the ground before coming to work. “Two bodies,” he said. “A man and a woman.”

  “Oh my God.” Traci took a breath. Rick saw her lips moving as she made a small gesture, crossing herself.

  “They’re looking for the slugs now,” Rick said. “Of course if they find any, then they have to find the gun and match the things and who knows what all? I’m supposed to talk to Sheriff Jackson later, find out what’s next.”

  The phone rang again. “Dubya-ay-oh-ahhr. Uhhh, could you hold please? I’ll see if he’s in.” Traci put the call on hold and looked at Rick. “It’s for you. Some guy from WVBR.”

  “Isn’t that the rocker in Vicksburg?” He looked at Traci. “Did he say what he wanted?” Traci shook her head. “Well, okay,” Rick said. “Put him through to my office.”

  75.

  The guy from WVBR was an old radio pro who knew a lot of the same people Rick did. In fact it was their mutual friend Marc Neiderhauser, a record rep for one of the major labels, who had mentioned Rick’s name. The guy said he’d heard Rick’s show a few nights earlier as he was driving back from Gulfport and was he interested in a job? They left it with Rick saying he’d give the guy a call in a few days to talk some more.

  Rick weighed his options. There was no question that things were about to change at WAOR. He doubted that the station would shut down just because the GM was in jail but that fact would certainly bring the absentee owner out of the woodwork and that might lead to something entirely different from the status quo. Maybe he’d sell the station, maybe he’d change the format. And who could tell what might happen when the FCC found out about the rigged contest? Would they yank the owner’s license and pull the transmitter’s plug? Rick wondered when he should tell the jocks they should get their tapes and resumés in order.

  Regardless of the answer to any of those questions, Rick had to consider the move. Vicksburg was a step up from McRae, improving his chances of leapfrogging to Baton Rouge or New Orleans or Mobile. Maybe, if he could get a contract and if he got a guarantee of a certain amount of control over. . . He stopped and shook his head, amazed that he was trying to talk himself into another radio job. He thought about J.J. Maguire pushing that shopping cart around Bismarck, North Dakota. Rick didn’t think he’d end up like that but it raised the question of how he would end up. And he started to wonder what he should do with the rest of his life. Last night it had been merely a rhetorical question. But now he could see the fork in the road and he had to make a decision. Which would it be, the path of least resistance or the road less traveled?

  Rick wondered what had kept him in the business all these years. What had prevented him from letting go of the past and embracing the future or at least the present? Maybe he was too lazy to learn something new. Or maybe he was just afraid that he’d fallen so far behind that he could never catch up. One thing was certain; there was no point in blaming the business. He could hate what radio had become, but he couldn’t change it. He just had to deal with it.

  But how? At his age? With his temperament? What could he do? Who would hire him and for what? The guy at WVBR would hire him to keep doing what he did, but that just delayed the inevitable. Then what? Rick could hear someone from the unemployment office saying that Radio Shack was looking for sales people. Such a fate was repulsive on so many levels that Rick couldn’t entertain it. Still, he had to try something. And soon. But what?

  Then – bang!bang! – it hit him like Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. Rick almost laughed out loud when it finally dawned on him. He’d already found his new profession. He even had a dba. He was Buddy Miles, Private Investigator. What a moron, Rick thought. I can’t believe it took me this long to figure that out. He slapped his desktop and began to imagine how much press he could generate for having solved a double murder for hire as his first case. What better way to launch a PI business?

  Of course Rick knew it wasn’t that simple. It would take a while before he could support himself as a PI. He’d need something to tide him over. The job at WVBR was perfect. Rick figured any town with a bunch of casinos in it would be chock full of seedy characters and shady goings-on. A good place for a PI to make a living.

  But he didn’t want to try to do it alone. He was tired of the solo act. He’d need an able assistant. He pushed back from his desk and went to the lobby.

  Traci looked up from reading Radio & Records. “What’d that guy want?”

  “Oh, he just said he’d heard my shift one night, driving through, and that he liked it.”

  “And you talked about that for twenty minutes?”

  “That and some other stuff,” Rick said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like my becoming his program director,” Rick said.

  “In Vicksburg?”

  “Yeah.”

  She put down the R&R.. “Wow. Are you going to take it?”

  “I’m not sure,” Rick said. “I’ve been thinking about getting out of radio.”

  “Oh,” Traci said. “I didn’t know that.” Something in her voice surprised him, a small sadness maybe, or disappointment, he couldn’t tell. “What would you do?”

  “I was thinking about being a private investigator.”

  Traci looked at him like she was expecting a punch line to follow. Then she said, “Are you serious?”

  “Why not?”

  “Here?”

  “No, in Vicksburg. But I’d need an assistant.”

  Traci looked at him like she was following – but at a distance. “Huh,” she said.

  “What do you think?”

  “You’d probably be good at it.”

  “I mean would you come with me?”

  “To be your assistant?” Traci shook her head. “No.” Then she smiled and said, “But I tell you what, if you ever go looking for a partner? You call me first.”

  76.

  Rick didn’t press Traci about moving to Vicksburg to join him in his new venture. He’d planted the seed and that was all he could do. He hoped she would come but he knew it was a lot to ask.

  Despite being disappointed by Traci’s ambiguous response Rick had a good show that night. He was enthused by the job offer and his decision finally to make a change in his life. His last set of the night started with Drowned from The Who’s Quadrophenia. Near the end of the song, there is a break that turns into a barrelhouse piano riff that Rick matched with the opening piano riff of Joe Cocker’s Hitchcock Railway. At the end of Hitchcock Railway, Rick returned to the piano riff in Drowned and let the song finish. As it faded, Rick brought up the train sound effects at the beginning of Bowie’s Station to Station. And at the end of Station to Station, Rick went into Dylan’s It Takes a Lot To Laugh, It takes a Train to Cry.

  After work, Rick drove home listening to Uncle Victor who had decided to continue Rick’s theme. He started with Lord Buckley’s The Train and Train Song by The Flying Burrito Brothers. He pulled off the road onto his dirt drive near the end of Tull’s Locomotive Breath. He turned off the radio when Uncle Victor went into another UFS spot. When the trailer came into view, Rick noticed a car parked off to the side. As he got closer he could see someone sitting in the chair by the cable spool. He stopped and wondered if he should back out but then the person stood up and waved. It was
Traci.

  Rick drove up and parked where the carport used to be. He got out of his truck and said, “What’re you doing here?”

  Traci held up a white pastry box and said, “Surprise!” She started singing the Happy Birthday song.

  Rick seemed a bit embarrassed by the display but let her finish. “How’d you know?” He opened the door to the trailer and let Traci in.

  “I’m dating a private investigator,” she said, putting the box on the table. “Plus I looked in the employee files.”

  “You shouldn’t have.”

  “Looked into the files?”

  “Gone to this trouble.” Rick turned on the radio. Uncle Victor was playing Tom Paxton’s One Million Lawyers. “But thanks for doing it.”

  As Traci went to get plates from the cupboard she gestured at the piece of wood covering the window. “What happened there?”

  “Flying squirrel,” Rick said as he took the milk from the refrigerator.

  Just then, a car pulled off the county road. The headlights were off. It sat there for a moment before it began creeping up the dirt road toward Rick’s.

  Traci opened the white pastry box and pulled out a pecan pie. “It’s from Kitty’s,” she said. She pulled a small blue candle from her shirt pocket and stuck it in the middle of the pie. “Got any matches?”

  Rick pointed. “Look in the drawer.”

  The car stopped about twenty yards from the trailer. A man got out, leaving the engine running and the driver’s door open. He could see shadows and light in the trailer.

  Traci lit the candle and started singing the Lennon and McCartney version of Birthday. “Yes we’re going to a party party. . .” She stepped back to present the pie to Rick. “Make a wish,” she said.

  Rick thought for a second before leaning down to blow out the candle. That’s when the shotgun blast ripped through the window. Glass and lead exploded everywhere. Traci screamed as Rick tackled her to the floor. The second shot blew a hole in the wood covering the broken window. Rick and Traci were scrambling down the hall on all fours when the third shot blasted through the front door. A moment later there was a fourth shot somewhere outside. Then they heard a car door slam and wheels tearing out on gravel. A final shotgun blast came from a distance as the car hit the county road and disappeared.

  Rick and Traci stayed on the floor holding each other for a minute. The only sound was the radio, Uncle Victor playing Zevon’s Lawyers, Guns, and Money. When he felt it was safe, Rick looked at Traci and said, “Did you bring me a birthday present?”

  She seemed surprised and said, “You mean, other than the pie?”

  Rick smiled. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I love pie.”

  “I did bring my birthday suit.”

  “Oh, I’d like to see that.” He craned his neck to look outside. It was dark and quiet. “I think they’re gone.” He helped Traci up. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  Rick walked over to the splintered piece of wood and looked at the buckshot pattern. “You know anybody with a shotgun?”

  “You mean besides Clay?”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen his.” Rick looked through the hole in the front door, then opened it and stepped outside.

  Traci followed him saying, “DeWayne Ragsdale probably has one.”

  “Probably.”

  “Then there’s my ex-boyfriend.”

  Rick looked at her car. It was untouched.

  “Should we call the cops?”

  “I’ll call Sheriff Jackson tomorrow,” Rick said as he stopped in front of his truck. “Right after I call the windshield repair people.”

  77.

  Rick went to Sheriff Jackson’s office later that morning. He told her about the shotgun attack but admitted they hadn’t seen anything. “Well, it couldn’t have been DeWayne,” Sheriff Jackson said. “Why not?”

  “‘Cause we had him in custody.”

  “Since when?”

  Sheriff Jackson said the coroner had identified the disinterred bodies as those of Jack Carter and Holly Creel. Both had been shot multiple times, including one each in the head. The slugs had come from a Smith & Wesson .45.

  Based on Rick’s statements to Sheriff Jackson, along with sworn affidavits from Donna Moore and Joni Lang, plus the police report Lori Stubblefield provided and DeWayne’s prior convictions on drug, assault, and firearms charges, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation obtained a search warrant for Mr. Ragsdale’s residence.

  The way Sheriff Jackson told it, DeWayne had been sitting on the weight bench outside his trailer in broad daylight. He was drinking a beer, taking the occasional shot at the washing machine propped against the tree. A Molly Hatchet CD was blasting on the stereo, so DeWayne never heard the two dozen law enforcement officers as they surrounded his trailer. The police watched from a distance as DeWayne fired his SW1911, .45 auto at the helpless appliance.

  A man with the highway patrol was counting the shots. After the final round he keyed his radio. “That’s nine,” he said. “Go.” On that signal someone tossed a couple of flash-bang grenades under the trailer right behind DeWayne. Each of the aluminum and potassium perchlorate explosions delivered a pressure wave of about thirty thousand pounds per square inch which was quite a bit more than they really needed to disorient a drunk, unarmed man. Nonetheless, it made a for a dynamic entry.

  DeWayne scrambled around in the dirt on all fours trying to figure out what the hell had happened. His first thought was that his propane tank had exploded. His second thought, which he cobbled together as he was being handcuffed and tossed in the back of the Sheriff’s car, was that he was going to need a lawyer.

  After they matched the slugs to the bodies, DeWayne was taken to a small room in the sheriff’s station. It was cold. He was in there alone for half an hour before two men from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation walked in. Nice haircuts, dark suits, new shoes. “DeWayne, it’s real simple,” the first man said. “You were arrested in possession of the gun that killed these people. The rightful owner of that gun reported it stolen long before either one of them was killed. On top of that, you had one of the victim’s cars on your property. So ipso facto, my seriously inbred hillbilly defective friend, those murders belong to you.”

  “He told you he bought the car at that auction,” DeWayne’s lawyer said. “And there’s no call for the verbal abuse.”

  “Sorry. I’ll send flowers.”

  It went on like this for about an hour. The interrogators made a series of accusations. DeWayne issued a string of weak denials. Rick and Sheriff Jackson stood watching on the other side of the glass.

  At one point, the second interrogator pulled a small box from his pocket and set it on the table in front of DeWayne. He tapped the box top a couple of times then he said, “Your mama and daddy still alive, DeWayne?”

  DeWayne scratched at his mutton-chop sideburns and stared at the box. “Yeah. So?”

  The second interrogator leaned down and started working the top off the box with one hand, slowly, holding the bottom down with his other hand. He said, “Are you afraid of needles, DeWayne?” He finally pulled the top off of the box to reveal a hypodermic. A big one, lying on a bed of cotton. “I mean, you’d want to be able to at least see your mama and daddy as they get on in their years, wouldn’t you? Even if it was through all that thick glass with the hand prints all over it. And you wouldn’t wanna deprive them of seeing your pretty face for a few more, right?”

  DeWayne gave an ambivalent nod and shrugged at the same time.

  The first interrogator blew a low wolf whistle then said, “Would you look at the bore on that needle?” His voice thick with awe. “Looks like a damn sewer pipe it’s so wide. I hear that’s the biggest gauge they make.” Everyone was staring at the needle. DeWayne. DeWayne’s lawyer. Both of the interrogators.

  Everyone stared at it until the second man said, “They stick that needle up that big ole vein in your right leg.” He reached down to the inseam of
his pants and did a grotesque pantomime of sticking the needle in his own leg. It hurt to watch.

  Rick turned to Sheriff Jackson and said, “Is that really the kind of hypodermic they use for executions?”

  Sheriff Jackson shook her head and pointed through the glass at the first interrogator. “He told me he got that from a large-animal vet he knows. I think they use that thing on horses and cows. But he thought it might be good for illustration purposes, you know? Help DeWayne make a more fully informed decision,” she said with a sly smile.

  “You’d think his lawyer might object to something like this,” Rick said.

  Sheriff Jackson’s head bobbed back and forth. “Like they say, you get what you pay for.” She nodded at the room. “That one was free.”

  Back in the interrogation room, the first man said, “After they get that thing up in there, they give you a big load of that so-dium thi-o-pent-al.” He said it in syllables for effect, then he pointed at DeWayne. “Now of course you being a drug user, you’ll probably like the way it feels right up until it knocks you out. That’s when they give you the pan-cur-o-nium bro-mide.” He made a sudden fist in front of DeWayne and said, “Paralyses your diaphragm so you can’t breathe.” He squeezed his fist tight, until it trembled. “Then comes the pièce de résistance. The po-tassium chlo-ride. You know what that does, don’cha, DeWayne?”

  DeWayne nodded slightly, his eyes were vacant.

  “Takes ‘em about five minutes to inject all that stuff into ya,” the first man said. “Of course your mama and daddy can watch if they want. It’s their right. But, DeWayne, is that really how you want ‘em to remember you? Splayed out on a gurney that way? That needle stuck up in your vein like that?”

  DeWayne finally pulled his eyes off the hypodermic. “I tolt you already,” he said. “That old Stubblefield hired me. Why don’cha stick a needle in his leg?”

  “I know, I know, you sang that song earlier,” the first man said. “But see, the problem is, we just can’t take your word on that, DeWayne. There’s a little bit of a conflict of interests. And we gotta take something better’n that to the grand jury. ‘Specially since you never had any contact with Bernie Dribbling.”