Dead Weight pc-8

by Steven F Havill

  Over to the left, a cricket announced himself, and I waited for the skink’s course to change in pursuit. The two creatures seemed oblivious of each other.

  “Ah, well,” I muttered, and reached out to turn on the light. I found my glasses and swung off the bed, determined that if I couldn’t sleep, at least there were better things to do than listen to a lizard draw trails in the dust.

  In her own sweet way, Jamie had left other traces of her weekly visit. The coffeemaker in the kitchen fairly sparkled, and a fresh filter rested in place. I set the machine to doing its job while I showered and shaved.

  At 3:45 with a full, steaming mug of coffee in hand, I stepped out of the house into the black velvet of the predawn.

  Traffic on the interstate was light, with just a few truckers pounding some night miles into their logbooks. By the time I’d driven north under the exchange and idled into the village proper, even those sounds had faded to a distant hiss of tires and thump of diesel engines. I turned onto MacArthur and let 310 slow to an idle with the headlights off.

  I sipped the coffee as I inched along, looking at each house in turn. I knew most of the residents and found it hard to believe that not one of them, on that quiet July night two days before, had heard anything unusual as up at the end of the street the life was crushed out of Jim Sisson.

  As I continued around the long, gentle bend that took the street due north toward its intersection with Bustos, I saw the county patrol unit parked two blocks south of Sisson’s place on the opposite side of the street. I let my car roll up behind it, drifting to a stop with just the faintest murmur of tires on curb grit.

  I could just make out the silhouette of Deputy Jacqueline Taber’s head, but the streetlight was too far away for more than that. I got out of 310, and even the sound of the door latch was loud.

  As I walked along the left rear flank of the Bronco, I saw Taber’s head move ever so slightly, and then an elbow appeared on the doorsill.

  “Good morning, sir,” she said.

  “Yes, it is.” I looked inside and saw that she had what appeared to be a book or magazine propped up against the steering wheel. The only light inside the vehicle was the single tiny amber power indicator on the police radio, and she wouldn’t have been able to read anything by that even if it were held right up against the page.

  “Any activity at all?”

  “No, sir. Not for a couple of hours. Not even a stray dog since…” She stopped, then clicked on a small flashlight, with most of the beam blocked by her hand. “About two-oh-five.” Before she snapped the light out, I saw that it had been a sketch pad that she’d been holding. “That was about an hour and forty-five minutes after I parked here, sir. After that, no traffic, no pedestrians, no nothing.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s good news. I don’t know. Has anyone been by to give you a break?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, then, here I am.” I patted the door. “Go get yourself some breakfast or something.” I pointed toward the pad. “What are you drawing?”

  “Oh, just sketches,” she said. “It’s a habit of mine.” She picked up the pad and handed it to me.

  “In this light, I’ll have to take your word for it,” I said. I turned the pad to catch what illumination there was from the streetlight and still saw a meaningless jumble of lines and shadows. I pulled the small penlight out of my shirt pocket and snapped it on. “Wow,” I murmured. Her “sketch” was a fantastically detailed, shaded rendering of what she was looking at through the windshield-the end of MacArthur Avenue and its intersection with Bustos, all drawn in careful perspective, as if the viewer were floating about twenty feet above the street.

  “Amazing,” I said. Deputy Taber had caught the silence and cover of night in her artwork, complete with what might have been a furtive figure lurking beside the Sissons’ fence. “Who’s this?”

  The deputy shrugged and smiled. “When I saw the pedestrian come around the corner from Bustos, she and her dog just sort of walked into the picture.” I looked closer. Sure enough, a hair-thin pencil line connected the human to the shadow of a dog.

  I snapped the light off and handed the pad back to her. “Hidden talents,” I said. “I’d like to see this in decent light. How the hell can you tell what you’re drawing in the dark?”

  “Actually, once your eyes adjust, there’s really quite a bit of light, sir. Enough for this, anyway.”

  Oh, sure, I thought. “Do you do people, too? Faces and such, I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s nice to know.” I regarded Taber for a moment. She’d joined our department as a transplant from Las Cruces six months before, one of the last people that Martin Holman had hired before he’d been killed in a plane crash in April. I also imagined her as the sort of gal who would have come off a farm in Nebraska somewhere…square through the shoulders with about as much taper to the waist as a refrigerator, hair no-nonsense short, a plain, round face that could split open with a fetching grin. Whatever the urban social scene of the city had been, it hadn’t agreed with her.

  Something about Posadas did, though, and she seemed to take quiet satisfaction in working the graveyard shift. As far as I knew, she hadn’t taken much ribbing from the other deputies about being the only female patrol officer on the force-partly because she did such a damn good job and partly because Estelle Reyes-Guzman had broken that particular ice for our department long ago.

  She started the Bronco and I stepped away. “Who was the pedestrian, by the way? Did you recognize him?” I asked.

  Deputy Taber paused with her hand on the gearshift. “It was a woman, sir. She lives right there,” she said, twisting and pointing, over her shoulder. “Number 512. Tabitha Hines. I believe that she works at the grocery store. I didn’t see her come out of the house, so I assume she walked the dog up the roadway behind the houses, then returned on the street.”

  “Ah, Taffy,” I said and nodded. “She’d have to be a fellow charter member of the Insomniacs Club of America. What kind of dog was it, not that it matters?” I laughed. “This is all a test of your keen artist’s eye, Jackie.”

  “It appeared to be a chow, sir. The light’s not the best, but it was either a chow or husky. Short, blocky, tail over the back. I couldn’t be sure of the color.”

  “From this distance, I couldn’t have been sure it was a dog,” I chuckled, then added, “or a person, either, for that matter. What time is it now, by the way?”

  “Four-oh-one, sir.”

  “She’ll be heading off to work in a little bit.”

  The deputy didn’t respond to that earth-shaking information, and I patted the side of the Bronco. “I’ll holler at you if I need anything. You might take a swing down 56 if nothing better crops up. I assume you know about our friendly letter writer.”

  “The letters about Tom Pasquale? Yes, sir, Undersheriff Torrez told me. He said you were taking care of it, but he suggested the same thing.”

  “Keep an eye out,” I said. “I don’t think there’s anything to it, but you never know.”

  She nodded and pulled the Bronco into gear, then U-turned in the street, letting the truck’s quiet idle pull it away. I stood on the sidewalk for a while, listening to the neighborhood as the sound of Taber’s unit faded.

  After a moment, I returned to my car and got the larger flashlight so that I’d have a fighting chance to miss stepping in the piles left by Taffy’s chow.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  There are folks who are built for nighttime stealth, those fortunate souls with vision like owls and balance like cats. I wasn’t one of them. I was blessed with patience, though, and had no trouble standing still long enough so that I was sure of my next footing.

  Exactly what I thought I would accomplish was anyone’s guess, but my curiosity was aroused. As long as I didn’t step on a rattlesnake or trip over a skunk, it would be a pleasant night for a stroll.

  I took the large flashlight and crossed MacArthur south of Taff
y Hines’ residence. The houses that graced the east side of MacArthur were Posadas civilization, as far as it went. Behind Taffy’s lot and that of her neighbors was open junk-strewn bunchgrass prairie, the land cut by tracks of four-wheelers and motorcycles.

  As I walked along the side of her yard, I kept the flashlight off, making my way by what light filtered through from the street behind me and the single sodium vapor light behind the McKuens’ house, two doors south. I expected the chow to burst out of a doghouse at any moment, teeth flashing. The place was silent.

  Many of the yards were neatly fenced, but Taffy’s wasn’t. The grass of the backyard ended at the lane that served as a back property boundary for all the properties on that section of MacArthur.

  I reached the lane without falling on my face and stopped, listening. In the distance, a trucker rode his Jake brake as he headed off the interstate for breakfast at the AMERICAN OWNED AND OPERATED POSADAS INN, home of the worst food in Posadas but conveniently located at the bottom of the exit ramp.

  After a moment, I turned on the flashlight and played it back and forth on the ground. The lane was what most back alleys are in towns and cities…a welter of broken glass, paper, pet manure, and the occasional automobile muffler or oil filter. The recent thundershower had turned it all into a dark soup.

  Taffy Hines had kept to the high ground along the side of the lane, but her chow hadn’t. His big feet had planted tracks that crisscrossed the lane, and he hadn’t been all that interested in missing puddles. I’m sure he was a delight to have inside the house once back home. Perhaps that explained why Taffy had elected to walk back on the clean sidewalk, giving pooch a chance to shake off some of the mud.

  With an occasional night thing clicking, buzzing, or peeping out in the prairie to my right, I passed behind seven houses before the stout six-foot board fence that marked the Sissons’ property came into view.

  The gate was wide and cumbersome, big enough that when Jim drove into the yard with one of his machines in tow, he could just head out the back without having to turn the Lo-Boy trailer around or back out past the house. The gate was ajar a couple of inches, and I played my light around it. Apparently a trusting soul, Jim Sisson hadn’t included any way to lock the gate when he’d hung it.

  It moved easily on the large barn door hinges, and I opened it enough that I could have passed through. The chow’s prints grazed a puddle just inside the gate, headed westward into Sisson’s property. I stood for several minutes, looking down at the tracks.

  Taffy Hines, in the wee hours of the morning, had walked her dog up the back-lot lane and stopped to visit Grace Sisson. As careful as Taffy had been, I could see a couple of shoe prints that were fresh and clear and about the right size for a woman. The soles were a neat, shallow waffle pattern that would track mud into the house almost as well as the mutt would.

  Other than the hour, the visit wasn’t surprising. Of course Taffy Hines knew the Sissons. Everyone who lived on MacArthur, and a host of others, did, too. That they were close enough friends for a drop-in visit wasn’t surprising, either, although the pleasant, almost dreamy Taffy didn’t seem like a natural match for friendship with the fiery Grace Sisson.

  I stopped short, my memory finally kicking into gear. The chow. I remembered his big, flat face thrust against the back door of the Sissons’ house that first night, beady little eyes watching us, a low chesty hooof of doggy puzzlement now and then.

  Taffy Hines either owned a similar dog or was canine-sitting for the Sissons during their upset. I pulled the gate closed and continued up the lane toward Bustos. There were no sidewalks on Bustos until the intersection with MacArthur. East of that point, basically for the depth of Sisson’s lot, Taffy Hines would have had to walk on the curbing or in the street-not that traffic would have been a concern.

  If Deputy Taber’s observation had been correct, and I had no reason to doubt it, Taffy Hines had continued her nocturnal stroll back around the long block, walking down the sidewalk on MacArthur, past the front of all her neighbors’ homes, including the Sissons’.

  I stood on the corner of Bustos and MacArthur, looking down the long, straight, empty four-lane street that cut east-west through the heart of Posadas, wondering if Taffy’s nocturnal strolls were a habit. The supermarket where she was the senior cashier opened at 6:00 a.m., so she had another hour or so before facing the public.

  I crossed the intersection and strolled down the west side of MacArthur, inspecting each quiet house in turn, recalling to mind who the occupants were and what they did for a living. Nothing was out of place, nothing amiss. I’d walked almost a block before I glanced down the street toward 310.

  A lone figure was standing beside the patrol car, leaning against the front fender. I’d walked to within a dozen feet before I recognized the plump, short figure.

  “Well, good morning, Ms. Hines,” I said, and my voice sounded unnaturally loud after the long moments of dark silence.

  “Hello yourself, Sheriff. What in heaven’s name are you looking for?” She said it with good humor, the same tone she might use when she said, “Here, let me get that for you” to a customer at the store who wanted to make an exchange after reaching the checkout with the wrong brand of soap.

  “Just enjoying a beautiful night, ma’am,” I said.

  She laughed a sort of oddly sad little chuckle and rested a little more weight on the Ford’s fender. “Oh, sure. Word around is that Jim Sisson’s death was a homicide, after all.”

  “Word around, eh?” I said.

  “Well, otherwise you people wouldn’t be tying up Sisson’s property and your detectives scouring everything, looking for who knows what.”

  “That’s our job, Taffy. I’d say you’re not such a bad observer yourself.”

  “I happened to be looking out the window when you drove up to chat with Jackie a little bit ago, that’s all. And then you walked around back, and up the lane.”

  “Like I said, you’re observant, Taffy.”

  “Well, it’s a neighborhood, you know. Lots of us nosy folks like to know what’s going on. Especially after such an awful thing happens.”

  “And yet…” I paused.

  “And yet what?”

  “And yet none of you, not one, saw or heard anything when Jim Sisson was killed. No one saw anyone unusual drive up, no one heard Jim arguing, no one heard a scream or a shout, no one heard a vehicle leave or the sounds of a person fleeing on foot.”

  “That’s not surprising,” Taffy Hines said.

  “Tell me why it’s not,” I replied. “When I arrived just now, my headlights were off, and I made a point to tiptoe.” I swung the flashlight up and tucked it under my left arm and thrust my hands in my pockets. “And you heard me.”

  “I just happened to look out,” she said.

  “Uh-huh.” I took a deep breath and pivoted at the waist a few degrees each way, scanning the neighborhood. “Listen.”

  We stood in companionable silence for a few heartbeats before Taffy said, “It’s my favorite time of day.”

  “Quiet, isn’t it?”

  “Sure.”

  “I think I could hear a dime drop up on Bustos right now.”

  Taffy Hines shook her head with impatience. “And so you imagine that half the neighborhood would hear the ruckus up at the Sissons’?”

  “That’s what bothers me.”

  “Well, from what I’m told, it happened in the evening, not a whole long while after dark. Folks are still up, televisions are on, kids are playing…all that stuff. This is a whole different world, right now.”

  “I guess,” I said. “Is that your dog?”

  She turned quickly, looking down the street in the general direction of my gaze. “What dog?”

  “No, no. The one you were walking earlier this morning. At about two or so. I think he’s a chow.”

  Taffy Hines crossed her arms over her ample chest. “My goodness,” she said with more good humor than I would have been able to summon had
I been in her shoes, “such efficient surveillance. You people must know all my dark secrets by now.”

  “Please, Taffy. Give us a break. You make it sound like Jackie Taber and I are members of the secret police from some third world country with this ‘you people’ nonsense. There’s been a questionable death, as you apparently already know. What do you want us to do, sit in our offices and hope that someone comes in and confesses out of a sense of good citizenship?”

  “Sheriff,” she said, and her tone softened, “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. In fact, I almost came out to offer Jackie a cup of coffee. But I didn’t, you know, because I wasn’t sure just what she was doing and I didn’t want to interfere.”

  “To pass the time and stay alert, she was drawing pictures,” I said, then added, “in her most creative secret police style. That’s how I knew about the dog. She saw you, obviously, and included you and pooch in the drawing she was doing.”

  “I’d like to see that,” Taffy said. “And the dog’s name is Rufus, by the way. He’s one of the sweetest dogs on the planet.” She laughed. “And probably one of the dumbest, too.”

  “Is he yours?”

  “No. He belongs to the Sissons. I’ve been taking care of him. I asked Gracie just a bit ago if they’re ready to take him back, but…”

  She shook her head. “That poor family.”

  “Did Deputy Mears, or any of the others, talk to you Tuesday night?”

  “No,” she said. “Nobody came by.”

  I turned and calculated the distance. Taffy Hines lived eight houses south of the Sisson property, hardly close enough to be considered an immediate neighbor.

  “When did you hear about Jim’s death?”