“All bite and no brains, huh?”
“No, no, Jase. But bite before brains.” He started to get up.
“Unless you have something else for me,” I told him, “I’ll get on with my written report, you know, about the whole case. But gee, Mr. Charleston, I can’t remember everything that was said here.”
He chuckled then. “Don’t have to.” He opened the big drawer of his desk and brought out a thing wrapped in a towel. “The towel’s a silencer,” he said as he unwrapped it. “But see, Jase.”
Inside the towel was a cassette recorder and just outside it, so’s to pick up the voices, a little microphone.
I gawked. “And you turned it on when you fingered around for that cigar?”
“Good thinking, boy.”
“Thank you. Thank you a lot.”
“Not too much, Jase. Remember, I’m just a sheriff, and Gewald represents the state and belongs to the opposition party to boot. So it wasn’t just for your sake.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I arrived at the sheriff’s office next morning just as Charleston did. We went in together and sat. He pushed to the side of his desk a clutter of accumulated paper, his manner indicating he couldn’t be bothered with such trifles now, if indeed, ever. Halvor had given us good-morning and taken a newspaper into the private room where he could read without being interrupted by current events.
“No Gewald yet?” I said.
“Not until first thing this afternoon,” he answered. “He’s scratching around some more first.”
“Where?”
“Old holes not worth scratching at. I had the pisswillie luck to meet him at breakfast. He said he wanted to talk to Felix Underwood and Doc Yak and other assorted characters who might hold a clue unbeknownst.”
“Fat chance.”
“Jase,” he asked, leaning back, “you want to play Kit Carson to our John C. Fremont?”
“Meaning?” I said, though I felt what was coming.
“Yeah. Guide Gewald to Hawthorne’s Hole and Hogue’s Flats and other far and unexplored places. Sorry I can’t be the chief scout. Not today.”
“It’s a waste of time, I bet, but sure, if you want me to.”
“It’s not so much I want you to as the show’s got to go on. He’s the state, remember, and local authorities find themselves baffled, plumb baffled. Two men done in and none jailed. Action is called for.”
I said, “I guess.”
“We’ve got some time, Jase.” He got extra effect by adding, as if as an afterthought, “Time enough, even if I’ve caught sight of the stripes of the invisible skunk.”
“You have!”
“Yup. But no evidence. Nothing convincing except to me. So I’m not telling yet. So we have time for Gewald.”
“I can keep a secret.”
He found a slim cigar, lighted it slowly and drawled, “We-ll.”
I knew then he was going to tell me a story. With action called for, he was going to tell a story in the cow-puncher language he used in such cases. Yet he wasn’t wasting time, not in my book.
“Time was,” he said, while making sure the cigar burned all around, “there was two old-timers in my town, both hearty for their years and able-bodied except, as you might say, their love muscles had petered out on ’em.”
He paused, smiling, though he might have known I got the drift.
“That was a shame for a fact, seein’ as both of ’em had had enough women to stock two harems apiece. Like Casey Jones in the song, on the four-posted bedstead they won their fame.”
He paused again, letting the story take shape in his mind.
“One of them codgers was Herman Bamberger, who still shod horses off and on, mostly just before the county fair when people raced their quarter horses. You know the kind. Early foot but not stayers. The other old-timer was Gene Zimmerman, who collected his welfare check and counted it welfare enough.
“They was pards, more or less. Gene used to come around to the blacksmith shop and sit on a block and watch Herman tackin’ on shoes. They was pards mostly on account of age, I reckon, for Herman was a sour old bastard whereas Gene was a smiler. Different make-ups. You got to remember that.”
Having laid the scene, Charleston took two slow drags on his cigar. I waited.
“One day a studhorse with some years on him, who was still pretty good on the track but better yet as a sire, was brought into Herman’s shop to be shod. Gene was there looking on.
“Well, sir, about the time Herman was gettin’ a front shoe nailed on, the stud pushed out a yard or so of workin’ joy prong. It interested Gene, bringin’ back memories, I reckon. When Herman let the foot down, Gene said, ‘Look,’ pointin’ to how the stud was dingin’ his dong on his belly. ‘Don’t that just make your mouth water?’”
I was supposed to laugh, of course, and I did, but not too much, feeling, as Charleston’s age and beginning-to-gray hair came to my mind, that what was funny to both of us might also be rueful to him.
“That ain’t the point I was makin’.” Charleston’s words, still cowpuncherish, jarred me away from my sympathy. “Not the point a-tall.”
“No?”
“No. Herman took a look at that eager pecker, and what he said was, ‘I would nut the son of a bitch.’ That’s the point. End of story, too.”
“And that’s a clue?” I asked.
“Think it over.”
I was thinking it over when I went to feed and water Mrs. Jenkins’ chickens. Who—no, whom—did the story point to? Everybody at first blush, for no man really liked it that another had more than he did, whether in money, brains, virility, automobiles, girl friends or baseball. Whether in anything except piety probably, though even there there seemed to be some competition. No use thinking about Buster Hogue, my first choice if he hadn’t been laid to rest, for he was kind of a head-pounder, meaning he was tempted to hammer down sprouts if they pushed up high enough to rival his standing. Junior Hogue might take after his old man, though I had my doubts. Simp Hogue was a no-no. That left Professor Hawthorne, Dr. Pierpont, Guy Jamison, who were as unlikely suspects as the shirttail characters we’d interviewed. Nothing I could see there. Sheriff or no sheriff, story or no story, my mind kept going back to the Hogues.
The chickens attended to, I looked up Terry Stephens, who was out of a job again because an inconsiderate rain had doused the forest fire he was fighting. We played catch. My arm, warmed up, felt strong and good, though I kept Terry chasing after wild pitches. Our team had lost while I was taking Mrs. Jenkins to her new, happy home. Score, 9 to 5. No team was going to score nine runs off of me, unless I walked the men in—which seemed possible.
On the stroke of one o’clock I was back at the sheriff’s office. Gewald showed up a few minutes later, and we drove away in Gewald’s state car after Charleston had wished Gewald good luck, knowing he wouldn’t have any.
Gewald looked like a hell’s-fire, ganted-up preacher bent on sniffing and snuffing out sin. He was dressed in a dark suit, wore a dark tie and on his head had a hat clamped and dipped down in front in the manner, if not of preachers, then of cattle buyers, prods in hand, poking their choices out of a corralful of steers. His coat, opened, revealed a belted six-shooter.
His mouth had no fun about it. If it ever smiled, I thought, it must have been at the sight of a hanging. A dedicated man, he was, and some words of the sheriff popped into my head. “Beware of dedicated men, Jase. They’ll push dedication clean to destruction, all because they’re so right.”
“First thing,” Gewald told me as we started to wheel, “I want to see that professor along with his dolly.” He shied me a glance and snorted, “And what the hell are you doing with the baseball?”
I answered, “I don’t know how good you can shoot,” to which he snorted again.
I directed him onto the gravel road. By this time I had a jolting acquaintance with every rock in it. What with all the official traffic, I thought, the county and state ought to pave it, counting
the cost against punctured gas tanks, flat tires, broken tail pipes and other dear benefits of the wild.
The county weed-cutters had been along, though, so’s to show people that their tax money worked, and the smell of snipped and torn growth came good and sharp to my nose. The sun was a high kindness today, and a breeze sifted our dust away. I could have enjoyed myself, alone or in other company. We scattered a covey of young prairie chickens. Gewald ran over one. Dedication didn’t jibe with delay.
At the late Ben Day’s mailbox Gewald braked, seeing the name, and got out and thumbed me to do likewise. He asked me where we figured Day’s killer had hidden. I couldn’t be certain, now that the brush and grass had been mowed, but I showed him as well as I could. He began poking and moving the downed growth, but it was me, not really looking but just idly scuffing, who saw the shine of a cartridge. I picked it up. It had been fired. It read .303 SAV.
Gewald said, “What? Give it here.”
Having no standing, I gave it.
He studied it and put it in his pocket, rasping, “Huh. Just like the first,” and led the way back to the car, mission accomplished.
It happened that Professor Hawthorne and Geet both were at home—which might have been rated lucky. They came out of the kitchen door as we drew to a halt. Her hair, drawn back from her forehead, fell loose down her shoulders. That’s all I saw of her immediately, her face and the hair drawn back and rippling, for a couple of lines from Lewis Carroll ran in my head. She wasn’t a child but still—
Child of the pure, unclouded brow
And dreaming eyes of wonder!
“Of course, sir,” Professor Hawthorne was saying after introductions, “we will help in any way we can. Come in, won’t you?”
He took us into that pleasant lodge room and saw that we were seated. He wore a long-used corduroy jacket and pants but looked trim as ever. For a silly moment I fancied his Vandyke must have been guaranteed perpetual care when the Lord first plotted it out.
In character, Gewald kept his hat on, though it seemed to me all heads should uncover in the presence of Geet.
Gewald started, “I am here, Professor—”
“Please, not ‘professor.’”
“All right, Mr. Hawthorne. I am here, as a state investigator, because there has been no local progress, none whatever, toward the solution of two cowardly murders. I hope to determine the guilty party or parties, no matter the failure so far.”
“I see,” Hawthorne said. “You are taking over the case, then?”
“That is too much to say. I am helping or, if you please, leading the investigation.”
“I wish you success. But a good many of us, most, I daresay, have faith in our sheriff.”
Gewald nodded shortly. “Of course. Of course. A good man, but there’s a saying about two heads being better than one.”
My father would have answered, “Even if one is a sheep’s head.”
“Yes. I have heard that old saw.”
Gewald didn’t show he found any sarcasm there. He sawed on. “A few questions then, Mr. Hawthorne, by way of clearing the undergrowth. I am given to understand that you had your troubles with the late Buster Hogue?”
“Not troubles, Mr. Gewald. Mere differences, and those laid aside. Sheriff Charleston has my report. Surely you’ve seen it. I have nothing to add.”
“He had to tell me, having failed to put it on paper. I’ll assume he was accurate, if not professionally thorough.”
“A safe assumption, I’d say.”
“More interesting to me,” Gewald said, “is the three-oh-three Savage you report missing.”
“Begging your pardon, not what I report missing but what is actually missing. Is and was.”
“It hasn’t shown up?”
“No. I would have notified the sheriff.”
“Yes. I suppose,” Gewald seemed to agree. “Now don’t you find it peculiar that the rifle is missing, was missing while one murder, then another, was done?”
“Of course. Odd indeed.”
“The guilty rifle, you might call it?”
“I hardly see how its guilt can have been established in its absence.”
“Circumstantial but to me convincing enough. Especially—”
Gewald interrupted himself by getting up. He reached into his pocket and produced the casing I had found at the mailbox. “What do you make out of this?”
“No more, even less, than you. I already knew about it.”
“Not this casing, Mr. Hawthorne. It is the second we’ve discovered and, like the first, came from a three-oh-three Savage.”
“May I ask where you found it?”
As Gewald hesitated, maybe thinking he alone had the right to pose questions, I broke in. “It was close to Ben Day’s mailbox, Professor Hawthorne, right where the sheriff and I thought the killer had hidden.” I couldn’t resist adding, “I found it myself.”
Not until after I had spoken did it really strike me that Geet and I had sat as outsiders, as mute listeners to a dialogue that was polite but all the same prickly. She shied me a glance of what might have meant appreciation—which Gewald didn’t.
We were all silent for a minute. Then Gewald said, “The guilty gun. Two casings from same.”
“May I say again,” Hawthorne asked, his beard a little thrust out, “that it has not been established from what gun the cartridges were fired? And who can say, at the present stage of investigation, that the same rifle fired both of them?”
He was right, of course, but, it seemed to me, just technically. One .303 rifle missing. Two .303 cartridges fired. Q.E.D., but not to him yet. I wished he wouldn’t be so professorish.
“You may say what you please, Mr. Hawthorne,” Gewald answered. “You might also quit quibbling if you are as eager as I to determine the culprit or culprits. Understand, I am not accusing you, not of anything. I am not even suspicious, except as I am suspicious of everybody involved. But I insist that the circumstances are funny, ‘funny’ meaning peculiar, ‘funny’ meaning open to suspicion.”
“It’s you who are funny!” Geet’s voice rang clear in the room, reminding me of the bell sound of a metal triangle tapped to bring the hay hands to supper. “Doubting my father, whom you don’t even know!” The pure, untroubled brow was not untroubled now. I didn’t admire it the less. “It’s your privilege that he’s even willing to talk to you.”
“Hush, Geet,” Hawthorne told her. “He’s only doing what he believes is his duty.”
“And making a mess of it.” Her unfriendly eyes turned from Gewald to me, still unfriendly.
“Mess or no mess,” Gewald answered, not fazed at all, “I want to see your assortment of guns, Mr. Hawthorne. I want to see where you kept the Savage until you reported it missing.”
“To be sure, Mr. Gewald.”
Hawthorne got up, unlocked the big cabinet and showed his prize rifles. The collection didn’t interest Gewald very much. His concern with history went back only as far as Buster Hogue’s death.
“And now, if you’ll follow me,” Hawthorne said.
The two walked out of the room, leaving Geet and me there.
“Why did you have to bring that person here?” she asked when they were out of earshot, her eyes still unfriendly. “That person!”
“He represents the state,” I tried to explain. “There was nothing else for it.”
“Who determined that?”
“Sheriff Charleston. Look, I can’t pick and choose …”
“He could have come himself.”
“Other fish to fry, so he told me.”
“Some vote-catching clambake, I suppose.”
“Now look here, Geet. You can’t fault Sheriff Charleston to me.”
“Tell him hello from the suspects.”
While we talked, the telephone in the kitchen had been ringing, shorts and longs and combinations, in the way of many-party lines. Now, abruptly, she came from her chair, graceful as grace itself, said, “That’s for us,” and h
urried from the room.
Her brow was less troubled when she returned. She took her seat and sat thoughtfully. She even smiled, but more to herself than to me, I suspected. After a while she said, “You’ll have to forgive me, Jase. I got upset. You’re all right.”
“I’m glad something changed your mind.”
“You’re all right, I say again, you and your baseball and your trust in the sheriff.”
Gewald and Professor Hawthorne came back to the room, neither looking as if a peace pact had been signed.
Gewald said, “Come on, kid.”
I followed him out.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Hogue Ranch,” Gewald said after he had planted himself behind the steering wheel.
I gave him general directions and added specifics when necessary.
“Your professor,” he said once we had begun to rattle over the rocks. “Niggling high-toned talker, or didn’t you notice, being under hypnosis?”
I ignored the dangler he tied to the question, not wanting to bring Geet into the conversation. “You didn’t do so bad yourself,” I said.
“Three years of law school,” he answered.
“Oh.”
For a minute he was silent, then went on as if the explanation wasn’t explanation enough. “My father was a minister. Educated man. Knew right from wrong. So do I.”
I said, “Oh,” again.
“I found out the law is a liar, and I quit it.”
Mr. Dedication, I thought. And to understand all was to forgive all, but my forgiveness was limited to a balky respect for his single-minded rigidity.
“Sings hallelujah, any lawyer does, if he can win a not-guilty verdict for a guilty defendant. Brags, ‘I sprang him,’ when he turns loose on society a sinner against it. Venal, dishonest profession, the law.”
Gewald rolled down the window and spit and was silent, presumably giving the law more of the same in his mind.
We crossed the bridge west of the picnic grounds, passed the turn-off to Old Man McNair’s place and wheeled on.
The mid-afternoon sun was beginning to blaze, but the day was still good. A breeze from the west brought the scent of pine with it, and the mountains rose gaunt and beautiful, blue against the blue sky. From this elevation I could see the whole valley sweeping southeast and beyond it the free roll of the plains. Badger Clark’s lines contrasting east and west came to mind.
Wild Pitch Page 13