And that wasn’t going to be easy. Having to work from long distance and not make contact with either Wilson or Flanagan—or, for that matter, any other Rushville residents—certainly complicated things. My best hope was that Kevin and Mark could turn up something that would explain why Charlie Flanagan had, as James Collins had put it, ratted out Carlyle Wilson…not only ratted him out, but most likely fabricated the whole confession.
I wondered if it had anything to do with a woman. Or an old rivalry. Or a grudge carried over from childhood. Or…I quickly realized there was little sense in speculating along these lines. It could be any one of a thousand reasons and quite possibly it was something I couldn’t even imagine.
I pushed aside the legal pad on which I’d been doodling. I needed to do something to free up my mind and stop clawing at intangibles. I was in no mood to edit magazine copy—and I knew my mind would wander if I tried to do so, almost guaranteeing I’d make a sloppy job of it—so I decided to clean my shotgun.
While I keep my guns in a locked vault upstairs, I clean them in the basement on a workbench I’ve equipped for that purpose. I retrieved the Ruger from the vault in my den and headed downstairs. As I passed through the kitchen, I glanced into the living room where Preacher was sprawled asleep on the sofa.
“Wanna come downstairs with me?” I asked and she opened an eye and favored me with an expression that clearly said, “Get real!” I was used to this sort of response and wasn’t offended. “Suit yourself,” I said, moving on downstairs.
I spread some old newspapers on the workbench, then removed the Ruger’s forearm and barrels and laid the pieces out side by side. I pulled a bore snake out of its box and unscrewed the lid from a bottle of Hoppe’s No. 9, enjoying the scent as always.
I dipped the end of the bore snake in the Hoppe’s, then dropped the snake’s weighted cord through the bottom barrel from the breech end. I grabbed the weight and pulled the snake through, noting the accumulated fouling on the snake as it emerged from the muzzle end of the barrel.
I’d wiped down the Ruger with a silicone cloth after my last outing with Preacher but I hadn’t broken down the gun and cleaned the barrels—yes, shame on me—and I had to make two more passes with the bore snake before the inside of the bottom barrel was gleaming. When it was, I repeated the procedure with the top barrel.
The dirtiest part of the job completed, I set the barrels aside and picked up the stock. I carefully wiped out the gun’s action with a dry rag, removing a few more bits of fouling and chaff, then wiped the action again with a silicone cloth.
That done, I eased the barrels back into place and closed the action. I wiped the barrels thoroughly with the silicone cloth, leaving them covered with a slight film, then I snapped the forearm back on and wiped the latch on its underside as well. I finished with a final polishing wipe of the trigger, trigger guard and receiver, and the cleaning was completed.
As I’d worked I’d made a conscious effort not to think about the whole Frank Reynolds/Carlyle Wilson/Charlie Flanagan situation. I’d concentrated on the task of cleaning the Ruger, something which always left me in an appreciative mood. The gun had been with me a long time and yes, it had been used to take a lot of lives, some of them human.
In simplest terms, it had served me well.
I’m usually not one to develop much sentiment toward an inanimate object but I couldn’t deny that over the years the Ruger had become, as the old western gunfighters used to say of their favorite revolvers, almost an extension of myself. It fit me well and I shot it well and of all the guns I owned, it was far and away my favorite.
There was a certain amount of irony attached to that favoritism, however, predicated on how I’d originally come to own the Ruger. It had been an anniversary present from my wife.
Our sixth anniversary, to be exact. The year before we’d struck a deal. We weren’t exactly well-heeled at the time, but my wife wanted diamond earrings for our fifth anniversary and she got them…but with the caveat that the following year it would be my turn for a pricey gift—specifically, a shotgun of my choosing.
I did a lot of shopping and comparing and finally settled on the Ruger Red Label. It was a well-built, American-made gun and comparably priced to what I’d paid for her earrings, and I especially liked its sleek lines, which gave it a more streamlined look than many of the other over-and-unders then on the market.
Because I was primarily a pheasant hunter, I chose the gun in 12 gauge rather than a lighter 20, and because I have rather long arms, I opted for 28-inch barrels instead of 26. This was in the mid-1980s, just a year or two before Ruger introduced interchangeable choke tubes in their shotguns. I held out for one with improved and modified chokes rather than the more common configuration of modified and full.
I took delivery of the gun a few days before our sixth anniversary, which, coincidentally, was also just a few days before the opening of pheasant season. I shot the heck out of the gun that first year and had been doing so ever since.
Unfortunately, my wife and I were not destined for such a long-term relationship. We were divorced four years later, shortly after our tenth anniversary—we were separated for the final year of our marriage—and that was more than twenty years ago. I hadn’t spoken to her for at least the last fifteen.
But I was still shooting the Ruger. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, which love affair lasted longer?
Chapter 11
I was returning the Ruger to its place in the gun vault when a curious idea hit me. Maybe thinking about how I’d acquired the shotgun—a gift from a woman to whom I was no longer married and with whom I no longer had any contact—was the trigger. Something about the final resolution of that situation—my marriage was long over but I still had the gun and I used it regularly—suggested a different perspective regarding Carlyle Wilson and Charlie Flanagan.
I knew Carlyle Wilson hadn’t killed Frank Reynolds. I didn’t know why Charlie Flanagan said he had. But maybe at this point I didn’t need to know Charlie Flanagan’s motive. I could formulate a game plan without that piece of information.
When my wife and I separated during the final year of our marriage, it was with the intention of giving ourselves some time apart to clear our thinking, stop antagonizing each other on a daily basis and attempt to rebuild what had been lost in our relationship—all the usual reasons couples cite for a so-called “trial separation,” in other words.
I knew from the outset it was a lost cause.
I knew that despite our best efforts—and in fairness, we did make a real try at reconciling, including several months of counseling—we weren’t going to make it. Call that pessimistic, fatalistic, whatever; somewhere deep down I knew our marriage was over. And indeed, at the end of a year’s time, it was. It ultimately became a matter of our both realizing and admitting this and then moving ahead with the divorce, which, in hindsight, was inevitable.
In a similar way, I realized now that I needed to push past the “why” and start concentrating on the “how.” What I’d been looking for so far was some justification for the course of action I’d known all along I was probably going to have to take. That’s why I had James Collins and his hacker buddies digging into the backgrounds of Wilson and Flanagan, hoping to come up with an explanation for Flanagan’s frame job.
The answer to this problem—seeing Carlyle Wilson cleared of the charges against him for the death of Frank Reynolds—was a fairly simple one, actually. Without Wilson’s alleged confession, the police had nothing but circumstantial evidence against him, and not much of that. So the obvious solution was to get rid of the confession.
That meant either somehow getting Charlie Flanagan to retract his story—admit that he’d fabricated the confession, in other words—or eliminating him so he couldn’t testify in court.
The latter course would probably be the easier of the two.
Of course, I could always sit back and hope that Wilson’s attorney would be sharp enough to poke holes in F
lanagan’s story and trip him up on the witness stand. If Wilson’s attorney could show there was at least some doubt regarding the veracity of Flanagan’s account, that might be enough to sway the jury, especially if the attorney could also point to some bad blood between the two.
The newspaper clipping had mentioned that, according to Flanagan, Wilson had “broken down” after making his confession. This had taken place in a bar, so I had to suppose there were other people around—customers and at least one bartender. In a town the size of Rushville it wouldn’t be difficult to locate some of those people and perhaps they could testify that they hadn’t seen Wilson showing signs of him appearing distraught…again, this would weaken Flanagan’s claim of Wilson’s confession.
But would that be enough to see Wilson exonerated? I had no real confidence that it would. The police had believed Flanagan’s story and there was a good chance the jury would also. Juries were notoriously unpredictable in their thinking…and notoriously unreliable in being able to separate fact from preconceived notions and prejudices. I was more than willing to give Wilson the benefit of the doubt and believe he’d never confessed as Flanagan claimed because, of course, I was privy to information no one else had in the matter…well, no one except James Collins.
But was knowing—or believing, anyway—that Flanagan had deliberately framed Wilson sufficient reason to kill him?
That was the dilemma I’d really been struggling with. I’d probably known after reading the newspaper clipping the first time that this was where things were headed, and that’s why I’d been searching for some justification. I didn’t want to kill Flanagan on nothing more than a hunch.
I also had to consider the possibility that killing Flanagan might make things worse for Wilson. Flanagan would be the key witness in Wilson’s trial and his sudden elimination would arouse all kinds of suspicion. I had to assume Wilson had family and friends in the Rushville area and, given the general public’s willingness to latch onto any conspiracy theory that comes along, it was a good bet that many people would immediately assume Flanagan’s death was caused by someone in Wilson’s camp.
So…what if Flanagan disappeared instead of turning up dead?
That would require a little more planning than a simple execution, but it could be done. The beauty of Flanagan disappearing was that it would create yet another mystery…people might assume Wilson’s supporters were responsible, but they couldn’t be sure. And with no real evidence of what had happened to Flanagan, an equally plausible explanation was that he had simply fled rather than risk being grilled and exposed as a liar on the witness stand.
Just as the public love conspiracy theories, they also love unsolved mysteries…the two go hand-in-hand, actually. Flanagan’s disappearance would be the talk of the town, undoubtedly. Rushville residents could wear themselves out speculating about what had happened to him, and they’d enjoy every minute of it.
There were still plenty of variables, however. I didn’t know if Flanagan and Wilson had families, but James Collins and his buddies should be able to discover that without too much trouble. If Flanagan had deep roots in the community—had lived there all his life and was happily married with children, say—then his sudden disappearance would seem much less likely and much more indicative of foul play.
I found myself hoping he didn’t have those deep roots. I realized I wanted him to be the bad guy in this. I’m not a particularly religious sort of person (big surprise, right?) but if my suspicions were correct, then Charlie Flanagan was certainly guilty of violating the Ninth Commandment by bearing false witness against Carlyle Wilson. Which brought me back to the essential question: Was that enough to justify killing him?
I wasn’t sure. It would be helpful if we could turn up some major dirt on him that would convince me he was one of those people who, as the expression goes, just needed killing. All the protests of bleeding heart liberals aside, there are plenty of such people out there—people who have irreparably damaged—or destroyed—the lives of others and, simply by their presence, continue to threaten the lives of those around them.
If Charlie Flanagan was one of those people, it would make my job a lot easier.
Or at least, easier to accept.
Chapter 12
The next morning, on the way home from our run at the lake, I saw a bobcat.
Bobcats were on the increase in Iowa but they were still something of a rarity and seeing one was definitely noteworthy. While I regularly saw deer as we were driving to and from the lake and on the lake property itself—it was a rare day when I didn’t see deer, in fact—and even the occasional coyote or flock of wild turkeys, a bobcat sighting was a little out of the ordinary.
For one thing, bobcats are crepuscular—most active at dawn and dusk. So you’re not likely to see one out rambling around in the middle of the day. For another, they tend to be secretive, sticking to heavily wooded areas and usually going to great lengths to avoid any human contact. Unlike raccoons and possums, they’re probably not going to be found raiding a garbage can in a suburban back yard.
We’d left the lake a few minutes earlier and were driving east on the road that would take us to the four-lane bypass on the south side of Des Moines. I happened to glance over at a wooded creek bottom bordering a field of corn stubble just as the cat was slipping into the woods. I saw its rear end and recognized the short tail, long legs and distinctive cat gait, and then we were past.
I pulled into the driveway of a farmhouse a couple hundred yards up the road and quickly made a U-turn. I returned to the spot opposite where I’d seen the cat and pulled off on the shoulder. I pulled out the pair of Bushnell mini-binoculars I keep in the SUV and spent the next five minutes or so glassing the creek bottom. Preacher, settled in the back of the SUV and probably snoozing after her hour-long run at the lake, was quiet.
I saw no further sign of the cat so finally gave it up. I pulled up to the next crossroad, made another U-turn—thank goodness there were no state troopers prowling in the vicinity—and started back toward home. When I came abreast of the creek bottom again I slowed down for one more scan and that’s when things really got interesting.
I spotted the cat a second time. It was sitting at the edge of a patch of snow—we’d gotten a couple inches earlier in the week—at the far end of the cornfield. I pulled off again and put the binoculars on the cat and just as I did it crouched down and went into stalk mode.
I watched for a good minute or more as it stalked something, slipping forward a few feet and freezing, then moving forward and freezing again. I heard Preacher whine behind me and realized she’d probably awakened when I stopped the vehicle and had seen the cat and was watching it also. A glance in the rearview mirror confirmed that’s what she was doing. I guessed the cat was stalking a field mouse or a bird feeding in the corn stubble.
It finally broke and charged, and I saw the flash of an orange-red tail a few yards ahead of the cat—the cat’s quarry was a fox squirrel. The squirrel raced to the tree line at the field edge and ran up a small tree not much larger than a sapling and the bobcat went right up after it. The cat got about halfway up then turned and jumped off, probably because the tree wouldn’t support its weight.
It came down in some tall grass on the far side of the tree line. Behind me, Preacher let out a sharp yelp. I wondered if that was meant sympathetically for the cat losing out on a meal or, more likely, if she was hoping for a chance to pursue the cat. In Germany, her breed was originally developed not only to hunt and retrieve upland gamebirds and waterfowl but also to trail and dispatch predators and vermin and I knew she still possessed those instincts.
I watched for another few minutes but the cat didn’t show itself again and I guessed it had probably continued on down the tree line away from the road. I wished it good hunting.
I also wondered if there was a lesson for me in what I’d just observed.
I pondered that question on the rest of the drive home. I knew that predators like bobcats
were not prone to making half-hearted stalking efforts just for recreational purposes. When they hunted something they fully intended to convert it into a meal. They couldn’t afford to expend energy stalking and chasing prey if there wasn’t a reasonable chance of success.
I’d been too far away to see exactly what had happened—whether the squirrel had spotted the cat closing in on it and had then made a mad dash for safety, or if the cat had begun its final charge prematurely and that was what had alarmed the squirrel—but regardless, there might have been a miscalculation on the cat’s part that had provided the squirrel with the margin it needed to escape.
Then again, maybe the squirrel just got lucky.
If the cat had made a miscalculation, what was it? Had it sensed that the squirrel had noticed it and figured it had better make its charge in a now-or-never effort? Or had it merely jumped the gun while the squirrel was still far enough away to get away safely?
I’d made a few miscalculations myself lately, and I didn’t want to make any more of them. I’d do well, I realized, not to jump the gun in the matter of Carlyle Wilson and Charlie Flanagan. I’d also do well not to assume I could get close to Charlie Flanagan and pull off either a disappearance or a kill without running the risk of being noticed.
I’d already figured that any appearance I made in Rushville would probably attract attention I couldn’t afford. That seemed to indicate I was going to have to operate from a distance, relying on whatever information James Collins and his buddies Kevin and Mark could come up with about Charlie Flanagan and Carlyle Wilson and then use that information to form a plan to slip in, execute and slip back out, still unnoticed.
On the other hand…
The bobcat had stalked the squirrel at the edge of a field of corn stubble, basically out in the open. Though over a hundred yards away, I’d been able to follow the entire progress of the cat’s stalk and while I couldn’t see what precipitated its charge, the cat had been visible the entire time, relying on keeping low to the ground and moving forward cautiously only a few feet at a time.
The Killer in the Woods Page 7