He sees the old woman and laughs. "Hey, old woman!" he yells. "Have you ever danced?"
The old woman looks up at him and says, "No, I never did dance. Never had time for such foolishness."
A crowd gathers as the gunslinger grins and says, "Well, you old hag, you're gonna dance now!" And after taking another swig of whiskey he begins shooting at the old woman's feet.
Not wanting to get her toes blown off, the old woman starts hopping around while the gunslinger blazes away and the crowd roars. When he's fired his last shot, the gunslinger holsters his pistol and, still laughing, turns to head back into the saloon.
That's when the old lady pulls her double-barreled coach gun from its scabbard on the mule's pack saddle. The sharp clicks as she cocks both hammers are clearly audible to everyone present, including the young gunslinger.
He turns around slowly. The crowd holds its breath as the gunslinger takes in the two barrels pointed directly at his chest.
The shotgun never wavers in the old lady's hands as she softly asks, "Son, have you ever kissed a mule's asshole?"
The young man swallows hard and replies, "No, Ma'am...but I've always wanted to."
There are five lessons in this story:
1. Never be arrogant.
2. Never waste all your ammunition.
3. Whiskey makes you think you're smarter, funnier and tougher than you are.
4. You should always be sure who truly has the power; and
5. Don't mess with old people. They didn't get to be old by being stupid.
.
Chapter 26
Old man?
OK, I realized that to someone in his early 30s, I probably did look old. And to someone like Charlie Flanagan, I probably didn’t look at all intimidating. In other words, I looked like someone he could push around—or at least shoulder-bump—with impunity. He was used to bullying people, apparently, and getting away with it. And obviously the lesson about respecting one’s elders had been lost on him.
Still, I couldn’t deny that his comment rankled. Bullies always have that effect on me, even if I’m not their specific target.
But I also knew I couldn’t afford to let this affect my judgment, and in fact, it was probably to my advantage to shrug it off and pretend a meekness I wasn’t feeling. I didn’t want to give anyone in the bar the impression that I was thinking about retaliating. Better to play the toothless tiger.
Also—I had to admit this, much as I hated to—I really wasn’t a match for Charlie Flanagan physically. When you’re north of 60, you tend to think twice about rough-housing…or at least you think twice if you have more than half a brain and don’t relish the idea of being pounded into the ground like a tent stake.
But I also knew that, like the shotgun-wielding old lady in one of my favorite jokes, I could eventually even the odds and settle the score. All in good time.
I shook my head and turned back toward my beer. The bartender looked my way and said, “Don’t pay any attention to Charlie. He’s always been a hothead and he’s been feeling a lot of pressure lately. Best just to stay out of his way.”
“What’s he been feeling pressured about?” I hoped my question sounded innocuous.
The bartender moved down to stand in front of me with his arms braced against the inside rail of the bar. “He’s going to be the star witness in a trial we’ve got coming up in a few weeks. Big news around here.”
“Oh? Trial for what?” Again I hoped I sounded only casually interested.
“It’s a manslaughter trial. Another one of our local guys, Carlyle Wilson, got charged with killing a deer hunter a couple weeks ago. A lawyer from Chicago who was hunting up north of here a little ways.”
“He killed a deer hunter? Was it an accident?”
“Had to have been…that is, if Carlyle actually shot the guy. Carlyle’s a good guy himself and he wouldn’t deliberately kill anyone…not even a lawyer.” The bartender laughed at his little joke and I smiled in return. “He had the bad luck to be hunting in the same area as the lawyer and he found the body…the guy was up in a tree stand, shot through the heart.”
I shook my head again. “Wow.” I hoped the bartender would keep talking, and he did.
“Carlyle saw the guy up in the stand, kinda slumped over, and he called to him. Then when the guy didn’t answer he walked up for a closer look and that’s when he saw that the guy had been shot.”
“Did he try to get the guy down off the stand?” That seemed like a reasonable question to ask.
“He climbed partway up and said he could tell the guy was dead. The guy’s coat was soaked in blood and Carlyle said he knew he was dead without touching him and there was nothing he could do for him. He said he knew he probably shouldn’t touch the guy and he was shook up pretty bad so he climbed back down and drove into town to report it. He said he was almost back to town before he remembered his cell phone and realized he could have called 911 when he was still out there in the woods. Like I said, he was pretty shook up by the whole thing.”
“Well, that’s understandable,” I said. “But I’m confused about something. If he found the guy and the guy was already dead, and he reported it right away, why did he get charged with killing the guy…you said the dead guy was a lawyer?”
“Right, a lawyer from Chicago. Named Reynolds. As for why Carlyle got charged with killing him…well, that’s where things get interesting.”
“How so?”
“Hold on a minute; I’ll be right back.” The bartender moved down the bar to refill a couple of drafts for a couple sitting at the opposite end and while he was gone I did a quick mental replay of our conversation so far. I hoped I wasn’t overplaying my hand by asking too many questions but the bartender seemed in a talkative mood so I thought I was probably OK.
“Where was I?” the bartender said when he returned. “Oh yeah, why Carlyle got charged for killing the guy. Well, here’s what happened. He came in here that same evening after he found the guy. He said he was still pretty shook up. He ordered a beer but instead of sitting here at the bar he took it over to that last booth in the corner”—the bartender pointed past my shoulder and I turned my head to look—“and sat by himself.
“Of course by then everybody in town knew what had happened, that he’d found a dead guy that morning when he was out hunting deer and he’d reported it and gone back out with the sheriff to show them where. I think he went off to sit by himself because he didn’t really want to talk about it anymore. He probably would have been smarter to have stayed home and not answered his phone, but who knows; maybe he just didn’t want to be by himself.”
“He’s not married?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.
“No,” the bartender said. “He’s engaged to a girl named Allie Marshall…in fact you might have met her. She works at her sister’s place, that Hidden Hollow hunting preserve where you’re staying. She does some of the cooking and cleans the guest rooms but I’ve heard she also guides out there sometimes.”
“Oh, Allie,” I said. “Yes, I did meet her. Nice looking girl. Tall, dark hair.”
“That’s her. Well, anyway, she must have still been working that evening since it was deer season and the lodge was probably full of hunters. Carlyle came in alone and like I said, he got his beer then went over to that corner booth and sat by himself.
“About ten minutes later, Charlie Flanagan—that’s the guy who just bumped you a few minutes ago—came in. He ordered his usual boilermaker, a shot of Jack and a Bud, and when I set him up he drank the shot then picked up his beer and went over to Carlyle’s booth and sat down.”
“Are they friends?”
The bartender snorted. “Not anymore, they aren’t, not after what happened.” He laughed and shook his head. “No, they weren’t really buddies anyway. Grew up here in Rushville and went to school together, played football when they were in high school, but they weren’t close friends. At least, not that I ever heard anything about.”
&nb
sp; A burly fiftyish fellow wearing a faded tan Carhartt jacket and a yellow and green DeKalb cap came in and sat down two stools away from me on the stool Charlie Flanagan had previously occupied. The bartender glanced his way and said, “Evening, Pete.”
“Walt,” the man replied, nodding at the bartender and shrugging out of his Carhartt. He dropped it on the empty stool on his far side but didn’t remove his cap. “My usual,” he said.
The bartender moved down to the taps and drew a tall Budweiser. He brought it back and set it in front of Pete, who said thanks and picked it up and took a long pull. I wanted to get Walt the bartender talking again because he’d apparently witnessed the conversation in which Carlyle Wilson had supposedly confessed to killing Frank Reynolds.
“So if they weren’t good friends, they were…what? Drinking buddies?” I asked.
“I guess that’s about right,” Walt said. He turned to my neighbor. “Charlie Flanagan and Carlyle Wilson—would you call them drinking buddies, Pete?”
Pete shook his head. “I don’t think I’d even call them that,” he said. “Especially after Carlyle got engaged to Allie Marshall. Everybody knows that really didn’t set well with Charlie. He’d had his eye on Allie for quite some time, ever since Jolene left him and Allie divorced Bob. Seeing Carlyle steal his prize right out from his under nose…well, that was bound to leave Charlie pretty p-o’ed.”
“Except Allie never wanted anything to do with Charlie anyway,” Walt said. “It’s not like he had any real claim on her.”
“That wouldn’t matter to Charlie. We both know that.”
“Well, you’re right about that.”
You had to love these small towns where everybody knew everybody else—their personalities, their histories, their everyday comings and goings. I wanted to steer the conversation back to Carlyle Wilson and what had happened when Charlie Flanagan joined him in his booth the night after Wilson found Frank Reynolds’ body, but we’d sidetracked into a discussion of their love lives. For want of a better strategy, I decided to play dumb.
“OK,” I said, “I’m getting confused here. Too many names. Carlyle Wilson is engaged to Allie Marshall, who used to be married to a guy named Bob, and Charlie Flanagan had his eye on her, and he and Carlyle weren’t really friends, but they’d sit down and have a drink together? And Carlyle is now charged with accidentally killing a lawyer while he was out deer hunting? Have I got all that right?” I hoped I sounded befuddled and just trying to sort out the facts.
“That’s right,” Walt the bartender said. “Allie was married to Bob Marshall, who farms out west of here, but they got divorced a few years ago, about the same time Charlie got divorced from his wife, Jolene, actually. Carlyle has never been married but he and Allie started dating, I guess you’d call it, and they got engaged a few months ago.”
“And that rubbed Charlie wrong?”
Walt and Pete both laughed. “Yes, and rubbing Charlie wrong is not something you want to do,” Walt said.
“Yeah, I got that impression,” I said. “But I’m still not clear on why Carlyle Wilson was charged with killing the lawyer.” I was beginning to feel like I was pushing my luck, maybe asking too many questions, but Walt and Pete still seemed eager to talk.
“Well, we haven’t got to that part yet,” Walt said.
“What part is that?” I asked.
“Charlie Flanagan is the reason, I guess you could say, that Carlyle Wilson got charged.”
“How so?”
“Carlyle confessed to Charlie. Or at least that’s what Charlie says, anyway.”
Chapter 27
There it was.
I already knew this, of course, that Carlyle Wilson’s arrest and manslaughter charge were based on Charlie Flanagan claiming to have heard him confess. But now I had some local context I could use to better evaluate that fact. It was obvious that both Walt and Pete were skeptical of Flanagan’s claim, and that they were more inclined to give Wilson the benefit of the doubt.
“Wilson confessed to Flanagan?” I asked.
“That’s what Charlie claims.”
“But why would Wilson do that, if the lawyer was already dead when he found him?”
“Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it? And in fact, Wilson claims he never confessed to Charlie. He says all he told Charlie about was finding the body, reporting it and taking the sheriff back out there.”
“So…what? You think Charlie Flanagan made up the bit about Wilson confessing?”
Walt arched his eyebrows and gave an exaggerated shrug, a gesture that implied I’d nailed it but he didn’t want to say so aloud.
Pete wasn’t quite so reticent. He snorted and said, “If you knew the two of them, you’d almost have to think that’s what happened. Carlyle says he never told Charlie he killed that guy, and that’s what most of us believe. But Charlie swears he did, and he’s planning to testify to that in court.”
I nodded toward the bartender. “That’s the pressure you were talking about,” I said.
“Yep. When Carlyle was arrested, I almost expected Charlie to back down and say he’d made up the bit about the confession, that it was all just a joke. I didn’t really expect him to stick to that story. But he did, and now he’s gonna have to swear to it in court. It’s almost like he painted himself into a corner and doesn’t know how to get out.”
“Claiming to have heard a confession and seeing another man arrested for it is one hell of a practical joke,” I said. “Would he really do something like that?”
“With Charlie Flanagan, you can never really tell what he’s capable of,” Walt said. “He’s been one of this town’s bad boys since he was a little kid. Always in trouble at school, always getting into fights, that kind of thing. Whenever anything bad happened in this town, vandalism or whatever, you could almost bet Charlie Flanagan had a hand in it.”
“Sounds like a nice guy,” I said. “So what does he do now? Job-wise, I mean?” I knew the answer to this also, but I was curious to get Pete and Walt’s take on it.
Pete fielded my question. “He’s a guard at the men’s prison down to Mt. Sterling, about 20 miles south of here.”
“He’s a prison guard?” I tried to sound incredulous, like I found the irony hard to believe.
“Yeah, and I wouldn’t want to be one of the prisoners on his cellblock.” Walt again.
“Me neither,” Pete said.
I shook my head. “You think this has anything to do with Wilson being engaged to Allie Marshall?” I knew I was stretching things here, but what the hell, in for a penny, in for a pound.
“That’s what a lot of us think,” Walt said. “If Charlie can get Carlyle out of the picture—sent to prison for killing that lawyer—then he’d have a clean shot at getting something going with Allie. Or at least, that’s what he’s hoping.”
“Wouldn’t that be kind of a stretch, though?” I asked. “Didn’t you say Allie didn’t want anything to do with him? If he gets her fiancé sent to prison, that’s not exactly gonna endear him to her.”
“No, it wouldn’t. But Charlie probably isn’t thinking that far ahead. See, he’s one of those guys who, when he sets his sights on something, he goes after it with everything he’s got. Tramples anything that gets in his way. And right now, that would be Carlyle Wilson.”
“Wow,” I said. “What a mess. But about this confession he supposedly heard. What did he do…report it to the sheriff?”
“That’s right. He stopped in the sheriff’s office early Monday morning. Said Wilson had confessed on Saturday evening and he, Charlie, had wrestled with it all day Sunday then decided he’d better tell what he knew.”
“And the sheriff believed him?”
“I don’t think the sheriff had much choice. After they removed the lawyer’s body from the woods they scoured the area pretty thoroughly, even brought in a team of technicians from Springfield. But they really didn’t turn up anything other than the tree stand the lawyer was sitting in when he was shot.�
�
“So the confession was the only reason Wilson was arrested…just on the basis of Flanagan’s say-so?”
“Well, remember Charlie’s a prison guard, so he works in law enforcement…sort of, anyway, and that might give him a little more credibility,” Walt said. “Plus, there were one or two other bits and pieces of evidence. Circumstantial, I guess you’d call it. But along with the confession it was enough to get Carlyle arrested and charged.”
I glanced at the clock behind the bar. It read 8:35, and like most bar clocks, it was ten minutes fast, the better to hurry people out the door when closing time rolled around. I noticed the place was beginning to fill up, both the stools at the bar and the tables and booths. That told me it would probably be a good idea to wrap up this conversation and take my leave, if I was still hoping to maintain a low profile. But I wanted to hear more about the evidence Walt had mentioned.
“What circumstantial evidence?” I asked. “I thought you said the crime scene techs didn’t find anything.”
“They didn’t, at least not right there where the lawyer was shot,” Walt said, and I inwardly sighed with relief. “But Carlyle’s gun had been fired. He said he’d shot at a deer earlier that morning and was trying to track it when he found the lawyer. The fact that his gun had been fired but he didn’t have a deer to show for it was enough to convince them, I guess, that he must have been the one who shot the lawyer.”
“That still seems like a stretch,” I said.
“Well, like we said earlier, if you knew Carlyle, you’d say he almost certainly didn’t do this. But it’s one of those deals where the facts seem to say otherwise, especially if you believe he confessed to Charlie Flanagan.”
“Do most folks believe that?”
“Hard to say. I’d guess opinions are about fifty-fifty here in town, or maybe sixty-forty in favor of Carlyle. But Charlie Flanagan has his own share of friends, even if most of them are troublemakers like him, to a greater or lesser degree. They’ll stick by him, even if a lot of the rest of us think he made up the whole story.”
The Killer in the Woods Page 14