“That’s right,” Pete chimed in. “One thing’s for sure. It’s big news right now and everyone is talking about it.”
“Yep, that’s for sure,” Walt said, then moved away to fill some customers’ orders.
“It still sounds like a case of he said, he said, or maybe he said, he denied,” I said to Pete. “I mean, it’s basically just Charlie Flanagan’s word against Carlyle Wilson’s, right?”
“Plus the fact that Carlyle’s gun had been fired.”
“Does Carlyle have a good lawyer defending him?”
Pete laughed. “He has a lawyer, a guy named Prescott, but I don’t know how good he is. He’s from Macomb, about 30 miles from here. I guess he’s won his share of cases, but he’s lost some too. Whether he can get Carlyle off…well, we’ll find that out in another few weeks.”
“Sheesh,” I said. “Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“You got that right.”
Our conversation pretty much dwindled to a halt after that, with Pete and me finishing our beers while Walt tended to other customers. I placed my mug on the bar and stood up to leave. I nodded to Pete, “Nice talking with you.”
He nodded in reply and said, “Nice talking with you also. I didn’t get your name.”
“Rob Vance,” I said. I’d already shared my name with Walt and I knew that in a town this size I couldn’t hope to keep my identity a complete secret anyhow. I figured word would soon get around about my hunt at Hidden Hollow and that I was there to write a story for my magazine about the hunt. While I still hoped to keep a fairly low profile and not attract undue attention—at least not in any way related to Charlie Flanagan—I also figured the story assignment should keep me fairly well covered.
“Pete Sawyer,” he said, sticking out a calloused hand. I shook with him and, to his credit, he didn’t try to pulverize my hand with his grip, although I was pretty sure he could have done so.
“Good to meet you,” I said, and he nodded. “You too,” he said.
Walt the bartender returned and I paid my tab, adding a good tip. He thanked me and told me to stop in again. I nodded and pulled on my jacket, then threaded my way through the tables and pushed through the door out into the cold night air.
Light, feathery snow had begun to fall and there was already about a half inch of accumulation on the sidewalk and street and the vehicles parked at the curb. I’d left my gloves on the passenger seat of the Equinox—duh—so I used my bare hand to brush the snow from the edges of the driver’s side doorframe. I climbed in, dried my wet hand on my jeans, and cranked the ignition.
I sat for a moment, then fished the burner I’d been using with James Collins out of my jacket pocket and turned it on. While it was booting up I gazed out the window at the door of the Rushville Tap. A couple came out, laughing, and turned to their right to walk down the street to their vehicle. The man had his arm around the woman’s waist and she leaned her head on his shoulder, and I felt a pang of envy.
I also suddenly remembered the vanilla scent of Daryl Nelson’s shampoo when I’d kissed her goodnight in the parking lot at Skip’s the week before.
The burner made the little chiming sound that signified I had a text message. I thumbed the icon and the message displayed. It read: “CW: 423 West Randolph. CF: 668 Highland Road.”
James Collins had come through. I now knew where both Carlyle Wilson and Charlie Flanagan lived.
Chapter 28
The navigation system on the phone made it easy to find both places.
Carlyle Wilson’s house was the closer of the two, just a few blocks away from the town square. Following the directions voiced by the robotic-sounding lady on the phone, I found it in less than five minutes.
It was a smallish frame two-story house, white with dark trim and a small screened front porch with a row of bushes in front. A detached two-car garage sat behind it and to one side. The garage door was closed so I couldn’t tell if there was a vehicle inside. There wasn’t one parked in the driveway leading back to the garage.
The house was completely dark, which was what you’d expect if you knew its owner and sole inhabitant was currently in a jail cell.
I circled the block and drove past the house a second time but learned nothing further. It was still dark (no surprise) and I couldn’t think of any reason to keep checking it out. I punched up Charlie Flanagan’s address and read it into the phone, and Robot Lady—I refuse to call her anything else—began telling me how to get there.
Highland Road was a couple miles outside of town, off Highway 24. I followed the directions and came to a roadside mailbox with the numbers 668 and the name Flanagan in metallic letters on the side. It stood at the corner of a gravel lane that led up a slope to a house sitting atop a hill about a quarter mile from the road. With the darkness and falling snow I couldn’t see the house all that clearly, but I could see it was a large two-story and there was at least one light on.
That didn’t necessarily mean Charlie Flanagan was inside; maybe he was one of those people who always left a light on because he didn’t like coming home to a dark house. Then again, the light could mean he was already home for the night and sitting in his den wearing a velvet smoking jacket, sipping brandy and reading Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
I highly doubted that scenario.
I drove on past and continued down Highland Road to the next lane, a little more than a half-mile farther on. I continued on to the next lane and it too was about a half-mile farther. I pulled in, reversed, and headed back toward Flanagan’s place. I paused for a moment at the end of his lane and powered down the window for a little better look.
Up on the hill near the house, a dog barked, sounding like something fairly large. Definitely not a yappy ankle-biter, anyway, which wouldn’t have fit Charlie Flanagan’s tough-guy image. I guessed maybe a Rottweiler or German shepherd or pit bull and hoped it wouldn’t come charging down the lane to investigate. But I waited a minute and saw no sign of the dog, suggesting it was either chained or confined in a kennel near the house.
I powered up the window and headed back to town.
The snow was still falling when I came to the town square. The pavilion in the park twinkled with the lights I’d seen workmen stringing that afternoon. Lighted Christmas wreaths adorned the streetlight posts around the square as well, and the snow gave everything a cozy, Norman Rockwell kind of look. Or maybe Thomas Kincaid.
There were still quite a few cars parked outside the Rushville Tap and in front of the other bars on the square. Most of the other businesses were dark. I glanced at the clock on the Equinox’s radio display and saw it was 9:10. I pulled into an empty parking space and sat for a moment, watching snowflakes melt on the windshield as I pondered my next move and thought about what I’d learned over the course of the evening.
My thoughts were pretty random. Charlie Flanagan lived outside of town in a large house on a hill and apparently he had a big dog. His nearest neighbors were about a half-mile away. He was a known troublemaker, going all the way back to his childhood. A lot of townspeople doubted he’d actually heard Carlyle Wilson confess to killing Frank Reynolds, but there were also some who believed him.
Carlyle Wilson lived in town and there’d been no one at his house this evening while he sat in jail. I wondered if Allie Marshall had a key to the house and guessed that, as his fiancée, she probably did. I also wondered if she lived with him and would be returning to the house after she finished up her duties for the evening at Hidden Hollow. The townspeople, or at least the two I’d talked to, thought Wilson was basically a good guy and unlikely to have killed Frank Reynolds or to have confessed to doing so. He’d been arrested primarily on Charlie Flanagan’s say-so.
Charlie Flanagan had had his eye on Allie Marshall before she got engaged to Carlyle Wilson. Pete Sawyer and Walt the bartender thought Charlie might have made up the confession story to get Carlyle out of the way so he, Charlie, could make a move on Allie, not real
izing she wouldn’t want anything to do with him if he was instrumental in getting her fiancé sent to prison.
That last part troubled me a bit. Could Charlie Flanagan really be that dumb and think that if Carlyle was sent up, that would simply clear the path to Allie’s door?
Walt the bartender seemed to think that yes, Charlie was indeed that dumb. Walt had said something to the effect that once Charlie set his sights on something, he trampled anything that got in his way. That observation fit hand-in-glove with my general impression of Charlie Flanagan as a bullying thug, further confirmed by Pete and Walt’s comments about not wanting to be a prisoner under his guard.
I had a sudden disquieting thought. I wondered if Charlie Flanagan was hoping that in addition to removing Carlyle Wilson as the obstacle to his pursuit of Allie Marshall, he was also hoping that Wilson would be convicted and then incarcerated at the Mt. Sterling prison. That would give Flanagan the opportunity to further torment Wilson, something Flanagan would probably enjoy.
I had no idea if such a scenario would actually play out along those lines; if Wilson would in fact be sent to nearby Mt. Sterling, rather than some other Illinois prison, if he were convicted. But life was too full of cruel ironies for me to entirely dismiss the idea.
By now there was little question in my mind that Charlie Flanagan had borne false witness against Carlyle Wilson and fabricated the story of Wilson’s confession. I wasn’t alone in my thinking on this, but whether a jury would see it that way was still a real roll of the dice.
Getting rid of Charlie Flanagan before he testified would render the alleged confession moot, I was pretty sure, and that in turn would probably result in the manslaughter charge against Wilson being dropped. The only real question in my mind—and it was the same question I’d been struggling with since first learning of this situation—was whether Flanagan’s lie was enough to justify killing him.
Another unsettling thought occurred to me. Rule Number 2 stipulated no collateral damage. Up until now I’d been thinking of Carlyle Wilson as the only possible collateral damage, in that he was being set up to take the fall for something I had done. But now I wondered if I was dodging the realization that Charlie Flanagan might also be considered collateral damage…was I thinking of killing him primarily to get Wilson off the hook, or just to prevent my having to come clean?
I certainly wanted to see Wilson exonerated. But I couldn’t deny I was also hoping to bring some closure to the matter of Frank Reynolds’ death once and for all and in such a way that authorities would have no choice but to rule it an accidental shooting with no other viable suspects. i.e., leaving Wilson and me in the clear.
Once again I found myself wishing for something more, some additional deciding factor, some further bit of incriminating evidence of wrongdoing by Flanagan.
As I sat there parked on the Rushville town square watching the snow fall, backlit by the Christmas lights on that Friday night, I couldn’t know that in less than twenty-four hours my wish would be granted and on the following afternoon I’d see Charlie Flanagan do something that would seal his fate once and for all.
Chapter 29
The snow had stopped falling by the time I got back to Hidden Hollow. I parked in the same place I had earlier, then walked across to the kennel building. The door was unlocked so I entered and snapped on the light.
I was pleased to note that the kennel building was heated, another amenity worth mentioning in my article. Preacher was curled up on her dog bed but stood up when she saw me. She gave one quick bark and stood by the gate to her kennel run, wagging her tail.
Two other dogs, the German shorthair and the black Lab I’d heard about at dinner, occupied two of the runs, one on either side of Preacher’s, with an empty run between each—the shorthair was in run number two and the Lab was in run six.
Good planning on Allie Marshall’s part, I thought. Although the Lab and the shorthair both appeared friendly, strange dogs in unfamiliar surroundings don’t always hit it off, especially if any or all of them are strongly territorial. By keeping empty runs between the kennel’s three occupants Allie had minimized the chance of any conflict.
I unlatched the gate to Preacher’s run and stepped inside. I knelt down and ruffled her ears and she sighed and laid her bristly head on my shoulder. I sweet-talked to her for a couple minutes and reminded her that we’d be hunting in the morning. Then I stood—my middle-aged knees couldn’t tolerate kneeling on concrete for very long—and stepped back out of Preacher’s run. I latched her gate, snapped off the light, and returned to the lodge.
As I stepped up onto the porch I saw someone standing off to my left, leaning against the porch railing. There was enough light coming through the lodge’s windows for me to recognize Allie Marshall. She was wearing a heavy canvas barn coat, and a longneck beer bottle stood on the railing next to her. Before I could speak, she said, “Is Preacher settled in for the night?”
I realized she must have watched me park and walk across to the kennel. “Yes, she’s fine,” I said. “That’s a nice facility you have for guests’ dogs.”
“Thanks. The kennels for our dogs are on the other side of the barn,” she said, answering a question I’d been wondering about. She laughed and added, “Their accommodations aren’t quite as posh.”
“Oh, I’ll bet they’re fine,” I said, then decided to push the envelope. “Do you mind if I join you with one of those?” I gestured toward her beer.
“If you’d like,” she said. “Although there’s a pretty lively pool tournament going on inside if you want to get in on it.” I wasn’t sure if she was trying to get rid of me or just playing the helpful hostess.
“’Fraid I’m not much of a pool player,” I said. “I’d only embarrass myself, to say nothing of losing some money if there’s any betting going on.”
She laughed. “I don’t think they’re playing for money, but you never know…things could get crazy. But sure, join me if you’d like.”
“Can I bring you another one?”
“Thanks, but I need to head back to town when I finish this.”
“OK,” I said. I pushed through the door and headed across the lounge toward the tall cooler behind the bar. One of the pool players—I think it was Aaron—hailed me and asked if I wanted to play but I shook my head and begged off.
I snagged a Winter Lager from the cooler, popped the cap and returned to the porch. Allie had lifted one hip to rest on the porch railing and was swinging that leg. I took a similar position opposite her and raised my bottle.
“So, what did you think of Rushville?” she asked.
“Nice little place,” I said. “Pretty town square, with the Christmas decorations and the snow. Kinda quaint, actually.”
“Quaint,” Allie said. She shook her head. “I guess you could call it that, although those of us who’ve lived here all our lives might choose some other words to describe it.” I wasn’t sure if I heard a trace of bitterness in her voice. Maybe just resignation.
I could have asked her to elaborate, but knowing she’d be leaving as soon as she finished her beer, I decided to force the pace. “I stopped in at the Rushville Tap,” I said.
Her leg stopped swinging and I saw her stiffen and straighten up a bit. “Oh?” she said.
I’d obviously touched a nerve. I nodded and said, “Yeah. Had a conversation with the bartender, a guy named Walt, and another fellow named Pete Sawyer.”
“What did they say? I mean, what did you talk about?” She was definitely on high alert.
“Well…” I glanced away, not wanting to embarrass her. I looked back at her and lowered my voice. “Your name came up.”
“Oh, Christ,” she said. “I mean…I’m sorry.” She shook her head again. “Let me guess. The trial?”
“Yes.”
“Of course. It’s the talk of the town. What did they tell you?”
“They told me about your fiancé…Carlyle? They said he’d been charged with killing a deer hunter a coup
le weeks ago and that the trial is scheduled to begin in a few more weeks.”
“Actually, probably not until sometime after the holidays,” Allie said. “These things take forever.”
“And he’s in jail in the meantime?”
“Yes. The judge denied him bail. I guess he thought Carlyle was a flight risk, or something. Which is ridiculous. Carlyle has lived here all his life and he’s not the type to run away from his problems. Plus…I know he wouldn’t leave me.”
“They said he was arrested because another guy claimed he confessed to him.”
“Charlie Flanagan. Carlyle didn’t confess to him and a lot of us know he didn’t. If you knew anything about Charlie, or Charlie and Carlyle both, you’d know Charlie’s lying about Carlyle confessing. Charlie Flanagan has been causing trouble all his life and this is just the latest example. He enjoys making trouble for people.”
“They mentioned he’s a prison guard.”
“Right. At Mt. Sterling, about 20 miles from here. It’s the perfect job for him; it gives him a chance to bully other people and get away with it.”
There it was again.
I pushed the envelope a little further. “Pete and Walt kinda hinted there might be some jealousy involved. That Charlie might be hoping to get Carlyle out of the way because he’s…uh…interested in you.”
She laughed, but not happily. “That’s nuts and Charlie should know it. We all went to school together…Carlyle and Charlie were in Amy’s class, and I was one year behind them. I went out with Charlie twice, I think it was, and that was enough to convince me he was bad news.”
“But he’s been carrying a torch for you ever since?” I was trying to sound like I was just trying to pick my way through the puzzle pieces; I hoped my attempt was convincing.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Charlie married another one of my classmates, Jolene Mitchell, and they were together for a few years until she decided she couldn’t put up with him, either, and they got divorced. Meanwhile, I got married myself and then divorced a few years later.” She stopped suddenly and even in the faint light I could see she looked embarrassed. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to get into all this ancient personal history.”
The Killer in the Woods Page 15