No Signal

by Ryan Bright



  No Signal

  By Ryan A. Bright

  Copyright 2013 Ryan Bright

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  Thanks for encouragement and help:

  Margaret, Frannie,

  and Mr. White.

  Chapter 1

  The sun burned high in the sky and heat waves radiated off the pavement. I had a good view of both directions from the shoulder where I was parked with a flat tire. A spare sat safely in the trunk with no worry of me getting it out because the jack handle was currently being held as Exhibit B by the district attorney. A jack handle makes a good defensive weapon when your clip is empty, but it also makes a strong case for assault and battery. Hopefully not strong enough in this case, especially when the accuser’s rap sheet is as long as a poor kid’s letter to Santa. It takes brains and brawn to be a p.i. and so far I’ve had just enough of both to get by on.

  I didn’t have to be a detective to know how well my cell phone was going to work in this part of the county and yet I held it up in the air to read “No Signal” on the display anyway. When I went over the last ridge I also went back in time at least thirty years as far as the scenery goes. No cell towers to mar the bucolic surroundings. I counted at least four dozen black and white dairy cows grazing under the shade of a fencerow lined with trees on my left. None offered to help me out of my predicament. I’m not sure that any actually looked my way.

  The field on the other side of the road was long and flat with no fence except by the road. Rows and rows of thick, green, freshly mowed hay dried in the afternoon sun. The earthy, wet smell reminded me of my grandfather. Like his father and grandfather before him he had been the sheriff of Canton County and they all worked the farm in between catching crooks. I remember the summer day vividly when I insisted on helping him haul hay without wearing gloves. The rough twine that held the small square bales together rubbed raw marks on my hands that took a week to heal.

  “How are you going to hold a gun or capture a criminal with those hands?” Gramps had questioned me sternly. I’m not sure why my grandfather expected a twelve year old to be fighting crime, but he made his point. Don’t do stupid stuff when you know better. I learned many lessons on the summers I spent here.

  A familiar sound echoed from over the ridge. Blue lights and a wailing siren accompanied one, two, three police cars as they flew down the hill barely holding it in the road as they wound around the curve at the bottom. An ambulance topped the ridge seconds later. The cows panicked at the noise and raced down the fencerow to the far side of the field. I half expected at least one of them to jump over, but the cows huddled up in a pack in the corner with their ears pointed up.

  The lawmen passed me and my flat by without so much as a wave of the hand or the finger. I wasn’t expecting much from them. The current sheriff and I don’t always get along, and when his sister is your ex-wife, well, let's just say life gets complicated fast.

  I watched the flashing lights continue down to the bottom of the hill towards the silos and barns that made up the Thompson dairy farm. The police cars careened into the farm’s driveway throwing gravels and slid to a stop in front of the barn. It looked like a good place for me to go and borrow a jack, and if I happened upon an investigation then so be it. I wiped a drop of sweat off the lens of my sunglasses and started walking.

  ###

  “Son, it looks to me like an accident and that’s all it was.” Sheriff Brookshire was summing up his investigation when I turned the corner of the barn. He still had the height and broad shoulders from his high school football days, but the balding cop had begun packing some pounds to go along with his heat for some time. Brookshire’s stern voice kept his men in line and could intimidate even the worst felons.

  The policemen, a few farmers, and an older woman sobbing uncontrollably stood on the inside of a small paddock. Behind them a metal gate clanged from the kick of a black and white Holstein bull that was chasing an invisible intruder. He stopped, spun towards the on looking police, and snorted sending bull boogers and spit into the air.

  “Look at that bull,” the sheriff pointed a long finger at the pacing and tail-thrashing animal. “He’s a mean’un. That bull charged your husband over and killed him. I’m sorry, ma’am.” The widow wailed louder as a younger man tried to hold her up and console her.

  The paramedics finished pushing the covered gurney in the ambulance, slammed the back door, and drove out of the barn lot. The silence was only broken by the sounds of a few gentle moos and an angry barking dog in the distance as the gathered crowd watched it drive away. That’s when Brookshire finally noticed me leaning against the side of the barn and doing my best to keep it from falling.

  “What the hell are you doing here? This ain’t no investigation. Nobody called you.” He spat the words out quickly like a boot stomping an unwanted bug on the floor.

  I tilted my head slowly back toward the road. “I had a flat. You passed me by. I came looking for a jack to borrow or a ride back to town.” I held my cell phone up uselessly in the air. “No signal.”

  The young man turned to the widow who’s crying had finally subsided. Her short, grey hair was slipping from the bun she’d tied it in. I deduced from the scrubs she wore that she probably worked over at Memorial Hospital. “You be alright for a minute, momma?” he asked her. “Let me go help this man out.”

  His mother nodded slowly. Her red wet eyes stayed fixed on a spot in the middle of the paddock where I assumed her husband was mauled. I had no doubt my ex would be smiling if I had met the same fate.

  I followed him through a roughly made door on the side of the barn. His plain t-shirt wet with sweat and speckled with cow manure clung to him. I imagined he had the wiry strength that lanky farm boys always seemed to have with all the physical work he did. “You’re that private detective, right?” he asked after we had gone far enough inside not to be heard by those still outside.

  “Yes. John Steele’s the name,” I replied while scanning the workshop over. Hammers, saws, and wrenches hung randomly on nails above one workbench. A well beaten anvil was fixed on a tree stump opposite a large vise. Another workbench, this one metal, was on the other side of the room with one end pushed clean of debris and the other piled high with pieces of metal worn bearings, and other odds and ends like they had been dumped from a garbage can. He retrieved a jack from underneath some shelves and began studying me. His brown eyes were red, but I couldn’t tell if it was from crying or anger.

  “The sheriff didn’t listen to me,” he stated suddenly and I couldn’t say I had not said the same thing before.

  “About what?”

  “I had been using the skid steer to move some dirt and just got off.” He pointed through the walls and toward the ridge on the other side. “I heard somebody get off at least three shots as soon as I killed the engine. I knew the cows were probably going crazy and I ran to check on them. That’s when I saw Dad had been mauled. Whoever was shooting did this!” His voice got louder and more frantic as he talked. “Somebody did this on purpose.”

  I pondered the scenario he presented for a moment. A bit farfetched, possible, but not plausible. “What’d Brookshire say?”

  The boy’s mouth twisted up and he slung the jack to the ground. “He said it was an accident.” Then he looked me straight in the eyes. “But you’ll check it out, won’t you? You’ll prove I was right?”

  I rubbed my thumb and forefinger across the sides of my
mouth feeling the bit of stubble I must’ve missed in my morning shave. He was loaning me the use of the jack. “I’ll look into it. But I’m not making any promises. And I don’t work for free.” Darn straight I don’t work for nothing. That tire wasn’t going to patch itself and paychecks have not exactly been flooding my mailbox lately.

  He nodded his head slowly. “’Kay. My name’s Sam, and don’t say nothing to momma about this until you find something, alright? I’m going to put that bull at the next auction at the stock barn so there’ll be money to pay ya out of that.” His head drooped a bit and the energy in his voice faltered and fell low. “I don’t want to keep it around after what happened to Dad.”

  I stood there letting him take a moment and finally broke the silence by changing the subject. “Well, I wouldn’t have needed any help if my cell phone would have worked.”

  He grabbed the jack, a few more tools, and strode out the door and replied, “Yeah, sucks don’t it? Dad was supposed to have a tower put on the farm, but it all fell through.”

  I heard the police cars startup and drive away as I stepped back outside. Sam went back to his mother. They stood silently for a moment staring at the paddock. He turned to an older farmer, an employee I guessed, that had been putting on and removing his cap trying in vain to keep his hands busy and his mind off what had happened evidently. “Henry, take those tools and him back to his car and get him going.” Henry grabbed the tools and I followed him to a truck.

  ###

  With the spare on and the flat tire placed back in the trunk I was on my way to the top of the ridge. I had thanked Henry for the use of the tools and for the ride, but he wasn’t talkative. There was a slight clearing in the trees large enough for my car to pull off in at when I reached the top. Yellow daffodils bushed out in clumps and gave the impression that perhaps a house had been her once, but I saw no sign of one being here other than that.

  There was no fence bordering the trees and I made my way slowly inward watching and listening for varmints, bugs, and poison. I heard Gramps voice in my head say, “Leaves of three,” as I saw a green vine climbing up the side of a maple tree. I gave it a wide berth careful to stay on a slightly worn path that deer had made.

  After a one hundred yard trek I moved to the edge of the trees to where they met a fence and hay field. Mustard plants had infected the field with their tall heads towering above the grass dusting pollen whenever the wind blew. The Thompson place lay below where the terrain flattened out. I had a perfect view of the paddock where Sam’s father had been mauled by the bull. I raised my arms and gripped an imaginary rifle and pretended to look down the scope. Too far. Too far for accuracy. I studied the layout of the dairy farm. All of the farm buildings including hay barns, workshop, dairy barn, and farmhouse were built on the other side of the paddock. The noise from a shot here would echo off the buildings and seem even louder than it actually was if you were down there.

  I turned my attention to the ground walking just inside the tree line and out of sight. Searching for more than ten minutes yielded no results. I paused for one last cursory look around before quitting when I saw a squirrel run half way down a tree. It stopped, eyed the ground, no doubt looking for something just as I was, finished climbing down, and ran up a another tree and out of sight. My attention to the squirrel stopped when I saw him rush past something glinting in the light.

  I had brought tissue and a plastic baggie from the car in case something was to turn up. I photographed the leaves and the silver metal pieces I could see by using an app on my phone before touching them with the tissue. Slow sifting through the leaves and grass finally earned me seven spent shells. I deposited all but one in the bag and held the last one up to the light. Halfway up the cylinder a flying bumble bee had been etched into the metal. A quick examination of the other shells proved they were marked identically. I took a picture of the bee and emailed all of the images to myself for safekeeping.

  After another thirty minutes of looking I gave up the search for more clues.

  Chapter 2

  Happy Harry’s Gun Store had been around for as long as I could remember. Of course, Harry was gone, shot dead about ten years ago by a jealous husband who had decided that Harry had too much of a good reason to be happy and mowed him down with a shotgun at close range as he locked up the store one night. That was when I met his son, Chris, who I would describe as also having his father’s happy demeanor, but hopefully not his philandering habits. I had helped the police track down and nab the perp behind it all.

  From the long counter in the back Chris had a view of the entire store. He was a big fella at six feet easy with broad shoulders, a hard beer belly, and his bushy graying beard was all the hair he had left. A broad smile appeared in the midst of that nest as he saw me enter the store. “What’s up, Steele!” he called in his deep booming voice.

  “Do have that bazooka in I’m waiting on?” It was a running joke between us. He had said he could get any weapon I needed so I asked for the moon.

  “Let me check,” he chortled and glanced down at his computer screen. “Nope, still not here yet. I’m sure it will be here.....never!” His eyes went wide and he laughed again.

  I pulled the bag of shells from my pocket and placed them on the counter. “What can you tell me about these?”

  Chris removed a pair of bifocals from his shirt pocket and slid them on his face. He twisted the shells around in the bag for a good three minutes, which I was beginning to think was only for dramatic effect on his part, all the while making knowing murmuring grunts to himself. He returned the glasses and pushed the bag back to me. “So you’re cheating on me,” he said matter of factly. “Or is this a case?” His matching bushy eyebrows went up and down.

  “Part of an investigation.”

  Chris let out a long sigh. “Thank goodness. I was afraid you’d been swindled.”

  My feet shifted slightly and I asked, “Swindled?”

  More laughter from Chris came. “These,” he pointed at the shells, “are Bumble Bee Stinger Bullets.” For the last part he held up his fingers in a quotation marks gesture. “They sting on impact,” he continued, deadly serious, before bursting out laughing.

  “Really?” I asked with a chuckle. “Do you sell them?”

  “No, sir.” He shook his head from side to side. “You’ll only find legitimate guns and ammo here. I don’t up sell stuff based on fancy marketing.”

  “Then who does?”

  “There was a guy,” and he thought for a moment while his right hand nearly disappeared inside his beard while scratching. “Right. Got it. Daniel Keys. That’s his name. Daniel Keys. He lives here in town. Don’t remember if he designed them or just tries to sell them to dealers like me. He came in about a month ago and I told him thanks but no thanks if you know what I mean.”

  Daniel Keys. The name rang no bells to me, but I would definitely be checking up on him. “Appreciate the help, Chris.”

  “Anytime,” he replied.

  ###

  One of the last unpaved roads in the county went through the valley that was commonly called Ceton Hollar. There was only one Ceton left, Wade Ceton, my Gramps. A few Yankees had moved in around him, as he might say, but he still owned a good bit of acreage. I moved to Canton County to take care of him after the doctors said he was going to die. Ten years later, which was long enough for me to marry, divorce, and start my investigating business, he was still going.

  Gramps lived in a white two story farmhouse that he said he should’ve never had vinyl siding put on. The front porch was his real home where he occupied a worn rocking chair and guests were left with the porch swing. He was there today with his oxygen tank by his side watching traffic and keeping an eye on the Yankees. Gramps waved slightly when he saw my crown vic turn up his driveway.

  As always he wore a pair of khaki brown pants with the top button undone, for breathing room he would say, which he needed with that paunch of his. He kept a pen and notebook in his fro
nt pocket, a habit from his days as police chief, but what he wrote in it now he never shared. He used to be six foot tall like me, but age had taken away a few inches, and while I seemed to have inherited his unshavable five o’clock shadow and solid chin I hoped I never grew a second or third like him.

  “How’s it going today, Gramps?” I asked as I stepped from the car.

  “Well my number one has been starting and stopping all day and my number two is good.” Gramps never could keep his bathroom routine secret. “Sit down, sit down,” he ordered.

  I took the porch swing and gave it a gentle push though I never could sit in it too long without getting up to stretch anymore. The swinging didn’t agree with my head or stomach.

  He leaned back in his rocker and popped his false teeth and out and in again. “I saw Carol drive by today. I was hoping she might bring me some of her good sweet tea again.”

  Carol, my ex-wife, was a topic of conversation he enjoyed using like a hot poker to my chest. “We’ve been divorced for five years and she hasn’t been by to see you in at least six.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Who says she doesn’t come to see me? I’m a lonely old man. I might have money. She might want to use her womanly ways to get that money when I die. She could make me sweet tea.” He paused to scratch at the stubble on his triple chin. “She has a nice rump.” This was his second favorite hot poker. “You know wide hips on a woman are good for child birthing.” Grandkids.

  “You thinking about having kids again?” I threw it back at him.

  He coughed. “Well, you sure aren’t doing anything to keep my line going, are you?”

  Gramps was still my hero after all these years in spite of his put downs. He had taken care of crime for over forty years before he gave it up for health reasons. I don’t think people were any less evil during his time or his father’s time as sheriff. Gramps says we’ve got crime but no punishment now and that’s the difference.

  “Go ahead tell me about it.” Gramps wasn’t for beating around the bush. He knew why I came.

  “Blair Thompson got mauled to death by a bull this morning.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much of a case for you ‘less you’re going to prove that bull innocent somehow,” he replied.