Cripple Creek Part 2

Still cool out by the cabin when I reached it, early-morning sunlight skipping bright coins across the lake. Near and far, from ancient stands of oak and cypress, young doves called to one another. Mist clung to the water's surface. I didn't come here for beauty, but it keeps insisting upon pushing its way in. Val's yellow Volvo was under the pecan tree out front. Two squirrels sat on a low limb eyeing the car suspiciously and chattering away. As I climbed out, Val stepped onto the porch with twin mugs of coffee.

"Heard you were back in port, sailor."

"Aye, ma'am."

"And how's the Fairlane?"

"Not bad, once you discount crop dusters trying to land on the hood."

I'd finally broken down and bought a car, from the same old Miss Shaugnessy who rented out her garage to Jimmy Ray, who bought beer for minors. Thing was a tank: you looked out on a hood that touched down two counties over. Miss Shaugnessy'd bought it new almost forty years ago, paying cash, but never quite learned to drive. It had been up on blocks since, less than a hundred miles on the odometer. Lonnie was the one who talked her into selling it to me. Went over with a couple of plate lunches from Jay's covered in aluminum foil and a quart of beer and came back with the keys.

I don't remember too much more about that morning. Val and I sat side by side on the porch on kitchen chairs I'd fished out of the city dump up the road. I told her about Don Lee's latest catch. About the money in the nylon sports bag. Told her I was tired, bone tired, dead tired. Watched sparrows, cardinals, and woodp.e.c.k.e.rs alight in the trees and bluejays curse them all. A pair of quail ran, heads and shoulders down like soldiers, from brush to brush nearby. A squirrel came briefly onto the porch and sat on haunches regarding us. I think I told Val about the pork chop.

Next thing I know she's beside me on the bed and I'm suddenly awake. No direct sunlight through east or west windows, so most likely the sun's overhead.

"What, you didn't go in to work today?"

"New policy. State employees are encouraged to telecommute one day a week."

"What the h.e.l.l for?"

"Clean air legislation."

"Someone's been trucking in the other kind?"

"Sorry. Thought you were awake, but obviously you're not quite. I did mention the government, right?"

"See your point."

"You said to wake you around noon. Coffee's almost fresh and Cafe Val's open for business. Need a menu?"

"Oatmeal."

"Oatmeal? Here I hook up with an older man, expecting to reap the benefits of his life experiencea"plumb the depths of wisdom land all thata"and what I get is oatmeal?"

She did, and I did, and within the hour, following shower, shave, oatmeal breakfast, and a change of clothes, I pulled in by city hall. The Chariot and Don Lee's pickup were still there, along with June's Neon. Blinds were closed.

Those blinds never get closed except at night.

And the door was locked.

If I hadn't been fully awake before, I was now.

I had a key, of course. What I didn't have was any idea where the key might be. Time to rely on my extensive experience as a law-enforcement professional: I kicked the door in. Luckily a decade's baking heat had done its work. On my third try the doorframe around the lock splintered.

Donna, one of two secretaries from the other half of city halla"mayor's office, city clerk, water and sewage departments, the administrative side of thingsa"appeared beside me to say "We have a spare key, you know." Then she glanced inside.

June lay there, shamrock-shaped pool of blood beneath her head, purse still slung over her shoulder. She was breathing slowly and regularly. Bubbles of blood formed and broke in her right nostril with each breath. As on a movie screen I saw her arrive for her shift, surprising them in the act. She'd have keyed the door and come on in. One hand on the .22 that had spilled from her purse when she fell, I imagined. She'd have realized something wasn't right, same as I did.

Two smaller questions to add to the big one, then.

Why was June carrying a gun in her purse?

And was Don Lee already down when she arrived?

He lay on the floor by the door leading back to the storage room and holding cells. A goose egg the color and shape of an overripe Roma tomato hung off the left side of his head. Glancing through the open door I saw the holding cell was empty. Don Lee's eyes flickered as I knelt over him. He was trying to say something. I leaned closer.

"Gumb.a.l.l.s?"

He shook his head.

"Goombahs," he said.

Donna meanwhile had put in a call for Doc Oldham, who, as usual, arrived complaining.

"Man can't even be left alone to have his G.o.dd.a.m.n lunch in peace nowadays. What the h.e.l.l're you up to now, Turner? This used to be a nice quiet place to live, you know? Then you showed up."

He dropped to one knee beside June. For a moment I'd have sworn he was going to topple. Droplets of sweat, defying gravity, stood on his scalp. He felt for June's carotid, rested a hand briefly on her chest. Carefully supported her head with one hand while palpating it, checking pupils, ears.

"I'm a.s.suming you've already done this?" he said.

"Pupils equal and reactive, so no sign of concussion. No fremitus or other indication of respiratory difficulty. No real evidence of struggle. Someone standing guard at the door's my guess. A single blow meant only to put her down."

Oldham's eyes met mine. We'd both been there too many times.

"Not bad for an amateur, I was about to say. But you're not, are you? So I was about to make myself an a.s.shole. Not for the first time, mind. And, I sincerely hope, not for the last." Grabbing at a tabletop, he wobbled to his feet. "I need to look at the other one?"

"Pupils unequal but reactive. Unconscious now, but he spoke to me earlier and responds to pain. Doesn't look to be any major blood loss. Vitals are good. BP I'd estimate at ninety over sixty, thereabouts."

"Ambulance on the way?"

"Call's in."

"Could take some time. Rory ain't always easy to rouse, once he's got hisself bedded down for the day. d.a.m.n it all, we're looking at a major G.o.dd.a.m.n crime scene here."

"Afraid so."

"Ever tell you how much I hate court days?"

"Once or twice."

"There're those who'd be pleased to pay for your ticket back home, you know." He leaned heavily against the wall, reeling down breaths in stages, like a kite from the sky. "But you ain't going away, are you, boy?"

"No, sir."

"You sure 'bout that?"

"I am."

He pushed himself away from the wall.

"Good. Things been a h.e.l.l of a lot more interesting around here since you came."

Doc Oldham and I packed the two of them off to the hospital up Little Rock way, then he had to demonstrate his new step. He'd recently taken up tap dancing, G.o.d help us all, and every time you saw him, he wanted to show off his latest moves. This from a man who could barely stand upright, mind you. It was like watching a half-rotted pecan tree go au point. But eventually he left to make another try at his G.o.dd.a.m.n lunch, and I went to work. I'd barely got started when Buster arrived. Buster filled in as relief cook at the diner, cleaned up there most nights, snagged whatever other work he could. I never could figure what it was about him, some kind of palsy or just plain old nerves, but some part of Buster always had to be moving.

"Doc says you could use help gettin' th'office cleaned up," he said, looking around. When his head stopped moving, a foot started. "'Pears to me he was right."

"You don't have to do that."

"Well, no sir, I don't," he said, grinning. Then the lips relaxed and his eyes met mine. A shaky hand rose between us. "Sure enough could use the work, though."

"Twenty sound okay?"

"Yessir. Sounds right good. Specially with my anniversary coming up and all."

"How many years does this make for you and Delia?"

"Fifty-eight."

"Congratulations."

"She the one deserves congratulations, puttin' up with the likes of me all these years."

Buster went back to the storage room to find what he needed as I sank in again. Buster could clean the stairs at Grand Central Station during rush hour without getting in anyone's way. Someone once said of a Russian official who survived regime after regime that he'd learned to dodge raindrops and could make his way through a downpour without ever getting wet. That's Buster.

Don's desk tray held his report, with a photocopy of the original speeding ticket stapled to it. In the ledger he'd logged time of arrest, reason for same, time of arrival at the office, booking number. The column for PI (personal items) was checked, as was that for FP (fingerprinted) and PC (phone call).

Just out of curiosity, I paged back to see when we'd last fingerprinted or given a phone call. We rarely had sleepovers, and when we did they were guys who'd had a little too much to drink, bored high school kids caught out vandalizing, the occasional mild domestic dispute needing cool-off time.

Four months back, I'd answered a suspicious person call at the junior high. Dominic Ford had offered no resistance, but I'd brought him in and put his stats in the system on the off chance that he might be a pedophile or habitual offender. Turned out he was an estranged father just trying to get a glimpse of his twelve-year-old daughter, make sure she was okay.

Six months back, Don Lee responded to a call that a man "not from around here" was sitting on the only bench in the tiny park at the end of Main Street talking to himself. Thinking he could be a psychiatric patient, Don Lee printed him. What he was, was minister of a Pentecostal church in far south Memphis, out towards the state border where gambling casinos afloat on the river have turned Tunica into a second Atlantic City. He'd only wanted to get back to the kind of place he grew up, he said. Touch down there, feel it again. He'd been sitting on the bench working up his sermon.

The previous entry was for that time, a year ago, when Lonnie, Don Lee, and I discovered how Carl Hazelwood had been killeda"the day the sheriff got shot.

All these years, I'd never seen anything remotely resembling a jailbreak and a.s.sumed they only happened in old Western or gangster movies. But it was obvious this crew had come here specifically to spring Judd Kurtz. Goombahs, Don Lee had said. Even among the most harda.s.sed, there aren't many who'll step up to a law office, even a far-flung, homespun one like ours, with such impunity.

I sat looking at that tick underneath PC. Then I made my own call, to Mabel at Bell South.

"Don Lee and Miss June gonna be okay?" she said immediately upon hearing my voice.

"We hope so. Meanwhile, I need a favor."

"Whatever I can do."

"How much do you know about what went down over here?"

"Just someone stormed in and beat c.r.a.p out of the two of them's all I heard."

"That someone came to town to break out a man Don Lee had detained on a traffic violation."

"Take safe driving seriously, do they?"

Known for her biting wit, Mabel was. Not to mention the choicest gossip in town.

"The man made a phone call from this office just after Don Lee booked him in, around one a.m. I know it'sa""

"Sure it is. Now ask me if I care. Just give me five, ten minutes."

"Thanks, sweetheart."

"For what? I'm not doing this."

Never mind five or ten minutes, it was more like two.

She read out the number. "Placed at one-fourteen." A Memphis exchange.

"Any way you can check to see what that number is?"

"Like I haven't already? Nino's Restaurant. Two lines. One's the official listing, looks like it gets almost all the calls. The othera""

"Is probably an office or back booth."

"Must be a city thing," Mabel said in the verbal equivalent of a shrug. "That do it for you?"

"I owe you, Mabel."

"You just be sure to give Miss June and Don Lee my best when you see them."

"I will."

"'Scuse me, Mr. Turner?" Head bobbing, Buster stood in the doorway. "'Bout done here. S'posed to go wash the mayor's car now. One or two more besides, I s'pect." When his head went still, an arm rose. "Came upon this back in there."

A business card. I took it. Put a twenty and a ten in its place.

"Much obliged, sir."

"When's your anniversary, Buster?"

"Thursday to come."

"Maybe you could bring Delia over to my place that night, let Val and me fix dinner for you both. We'd love to meet her."

"Well now, I'd surely like that, Mr. Turner. 'Predate the asking. And forgive me for saying it, but Della'd be powerful uncomfortable with that."

"I understand. Maybe some other time."

"Maybe so."