A Living Grave (3 page)

“That's good, Clare. Saying nothing is better than lying. But saying nothing won't let me know you had nothing to do with this.”

“I called ya, didn't I? I brought you out here. Why would I do that if it was me that hurt the girl?”

“Happens all the time. Lots of people get the bright idea to throw off our scent by being the first to report. It pays to consider the motives of the person that calls. Especially when that person is not completely forthcoming.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” His words said one thing but everything else about him said another. It was an interesting change. I wondered what he was protecting.

For a long moment I stared at him and then turned away to point downstream. “I bet the kids have a name for their little party spot, don't they? That clearing by the fork.”

“Whiskey Bend.”

“When I was seventeen we called it Budweiser Corner.” Clare looked like he was trying hard to remember seventeen. “Kids been coming here for years. For a while I heard they were calling it Coors Corner. Course, back when I was a kid, you couldn't get Coors this far east. You ever see
Smokey and the Bandit
?”

“Why whiskey, Clare?”

He stopped smiling and his eyes got that same caught-in-the-crosshairs look. “Huh?” was all he managed to get out.

“Whiskey. Kids like beer. It's what they usually start with. What they can get away with. My old man kept a refrigerator in the garage filled with the stuff. He never noticed when a couple disappeared.”

“So?”

“So, now they call it Whiskey Bend. I have to wonder where the whiskey comes from.”

Clare was thinking. He had the look of a man weighing options. Heavy ones. I kept watch on him from the corner of my vision as his face squirreled around itself. He had nothing to do with killing the girl; I was sure of that. But the girl was dead and that left no room for anyone's secrets in my tally.

Leech
.

There it was again, carved into another tree. This time the word was more than written, it was stylized like a logo or brand. The capital L was formed with arrow points at each termination and the rest of the word inset within the angle.

“I don't want no trouble,” Clare said. “And I don't want to start nothin' where there ain't nothin' .”

I just looked at the man and nodded. He needed to know I was listening, but interruptions had a way of derailing even the smallest of confessions. To give him a little thinking room, I turned away again to examine the carved graffiti. This time I pulled a pen and notebook. Both the word and the style went onto the paper.

“I don't give it to 'em or sell it, either. But they're kids. Kids get into things.”

When I finished my rendering of the carved mark, I wrote the word
whiskey
beside it. I added the phrase
kids get into things
as well. Then I lowered the pad and looked right at him again. I didn't speak; silence did the talking.

“It ain't me you gotta worry about anyway. I just make a little for fun. For me and friends and I only sell to the old-timers.”

“I think it's time you spit it out, Clare. This is one of those only-the-truth-will-set-you-free moments.”

“My mama used to say, ‘It's time to come to Jesus.' You kind of remind me of her.”

The old man's eyes wandered down and, for a second, I wasn't sure if he was falling into memory or checking out my shape again.

“Clare!”

“There's another guy that's been coming around here. He busted up my rig and he's been telling me to shut it down. A real badass-biker type.”

“By rig, you mean a still?”

He nodded. “Small-time. Just for fun and to make a few extra bucks. I never believed it could cause things like this.”

“What are you talking about, Clare?”

“The biker. He said if I didn't stop, someone was going to get hurt.”

“B
ootleg whiskey?” the sheriff asked me. “You think that's what the girl was killed for?”

Sheriff Charles Benson—Chuck to his friends, and everyone in the county seemed to be his friend—was an elected official. Like a lot of elected sheriffs, he was better at what he considered his real job—making the citizens feel confident in the department—than he was at actual law enforcement. In his favor, though, was his own understanding of the two roles. He was a Vietnam veteran, a former farm insurance agent, and a Mason, but he hired people with training and experience and listened to them. He was a good man and I tried not to roll my eyes at him when he tried to fill in the blanks with obvious answers.

“Who knows?” I asked him. “I'm just telling you what the old guy told me. Still, we have bikers, bootlegging, and a dead girl. There's probably some connection, even if it's bad luck.”

“Why would bikers try to muscle into a small-time still operator? Where's the money in that?” the sheriff asked. It sounded like a conversational averting of the eyes. Easier to talk about the bikers than the girl. “Besides,” he went on, “bikers run more to meth these days. It's a lot more money and easier to transport. Whiskey just seems too much work.”

“And killing, this kind of killing, doesn't make sense. Yet.”

The sheriff nodded like he was agreeing, then said, “Clare's not so old. He was a grade behind me in school.”

“You know him?”

“Of course I know him. Known him all my life. We're in the same lodge. If he said there was a biker snooping around I believe him.”

“I believe him too and I'll check it out. I'm just letting you know there's no one waiting, all trussed up in a bow, to be our killer.”

“Yeah,” he said, waving his hand like he could clear some horrible thoughts. “I get it. No easy answers. And almost as bad, nothing to tell the parents when I go back to see them.”

“Sorry, Sheriff.”

“Me too,” he answered sounding tired. “But you understand, easy or not, there will be answers. We won't have an unsolved child murder in my county—on my watch. You get what I'm saying?”

I got it. I nodded.

“People forget sometimes, they think we live in the modern age. This part of the world just kind of wears its civilization like a Sunday suit. Once church is over it comes off easy. Last thing we need is a reason for them to take off the suit and go looking for their own answers.”

Despite the folksy delivery, the threat was real. The Ozarks had a long history of citizen justice.

“I'm going to need to talk to the parents,” I told him.

“I know.” He sighed as he said it. “Make it tomorrow. Let me talk to them again first—ease them into it.”

“Sheriff, that's—”

“I know. It's not the way to do things. But it's the way I want it done this time.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “I have plenty to occupy me.”

I left his office fuming a little. The sheriff was no professional, but he knew enough to understand this probably had more to do with either family or people known to the family than it did to any stranger. Even a stranger that was a booze-running biker.

Failing an interview with the parents, the next best thing was to talk to close contacts. Kids the age of Angela were in many ways more deeply connected to friends than to their family. That was where I wanted to start. I wasn't going to ignore the other issue, either. I had asked Clare to come in and look at some booking photos. The biker was our only lead so far and I wanted a name to go along with it. I asked the desk to set that up for me and I headed out to the Briscoe address. I had a feeling there would be some kids hanging around.

* * *

The windows were down on the departmental SUV I had taken. At lake level the air was relatively cool. I liked the feel as it kicked my hair. Leaving Forsyth, the roads snaked under green cover following ancient animal and Indian trails. Sunlight shooting through the gaps in leaves stuttered across my windshield. Both temperature and elevation rose as I moved away from Lake Taneycomo.

The roads in the county were my thinking spaces. They were just right for splitting my concentration. One part of my mind drove, watching the road and controlling my hands and feet, and by extension the vehicle. Another deeper part of my brain was freed to gnaw over problems like a dog working an old bone. I didn't even need a specific problem. Sometimes you let the mind free and it takes you to places you never planned.

I had just started to relax into my own thoughts when the cell phone rang. So much for mental freedom. It wasn't Darlene. Everyone from the sheriff's department had the same ring tone and it wasn't playing. I took a quick look at the number, then set the cell down and let it ring. Five-seven-one area code, that's Quantico, Virginia. You say
Quantico
and most people have the same first thought: FBI. That wasn't who I thought of. Quantico is also the home of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigative Division Headquarters. It would be Major John Reach calling and being ignored again. I didn't know what he wanted. The one message I had listened to said only that he wanted to speak with me. I didn't want to speak with him. The call went to voice mail and I tried to get my mind free again.

Freedom wouldn't come. I knew I had fallen blindly into one of those cases that had no good ending. It would end. There would be a time that it was no longer at the forefront of anyone's mind but the parents of the dead child. But it would pass without grace. The best that could be hoped for would be a clean-lined, official stamp of finality. Answers and consequences. Not that either would really matter. This girl's death would be a landmark in the lives of an innocent family. Like a strip mine sunk into the private landscape of their life, it would exist as a huge, horrendous wound that would never heal. People like to talk about closure. They especially like to say it to cops. They
need
closure. They
want
closure. There would be no closing the pit for these people. For the moment I was glad the sheriff would be talking with the parents. It was a brave and honest thing for him to deliver the news himself. He deserved respect.

That's what the drive does for me, perspective. I had gotten on the road thinking only of how Sheriff Benson had slowed me down and gotten in my way. I need a lot more perspective in my life.

I wasn't going to get it on that drive, it seemed. At the same time, the cell rang again and I came around a bend to see a man fire up a loud pipe Harley and tear ass away from an older crew-cab pickup on the side of the road. That wasn't so alarming, but the body lying in front of the truck was.

The phone call was the same one I had ignored before, and it was easy to ignore again. I crossed over the highway and parked facing traffic in the same dirt cutout as the pickup truck. Before leaving the SUV I called in the location and requested an ambulance. I also asked for a BOLO—
be on the lookout
—for the Harley and the biker. I didn't see the patch on his vest, but that's the nice thing about club bikers. Even if you don't see the colors their look is like a uniform. If he stays on the road we'll get him.

When I stepped from my vehicle the man on the ground grunted a hard, achy-sounding breath into the dirt. He followed with a series of hacking coughs coming up from deep in his chest. Once the coughing passed, his hands scrabbled out in the dirt, rocks, and trash looking for a place to land before pushing his body up. His shaved head was smeared with blood running from a wound in his scalp. It was ugly and there was no telling if he had any damage to his neck.

“I don't think you should try getting up just yet, sir,” I told him.

He ignored me long enough to push up onto his hands and knees. His head remained dangling from his shoulders like it weighed just too much to lift. Then he spit a bloody glob into the dirt.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked, still without looking up.

I told him and he nodded his head in a vague waggle. “Nice boots,” he said. “Lady cop?”

“I'm a cop.”

He laughed a little, but it turned into coughing. He looked like he was fighting to control that as well as to keep his head still. When it passed, he asked, “That mean you're not a lady?”

“It means I'm a cop and it's all that matters in this situation.”

Once again he spit out the blood pooling in his mouth. There wasn't as much this time. “Only reason I ask was, the footwear didn't seem to match the voice. You're Hurricane, aren't you?”

“My name is Detective Katrina Williams.”

“Hurricane,” he said bluntly. “I've heard of you. I don't suppose you got them?”

“The guy got away on his bike but I got a call out. We'll find him. EMTs are on their way too. You just relax.”

“Guy?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said guy. There was only one?”

“That's all I saw.”

“Me too, but it felt like a whole herd.”

“Herd?”

This time when he laughed he put a little more head into it. Before he spoke again he spit out another mouthful of blood. “Collective noun,” he said. “You know how a group of crows is a murder. A flock of ravens isn't a flock. It's an unkindness. Then there's a shrewdness of apes. When I was lying here I decided that I had been kicked to pieces by a herd of bastards.”

“Well, aren't you the interesting one?”

“I know,” he said and I could hear the smile in his voice now. “Why would anyone want to give me a beatdown? I'm just a harmless, interesting guy.” He lifted his head and looked up at me for the first time. As soon as he did he winced at the pain and started coughing again.

“Take it slow and easy,” I cautioned.

In answer he nodded, grimacing with the effort. Even with the pained look it was a nice face. Under the blood was a square jaw that managed to be masculine without getting into lantern shaped. His eyes were a rich hazel-brown that could have been chosen from a color chart to match perfectly with his sun-darkened skin. There was one incongruity. His head was bald and it looked like a recent development. The scalp was still paler than the rest of him and made him look maybe a bit older than I thought he was. If I had met him someplace else I would have looked twice and thought three times. Even here, on the side of the road, with blood running down his cheek and his lip swelling, I liked what I saw. Or maybe it was just that I would like any man that took an ass-kicking and got up laughing instead of whining and cursing.

“What's your name?” I asked.

While looking up at me he ran his tongue around his mouth, probably looking for missing or broken teeth. A couple of times he winced when he found something, the sources of the blood he spit out one more time. The look on his face was the down-but-not-out of a fighter, a crooked smile that broke into a bent grin as he offered up his hand to me.

I took it and helped him up.

“I'm Nelson Solomon,” he said.

“Like the painter?”

The grin that had shaped his lips made its way to his eyes and then it was a genuine smile. “Exactly like the painter,” he told me. For a moment he stood there holding onto my hand and steadying himself. When he was confident enough in his footing he let go and waved me over toward the barbed-wire fence and the pasture beyond. “Give me a hand with the rest of my stuff?”

“I really don't think you should be climbing fences or tramping through fields right now, Mr. Solomon.”

He waved my concern off. “I was never unconscious, just took a few shots and got the wind knocked out of me.” Before I could say anything more he went for the fence and ducked through the sagging, rusted strands of tetanus waiting to happen.

“You mind telling me what happened here?” I asked as he came up on the other side. In his hand was a stained rag and a couple of tubes that looked like toothpaste.

“I was over there.” He pointed off to a tree line. “There's a good view of the lake and I was painting.” As he talked, he walked, picking up more tubes and adding brushes. The tubes were paint.

I had thought he was kidding after I said his name was like the painter. I didn't know much about art, but his was all over the place—posters, coffee-table books, calendars. He was a merchandising gold mine. I couldn't afford even a decent print and couldn't imagine the cost of one of the originals. I had heard there was a place selling them down on the Branson Landing, a shopping development for tourists. Other than loitering teens, locals don't spend much time there.

While I was thinking, he kept gathering. Working his way down a trail trampled in the grass, he pulled up a box with legs on it. When he set it upright it was a little fold-up easel and compartment for supplies. After dumping everything else he had picked up inside, he collapsed the whole thing and held it up by a handle. He was grinning even bigger than before, pointing to a stain on one corner.

“I got him with this,” he called out. “See? Blood.”

“So he attacked you?”

Walking back along the trail, he nodded at me as he kept an eye out for any other pieces of his kit. “He was just trying to scare me, probably.”

“Why would he do that?” I asked. “Did you know him?”

“Nope,” he answered, still smiling. This time, though, his eyes didn't quite look at mine.

“So why'd he come mess with you?”

“I don't know. Some people are just general, all-around assholes.” That time he was looking at me, but there was something more than the conversation at hand in his gaze. He looked like a man having a good time. He added, “You know?” And then he looked from my face down my body. He wasn't rude or trying to be obvious about it; just a little more honest than I was used to.