Bad Country: A Novel (29 page)

Get in there then if you can find somebody to let you in, said the detective. TPD don’t care. This is an OD—the guy had enough pills and booze in him to kill a palomino pony—so we at TPD are moving on and nobody I care about thinks any different.

Did you find anything or take anything out of the apartment? asked Rodeo.

The death looked like a classic OD so we only took some prints from the pill bottles we found and a few liquor bottles, wrapped up the bedspread he died on and that was that. There was no sign of foul play. We snooped around a bit but didn’t toss the place since his sister was right there and there seemed no point. We took our pictures, bagged the body and moved on, said Detective Haynes. Prelim autopsy and toxicology was done at record speed at someone’s … Randy Miller’s, I guess … insistence and we at TPD are done with this on the investigation side. You got any more questions? No, you don’t. You don’t have any more questions, said Jethro Haynes. And after this courtesy, all nonpolice parties can kiss my ass on this particular case. You especially, Garnet, because there’s a change of guard around here so you don’t have any special status at TPD anymore. You get that?

I get it, Jethro.

Okay, then, Garnet. Good hunting. And of course if you find something useful you will call the Tucson Police Department and Detective Haynes will now be the man to take your call.

*   *   *

Rodeo went to Eryn Hage’s complex and was buzzed in immediately. The woman did not acknowledge Rodeo’s two black eyes but instead handed him the keys to her rental and motioned him out her back door.

Drag that bad mattress out of his place if you want to help me out, Little Rodeo. Should be a Queen back there in the Outback Studio to replace it with since every time one of my kids or grandkids moves I get stuck with half their crap.

I’ll do my best with this situation, Eryn.

If your broke back goes out I got some good pain pills.

Oxys from Mexico? asked Rodeo.

Better than booze and no calories, the woman said.

*   *   *

The stench from the vomit and the feces Tinley Burke had finally released into the world was so nauseating Rodeo hurried into the bathroom of the rental apartment and found some Vick’s VapoRub in the medicine cabinet and swabbed his nose with the camphor then turned on the bathroom blower. He went then into the kitchen and turned on the stove ventilator then proceeded through the apartment opening all windows not painted shut throughout the three rooms and then he turned on the swamp cooler to Full High.

Rodeo found Lysol under the sink and exhausted the aerosol can into Tinley Burke’s last known address. When he tossed the aerosol can into the trash can under the kitchen sink he discovered latex gloves for dishwashing. Rodeo slipped these gloves on before he dragged the soiled mattress out of Tinley Burke’s apartment and to the garbage pickup spot at the back of Erin Hage’s property where he slit the mattress in likely places with his pocketknife to check for things hidden.

Rodeo found nothing.

*   *   *

While Tinley Burke’s apartment ventilated, Rodeo went to the pool house—a post-and-beam mother-in-law studio built on a concrete slab with a set of French doors facing a porch with a tin shed-roof over it—to look for a replacement mattress.

Rodeo peered through the French doors at the standard assortment of furniture and domestic junk old people collected from and stored for younger people—futon racks and futons, folding chairs and dining room chairs and kitchen chairs and bean bag chairs and video game chairs, turntables and occasional tables and dining room tables and drafting tables, computer desks and computers and word processors and typewriters, ceiling fans, oscillating fans, box fans, standing lamps and desk lamps and lava lamps, suitcases and suit bags and duffel bags and grocery store bags and boxing bags and shipping boxes, hot plates, electric woks and crock pots, popcorn makers, microwaves and mini fridges.

Rodeo espied a tall stack of mattresses overarching all this junk and so he tried the handle of the French doors. The studio was unlocked.

*   *   *

Rodeo rummaged the large room in a general way picking through various antiques and human bones, crockery, glassware, textbooks, yearbooks, CDs, records and tapes. When he found an eight track of Brother Dave
Live in Houston
he pocketed it.

When he happened upon a collection of Indian artifacts stored in ten compartmentalized wooden boxes, he stopped still in his boots.

Each archeology site box was identified with a typed label—Navajo, Tarahumara, Hopi, Apache, Yuman, Havasupai, O’odham, Seri, Paiute, Yaqui.

Rodeo recognized his tribe, Yaqui.

With his rubber kitchen gloves still on, Rodeo examined and handled the artifacts in the storage boxes—the rattles and combs, ironwood trinkets, potsherds, trading beads, bits of leather thong, bound feathers, arrowheads—then he used his cell phone to call Eryn Hage.

He described the wooden storage boxes and the contents in the compartments of the boxes.

Don’t sound familiar to me, said the homeowner. But you know I bought and sold artifacts for years when that was still a thing to do. And I got hundreds of pieces of Indian crap out there in the studio from my days as a dealer and a lot of burial crap we found on the ranch I never even tried to catalogue or sell once the market went down and the Government Indians and University Professors took over and turned the world politically correct. Rodeo heard the rattle of ice in beverage. But Burke was an archaeologist or claimed to be, so he probably has all kinds of stuff back there too. Arrowheads, potsherds, who knows what? Probably some skulls and bones out there related to you by blood, Little Rodeo.

Did you tell Professor Burke he could be out here, Eryn? In your outbuildings and such?

He had free rein and keys to everything on this place except my house proper, the landlady said. He maintained the pump house for the pool and was cleaning out all the Tuff Bilts and the greenhouse and the bar-b-que ramada. He drained the Koi pond and resurfaced it. He reorganized my garage and even fed the chickens for me so I wouldn’t have to make the trip to the back of my place since it seems like a mile to the rear gate and to the trash bins and recycle bins, so I seldom go out there anymore, Eryn Hage said. And as soon’s those chickens die that’s it for me keeping livestock. My ranching days are over. The woman sounded drunk or stoned or both. Same with dogs. I am tired to death of dogs, so once Skinny dies that’s it with me and dogs because I have paid all the pet health insurance I am ever going to pay and once Skinny kicks the bucket and I bury her I buried the last dog I am going to bury because I’m too old to take care of any animal but myself. Eryn took a noisy drink. I saw you hauling off that old mattress, Little Rodeo. Are you going to put a new one back on the bed for me and make up that bed? There’s fresh linens in the bathroom closet.

I’ll take care of everything I can take care of, Eryn, Rodeo said. But it will take me a little while. So if I’m here for a little while don’t panic.

I hadn’t panicked since Oprah Winfrey invented mad cow disease, Eryn Hage said. So take your time, Little Rodeo. Nice to have a real cowboy man around my place again. You being here reminds me of the old days on the Ranch, she said. And come over to the house and get a pill if you need one. Oxys are better’n booze and no calories.

*   *   *

Rodeo carefully moved the stack of artifact boxes until he had a clear angle to the mattress pile. There were twins on top of a queen on top of a king. Rodeo levered the twins off the queen and when he did he saw a bound manuscript.

He picked up
Running in the Dark, a Memoir by Tinley Burke,
held the book in his hands staring at it for almost a minute. And then he took off his gloves, settled into a bean bag chair, propped his boots on a stack of Norton Anthologies and started to read.

*   *   *

With the bed on his back his eyes were downcast, so he noticed on the haul to the apartment a number of different shoe prints in the dust and some cigarette butts. He knew Eryn would not have allowed smoking in her rental, so some of these could have been discards from Burke though Eryn had described her renter as a neat freak. Several of the discards were Marlboro Reds stained by various shades of lipstick on the filters. There were also several Gitane butts. He carried the queen into the rental unit and placed it on the bed frame. He did not make up the bed.

He returned to the pool house and retrieved
Running in the Dark,
returned to Burke’s apartment.

Even though his job for Sisely Miller was technically finished, Rodeo searched the apartment now seeking evidence of old crimes.

He started at the back of the apartment, in the small bathroom and examined the contents of the medicine cabinet. There were no drugs, prescription or nonprescription, and nothing else unusual beyond three large tubes of personal lubricant. The room was clean but not clinically so. Rodeo inspected the drain cover in the bathtub and found a few long hairs, all shades of blond. There was a used tampon in the trash can, nothing hidden in the water tank of the toilet.

In the kitchen Rodeo searched the cabinets where cans and boxes were organized and aligned—SpaghettiOs and mac-and-cheese, chili, beans, canned tomatoes, boxes of pasta. Dishware occupied the rest of the cabinet space and was mostly new Fiesta dinnerware and Jadeite. The pots and pans were in the storage area in the antique gas stove and were all copper. The silverware was all silver.

In the main compartment of the refrigerator was soda pop and seltzer water, Bloody Mary mixer, condiments, salad dressing, olives, pickles, capers with the liquid poured off. There was no fresh food at all. The freezer held two bottles of Stoli vodka, one still sealed and one three-quarters empty. A liter bottle of Jägermeister was about half empty. There were frozen Tony’s single-sized pizzas, an assortment of expensive Omaha steaks, Jimmy Dean breakfast snacks, Lean Cuisines and several cans of frozen juice concentrate. One of the orange juice cans was not as frosted as the others and obviously a fake can used as a hideaway for small valuables.

Rodeo pulled out the fake OJ can and unscrewed the top. Inside was a single spent shell casing. He tipped it out onto the kitchen table and identified it as from a .38. He replaced the brass cartridge in the OJ security can using a tine of a silver fork and put it back in the freezer.

Rodeo sat for a while at the kitchen table and scanned the room. The low ceiling was braced by three rough-cut vigas and with a ceiling of ocotillo with the dried fibrous wood closely packed, bound with baling wire and shellacked. Decorative plates hung on one wall, probably Eryn’s as they all had Western themes and seemed to have been in place for a long time judging by how the wall paint had faded around their perimeters.

But one plate seemed newly hung. Rodeo put his rubber gloves back on now and removed this plate from the wall and flipped it over. Taped to the back of a Grand Canyon commemorative plate was a Polaroid Instamatic snapshot of a Dairy Queen somewhere in the desert. Though the location was not identified, Rodeo guessed it had been taken in Sells, Arizona near where one of the Los Jarros victims had been shot with a .38.

Rodeo replaced the plate and moved to the front room that had served as Tinley Burke’s living room and study. Rodeo found a Polaroid Instamatic amongst a small collection of cameras displayed on a bookshelf but it was empty. None of the other cameras had film in them and none of these cameras was digital. Rodeo checked behind and under all the furniture in that room but found no child pornography or drug stash.

He moved to the bedroom to do a quick check on the furniture there. Except for the several pairs of plastic handcuffs, personal lubricant and a hunting knife in the bedside table there was nothing of note in the sleeping quarters so Rodeo moved back into the study and settled down in front of the bookcase.

He scanned the shelves quickly and paused at
The Old Man and the Sea
. He noticed that this version of Ernest Hemingway’s very short classic was much longer than usual so he slid the book out of the shelf. It was a fake book, a realistic-looking hideaway for larger valuables, hollowed out and holding a gun, a short-barreled .38 Police Special, old and not well maintained with what looked like very old dried blood spatter rusting on the barrel and the body and staining the white pearl handle.

He sat looking at the gun for a few minutes then he called Sisely Miller.

Yes, the woman answered immediately. Have you found it?

No ma’am, Rodeo said. Professor Burke had access to all the out buildings on Eryn’s property, so it’s a bigger project than I thought it would be. Maybe might take a few days.

Are you calling for more money then?

Not yet, Mrs. Miller. Though that might become necessary at some point.

Then why are you calling me?

I just wanted to know about your brother’s gun.

What makes you think he had a gun? Sisely Miller sounded very suspicious.

Not much doubt about it, Mrs. Miller, Rodeo said. I’m looking at it right now. Smith and Wesson, pearl-handled .38 revolver. Maybe twenty-five or so years old I’d say. He paused. And it really needs a clean.

So what if my brother does, did have a gun? What’s that to you?

Well, if this gun was used in the commission of a crime, then that’d be police business, Mrs. Miller.

What crime? My brother didn’t commit any crime here.

Suicide is a crime in most states, Rodeo said.

He overdosed. On prescription medications. That’s a very different matter than suicide.

I didn’t say I was talking about Professor Burke’s suicide, Rodeo said. He waited long seconds for Sisely Miller to respond.

Have you found the memoir, she asked.

No. Not yet, said Rodeo. But you said something when we met at Riverpark Inn about your father having committed suicide and I am looking at a gun that has blood on it.

Sisely Miller did not speak for a moment, but Rodeo could hear her breathing deeply. She then sighed loud enough to be heard. It’s public record anyway, she said. You could look it up in the Santa Barbara and LA papers from twenty-five years ago. My father committed suicide when we were teenagers and my brother … She hesitated. My brother discovered the body. But the gun was never recovered by the police.