Blanco County 03 - Flat Crazy (23 page)

“Sir, Duke Waldrip’s fingerprints were all over the inside of that deer mount.”

None of the fingerprints on the antlers themselves had matched Duke Waldrip’s. The mount had obviously passed through too many hands by that point. But then they had removed the deer hide and exposed the prefab taxidermy form made of synthetic materials. There they’d found what they were looking for.

The judge nodded. “That may be, but that doesn’t mean he’s a murderer, does it?”

Nobody spoke. The judge wasn’t expecting an answer.

“You haven’t located the trucker yet?” Hilton asked.

“We’re working on it,” Tatum replied.

Marty Hoffenhauser had been able to give a fairly good description, including a cap with an arrowhead design the trucker had been wearing. If they could just find the trucker, perhaps he could shed some light on who was in possession of the mount before he was.

“Folks, what you’ve got so far is circumstantial evidence—and I’m not saying it isn’t promising stuff. But from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t add up to probable cause yet. I’m not even taking the deer mount into account at this point, because Searcy might very well have hunted with Waldrip, and Waldrip could’ve done the taxidermy for him. Waldrip might’ve even cheated the guy, but I’m afraid that just ain’t enough. All it says is that Waldrip lied to y’all—something ex-cons are inclined to do on occasion.”

“Sir, what about Gus Waldrip?” Tatum asked.

“What about him?”

“Well, when John talked to him, Gus indicated that he
had met
Oliver Searcy, which goes against what his brother told us.”

The judge’s gaze fell on Marlin. “That right?”

“Well, yes, sir … at first.”

“At first?”

Marlin snuck a peek at Tatum, and the deputy’s eyes were pleading:
Go on, stretch it a little.

But Marlin couldn’t do it. “He changed his mind later,” he told the judge. “He’s a pretty confused guy.”

Hilton passed the papers back to Tatum, unsigned. “Sorry, folks. If you found anything, it’d get tossed later. You’ll thank me for this. Believe me.”

28

AT HOME, MARLIN took a quick shower and changed into jeans and a flannel shirt. He was sorting through leftovers in the fridge when the phone rang.

“How about dinner again?” Rudi asked. “My treat this time. I’m celebrating.”

“Let me guess. You quit.”

“Actually, no. I was fired, if you want to get technical.”

She promised to tell him the full story when she picked him up. “I’ve got the keys to the rental car,” she said with a wicked laugh, “and I’m not giving it back. Before I’m done, I just might make a cross-country tour.”

She said she’d be there in thirty minutes, and they hung up. Marlin turned to feed Geist, who was hungrily watching his every move, when the phone rang again. It was Tatum.

“I talked to the trucking company, this outfit called Arrowhead Freight, out of Cary, North Carolina. Anyway, you hear about that ten-fifty on Two Ninety last night?”

Marlin groaned. This morning, he’d gotten the details about a wreck that had happened during the storm. A trucker had failed to make a curve, plowed through a guardrail, and plunged into a steep culvert. “Our guy?”

“Would you expect anything else? I swear, just when we think we’re getting a break…”

“Jesus, you’re saying he died?” The last Marlin had heard, the trucker had been taken to a hospital in San Antonio.

“No, but he’s still unconscious, in critical condition.” Tatum had left word with the nursing staff to call if there was any improvement. “Hey, listen,” he said. “I’ve got this devious little plan running around in my mind. Tell me what you think. You haven’t lifted prints from those metal bowls in Dawson’s stable, right?”

“No, I figured it was kind of low on the list of priorities.”

“Yeah, but here’s what I’m thinking. Let me dust ’em, and if we find Duke’s prints, we’ll bust him for the illegal animals. Except I’ll run him in instead of you. And I won’t tell him what I’m arresting him for.”

Marlin chuckled. “Damn, that
is
devious.”

By the letter of the law, a suspect didn’t have to be formally charged until arraignment. And normally, Marlin would be the one making an arrest for a game violation. If Tatum did it, Duke would definitely be confused.

“If he happens to think he’s getting busted for the Searcy homicide … well, that’s certainly not my fault,” Tatum said. “That just might rattle his cage a little, get him talking again.”

They both knew the fingerprints on the bowls probably weren’t enough to convict him for hunting illegal animals, but in this instance, that wasn’t the point. “You cool with that?” Tatum asked. “Might spoil your case.”

“No problem.” The homicide was much more important.

“I’ll check for prints,” Tatum said. “If we pick him up, I’ll let you know.”

* * *

“How about that one?”

“Ease off the gas, Red, and let me see what the hell it is.”

“I think it’s a dead coon.”

“Naw, it’s just a—damn, stop for a second, will ya? Huh. It’s a shirt.”

“A shirt?”

“Yeah, someone’s work shirt or something.”

“You sure?”

“I know a shirt when I see one. Keep on moving.”

“Any other day, you’re driving along, there’s dead shit all over the road. Now—when we need a coupla good animals—nothing.”

“Man, this is just stupid. That squished armadilla should be plenty.”

“Then why didn’t anything show up last night?”

“Dunno. The rain?”

“Damn, what is it with you and the rain? Animals don’t care about the rain. No, I’m thinking the chupacabra don’t like armadilla. Can’t be any easier than eating a damn lobster. Big ol’ shell to crack and everything.”

“Shit, when’ve you eaten a lobster? You can’t even spell lobster.”

“I’ve eaten my share of lobster.”

“I’m gettin’ hungry.”

“See, what we’ll do is load that trap up with a whole damn smorgasbord of roadkill. Coons, possums, cats, whatever.”

“Smorgasbord of roadkill. Sounds like a Black Sabbath album. I like that.”

“So will the chupacabra.”

They picked Johnson City’s one and only pizza joint, where they were the sole customers. Riding over in the light rain, Marlin had noticed that the town was back to its quiet Sunday evening self. Very few cars on the road. Most of the restaurants were already closing for the night. Now, over slices topped with pepperoni and jalapeño, Rudi told Marlin what had happened.

“I’ve been pretty much ignoring Chad since last night. Barry already flew back. I took him to the airport in San Antonio this morning. He’s as disgusted as I am, and he said he was going to start looking for another job. Anyway, my phone rang a few times this afternoon, but I didn’t answer it. Finally, at about two o’clock, Chad knocks on my door, saying he won’t leave until we talk. So I let him in. He’s looking all nervous, which is completely out of character for Chad. He’s usually Mr. In Control. I ask him what he wants and he says he wants to talk to me about, quote, ‘responsible journalism.’ Get this: He starts going off about how we have a sacred pact with our viewers and hypocritical bullshit like that. I ask him what the hell he’s talking about, and he says, ‘Based on last night’s segment, I’m afraid I have no alternative but to let you go.’ His exact words.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was. That self-righteous prick.”

“What’d you do?”

Rudi smiled. “I threw the phone at him. The whole damn thing.”

“You get him?”

“Hell yeah, I got him. But there’s more. It bounced right off his chest, and it made this weird noise, like it hit metal or something. So he fishes into his front pocket and comes out with one of those miniature tape recorders.
He was taping the conversation.
”

Marlin could see where this was headed. “You better watch yourself. He’s trying to pin it on you.”

She nodded. “Then he says, ‘You’re paying for this thing, you know.’ Can you believe that asshole?”

“You got a lawyer?”

“You better believe I do. Called her right after. And let me tell you, she’s one tough bitch.”

Marlin gave her a deadpan look. “I have no doubt. Takes one to know one.”

Rudi tried to glare at him, but she couldn’t hold it. They laughed in unison.

“God, I feel so good, though!” she said. “Am I supposed to feel this good, without a job and everything? I mean, here I am, unemployed, two thousand miles from home, and I feel great!”

“Plus,” Marlin said, nodding toward the front window, “you’ve got a luxury sedan with unlimited mileage.”

“Damn straight I do. Grand Canyon, here I come. Then maybe Vegas, or up to see the redwoods in Oregon. Wanna tag along?”

Marlin knew she was kidding, but it was a tempting thought. Just to be able to pick up and take off, without a care in the world.

They finished the pizza and—just as she’d promised—she insisted on paying. Outside, the air was crisp, though not as cold as the night before.

She stopped for gas, and Marlin got out to pump it.

“Quite the gentleman,” she said, coming around to stand beside him. “I’m going to run inside and get a Coke. Want anything?”

Marlin noticed the steam from her breath as she spoke, and how she had her hands tucked deep into her jacket pockets for warmth. Their eyes met, and for some reason Marlin couldn’t determine, it was an oddly intimate moment. Like they were old lovers, stopping for gas, following the same routine for the thousandth time. “How about a six-pack of beer?” he said.

She took one step closer. “Are we going back to your place?” she asked softly.

“Yeah, I think so. I’d say it’s time for a little celebration.”

Her jacket came off first, followed by his. Their lips were pressed together, tongues dancing.

Rudi shrugged her blouse off her shoulders, and Marlin placed his hands on her rib cage. “Too cold?”

She shook her head and untucked his flannel shirt, running her hands up his torso, her fingers combing through his chest hair.

He caressed her breasts, tracing the lines of fine lace on her bra, slowly sliding his hands around to the back.

“It hooks in front,” she whispered, her breath making Marlin’s ear furiously hot. “Hurry.”

29

“DAMN, I FIGURED you’d have called me by now,” Jacob Daughdril, the chopper pilot, said. “Have you been outside? Clear skies, light wind. It’s perfect.”

It was 7:55
A.M.,
and Marlin was still in bed, wishing the weather hadn’t changed quite so quickly. He cradled the phone to his ear and slid his free hand over the curve of Rudi’s hip. “I’m ready when you are,” he said, hoping Daughdril would be tied up until the afternoon.

“I’ll be at your place at nine.”

Marlin hung up and told Rudi his plans for the morning. “He’s picking me up in an hour.”

She stretched and yawned as she glanced at the clock on his nightstand. “I’d say that’s plenty of time.”

* * *

Daughdril’s chopper was a Robinson R22 two-seater, and he touched it down expertly in a clearing on Marlin’s seven acres. As they gently lifted back into the air, Marlin could see Rudi’s rental car parked in front of his house. She’d promised to be there when he got back. “Where am I gonna go?” she asked. “I’m a woman of leisure now, remember?”

“We doing a deer count this morning?” Daughdril asked as he guided the chopper north. Marlin had told him the destination of their mission but not the objective. “Not exactly,” he said. He told the pilot they would be attempting to spot a deer decoy on a thousand acres of wooded ranchland. Not an easy task.

Daughdril gave a low whistle, but he didn’t ask any questions.

Marlin had ridden in helicopters plenty of times, but he could never get over the view. From one thousand feet, he could see thirty or forty miles in every direction. He’d been up at six thousand feet one moonless night and had spotted the glow of lights in Houston, two hundred miles away. Truly an awesome experience.

The flight to Kyle Dawson’s ranch took about seven minutes, and Daughdril asked Marlin what kind of pattern he wanted to fly. “Is north-south okay,” the pilot asked, “so we won’t have to face the sun?”

“Fine by me,” Marlin said. “I realize we can’t check every nook and cranny on the place, so let’s just see what we can see. Let’s start on the western fence line.”

“Ten-four.”

On the first pass north, they spotted at least a dozen deer, plus a flock of wild turkeys congregated at a feeder. Most of the animals became skittish when the chopper flew over, ducking for cover or, in some cases, simply sprinting away from the thrumming of the rotors. A few deer stood in place, but Marlin could always see them crane their necks to stare at the strange object in the sky.

Coming back south, Daughdril pointed out a pack of coyotes sneaking along the bottom of a ravine. Gazing through his binoculars, Marlin figured it to be a female with five or six juveniles born the previous spring.

They continued cutting swaths up and down the ranch, with each new pass pushing farther to the east. Fortunately, Kyle Dawson’s father had removed most of the scrub cedars and other brush from the ranch years ago; otherwise, surveying the property by air would be, for the most part, a futile effort.

As the survey continued, Marlin asked Daughdril on several occasions to decelerate for a look at a particular deer. Each deer, though, bounded away, disappearing into a distant oak motte or field of tall native grasses.

“What the hell you think he’s doing?” Billy Don asked, staring out the window on the passenger’s side. He and Red were parked on the shoulder of Flat Creek Road, along the southern border of the Macho Bueno Ranch.

Red recognized the helicopter as one belonging to a man named Jacob Daughdril, who lived just south of Round Mountain. Every ten minutes or so, the chopper would approach from the north, reach the road, and turn around. It was obvious that Daughdril was scoping the ranch from one end to the other.

“What you wanna bet he’s trying to rustle up the chupacabra?” Red said, not feeling too happy about the whole situation.

It was damn unfair, a man taking to the air like that. What chance did he and Billy Don have against a chopper? Daughdril could get a good look at the entire ranch that way, whereas Billy Don and Red were limited—legally anyway—to what they could see from the county road. Worse, they couldn’t even check the trap until Daughdril left, because he was the kind of guy who’d raise a ruckus about a trespasser.

When their path took them over Dawson’s house and the horse stable, Marlin asked Daughdril to fly in an expanding circle above the surrounding acreage. Maybe the decoy was stashed nearby, although Marlin was beginning to wonder if there
was
a decoy at all. Truth be told, he was beginning to lose his ambition for the project, knowing that even if he found the decoy, its evidentiary value would most likely be nil.

They had been in the air for more than an hour now, and their fuel supply was mandating no more than fifteen more minutes over the ranch.

“All right,” Marlin shouted over the noise of the engine, “let’s take a few more passes over the eastern pastures and call it a day.”

Daughdril gave him a thumbs-up.

Duke heard the
whoop-whoop-whoop
of the chopper and stepped onto the back porch of the Waldrip homestead.

Jesus, what the hell are they up to now?

Duke had been following the news, and he didn’t think the copter was looking for the chupacabra—not after John Marlin’s warning on Saturday night. Most of those idiots had already left town. What a bunch of wackos, thinking an animal like that actually existed. All that uproar over a hyena. Stupid spick who reported it had done Duke a favor, keeping the cops busy with a bunch of bullshit.

So what, then, was that damn chopper doing flying over Kyle’s ranch? According to the reports, the cops were calling Kyle a “person of interest” in the Searcy case—which meant to anyone with half a brain that he was a suspect.

He heard a car door out front. Gus coming back. Duke had finally made the decision: He was sending Gus away for a while. Not up to Alaska or anything that drastic, but maybe over to see a cousin in New Orleans. All in all, it was the smartest thing to do. Keep him tucked away somewhere until the heat was off.

Duke had sent Gus to the bank to get some cash, then began to pack a suitcase for him. Get him on a bus this very afternoon.

Then Duke heard another car door. And another.

What the hell?

He entered the house just as someone pounded firmly on the front door. “Sheriff’s department!”

Duke peeked through the front curtains and saw three patrol cars in the driveway. He quickly turned and went out the back door.

“Hello, Duke.”

Standing to the side of the porch was Bill Tatum, his hand resting on his revolver.

Just as they were making a final turn over the northeast pasture, Marlin saw it.

“Hey, Jacob, swing back to the left, will ya?”

Down below, something was catching the sunlight, twinkling like a jewel.

“See that thing shining?”

Daughdril veered toward the object, then began to hover overhead.

Marlin sighted through his binoculars.

Was that what he thought it was? He dialed up to maximum zoom. The object came into focus—and sure enough, it was a toaster. An everyday household toaster, lying in a remote field, half a mile from the nearest house. Weird.

“John, we gotta head out,” Daughdril said, tapping the fuel gauge.

Marlin nodded, and Daughdril, eyeing his gauges, banked the craft back to the south.

As the chopper began to ascend, though, something else caught Marlin’s eye. A shape, instantly recognizable by its contours, spilled across a rough caliche flat.

“Jake, stop! We’re gonna have to land.”

“But—”

“I’ll have the deputies bring more fuel, but you gotta set her down!”

What Marlin had seen was a human body.

Bill Tatum calmly took a seat across from Duke Waldrip in the interview room. “Just give us a few minutes here, Duke. We want to set up a video camera.” He gazed at Waldrip, and Waldrip stared back, unblinking.

To Tatum’s surprise, Waldrip hadn’t asked for a lawyer so far or said anything about not answering questions. Tatum had seen it before, though. Sometimes it was ego, or maybe it was stupidity, but guys like Waldrip often decided they could get through the proceedings just fine on their own. Waldrip, even with his criminal background, might not realize the smartest thing he could do was keep his mouth shut. The toughest offender was the type who forced the police to
prove
their case. More often, though, the break came when a suspect incriminated himself, or said something that inadvertently led to hard evidence against him.

Rachel Cowan entered with the camera, stood it on its tripod, and wordlessly ran a microphone to the table separating the two men. She pressed the RECORD button and said, “Anything else?”

“How about a decaf latte?” Waldrip asked.

Cowan didn’t even look his way.

Tatum smiled. “No, that’ll be it, Officer Cowan. Thanks.”

She closed the door behind her, and Tatum let the silence settle in the room for a moment. Then he recited Waldrip’s rights for the second time. “You understand your rights?”

“This is bullshit.”

“Mr. Waldrip, do you understand your rights?”

“Yeah. Whatever.”

“Thank you.”

Tatum began to thumb through a pile of paperwork on the table in front of him, feigning interest. The truth was, the papers had nothing to do with Duke Waldrip. But Tatum wanted the man to think a great deal of evidence and documentation had been amassed against him. Likewise, the deputies had covered one wall of the room with materials meant to rattle the suspect: an enlarged photo from Waldrip’s driver’s license; a mug shot from his arrest for armed robbery; an aerial photograph of Maggie Mason’s ranch, where Oliver Searcy had been found, and another of Kyle Dawson’s Macho Bueno Ranch. Copies of interviews with Searcy’s friends and family were thumbtacked to the wall, and meaningless notes had been scrawled all over them. The intent was intimidation—to make Waldrip think the full force of the Blanco County Sheriff’s Department had been dedicated to bringing him to justice. It wasn’t far from the truth. So far, Tatum had noticed Waldrip’s eyes wandering to that wall on several occasions.

After a full ten minutes, Tatum finally placed the paperwork back on the table. “This is big stuff, Duke. Big stuff.”

Duke shrugged. “I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about. You still ain’t told me what you arrested me for.”

“You’ll be arraigned tomorrow,” Tatum said. “Meanwhile, I want to give you a chance to tell your side of it. Hell, Kyle’s run off and left you holding the bag. You’re the one we got, so you’re the one that gets charged. But see, that’s not so bad. You can tell us what happened, and Kyle’s not around to say you’re lying.”

Tatum was walking a thin line here. Later, if the videotape was used in court, the questions had to be seen as applying to the illegal animal charge. If Waldrip misinterpreted them, though, and began giving information on the Searcy homicide, that was all fair game.

“The big question is,” Tatum said, “was Kyle even involved? Right now, to be honest, Duke, everything’s pointing at you. Maybe there are mitigating circumstances, though, or maybe the evidence isn’t showing things the way they really were. All of us want to be fair here, and nobody wants to charge you with something you didn’t do. That’s why it’s so important to tell us what happened.”

Tatum did his best to present a cool demeanor, but inside, his heart was firing like a piston. The bluff came down to this moment. If Waldrip was going to give them any kind of toehold on this case, it would be now.

Waldrip looked up at the wall, his eyes roaming over every scrap of paper, and then back at Tatum. “You ain’t got shit, do ya?”

Never in a million years,
Tatum thought,
would an innocent person ask that question.
It renewed Tatum’s feeling that the investigation was on the right track. In his experience, innocent men didn’t taunt. But he kept a poker face and didn’t answer. Clearly, this approach wasn’t working as well as he had hoped. Waldrip didn’t seemed cowed in the least.

The door opened again, and this time it was Ernie Turpin. Something showed on his face—urgency maybe—as he stepped into the room and handed Tatum a note.

Tatum unfolded it and read Turpin’s scrawl:
“Marlin just found Kyle Dawson’s body.”