Isabella Moon (44 page)

He slowed the cruiser at the curve just before Chalybeate Springs. Was it his imagination, or did Mitch flinch as he put on the turn signal?

“I want to have a chat with Mr. Matter,” Bill said.

“You think he knows anything about Birkenshaw being involved in the kid’s death?” Mitch said. “He wouldn’t have kept that back, do you think?”

Mitch’s words took Bill by surprise. He’d been so focused on Mitch’s connection to the case that he hadn’t given much thought to the fact that Matter and Birkenshaw might be caught up in the girl’s murder together. The ugliness of the notion stunned him. The little girl’s death had obviously been painful. Had she found out something she wasn’t supposed to about their drug dealing? The mother would have had to know about it, wouldn’t she? Although, she was such a piece of work, it was possible that Matter had never brought her far into the business. They hadn’t been able to discover any sort of motive two years before, but this, maybe, was a motive.

“No, you wouldn’t think so,” Bill said. “But if Matter himself is involved, he might have had reason to.”

“No shit,” Mitch said. “I don’t like coming out here. These hippies give me the creeps.”

“I can see that,” Bill said. Noting the Closed sign on the door of the shop, he parked the cruiser near the house.

“You want me to wait here?” Mitch asked.

“No, I don’t want you to wait here,” Bill said, getting out. He leaned down to address Mitch face-to-face. “I would’ve dropped you by the station if I didn’t want you along. I’ve just got some questions, but a little show of strength wouldn’t hurt.”

“It’s awfully windy out there,” Mitch said.

“Yeah, well I figure you’ve got enough hair spray on that you’ll stand it.”

A shadow of irritation crossed Mitch’s face. He was vain about his hair.

“It’s not hair spray,” he said defensively. “It’s gel.”

“Whatever,” Bill said, shutting the cruiser door firmly behind him. In any other circumstance, he would have laughed, but he wasn’t in the mood.

As they approached the porch, Mitch stayed at the bottom of the step while Bill went on up. Before he could knock, Hanna Moon opened the door.

“Are you bringing my girl back to me, Sheriff?” she asked. Her voice was fretful. “Charlie says we’ll have to have an undertaker, but I want her here with us. There’s a nice place up on the hill way in the back. She liked it up there.”

“No, ma’am,” Bill said. He didn’t bother to mention that it wasn’t exactly legal to bury people wherever one chose to put them. Hanna Moon’s eyes were clear today. She wore a purple velvet dress whose nap was flat and shiny in places, and black Chinese peasant shoes with brightly patterned socks on her feet. She was not a young woman and her weathered face was heavy with grief. There was none of her usual loopiness about her, and Bill wondered if it wasn’t an act that she put on and off at her convenience. His confidence was shaken—people he thought he knew, he didn’t. He was tired of being surprised.

“It may be a couple of weeks more,” he said. “The coroner wants to be thorough.”

“Those newspeople went away fast this time,” she said. “Two years ago, they couldn’t get enough of my Isabella. Isn’t that funny? Hey, you want to come in?”

Bill didn’t have an answer about the newspeople, so he was glad enough to dodge the question. As far as he was concerned, the farther away the press was, the better. The next election was another eighteen months off, but already he was seriously concerned about his chances. With the Moon girl’s murder not yet solved, and the two other, more recent deaths, he wasn’t counting on anything. He had more than a decade until retirement and hated to think they would have to depend on Margaret’s money for the rest of their lives.

“We don’t need to come in, thanks,” he said. “What I’d like is to have a word with Mr. Matter if he’s in.”

“Sure,” she said. “I think he’s in his office.” She turned and shuffled off down the dim hallway. Bill could hear her calling.

“Charlie, company.”

After a minute or so he heard a door slam somewhere back in the house. Hanna Moon hurried toward the front door.

“I forgot,” she said, giggling nervously. “He’s not here.”

“Really?” Bill said. “We’ll just hang around until he shows up, if you don’t mind.” He turned and headed down the steps.

“He might be a while,” Hanna said after him.

Two more cruisers rolled up the gravel lane and parked—one was Frank’s, the other bore a state trooper’s insignia.

“There he is, Sheriff,” Mitch said, pointing in the direction of the property’s run-down barn.

Charlie Matter was headed across the stretch of worn gravel and weeds separating the house and the barn. “Hey, Sheriff!” he called, waving. “I’ll be with you guys in a minute.” He hustled through the barn’s yawning doors.

“I’m thinking that Mr. Matter doesn’t really want to chat,” Bill said. He gestured to Frank, who had gotten out of his cruiser and was standing by. Frank nodded and headed in the direction of the barn. He stayed close to trees along the road and disappeared behind the springhouse.

“Go ahead and turn back anyone who tries to come up this road,” Bill said to the trooper. “And make sure whoever else is in the house stays inside.”

“Sure thing, Sheriff,” the trooper said. He was a strak, serious-looking guy with
MORGEIWICZ
on his name tag and reminded Bill of a younger version of Frank.

“We probably ought to go and see what Mr. Matter’s up to,” Bill said. His mind was mostly on what Charlie might be doing in the barn, but he couldn’t help but wonder how Mitch was taking all this. A glance told him that Mitch appeared not so much worried as focused on the job at hand.

They had almost reached a long row of compost bins when they heard the first shot. The bins were lousy cover, but they ran over and ducked behind them.

“Where the hell did that come from?” Bill said.

“Sounded close to the barn, but I don’t know,” Mitch said. “Shit. I’m going to look.”

“Maybe he’s after you,” Bill said.

“I think Matter’s a scared son of a bitch. I bet he’s off to the next county by now.”

“Just stay down,” Bill told him. He readied his weapon, rose up on one knee, and took aim at the barn. Charlie leaned out cautiously.

“Matter!” Bill yelled. “Drop your weapon!”

But Charlie took a shot in Bill’s direction, and before Bill even realized that it had hit the dust about ten feet to his left, he had one off back at the barn. Mitch, too, began to fire. The shots were deafening.

As they ducked down again, another shot fired, but even with the ringing in his ears, Bill could tell that this one hadn’t been headed in their direction.

“Frank,” he said.

“What?” Mitch said.

“I really don’t want Matter dead,” he said.

This time, as they aimed, Charlie Matter hurled his gun out the barn door and onto the gravel.

“No gun, man!” he yelled. He stepped cautiously out of the barn with his hands in the air. “See, I got no gun!”

But before the last word was out of his mouth, there was another shot and he fell to the ground with an agonizing scream.

“Holy shit!” Mitch said.

“Hold your fire!” Bill shouted toward the barn. He fumbled for his radio, hoping Frank’s was on as well. “Frank, hold your fire!”

He turned to Mitch. “Get an ambulance here.” Over Mitch’s shoulder he saw gray wisps of smoke working their way around the edge of the barn’s opening.
Shit, what the hell else could go wrong?
“Better get the fire department out here, too.”

Hanna Moon had thrown herself over Charlie Matter. When Bill reached them, he saw that Charlie was on his side, holding his bleeding leg. Either Frank had intentionally missed with that last shot or it hadn’t been a clear one.

“You need to get back,” Bill told Hanna Moon. “You, Matter, don’t you move!”

He holstered his weapon and pulled the handcuffs off his belt.

“Ma’am, now!” he repeated.

Hanna Moon made low keening noises over Charlie as she slowly moved away. Bill rolled him over and snapped the handcuffs on his wrists.

“He tried to fucking
kill
me, man,” Charlie said. “That son of a bitch is fucking crazy! I’m going to bleed to death, man. You’re going to let me bleed to death, aren’t you?”

“Your ride’s on its way,” Bill said. “And you’re lucky you’re such a piss-poor shot, because if you’d hit one of us, you’d be in a bigger world of hurt.”

Charlie put his head down, and Bill could see that he was trying to hold back tears. In the distance there were sirens.

Mitch and the trooper reached them at the same time. Frank was trying to lead Hanna back to the house.

“Why’d you run, Matter?” Mitch said.

“I don’t have to answer any of your questions until I get a lawyer,” he answered. Then he gave a howl. The pain was settling in.

Bill watched Mitch and Charlie, waiting to see what would pass between them, but nothing happened.

“You want me to read him his rights, or do you want the deputy here to?” the trooper asked.

“Go ahead. And keep an eye on him, if you would,” Bill said. He knew that if anything transpired between Charlie and Mitch, he’d hear about it from the trooper. He had that look of enthusiastic sincerity about him.

As he approached Hanna, she broke away from Frank to beg him to let her go to Charlie. “I can’t lose both of them,” she said. “Please, please.”

Bill nodded and told her to stay at least five feet back, and she ran off. He turned to Frank. “You want to tell me what happened?”

Frank shrugged. “I thought the bastard was going to run. I didn’t see him pitch the weapon. End of story.”

“You didn’t hear him?”

“You think I had ear protection out there?” Frank said. “I couldn’t hear squat.”

“That was pretty damned careless of you, Frank.”

“You forgetting what you wanted me out here for?” Frank asked. “What’s up with Mitch and our drug dealer friend having a quiet moment? Shouldn’t we take Mitch in now?”

“Have you noticed the barn? Besides the smoke, it smells like someone dumped a few hundred gallons of cat piss in it,” Bill said. “If there’s not a meth lab in there or under it, then my mother was a redheaded whore.”

Frank looked toward the ruined building. “There won’t be much left. I hope there’s enough equipment left to prosecute.”

“As soon as we get this mess cleaned up, consider yourself on administrative leave,” Bill said. “Here they come.” The fire trucks had cut their sirens as they left the gravel road and were approaching the barn. The ambulance came behind them, and Bill waved the driver in the direction of Charlie Matter.

The EMTs worked quickly, and within five minutes had Charlie on a stretcher headed for the ambulance. Hanna Moon hovered over the stretcher telling him that she would bring lots of crystals to the hospital so he would heal quickly, but he turned his face away from her. The barn continued to burn behind them. The firefighters had gotten started, but from the building’s age and state of disrepair, it looked to Bill like it was going fast.

“Hey, Mitch,” Bill said. “I’m going to have Frank accompany Mr. Matter here and the trooper to the hospital. Would you—”

“Frank! Where is he?” Charlie screamed, trying to twist around to see Frank. But his restraints kept him firmly in place. “Where is he? Don’t you let that bastard near me! He tried to kill me just like he did Delmar! Don’t you let that bastard near me!”

“Shut up,” Frank said. “You’re delirious, Matter.”

“Ask him,” Charlie said, looking at Bill. “You ask him why nobody messed with us. You ask my buddy Frank, here. My buddy Frank who tried to shoot me in the fucking back!”

Bill looked at Frank. Good, solid Frank. Frank had been the one to take Delmar Johnston to the jail in the first place. Did it make any sense? Frank?

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Frank said. “You know these hippies are half stoned most of the time.”

Hanna Moon spoke. “I saw him go out to the barn,” she said, pointing to Frank.

A brief look of worry flickered across his face.

“Just the once.” Then she was quiet again, looking nervously away from him.

“Frank,” Mitch said. “Aw, man.”

“Bill,” Frank said. “You’re not going to believe this crap, are you?”

“You think I don’t have cameras, old man? Security?” Charlie said.

“Bill?” Frank said again.

It made Bill sick to do what he had to do, but he was looking at a potentially dirty cop, one who had already tried to kill at least two people. And Frank was still armed.

“I’m going to take your gun, Frank,” he said.

“Oh, hell, Bill,” Frank said. “This is going to kill Rose.” He raised his arms. “Go on,” he said. “Do what you have to do. But I’m telling you this is a mistake.”

“I pray to God it is,” Bill said. “But when Officer Morgeiwicz gets you back to the office, you’d better call yourself a lawyer.”

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