Murder at the Courthouse (9 page)

At last the mother sighed slightly and gave in. “If it has to be done, it'll be done. Now leave us alone.” She disconnected before Michael could say anything else.

Michael considered calling back to ask the mother to accompany her daughter the next day. The mother sounded as if she might have some answers, and Michael needed answers. Right now he'd even be glad to have a few questions. His hand hovered over the phone, but he didn't want to further antagonize the woman. If she didn't show up with the daughter, he'd get her number and contact her then.

After his crossing guard duty, Lester came in to report he'd tracked down Buck. Lester was still glowing from his big discovery that morning, holding his thin shoulders back, strutting through the office over to the coffeepot. He poured the last of the coffee into his cup, but didn't bother making a fresh pot. He left it for Betty Jean the way Sheriff Potter always did.

Betty Jean opened her mouth to blast him, but Michael caught her eye and winked. With a scowl that said plain as words Michael was going to owe her, she pushed up from her desk to fill the pot with water.

“Had Buck found out anything?” Michael asked.

“I don't know.” Lester looked up from his coffee, his cocky grin changing into a worried frown. “Buck got sort of mad.”

“Yeah? Because you found the car before he did?”

Lester shook his head. “Not that. He was out at the truck stop and I kind of bumped into his table and spilled his coffee in his lap. It must've been really hot, the way he yelled and jumped up and held his pants leg out away from him.”

Michael bit his lip to keep from smiling. “So you just told him the news and got out of there while the getting was good.”

“I wouldn't run away like that.”

Michael noted Lester's sincere look and was almost afraid to ask. “What'd you do?”

“There was a glass of ice water right there on the table, and seeing as how it was cold and the coffee was hot, I thought it would cool him off to pour it on his pants.”

“It's a wonder he didn't shoot you.” This time he couldn't keep from smiling.

Lester looked scared. “He wouldn't do that, would he?”

Michael rubbed his hand across his face to wipe away his smile. “No, Lester, of course not. When he calms down, he'll realize you were just trying to help.”

“Yeah.” Lester cheered up a little. “So when he quit yelling, I told him what you said quick like, since I had to get back to the school. I have to be there before the bell rings, because some of those kids get out to the street really fast, and I wouldn't want them to cross that road without me there.” Lester smiled all the way across his face. “Did you know Mr. Leland is going to write a piece about me and how much I help the kids?”

“So I heard.”

“Mr. Leland told me I must have a nose for leads and that's how come I spotted that guy's car this morning.”

“He could be right,” Michael agreed.

Betty Jean snorted a little as she measured out the coffee behind them, but Lester didn't notice as he sat up a little straighter in his chair.

“I'll let you know, Michael, if I smell out any more leads.”

Betty Jean had a coughing fit and had to go out into the hall.

“You okay, Betty Jean?” Lester started to get up to follow her, but Michael waved him back into his chair.

“She'll be okay. She just needs a drink of water.” Michael waited till Lester sat back down. “I need all the help I can
get with this, Lester, so if you see anything else out of the ordinary, anything at all, you tell me right away.”

Lester's eyes widened and he looked around as if expecting a new lead to pop up in front of him right there in the office. “I'll be on the lookout, Michael. You can count on that.”

“I know I can. Oh, and by the way, it might be best if you didn't tell Hank Leland anything about what we find out. We want to keep what we know under wraps for a while until we have a suspect in hand.”

“Right. He won't get anything out of me.”

Michael looked at Lester and knew he didn't even realize Hank had gotten him to spill his guts at lunchtime. Michael was almost relieved when the phone rang so that he could give up on the impossible.

It was Chief Sibley. There had been an accident at the intersection of North Main and Bell Street and could Michael go write it up, since he was headed over to Eagleton to the hospital to be with Caroline. It seemed Paul didn't have a bug or food poisoning after all. His appendix had ruptured, and they were rushing him into surgery. Paul was out of his head and Caroline about as bad.

Michael left Betty Jean with instructions to tell Buck where he was if he called in.

Michael didn't like working accidents. The fender benders were boringly routine, and the bad wrecks always pushed him too close to the strange pool of blackness that held the memories of that other accident years ago. Of course, he had to work wrecks all the time from fatalities on down to the bumper kissers.

When the smashup was bad, it took Michael days to get over seeing the crushed cars and broken bodies. He had to
turn off all feeling and become almost a robot to perform his duties.

This wreck wasn't bad. Irma Bottoms in the compact car had a bumped head, and Billy West in the pickup truck was ranting about how Irma must be senile to pull out in front of him like that. Michael wrote down their statements. Sam's wrecker was just towing away the car when Buck showed up.

“You through here, Mike?” Buck leaned out his window. When Michael nodded, he motioned toward the other door with his head. “Then get in. Could be, it wouldn't hurt if we compared notes. But first turn those roof flashers off. Folks will think you're giving me a ticket.”

As soon as Michael got in Buck's car, the man started in on him. “I guess you think it was pretty funny sending Lester out to tell me he found the stiff's car when I'd been out there busting my butt all morning trying to get a line on the guy.”

Michael kept all hint of a smile off his face. “I figured you'd already called in and Chief Sibley had filled you in on the details. I just sent Lester out to be sure.”

“Sure you did. I can see that smirk, Keane.”

“Okay, okay, you got me, Buck, but I didn't want to put it out on the radio. And since you were being Lone Ranger on this one, I didn't know how else to get you the info.” Michael pointed to the phone in Buck's console. “I called your cell and you didn't answer.”

“Ease off, kid. Those things drive me nuts. Ringing at the worst times.” Buck's voice was down in the growling range. “Besides, Osgood has that number and I needed an excuse not to answer if he called. You know I can't work with Osgood. I'd end up having to kill him.”

“Paul's sort of off the case for a few days.”

Buck looked directly at Michael for the first time. “You're kidding? What happened? Chief Sibley get some backbone or what?”

“Not exactly. Paul's getting his appendix out as we speak.”

Buck swore and rubbed his cheek to hide his smile, then gave it up and laughed out loud. “I don't call in for a couple of hours and look what happens. Lester finds the stiff's car. You ID him from his driver's license, forever more, and before Little Osgood gets to give order one, he busts his gut. Things are going crazy in this burg. What next?”

“I don't know, Buck.” Michael's smile faded away. “But I figure we'd better be ready. So if you've got to be the Lone Ranger, then you'd better let me be Tonto.”

Buck had been busy. While he hadn't found a girlfriend or wife sitting in one of the little trailers or a motel room with a gun in her hand ready to confess, he had found a couple of locals who recognized the man. T. R. Boggess, who ran the gas station out close to the interstate, said the guy filled up there sometimes and he'd fixed his brakes for him last year.

The other man, Billy Samuels, owned the one restaurant out by the interstate that hadn't been taken over by a chain. The Country Diner drew in a good mix of local folks, along with tourists and passers through. Billy said their victim had been stopping at his place now and again for years. That he was a backslapping, friendly sort of guy who liked to swap jokes with Billy or commiserate about the weather or traffic. Everyday sort of stuff. Billy hadn't known the guy's last name, but his first name was Jay. The guy always paid cash but got a receipt.

The two waitresses told Buck this Jay whoever liked to flirt with them, but since it was harmless enough and he was generous with his tips, they didn't mind. The younger one, Kathy, said he sometimes got her to pick a number when he was
buying a lottery ticket. He promised to leave her a thousand-dollar tip when he struck it rich. He was always studying tip sheets on the horse races and talking on his cell phone.

Hilda, the other waitress, said he was in there maybe once or twice a month and that they sometimes talked about their kids. Nothing really important. Just what this one or that one was doing. He showed her pictures of his first grandkid on his cell phone the last time he'd been through. That had been about two weeks ago. They were all sure he wasn't there on Tuesday.

They didn't think he knew anybody in Hidden Springs, but he did sometimes glance through the
Gazette
while he ate. He was always asking what was going on in the town. Said Hidden Springs was the kind of place he'd like to retire to someday if he ever made enough money to get off the road.

Hilda said when she first started working there and he came in, he'd ask after one of the waitresses who had quit, but it had been so long ago Hilda couldn't remember who that was. She was shocked to find out Jay had been shot and couldn't imagine who might have done it.

Neither could Kathy, who seemed more disappointed than sad to find out Jay was dead. She had wanted to believe he might hit on the lottery, and she just knew if that happened, he would have given her that thousand-dollar tip.

Hilda laughed at Kathy and said guys were always coming in there expecting to strike it rich somehow. It never happened. And poor Jay, anybody could tell he was down on his luck. The grandbaby being born was the only good thing that had happened to him for a long time.

When Buck asked her how she knew that, Hilda told him there were just signs a person who looked could read. His
shirt collars were frayed, and he had this funny look in his eyes. Buck pushed her about what kind of look. Hilda had shrugged and said she didn't know exactly how to describe it. Sort of like he wanted to hope for something, but was afraid to. It wasn't something a person could exactly put into words. It was a look. The kind of look people had when they knew they were in trouble but thought they'd figured a way to get out of it without facing the music.

That's the kind of guy Jay was, Hilda said. The kind of guy who bought an extra lottery ticket when he was next to broke. She'd loaned him a twenty spot a couple of times herself. She figured he put it on a horse at some track, but she felt sorry for the guy.

What Buck found out matched what Michael already knew, but though Jay Rayburn was beginning to flesh out as a real person, they still hadn't come up with any reason for him to end up dead on the courthouse steps. Buck had scrapped the jealous wife/girlfriend idea and now was ready to explore the possibility that Rayburn was in too deep with the wrong people.

That could be how it happened, Michael thought after Buck drove off toward Eagleton to check with some sources in the city. But it didn't feel right to Michael. Too many things didn't add up. If people like that were making an example of Rayburn the way Buck suggested, Hidden Springs was not exactly a prime spot to ditch the body. It didn't make sense, but then what had since Miss Willadean rushed back to the sheriff's office yesterday morning to report a drunk out on the courthouse steps.

Michael turned his car around and headed out to Wilbur Binion's old barn on Crooked Ridge Road. He couldn't spend
all his time chasing for some elusive lead on Jay Rayburn's killer. Other things needed to be investigated, and Wilbur Binion's barn was one of them.

After Wilbur developed heart trouble a few years ago, he moved to town, but he kept some cows down on his farm. On Monday, he spotted tire tracks going back to an old barn on his place. He hadn't used the barn for years. Not since he quit milking cows. Wilbur's wife had talked him into calling the sheriff's office instead of checking out the barn himself. She worried that somebody might be growing marijuana on the back of their place, and everybody knew marijuana growers carried guns nowadays.

Michael radioed Betty Jean where he was going and then headed out of town. He liked driving the country roads that twisted and turned back through farmland. Here and there tractors crawled across the fields as farmers worked up their ground for planting.

When at last he got to Wilbur's farm, the place looked deserted. Michael opened the gate and drove back through the field. The barn's weather-beaten planks flapped in the wind to reveal the old log structure underneath. The tin roof was rusted all the way through in places, and if not for the logs, the whole thing might have collapsed years ago. Inside the barn, ancient hay dust filtered down from the loft to catch in heavy gray cobwebs dripping from every corner. Stanchions still waited to trap cows' heads, but not even a whiff of cow manure lingered in the air.

A couple of shoe prints were clear in a patch of soft black dirt in the breezeway. Squatting down, Michael ran his fingers over the design. Sneakers. Ten and a half or eleven. He doubted Wilbur even owned a pair of sneakers.

After running his hands around a door opening to a storage room to be sure it wasn't booby-trapped, Michael gingerly pulled it open. Blinking to let his eyes adjust to the dimness of the log room, he pulled out his flashlight and flicked it on. Nothing looked out of the ordinary in the room. No sign of marijuana or the equipment used to grow it. Just a large wooden feed bin, a rusty old metal milk cooler, and narrow wooden steps to the loft. Swiping away the cobwebs, Michael climbed the stairs. A mouse scurried out of sight in the empty loft.

Back downstairs the feed bin was empty too, but the milk cooler was not. Michael's flashlight beam bounced off Bonnie Wireman's laptop. There were also a couple of iPads and a shotgun that looked like the one Perry Masterson had reported missing some weeks back.

Michael slowly closed the cooler lid and went back out to stare down at the sneaker prints. He wished they didn't make him think of Anthony Blake.

By the time he got back to town, the courthouse offices were closing and Sheriff Potter was on the way out. He grumbled but helped Michael carry the recovered property inside to store on the cluttered shelves in the evidence room.

After they had it all stowed away, the sheriff looked around and said the same thing he always said whenever he went in the small room. “About time we sorted through this stuff and had an auction or something to get rid of the things nobody ever claimed.”

“Betty Jean's cataloging it on the computer,” Michael said.

“What good's that going to do?” The sheriff pointed toward a handgun on one of the shelves. “How many of these are back here?”

“I'm not sure. I'd have to check the inventory list.”

The sheriff stretched up for a better look. “I see four.” He shifted a wire basket to the side to look behind it. “That's probably all. I can't imagine why we have that many. Must have been here when I took office.”

“That's been awhile.” Michael glanced around at the crowded shelves. Betty Jean had been trying to sort through it with Michael's help, but it was slow going because she couldn't work in the little room over an hour at a time without getting claustrophobic.

The place sort of closed in around Michael too. He hoped the sheriff wouldn't decide to start counting everything as he leaned down to peer at another shelf that held a couple of shotguns and three outdated car radios.

“At least we know none of these guns shot that Rayburn fellow.” The sheriff straightened up and led the way back into the office.

“That's about all we know.” Michael followed the sheriff out, glad to be out of the cramped room.

“We know a lot more than we did yesterday. By this time tomorrow, we may have the murderer behind bars.” Sheriff Potter dusted off his hands. “Things can go fast once you start learning what's what.”

“What do you think happened, Sheriff?” The sheriff was one of the few people in Hidden Springs who hadn't shared with him any conjectures about the murder.

The sheriff pulled the evidence room door shut, locked it, and dropped the key back into Betty Jean's top desk drawer. For a minute, he watched the blue and purple bubble screen saver flowing across Betty Jean's computer screen as if he expected some answer to appear there. Finally he sighed a
little. “It's hard to guess at things like that. And there's really not much use in doing that anyhow. Even educated guesses turn out to be wrong more times than not.”

“You surely have some thoughts on what might have happened. Everybody else in Hidden Springs does.”

“Do you?” The sheriff looked up at Michael.

Every hint of the sheriff's good ol' boy smile usually settled comfortably on his face was gone. His eyes were so direct and intense that Michael felt like a little boy who'd just challenged his math teacher's ability to multiply. Michael cleared his throat. “I guess not. Nothing that makes sense.”

The sheriff's smile inched back. “It could well be we'll never know who did it.”

Michael frowned, and the sheriff came around Betty Jean's desk to throw his arm around Michael's shoulder. “Don't look so bothered, boy. When you've been a law officer as long as I have, you learn you can't solve every crime. And even when we do figure things out, a goodly number of those never make it to court for one reason or another. It's just the way things are.”

“But murder's different. I don't like to think about a murderer on the loose in Hidden Springs.”

“Nobody does, Mike. Nobody does, but whoever did it is likely miles away by now. What reason would they have to hang around here?”

“We might know that if we knew why the killer shot Jay Rayburn in the first place.”

“And we should try to find that out. I'm not saying we shouldn't, but you can't let it get you down if the killer isn't hanging around town waiting for us to catch him. You'll probably have better luck finding out who carried off that
stuff we just brought in.” The sheriff stepped away from him toward the door to the hallway. “You talked to Anthony Blake lately?”

“I'm going to tonight.” Michael kept his voice neutral. “He's supposed to be at Aunt Lindy's for a tutoring session.”

“You tell Malinda to be careful around that boy. I know a bad apple when I see one.”

“You were already in office when his mother disappeared, weren't you?” Michael followed the sheriff out into the empty hallway. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Sure, I remember,” the sheriff said. “We put out an APB on her, treated it like a regular missing person, but it was obvious she just took off with one of the men she was always getting chummy with out where she worked.”

“Where was that?” Michael locked the office door.

“The Country Diner.” The sheriff waited for him, staring off up the empty hallway. “Billy Samuels was the one who reported her missing when she didn't show for work. He was that sure something had happened to her. Said she never failed to call in if she was going to be even a few minutes late. So we checked it out. When we went out to her apartment, the kid—he must have been about five—peeked out the window at us. I can still see that kid's face.” The sheriff shook his head slowly. “I don't see how she could have done it. Just to take off and leave him there by himself like that.”

“Did you know her?”

“Everybody knew Roxanne.” The sheriff gave Michael a knowing smile.

“That's what Buck said.”

“Yeah, as I recollect, Buck was pretty chummy with her himself. He kept saying she wouldn't have gone without the
kid, but she did. The kid, he didn't cry, you know, that day we found him there alone. Not till we made him leave. Then he pitched an awful fit. Screamed and grabbed the door facings. We had to pry his fingers loose one at a time to get him out of the place. He kept screaming he had to wait for his mama. That she told him she was just going to the grocery. I figure she went to the grocery a lot, if you know what I mean.”

“Buck said she didn't take any clothes or clean out her bank account.”

“Yeah, that was sort of strange.” Their footsteps sounded loud in the quiet building. Roy must have left early. The sheriff didn't say anything else until they were almost to the rear exit. “People don't normally leave behind their money when they decide to disappear. That's for sure, but maybe whoever she ran off with was in a hurry. Told her now or never. Who knows? But I tell you I ain't never seen anything so pitiful as that kid that day. I guess it's little wonder he's turned out the way he has.”

“Anybody ever get any kind of trace on Roxanne?”

“Once somebody reported seeing her up in Louisville and then somebody said they saw her dealing blackjack in Las Vegas, but I figured it wasn't nothing but talk. We checked it out just in case but never came up with anything.”