Scare Tactics (9 page)

“Taryn was—” Grange lowered his voice, as if that would make the brutal facts easier to bear. “Well, there was just a multitude of stab wounds. Any one of at least a dozen could’ve been fatal to her. Also she was beaten. Stomped hard enough to break some bones.”

Sheriff John Stone’s eyes went out of focus and he lowered his large head in an attitude of pain and sorrow.

“Have the body taken over to Daimler’s when they’re through with it. I’ll talk to Ike Daimler later about arrangements.”

“Yes, sir. The two boys that found her are in Arby’s office, and the Bazemores are in mine.”

“Let the kids go, they’ve told us all they can.” The Sheriff got up. “I want to talk to the Bazemores. Give me about ten minutes, then we’ll take another statement from them.” Grange nodded. “I didn’t think too highly of what they was telling us the first time,” he said, and followed the Sheriff out of the office.

In Grange’s office Nealy and Gaynell Bazemore were sitting in a couple of thinly upholstered chairs pushed back against one wall. Gaynell, a caffeine addict, was on the fourth cup of coffee she’d had since arriving at the Sheriff’s station. Her eyes were red and dry. Nealy twisted his hands slowly and chewed aspirin.

“Morning, Nealy,” Stone said. “Keeping you all busy down there at Lockheed?”

“Yes, sir, they are for a fact.”

“Gaynell, how are the kids?”

“Oh, Curtis is just growing like a weed since he had his tonsils out, and Kipper’s the same old booger bear.”

“Your mama making it okay?”

“Well, you know, her sciatica’s acting up, but Mama’s always been the bravest soul. You can’t keep her down—you know Mama.”

“I ought to. Best-looking woman I never married.” He said this with an attempt at a smile, then sat on the edge of Lieutenant Grange’s desk and sipped at the mug of coffee he’d brought in with him, which had Garfield the cat in a Santa Claus suit on the side. Stone looked at the Bazemores, mildly but with a slight air of disapproval that soon had Nealy so ill at ease he couldn’t find the right attitude for his body in the straight-backed chair. The phone rang, but Stone ignored it.

Gaynell burst out, “I want you to know we’re just heartbroken about this!”

Stone sipped coffee and continued to stare at them.

“Do you know who did it?” Nealy mumbled, keeping his head down and his eyes on the scuffed black-and-white tile floor.

“No.” Stone put his mug down. “You know, I took Taryn into my own house when she had no place to go. It was that or the county shelter, nobody else in the family could do a thing with her. She was, what, barely ten years old? By then I reckon it was already too late. Now, Roberta, if she hadn’t of been bedfast, might have been a powerful influence, but it was all just too much for me to cope.”

“Well, God bless you for trying to help her!” Gaynell said passionately.

“Nealy, are you fixing to be sick?” Stone inquired of the squirming man.

“No.” Nealy cleared his raspy throat. “Reckon there ain’t a thing left on my stomach to heave up.”

“You’re welcome to go out and use the bathroom, then come back.”

“No, I appreciate it, Sheriff, but I think I’ll be okay.”

“Why don’t you go on out anyway, take a turn down the hall, have you a drink of water, let your head clear, if you know what I mean. So you’ll be ready to tell me the complete truth when you get back in here. Otherwise the two of you just might be sitting right where you are for the next couple days, and I ain’t crapping you negative.”

Gaynell looked appalled. Nealy stared steadfastly at the floor, his clenched hands between his knees. The phone rang again. Gaynell, Mrs. Coffee Nerves, jumped slightly.

Stone smiled bleakly at her. Gaynell’s mouth turned down at the corners, and she looked hatefully at her husband.

Stone said, “Folks, I have been in law enforcement for thirty-three years. Set here thisaway the Lord knows how many thousand times and heard all the stories there is to tell. You want to know how many people have lied to me in thirty-three years? It’s a simple computation.” He leaned forward to emphasize his point. “They
all
lied. They lied a little, or they lied a lot, at least to begin with. Now, I hope you’re only lying a little, Nealy. And that you honestly didn’t have anything to do with Taryn’s death.”

Gaynell drew a breath through her teeth as if she’d put a hand to something red hot.

“How could you say a thing like that? Nealy was with me the whole night, Sheriff, and that ain’t a word of a lie! I’ll swear it on my daddy’s—”

“The whole night, Gaynell?”

“Well—”

“Where were you when Nealy was getting it on with Taryn earlier in the evening? Out bowling?”

Nealy’s head came up. “Sheriff,” he said hoarsely, “we
never
got it on!”

“The autopsy’ll find that out beyond a reasonable doubt. Now, then. You’re the one that took her to Six Flags to see George Strait, which is where Taryn’s roommate said she was going?”

“Yes, sir, I did. I, uh, left that out when we was talking to—”

“And Gaynell, you weren’t home when Nealy and Taryn got there?”

“No, I was on my way back from Columbus.”

“What time did you get to the house?”

“I reckon it must have been about two-fifteen.”

“Where were Nealy and Taryn?”

“They was ... in our bedroom.”

“I guess you pitched a fit.”

“That’s right, I surely did.”

“Mad enough to kill her, Gaynell?”

“I was, but I didn’t,” Gaynell said, and she broke down sobbing.

Stone let her carry on, staring at Nealy all the while. “Then what happened?”

Nealy said hoarsely, “Taryn got her clothes back on and took off.”

“You didn’t give her the loan of the Camaro, then, so she could get herself home?”

“She sort of borrowed it off of us without asking.”

“And run out of gas down there by the drive-in theatre?” Nealy nodded. “That must have been what happened.”

“How long had you been dating Taryn before last night?”

“I never taken her out before. I’d see her now and then at the All-Niter, where she worked the counter. Sometimes I’d have me some breakfast there before the early shift.”

“She talk to you about any of her other boyfriends?”

“No, sir. I don’t have no idea who—” Nealy fell silent, thinking about something that intrigued him greatly.

“Whatever’s on your mind could be helpful to us, Nealy.”

“Well, I don’t know how important—”

“Go ahead, son.”

“There was this guy at the All-Niter, and he was coming on to her big-time. She told me his name was Hero, or else that was just a nickname, Taryn didn’t know his real name. He was just one of those itinerants, you know, with a beard he never trimmed, and his jeans was so shabby he must have got them out of a church barrel. Had a big blue knapsack with him. Taryn said he was in the All-Niter a lot.”

“Biker?”

“I don’t know if he owned a bike, I never seen him on one. There was just something about him I didn’t take a liking to.”

“Sheriff, I’m the one needs go to the bathroom,” Gaynell said, sniffing.

“Okay.”

Nealy said with a little laugh that came off mean, “Gaynell just can’t hold water when she’s nervous.”

Gaynell turned in front of him and began earnestly to kick his ankles and shins, swearing at him under' her breath. Stone got up and pulled Gaynell away from her husband, turning her toward the door.

“All right, now, Gaynell, I don’t want to have to put you in a holding cell until you cool off.”

Gaynell lifted her chin and, without another look at her husband, who was wincing and trying not to rub all the places where it hurt, she went outside.

“I don’t know what else I can tell you, Sheriff.”

“You ever stop to think, Nealy, that one of these days you’ll get hold of one who says she’s eighteen when she’s not? We’re talking twenty years in this state.”

“I heard
that.
”
Nealy’s shoulders began to quake. He sobbed, “I’m not ever going to forget what she looked like, lying there in the drive-in. God, I’m so sorry!”

“Would you recognize him again? The one Taryn called Hero?”

“Yeah, I’d know him anywhere. I just hope you can find the bastard.”

Stone looked him over. Nealy already had it fixed in his mind that the bearded drifter had killed Taryn. Well, that wasn’t so bad. “If he’s around, we’ll find him,” Stone said. He sat again on the corner of the desk and took out his cherished corncob pipe, which he stuffed with a dark and evil-smelling tobacco from a leather pouch. He lit the tobacco with a kitchen match from another pocket of his fisherman’s vest. There was a little dirt under one of his thumbnails. He stared at it, then used the other end of the extinguished match to clean under the nail. This time when the phone rang, Stone answered and spoke softly.

“Believe we’re ready for a new statement,” he said. “Also there’s somebody we need to be looking for, Bob. Nealy’ll fix you up with a first-class description.”

Lime-Green Panties

D
eep in meditation, Hieronymus Flynn was aware of the dog’s presence before he heard the Deputy Sheriff speak; but it was as if they were all underwater, he could make no sense of the words. Only the inflection of authority was clear.

“I said for you to get up now, and put your hands on top of your head!”

Hero began, with difficulty, to focus on the here and now. He was sitting crosslegged on a spongelike mat of pine needles and other woodland litter beneath tall, gently swaying trees. The sun was setting. There was a glint of light on the gold-toned badge and nameplate the deputy wore on his shirt, on the short chromed chain that held an eager German shepherd in check.

Hero smiled at the dog, which whined but sat back obediently. He had no such easy communication with the deputy, who faced him from ten feet away holding a walkie-talkie in his other hand.

“I want you to get up from there and do what I tell you, and I want you to be mighty quick about it!”

There was movement on the path behind the deputy, Don Maxwell according to his nameplate, and another uniformed man—older, shorter, pudgier, with impeccably styled gray hair—came into view. He wore lieutenant’s bars on his collar.

“Harve,” Maxwell complained to the newcomer, “he wants to give us a hard time. Been sitting there like he’s in some kind of trance.”

“Meditation,” Hero said, his voice a little thick. “I’ve been meditating.”

“You have a name?” the gray-haired Lieutenant asked him.

Hero pronounced it for him carefully, then said, “But most people find it easier to call me Hero.”

“That so? Not from anywheres around here, are you, son?”

“I am from Sheffield, England.”

“Um-hm. Stand up for us, please, Mr. Flynn. Just keep your hands in sight and place them on top of your head. If you make any kind of sudden move, Deputy Maxwell here will turn the dog loose.”

“It’s all right to let her loose,” Hero said with a smile. He got to his feet, raising his hands slowly, as he’d been told to do. “She wouldn’t harm me, in any event.”

“Don’t believe you want to take that chance, Mr. Flynn. This here’s a trained attack dog.”

“I practice kinship with all forms of life,” Hero told him. “What else do you do with your time? Which you seem to have plenty of to waste. Now, just turn around slow, hands on your head, I’m going to do a body search.”

“Is something wrong? I don’t believe I was disturbing anyone.”

Hero, his back to the deputies, closed his eyes momentarily while the Lieutenant’s stubby hands patted him down from his neckline to his ankles. He felt uneasy, not from being roughly touched, but because the position he found himself in—feet spread, elbows out, fingers laced on top of his head—was eerily familiar to him. In Bolivia the police had lined him up facing a wall, and beaten him senseless with rifle butts. But this wasn’t Bolivia, and he couldn’t be in any danger. No, it was
her
again. She’d been forced to stand like this, and then—dear God—

A shudder went through Hero, nearly staggering him. He saw it again, the oblong white space that mystified him, and Taryn’s flitting, ghostly form, running, naked, across—but he couldn’t identify where she was.

“What’s a matter?” the Lieutenant said with a trace of contempt. “You enjoy it when my hand gets close to your balls like that?”

“I am not a homosexual,” Hero said.

“You don’t seem to have any kind of identification. Mind telling us just who you are?”

“My passport is in my knapsack. Also my traveler’s checks—you will see that I am not an indigent—and my address book, with the names and telephone numbers of many friends and relatives who will vouch for me.”

“What’s that bracelet on your wrist? One of those medical ID’s?”

“Yes. I have ... a form of epilepsy.”

“I see. You just stay standing there, Mr. Flynn, while I have a look at that passport and the rest of your belongings.”