Summer People (12 page)

“The guy’s name is Hammer. Any relation to….”

“You got it, Lisa. First cousin.”

“Unbelievable,” said Lisa. “And the rest of the story—is the murderer a local?”

“No, he’s an unemployed auto worker—got laid off from a plant in Pontiac and moved up here. He’s been a suspect in some cottage break-ins, but we’ve never been able to nail him.”

“Are you going to have trouble arresting him?” asked Marc. “I don’t know. If he’s really in his trailer, he’s in an impossible situation. Watch the news.”

The staging area for the assault on Lennie Buck’s trailer was at an old cemetery about a mile down the road. Ray stood in the center of the small circle of his deputies and State Police Troopers.

“First, I don’t want any of you wounded or killed. We will take our time; we have all of the advantages. The trailer is in the open, and you can drive off the road to take your positions. Stay behind your cars because there is no other cover.

“Second, I want to take Buck prisoner. If possible, I don’t want him injured. We know he has an AK-47. We don’t know how much ammunition. So please be careful.

“Once we are all in place I’ll try to talk him out with a bull horn. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try some tear gas. Again, be careful. This man has nothing to lose. He’s very dangerous.”

The old trailer stood in the middle of a flat, sandy field. An old car was parked near the front door. One by one the police cars rolled off the road and formed a distant circle around the trailer. The police took cover behind the cars. Ray positioned his car across from the door of the trailer.

“Lennie Buck, we know you’re in there. We have the place completely surrounded—there’s no escape. I want you to open the door wide and come out slowly with both hands high in the air. And I want you to keep those hands high.” Ray tried to think about what might be going through Lennie’s head as a way of thinking about what he should prepare for. A vision of Jackson Prison flashed before Ray. If he were in Lennie’s shoes, he would rather die than go to Jackson.

The instant Ray heard the glass break he dropped behind his car. A short blast from the assault rifle raked his car and sent puffs of sand flying on the surrounding ground.

“Are you all right, Ray?” someone asked on the radio. “Yes. Put in some tear gas.”

Ray heard the shot and then heard, “Shit, I missed the window.

I’ll fire a second one.” He heard the second shot and then, “That one’s in and smoking.”

“Nothing happening,” came another voice.

“Put in another one.” said Ray.

He heard the third shot. He looked over his hood and watched the smoke roll out of the windows.”

“There’s a fire,” came a voice.

Ray saw the flames pushing out of the front window of the trailer. The door of the trailer opened a crack and stopped. The deputies tensed, ready to fire. Then the door slowly opened the rest of the way. A man emerged, staggered a few feet and fell to his hands and knees. The fire quickly engulfed the whole trailer; the man crawled forward away from the heat. Ray approached him from one side. Bob Kretchmer approached from the other side; he pulled a pair of handcuffs from a case on his belt and secured Lennie’s arms behind his back.

The man was limp. Ray pulled Lennie to his feet and dragged him away from the burning trailer and back behind his car. The fire roared through the flimsy structure, burning through the aluminum skin on the roof. Ammunition exploded in the flames.

Buck, in dirty jeans and a black T-shirt with Shit Happens in block letters on the front, slouched against the side of Ray’s car. His head was down as if he were examining his shoeless feet. His figure, long and lean with round shoulders suspended on a narrow frame, hung with a look of defeat. A thin nose separated two small, watery blue eyes. A long, shaggy beard framed the pale-white face.

Ray read Buck his rights; the prisoner nodded as if he understood, but said nothing. Ray motioned to Bob Kretchmer. “Get him out of here.”

Ray walked back toward the trailer. The roof had collapsed, and as he watched the wall near him peeled away, like someone doing a back dive in slow motion. The wall on the other side of the trailer soon followed in the opposite direction. By the time the volunteer fire department arrived, there was little to do but dampen the remains and put out a few small grass fires near the ruins of the trailer.

Ray circled the trailer with Sue looking at the rubble. Finally he said, “There it is,” and pointed at a metal object entangled in springs and half-burned wood that once formed a day bed. He borrowed some heavy leather gloves from the fire crew and carefully fished the remains of the AK-47 out of the still smoldering mass.

“Not bad,” said Ray.

Sue gave him a quizzical look.

“We’ve got motive, foot prints, tire prints, and the weapon, albeit slightly charred. If we get a confession, it will be as clean as it can be. It’s nice getting one solved quickly for a change.”

Through the open window, Jack Grochoski saw the Sheriff’s car park at the side of the bar. By the time Ray walked into the Last Chance, Jack had two cups on the bar and was filling them with coffee.

“Thanks, Jack.” Ray took a sip. “Jack, you make about the best coffee in the county.”

“It’s the water, Sheriff; it’s the water. I don’t use well water. I get spring water in those big bottles; well water has too much iron, makes the coffee bitter. Don’t imagine you came by to talk about coffee.”

“Grimstock, Roger Grimstock, was he in here on Saturday evening?”

“Thought you’d be by to ask ‘bout him. He was here. Has been almost every night in the summer for years. You probably know that.”

Ray nodded, “I wasn’t sure about Saturday night, but I did know his car was usually in your lot. Anything different about Saturday night? Was he drinking heavily?”

“He was the same as always. I imagine he started drinking when he got out of bed. He’d come in here in the early evening and have a couple shots-and-beers, and then he’d settle down to just beers, Budweiser in bottles. He’d drink about one an hour until he left, usually ‘bout closing, sometimes before. He was never falling down drunk; he always seemed in control—you know I cut people off it they’re not. But he was never stone sober, probably hadn’t been in years.”

“Did he have any friends, anyone he met here?”

“He was a real fixture here, but I don’t think anyone knew him; I sure didn’t. Over the years I watched people try to get a conversation going with him, but he’d cut them off. He wanted to be left alone. The girls that work here were all afraid of him because he’d snap at them. Had a nasty mouth.”

“And Saturday was just the same?”

“Well, I have to be truthful. He was like an old piece of furniture, you might walk by it ten times a day and you don’t notice it. I know he was here; I remember serving him; I remember he was on his usual stool, and he wasn’t here at closing. But there was one peculiar thing.”

“What’s that?”

“He got a phone call sometime late in the evening. Years ago, when he was still married, his wife would call here all the time looking for him, but I don’t think he’s had a call since they split up.”

“Man or woman—the person on the phone?”

“Man or woman,” Jack repeated. “That’s interesting, Sheriff. I don’t remember. It gets real noisy here at night, and my hearing ain’t what it was. It’s hard for me to hear people on the phone. I might guess that it was a woman, but that’s probably because the only calls we get here are women looking for their men. I don’t think I can say for sure.”

“So he got this call late in the evening. What time would that be?”

“It probably was between eleven and twelve. The summer crowd doesn’t start dropping off until after midnight.”

“Did he leave right after he got the call?”

“I can’t say, Sheriff. I don’t think so. I just know he was gone before closing.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Most nights he’s here till then, but sometimes he leaves around midnight, sometimes before. Usually buys a six pack on his way out.”

“Jack, is there anything else you can remember about Saturday?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve pretty much told you all I know.”

“If you think of anything, please give me a call. It gives me an excuse to get some more of this good coffee.”

Dell’s Complete Auto Service was housed in two buildings. The first, the smaller of the two, looked like a 50s gas station. In the middle 80s the interior walls were removed so the business could function as both a convenience store and gas station. The service part of the business was moved to a large pole building behind the first.

Ray found Dell working on a truck engine, its cab tipped forward to allow access to its innards.

“Looks like you could get lost in there,” said Ray as a way of getting Dell’s attention.

Dell, hearing the comment, turned and looked at Ray. Dell— well in his seventies, with heavily muscled biceps extending from a short sleeved shirt, his right arm with the tattoo of an anchor, the left with an American eagle, his barrel chest pulling at the buttons, his stomach hanging over his belt—climbed down from the truck. He pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose with a grease-covered hand. “I wish the bastards that designed these things would have to try to fix them. There’s only a little problem with that damn truck, but you have to spend half the day getting to it. And Bill VanDyke will bitch like hell when he finds that I’ve charged him four hours labor to replace a ten dollar part.”

“Why don’t you charge him more for the part and less for labor? Use a little psychology on him.”

“Won’t work on that damn old Dutchman, Sheriff. He checked on how much the part cost before I started on the job.”

“Dell, that old Triumph they brought in from the accident scene. Did you have a chance to check it over?”

“I went through it. It’s back in the storage area.

“How about the brakes and steering?

“Brakes was okay, and there was nothing wrong with the steering. Let me show you, it’s over here.” Dell led Ray to a fenced area behind the building.

“As you know, everything is pretty banged up and bent, but nothing is broken in the steering. Tie rods are still intact, and the rack seems to be working all right. Look.” Dell reached in, grabbed the wheel and moved it back and forth. He pointed to the front wheels, “See, there’s some slop in it, but it works. Now the back wheels, that’s another story.

“What do you mean, Dell?”

“Actually, Sheriff, it’s not the rear wheels, it’s the whole damn drive train. The whole thing is locked up.”

“Why’s that?”

“The motor came apart. I got the oil pan over here. I pulled it to look at the bottom of the engine. There are a couple of holes that were made when the engine came apart. The crank busted in half; the pan was full of metal debris.”

“Any reason for that to happen?”

“It’s an old engine. Looks like he was driving it wide open. You just can’t do that with one of these. Probably was low on oil. Hard to tell what failed first, but what ever it was, the whole damn thing came apart instantly. The way things are jammed in here, it locks up the rear wheels.”

“That explains a couple of things.”

“Like?”

“We found oil on the road. And if the rear wheels locked up, he probably went into a skid and lost control of the car. Did you find anything else interesting, Dell?”

“One more thing.” He pointed into the engine bay. The hood was missing from the car.

“What am I looking at?”

“These are old Stromberg 175s carburetors, a peculiar bit of limey engineering. Fucking limeys. You could never get these damn things synchronized.”

“So, what about them?”

“Look, Sheriff, they’re jammed wide open. The linkage is bent here and doesn’t move. I don’t know if this happened before the crash. It might have caused the accident. Or it might have happened in the course of the car rolling down the hill and smashing into things.”

“Is there any chance that another vehicle was involved in the accident?”

“I don’t think so. Every damn panel on this piece of shit is smashed, but I think that it happened when the car rolled down that hill. I don’t see no paint on this other than dark green. That poor bastard picked about the steepest hill in the county for his accident. There’s one more thing, the frame is busted in the back. It must’ve been almost rusted through.”

“Could that have happened before the accident?”

“I don’t think so, Sheriff. See where the rear quarter is smashed in here,” Dell knelt beside the back of the car and ran his hands over the area. “The car must have hit a tree, and most of the blow was carried by the wheel and axle. You can see bark and wood ground into these holes in the wheel. The axle being pushed sideways is what busted the frame, but it had to be weak to start with. I can have the boys put the car on the rack if you want to see where the frame is busted.”

“No, Dell, I trust your judgment. You know much more about these things than I do.”

“Sheriff, how long do you want me to keep this around?”

“It will probably take three or four weeks to get the whole thing cleared up. Don’t do anything until you hear from us, and don’t let me forget that it’s here.”

“I wouldn’t do that Sheriff,” Dell said with a big grin. “I wouldn’t want to burden the tax payers with an unnecessary storage fee.”

Ray was sitting at the oak table in the interrogation room. Sue was sitting at his right with a tape recorder and a laptop computer. Lennie was ushered in and seated across from Ray. His lawyer, Ilene Hawthorne, a court appointed attorney, seated herself at Lennie’s right, opened her brief case, and removed a yellow legal pad and a pencil. She opened her purse and pulled a pair of glasses from a case. She lifted them to her face and carefully adjusted them. She did everything very slowly, knowing that all the attention was on her as the others waited to begin. Hawthorne, carrying extra weight from a recent pregnancy on a short, stocky frame, filled her business suit. Her hair style, short and curled, did little to offset her coarse facial features: lips, too large and full for her small face; a large flat nose with upturned, oval nostrils; a wide, tall forehead that sloped back to the curls; and eyes, small and angry, their size contrasting sharply with the grossness of her other features.