‘‘Was Bill shot with a rifle or a shotgun at close range?’’
‘‘What?’’
‘‘How sure are you Bill was shot with a rifle?’’
She thought for a few seconds. ‘‘Just about certain.’’
‘‘Same here. Then how about Howie?’’
‘‘Positive.’’
‘‘Rifle?’’
‘‘Yep.’’
‘‘Okay, me too.’’ I thought again for a few seconds about the wounds I had seen in Bill’s chest. The autopsy would do it for certain, but I didn’t think it could have been a shotgun. Holes too far apart for close range. At more than fifteen feet, they wouldn’t have enough energy to get through the front of the vest, let alone out his back. ‘‘Shit.’’
‘‘There a problem?’’
‘‘Yeah,’’ I said. ‘‘We haven’t got enough from the scene yet… we gotta have a meeting.’’
‘‘Hell,’’ said Hester. ‘‘The poor damn lab crew will be here for a year.’’
‘‘I know.’’ I looked over the back porch rail at the backs of several old houses. The weathered rail had chicken wire stapled to the supports, to keep the two-year-old from falling through, and an unsupported tag end of the wire was stretched across the top of the wooden stair. There were no signs of life except for the wheezing of an old air conditioner, a three-year-old who was picking her nose, and the two-year-old who was curling up in what was apparently the cat’s bed. I wished I still smoked.
Five
We went back inside. Beth was a lot calmer, which was unfortunate, at least for us. Nan looked madder at us than ever, and brushed by in a huff, back to the porch and the kids.
‘‘How you doin’?’’ I asked.
‘‘Fine, now. Sorry about that.’’
‘‘That’s all right. Believe me. Say, Beth, just for the record, how old are you?’’
‘‘Seventeen. Almost eighteen.’’
‘‘Gettin’ up there.’’ I grinned at her. ‘‘Damned near old.’’
Hester looked surprised.
‘‘Does Howie have any cammo clothes around here?’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘None?’’ asked Hester.
‘‘None.’’
‘‘Thanks,’’ I said. ‘‘Well, so we think that this Johnny Marks was up there today, maybe with a friend?’’
‘‘Yeah…’’ said Beth, hesitantly. ‘‘I don’t know… I don’t think Johnny Marks would ever go there himself. I really don’t.’’
‘‘Why not?’’ asked Hester.
‘‘He can’t. He can’t be associated with dope at all, or he goes back to the joint for a long time.’’
‘‘I thought he worked on the gambling boat?’’ I said. ‘‘You need a clean record to do that.’’
‘‘Not exactly,’’ said Hester. ‘‘The legislature worded it a little differently. You can’t work the boats for five years after a felony conviction. They thought it meant you had to be clean for five years, but it turns out that it also means that if you get five years in prison, you can be hired the day you walk out the door.’’
‘‘No shit?’’
She nodded.
‘‘Like I said,’’ said Beth, ‘‘he can’t have anything to do with it. So I don’t think he’d be there.’’
‘‘Sure.’’
She sighed. ‘‘Do I need a lawyer?’’
Magic phrase. ‘‘Do you want one? You’re not in custody or anything,’’ said Hester.
‘‘I’m scared of Johnny Marks finding out I talked to you. He’d kill me too.’’
‘‘We can get you to a safe house.’’
‘‘No fuckin’ way! I go there, he knows for sure.’’
‘‘Well, you’re probably right there.’’
‘‘I don’t know,’’ she said. She was becoming genuinely afraid.
‘‘Look,’’ said Hester, ‘‘talk to us just a bit longer. This can still be considered routine, in a death case. No suspicion.’’
‘‘And you leave here, and go right up and talk to Johnny Marks, right? Straight to the man, right from me. No, thanks. No, thank you very much!’’
‘‘Now, slow down,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Don’t get all upset over something that hasn’t happened.’’
‘‘Yeah, right.’’
‘‘Tell you what,’’ I said. ‘‘I’ll use your phone, and get some of our people to talk to Johnny Marks right now. While we’re still here. So it looks like you both got heat at the same time.’’
She thought about that. Finally: ‘‘That’s good. That’s okay.’’
I picked up her phone and called the office. It had a long cord, and I went around the corner while she and Hester continued to talk.
Sometimes the simplest things can get so complex. Let me just say that I was on the phone for better than five minutes, making the arrangements to get somebody to go talk to Marks without using police radio.
I went back to Beth and Hester. They were really getting along.
‘‘Beth tells me,’’ said Hester, ‘‘that she doesn’t think Marks would go along, but that a man named Howler Moeher might.’’
‘‘Reasonable.’’ I kind of knew Howler. She was right, he probably would.
‘‘Howler’s got a machine gun,’’ said Beth.
There was a pause at that. Most people wouldn’t know a machine gun from a semiauto rifle, unless it was one of the big ones on a tripod. But you always had to ask.
‘‘What do you mean by machine gun, Beth?’’
‘‘Well, you know, it’s black, and it fires real fast, and Howler says it is.’’
‘‘Right,’’ said Hester. ‘‘How big is it?’’
‘‘Oh,’’ said Beth, extending her hands about three feet apart, ‘‘like this or so, with a thing hanging down from the bottom, like.’’
‘‘Where is old Howler these days?’’ I asked.
‘‘On a farm between here and Maitland, on the highway, you know, by the old train station…’’
‘‘Yeah, I think so,’’ I said.
We had to talk to Howler.
We stayed with Beth for a few more minutes, and I checked to make sure we had a unit talking to Marks, before we left. We did. The Freiberg officer. He’d been the only one available. We headed right up to Marks’s place, both because we wanted to talk to him and because the unit already there had damn little idea what they were doing with him.
On the way, we started sorting things out better. And were faced with a pretty familiar dilemma. Do we talk with Marks on the fly, to get him while he’s still off balance? Or do we wait, and talk to him later, when we have more information, and ammunition enough to impeach his story? We figured that, since we had to protect Beth, we’d better do it now, and then hit him again later if we had to. And we’d probably have to.
Then, we had Howie with a shotgun, and nobody that we saw had been hit with a shotgun. But, according to Hester, the shotgun had been fired. She had seen no blood trails at any of the other obvious locations. Therefore, Howie had missed? Most likely. But who had he been shooting at? Bill probably. But were we sure? No. And why in the hell did Howie have a shotgun in the first place? It wasn’t like him at all.
Ah, but we knew that Marks and Howie were working together. Marks was almost guaranteed to know something worth our while, even if he hadn’t been out there today.
Johnny Marks was about twenty-five, a little over six feet, slender, tanned, black-haired, and very indignant.
‘‘I said,’’ he said to me, ‘‘I want to know just what the fuck you people are doing here.’’
‘‘I’m sure you do,’’ I replied, and continued my introduction. ‘‘As I was trying to say, my name is Houseman, and I’m a deputy sheriff here in Nation County. And this is Special
Agent Gorse of the DCI.’’
‘‘Big fuckin’ deal.’’
‘‘We’d like to ask you a few questions.’’
‘‘Fuck you. I’m leavin’ town for a vacation.’’
‘‘May we come in?’’
‘‘No.’’
I reached out and grabbed the front of his Hawaiian shirt. ‘‘Then you get to come out.’’
‘‘Get your fuckin’ hands off me!’’
‘‘I’m placing you under arrest as a material witness. You will come with us.’’ I pulled, hard. He came out the door, stumbling. ‘‘Now.’’
Hester shot me that damned eyebrow again.
‘‘You heard him say he intended to leave?’’
‘‘Yes,’’ she said. ‘‘I did.’’
‘‘I want my attorney, and I want him now!’’ Typical. ‘‘You can’t arrest me!’’ Natural progression. ‘‘For what?’’