“I’m coming too,” Brett said. “I’m no shrinking violet.”
“I bet you aren’t,” said the sheriff. “Olford, you go sit in the car and get your notes straight.”
“They’re straight, Sheriff,” Olford said.
“Go sit in the car anyway,” he said.
We walked along a ways. The sheriff, who we learned was named Nathan Hews, said, “Olford is the mayor’s boy. Whatcha gonna do?”
“Did he get his uniform from Goodwill?” I asked.
“Don’t be disrespectful,” the sheriff said. “He stole that off a wash line.”
We came to the body. I said, “I turned him over.”
“Not supposed to do that,” Sheriff Hews said.
“I know. But I checked to see if he was alive.”
“When they look like this, facedown or faceup, you got to know they’re dead.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“You know something,” the sheriff said. “You called things in, said who you two were, so I made some calls, checked some things out. The chief over in LaBorde, he said you’re a real pain in the ass. That you usually run with a black guy named Leonard.”
“Yep, that’s me,” I said. “I mean, I run with a black guy named Leonard. I don’t know about the pain-in-the-ass part.”
“I think you do,” he said. “Chief told me some things.”
“Blabbermouth,” I said.
When we finished looking at the body, we walked back to the car. The sheriff had Olford get a camera out of their car and go out and take some pictures.
“We don’t have a real team,” he said. “There’s me, Olford, one other deputy, and a dispatcher. Sometimes we get free doughnuts, though.”
“That’s keeping in form,” I said.
“You betcha,” he said. He looked at Brett. “You seem to be holding up well, considering your daughter is missing and a man is dead.”
He was still playing us, trying to see if we had anything to do with the business that had gone down.
“Trust me,” Brett said. “I’m worried sick.”
We had to stay at a motel for a couple of hours before the sheriff showed up with a lack of information. “We didn’t find your daughter,” he said to Brett. “That could be good news.”
“Could be,” Brett said. What the sheriff had missed in his absence was Brett’s breaking down and crying, but he could probably notice the red in her eyes. She listened to what he had to say and went into the bathroom and closed the door.
He said to me, “Listen, I’m going to square with you. Going to tell you what you probably have already figured. I’m a one-horse sheriff in a one-horse town with two deputies who are working their first murder case. They’re more suited to chasing down renegade cats and dogs and figuring out who stole whose graham crackers at the nursery school. If we had one. I’m not telling you to go off on your own, and there’s bigger law can be brought into this. But if I was you, from what I know about you, I’d tell you on the sly, which is what I’m doing now, just in case you don’t get it, to do some looking on your own.”
I nodded, said, “You got any idea where I should start?”
“I said I was a one-horse sheriff, but I once upon a time did some city work. I came here so I’d see fewer bodies. So far, I’ve seen fewer. This is the first murder that isn’t a suicide I’ve seen in five years. The dead man is Robert Austin, he was wanted for some shit. The girl, your woman’s daughter, word was she did some business, if you know what I mean.”
“That word is probably good,” I said.
“This guy, Robert, sold drugs and sold her. Town like this, people who used her services … Well, everyone knows. Everyone here knows the size of their neighbor’s turds and can tell one’s stink from the other. Thing is, Robert, he was most likely selling drugs for Buster Smith. Buster runs a Gospel Opry show over in Marvel Creek.”
“I was born there,” I said.
“Then you know the place. Used to be tough as a doorstop and sharp as a razor. All that booze out there on Hell’s half mile. Now it’s a town known for antiques and all the tonks are gone. The Gospel Opry, well, they say that’s a cover for old Buster. Marvel Creek sees him as a pious businessman. Me, I see him as a man gives real Christians like me a bad name.”
“All right,” I said.
“He’s about fifty, with slicked-back hair and a very cool manner. Wears awful plaid sports jackets all the time. I’ve met him a time or two, when I was over that way. I even went to the Opry once. Good entertainment. But the word kept drifting back about him, and though it’s rumor, I’ve come to believe it. He’s an operator living a simple life on the surface, putting himself in a squeaky-clean front while he does the bad stuff out the back door. He’s got everyone that matters over there in his pocket.
“Another thing, there’s a guy named Kevin Crisper hangs out at the Go-Mart here, sits on a bench out front. It’s his bench. He works his drug deals there, and rumor is, though we can’t prove it, he works for Buster. I keep a watch on him, but so far I haven’t caught him doing what he shouldn’t be doing. He has a guy or two to help him out. They all got a few snags on their arrest sheet, but nothing that keeps them anywhere behind bars. I mean, I know what they’re doing, and I can’t prove it. I can’t do to them what needs to be done. Thing is, though, Kevin Crisper does sales of drugs and gets a percentage. Buster gets the lion’s share because he provides the goods. At least the dope. Tillie, and I want to say this before your girlfriend comes back, she was a self-operator, but word was she was getting pretty deep in the drugs and that maybe she didn’t know if she was about to shit or go blind. She was down in the dead zone with one brain cell or two for a life preserver, and that was it. Robert, he might have been farming her out through this Kevin. Probably was. And Tillie, like I said, she might as well have been a blow-up sex doll, way her mind was messed up.”
“And you know all this and couldn’t do nothing?” I said.
“That’s right,” he said. “Isn’t that nice? Listen here, chief in LaBorde said you were smarter than you looked, so I’m thinking what I said before. There’s stuff you can do I can’t. Law and all. But, you get caught doing it, I didn’t tell you to do it, and you say I did, I’ll call you a big fat liar. I’ll even arrest you. How’s that for modern law enforcement?”
“I can live with it,” I said.
It took some doing, but I finally talked Brett into letting me take her home. I called Leonard on my cell, but he didn’t answer his. I left him a message. I drove over to downtown Bullock, which was a cross street, and went over to the Go-Mart and found Kevin Crisper. He was a man in his forties trying to look thirty. He had similar tattoos to Robert. Kevin looked like a man who had been soaked down wet and overheated in a microwave. Skin like that was last seen on Tutankhamen’s mummy. That said, he had muscular arms, the kind of muscles some people are born with, long and stringy and deceptively strong.
I walked over to him, said, “I hear you can sell me some things.”
“Some things?” he said. “What kind of things? I look like I got something to sell? Pots and pans. Maybe gloves or shoes?”
“I was told you had some entertainments. Guy named Robert told me. You are Kevin, right?”
“Yeah, that’s me.” Kevin lifted his head, said, “When did Robert tell you that?”
I backdated the time, just in case Kevin had some idea when Robert bit the big one. I added, “He said there’s a girl that could do me some favors, you know. For some money.”
“You heard all that, huh?”
“I did.”
“He didn’t offer just to take care of you himself?”
“He said he worked for you and that I should talk to you.”
“That’s funny he should say that,” he said.
“Look, you got the goods or you don’t. I got money. I want some services. I’d like to party with a girl and I’d like to make myself right. You know where I’m coming from.”