The deputy left the men in the road and jogged back to the station wagon. “We ain’t touched a thing, Lee.”
“Where’s the farmer that found ’em?”
“Said he had a sick heifer to tend to. But I questioned him pretty good before he left. He don’t know nothing.”
“You already take pictures?”
“Yeah, just got done when you pulled in.”
He handed Howser the bullet, then leaned across the front seat again, picked up the.22 with his handkerchief. He sniffed the barrel, then released the cylinder, saw that it had been fired once. Pushing the extractor back, five shells fell out into his hand. The ends were crimped. “Hell, these are blanks.”
“Blanks? Why the hell would a person do that, Lee?”
“I don’t know, but it was a bad mistake, that’s for certain.” He set the gun on the seat next to the purse and the camera. Then he got out of the car and stepped over to where Carl lay. The dead man still had hold of the.38 in his right hand, some grass and dirt in the other. It looked like he had been clawing at the ground. Several flies crawled around his wounds and another rested on his lower lip. Bodecker checked the gun. “And this fucker, he didn’t fire a shot.”
“Either one of them holes he’s got in him would account for that,” Howser said.
“Wouldn’t take much to put Carl down anyway,” Bodecker said. He turned his head and spat. “He was about as worthless as they come.” He picked up the wallet lying on top of the body and counted fifty-four dollars. He scratched his head. “Well, I guess it wasn’t robbery, was it?”
“Any chance Tater Brown could have something to do with this?”
Bodecker’s face reddened. “What the hell makes you think that?”
The deputy shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just throwing stuff out. I mean, who else does this kind of shit around here?”
Standing up, Bodecker shook his head. “No, this kind of thing’s too out in the open for that slimy cocksucker. If he was the one done it, we wouldn’t have come across them this easy. He’d have made sure the maggots got a few days alone with them.”
“Yeah, I guess,” the deputy said.
“What about the coroner?” Bodecker said.
“He’s supposed to be on his way.”
Bodecker nodded over at the other deputies. “Have them look around in that cornfield, see if they can find something, then you keep watch for that coroner.” He wiped the sweat off his neck with his handkerchief. He waited until Howser walked away, then sat down in the passenger’s seat of the station wagon. A camera was lying beside Sandy’s purse. The dash was open. Underneath some wadded-up maps were several rolls of film, a box of.38 shells. Glancing around to make sure Howser was still talking to the deputies, Bodecker stuffed the film in his pants pocket, looked through the purse. He found a receipt from a Holiday Inn in Johnson City, Tennessee, dated two nights ago. He thought back to the day he’d seen them at the gas station. Sixteen days ago now, he figured. They had almost made it home.
Eventually he noticed what appeared to be dried vomit in the grass, ants crawling over it. He sat down on the backseat and placed his feet out on the ground, on both sides of the mess. He looked over where his brother-in-law lay in the grass. Whoever got sick was sitting right here in this seat when they did it, Bodecker said to himself. So Carl’s standing outside with a gun and Sandy’s in the front, and somebody else is in the back. He stared down at the puke for a few more seconds. Carl didn’t even get a chance to fire before somebody got three shots off. And sometime in there, probably after the shooting was over, whoever it was got awful shook up. He thought back to the first time he’d killed a man for Tater. He’d nearly gotten sick himself that night. Chances are, then, he thought, whoever done this wasn’t used to killing, but the fucker definitely knew how to handle a gun.
Bodecker watched the deputies cross the ditch and start moving slowly through the cornfield, the backs of their shirts dark with sweat. He heard a car coming, turned and saw Howser start walking up the road to meet the coroner. “Goddamn it, girl, what the hell were you doing out here?” he said to Sandy. Reaching across the seat, he hurriedly removed a couple of keys hanging on the same metal ring as the ignition key, put them in his shirt pocket. He heard Howser and the coroner behind him. The doctor stopped when he got close enough to see Sandy in the front seat. “Good Lord,” he said.
“I don’t think the Lord’s got anything to do with this, Benny,” Bodecker said. He looked over at the deputy. “Get Willis out here to help you dust for prints before we move the car. Go over that backseat real close.”
“What you figure happened?” the coroner asked. He set his black bag on the hood of the car.
“The way it looks to me, Carl got shot by somebody sitting in the back. Then Sandy managed to get one round off with that.22, but, hell, she didn’t have a chance. That fucking thing’s loaded with blanks. And I think, judging from the place where the bullet came out her, whoever shot her was standing up by that time.” He pointed at the ground a few feet from the back door. “Probably right here.”
“Blanks?” the coroner said.
Bodecker ignored him. “How long you figure they been dead?”
The coroner got down on one knee and raised Carl’s arm up, tried to move it around a little, pressed on the mottled blue and gray skin with his fingers. “Oh, yesterday evening, I’d say. Thereabouts, anyway.”
They all stood looking at Sandy silently for a minute or so, then Bodecker turned to the coroner. “You make sure she gets took good care of, okay?”
“Absolutely,” Benny said.
“Have Webster’s pick her up when you’re done. Tell ’em I’ll be over later to talk about the arrangements. I’m gonna head back to the office.”
“What about the other one?” Benny asked, as Bodecker started to walk away.
The sheriff stopped and spit on the ground, looked over at the fat man. “However you got to work it, Benny, you make sure that one gets a pauper’s grave. No marker, no name, no nothing.”
50
“LEE,” THE DISPATCHER SAID. “Had a call from a Sheriff Thompson in Lewisburg, West Virginia. He wants you to call him back soon as possible.” He handed Bodecker a piece of paper with a number scrawled on it.
“Willis, is that a five or a six?”
The dispatcher looked at the paper. “No, that’s a nine.”
Bodecker shut the door of his office and sat down, opened a desk drawer, and took out a piece of hard candy. After seeing Sandy dead, the first thing he had thought about was a glass of whiskey. He stuck the candy in his mouth and dialed the number. “Sheriff Thompson? This is Lee Bodecker up in Ohio.”
“Thanks for calling me back, Sheriff,” the man said with a hillbilly drawl. “How you all doing up there?”
“I ain’t bragging.”
“The reason I called, well, it might not be nothing, but someone shot a man down here yesterday morning sometime, a preacher, and the boy we suspect might have been in on it used to live up in your parts.”
“That right? How did he kill this man?”
“Shot him in the head while he was sitting in his car. Held the gun right up to the back of his skull. Made a hell of a mess, but at least he didn’t suffer none.”
“What kind of gun did he use?”
“Pistol, probably a Luger, one of them German guns. The boy was known to have one. His daddy brought it back from the war.”