"Yes sir."
"Make us some."
"Yes sir."
I watched sadly as the old black man shuffled into the kitchen. He had gained ten years and lost twenty points off his IQ the moment Cantuck arrived.
The Chief took hold of a rickety chair, straddled it carefully, adjusted his nut, said: "On this gal."
"Florida," I said.
"Yeah, well, you boys may be right. I think maybe she might be in trouble. Or beyond it."
"No shit," Leonard called out.
"There's stuff don't add up," Cantuck said. "Tim, give me that spit can."
Tim, with a scrunched face, picked the can off the television set and handed it to Cantuck by holding it with thumb and forefinger. Cantuck put the can in front of him on the chair, peeled back his coat, pulled a pack of Beech-Nut from his shirt pocket. He carefully unfolded the pack and opened it. The smell of the tobacco was fresh and sweet, like syrup on pancakes. Too bad it didn't taste that way.
Cantuck poked tobacco into his mouth as if packing a cannon. He worked his mouth a little, wiped spittle on his sleeve and said, "There's some kind of tie-in in all this. Bobby Joe's death, this Florida gal missing."
"So we're not quite the assholes you thought," I said.
"No, you're assholes all right," Cantuck said, "you're just a little smarter than I expected."
I could hear Leonard moving in bed, trying to find a better listening position.
"This mornin' a Texas Ranger came down with the County Sheriff, Tad Griffin. They had a fella with 'em. Some kind of coroner, or dead body expert, whatever them sonofabitches are."
"Forensics," Tim said.
"That's it," Cantuck said. "They come to dig up that dead nigra. Bobby Joe. Wanted to see if he'd hung himself or someone hung him. They got ways of tellin'. Did you know that?"
"All I know I get from the movies," I said.
"They look at the marks on his neck, the strangle marks, and they can somehow tell if he did it himself or had help. Or so they claim. I'm not sure they really know shit."
Cantuck paused, poked two fingers into his mouth to line his chewing tobacco up right, then wiped the fingers on his pants.
"I'll bite," I said. "Was he hung, or did he commit suicide?"
"Don't know," Cantuck said.
"When will you know?" I said.
"No idea, because they didn't find the body," Cantuck said.
"What?"
"I put him down," Bacon said. "You was there."
"I know," Cantuck said. "Went out there, dug where he was supposed to be, and he wasn't there. Wasn't nothing there, unless you want to count earthworms. Big old bastards. Make good fishing bait."
"You're sure he was in the coffin to begin with?" I asked.
"He was there," Cantuck said. "I went out and supervised the burial. Bobby Joe's family wouldn't have nothing to do with him. Thought he had the taint of the devil on him. Was a voodoo person, they said. I was at the undertaker's when they closed him up in his box, and I was there with a Baptist reverend when they put him down in the colored pauper's field. Bacon dug the original hole. I watched him dig it."
"Colored?" Leonard called out. "You can't be consistent, can you, Chief? Are we niggers, colored, or nigras?"
"Take your pick," Cantuck said.
"Just as long as you don't use a term like People of Color," Leonard said.
"Don't worry," Cantuck said. "I won't."
"You mean someone stole the body?" I said.
"Unless it turned into a worm and crawled off. Coffin, body. Gone. Bobby Joe wasn't embalmed 'cause wasn't nobody paying for it, so whoever took the body had'm a pretty ripe job."
"Any ideas who might have stolen it?" I asked.
"Few," Cantuck said, changing his tobacco to the opposite cheek. "Could be kids fuckin' around, some of that Satanist shit."
"Oh, come on, Chief," I said.
"Didn't say it was," Cantuck said. "Said it could be. It could be other things. Folks might not want him buried out there near a loved one."
"I know one family was real upset about it," Bacon said. "They was upset enough, they could have moved him."
"Who would that be?" I asked.
"Mrs. Bella Burk's folks," Bacon said.
Cantuck nodded, picked up from there. "They come to me about it. Wasn't nothing I could do. Burks didn't want Bobby Joe laid down near their mama on account of him into black magic, not being baptized and all. Her people covered her grave with crucifixes, charms. They may have decided that wasn't enough, dug him up and disposed of the body. They did, I wouldn't hold it against them."
"And if they didn't," I said, "what's that leave?"
"What you might suspect," Cantuck said. "What you been thinking all along. Someone got rid of the body so there's no evidence Bobby Joe didn't commit suicide. If he didn't."
"That's the case," I said, "him not committing suicide, someone might think your office could be involved. He didn't hang himself, that points a finger at you, doesn't it?"
"It do," Cantuck said. "In fact, they're thinkin' along that line right now. Sheriff and Ranger told me that right out. Frankly, I'm startin' to think that boy was hung."
"While you were away, of course," I said.
"Yeah, while I was away. I was there, he wouldn't have been hung. He might have lived to have gotten the needle, but I wouldn't allowed nothing like that. I keep tellin' you that."
"That's right," I said. "I thought I'd heard it before."
"Man does a crime like that, sets it up way Bobby Joe did, had that stupid Yankee come down here with money to buy stuff didn't exist . . . Well, the Yankee was stupid, but his only crime was being stupid, and legally, that ain't no crime. Bobby Joe could have had that Yankee's money without killin' anyone. Could have conned that city fuck and come out good, but Bobby Joe thought it was too much fun to kill him. Maybe 'cause he was white. Maybe 'cause Bobby Joe was drunk. Maybe 'cause he just wanted to."
"Sounds more like it," Tim said.
"But there wasn't no excuse to gut him like a hog, do him the way he did," Cantuck said. "Even if he was a Yankee. I got nothin' but contempt for Bobby Joe."
"You and everybody else," Tim said.
"But," Cantuck continued, "he was in my jail, and I put a prisoner in my jail, he's supposed to be safe. People work for me are supposed to make sure he's safe. They don't, and I find out they didn't, then I'm gonna want to see they get a trip to the death house, get that needleful of shit in the dead man's place. I don't allow that kind of shit."
"Does Reynolds know you don't allow that kind of shit?" I said.
"I reminded him this mornin' after that body come up missin', and I told him if he had his fingers in any of this, well, I was gonna see they got cut off."
"How'd he take that?" I asked.
Cantuck paused. "Nervous. I thought he looked a little nervous when we went out to the gravesite, for that matter. And damn relieved when the body wasn't there."
"So, you think Reynolds was surprised it wasn't there?" I said.
"I don't think nothing."
"Meaning, he didn't move the body," Leonard said.
"Meaning nothing," Cantuck said. "I'm sayin' he looked nervous, then relieved. That could mean somethin', and it could mean diggin' up corpses don't give him a hard-on. Then, knowing he wasn't going to have to see a dead body after all, it cheered him up. I'll tell you, seeing a body don't give me no hard-on neither, so I can understand that. Fact is, ain't nothin' gives me a hard-on anymore."
"Not even chickens?" I said.
"Not even chickens," Cantuck said. "But I don't know, I look at them little pin feathers around a chicken's butthole long enough, maybe I'd heat up."
"Still," I said, "you're suspicious, aren't you?"
"Maybe."
"You went far enough to talk to Reynolds about it," I said.
"I did it to see if the water rippled or splashed. It might have rippled a little, but it didn't splash. Then again, Reynolds ain't easy to read, and if I had my druthers I wouldn't work with him. 'Sides, he's fuckin' ray secretary, and she's a married woman. I don't like a man workin' on a married, and I don't much care the woman don't mind givin' it up. She's got kids and a good husband. I had concrete evidence I'd fire 'em. And her a big churchgoer. You say shit, she acts like you just gave her a mouthful, and I know she's fuckin' that big sonofabitch every goddamn chance she gets. Can't prove it, but I know it."