Bill Hopkins - Judge Rosswell Carew 01 - Courting Murder (5 page)

Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled. Black clouds rolled across the sky.

The killer’s tongue flicked in and out, catching the first drops of
rain.

“It’s nice of Mother Nature to clean this mess up.”

R
osswell stumbled into the sheriff’s
station in Marble Hill, his eyesight haloed by lightning, hearing thrumming from thunder, and clothes dripping rainwater. Frizz and Neal followed him.

Tina Parkmore sat at a desk behind a long plywood counter, varnished and shiny, that served to keep the public in its place.

For Tina’s sake, Rosswell hoped the drenching rain had washed away his stink. He didn’t want to offend her. He always found a reason to talk with her. The perky dispatcher, in Rosswell’s mind, looked the same as when she’d reigned as the head cheerleader in high school ten years ago.

Slender and tall, the strawberry blonde’s job was to handle all the phone calls and radio traffic, as well as to give information to the
pubic. Her green eyes saw everything, her delicate ears heard everything. She wore the hint of a perfume scented like lilacs. Her mouth never opened unless she said something worth hearing.

Her two-tone brown sheriff’s department uniform wasn’t as sexy as her cheerleader outfit. Rosswell knew that because he’d seen her
wearing it on occasion lately. In private.

“Rosswell?” Tina Parkmore queried when he sloshed through the door, then she noticed the other men. “I mean, Judge Carew.” Their relationship was no secret; although during work hours, they tried to keep it professional. “What’s wrong?”

Frizz didn’t wait for Rosswell to answer Tina. “Two people were murdered up at Foggy Top.”

“Who?” she asked, swiveling her chair around to face the sheriff. She was interrupted by the radio. An officer was trying to find the owner of a flock of chickens whose hen house had been flattened by the storm. Tina transmitted the owner’s address, then turned to Rosswell. “Anyone I know?”

Neal said, “Go ahead, tell her, Judge.”

Rosswell wanted to say
Thanks, Neal, for making me look like a stupid jerk in front of Tina.
Instead, all he could come up with was, “No thanks. That’s the sheriff’s job.”

Frizz pointed at Rosswell. “You’re so all-fired ready to be part of this fiasco. Go ahead and tell her.” He shook his hat and water flew across the room.

The three males, their machismo deflated, hung their heads, each of them reminding Rosswell of an embarrassed lion trying to regain his pride. The single bright spot in this sorry picture was Tina, who grew more beautiful every day.

Tina said, “If it’s a secret, then never mind.” She turned her attention to a stack of papers on her desk.

Rosswell cleared his throat. No one else was in the place but the four of them. “We don’t know who it was.”

“Ah,” she said. “Neal has to identify the bodies? Is that the secret?”

Neal said, “We lost the bodies.” Tina’s eyes widened. The phone rang and she answered it. Rosswell listened to a conversation about a stray cat digging in some old lady’s garden, preparing a place to poop. “We’ll check into it,” Tina said and then hung up. She again turned to Rosswell. “How did you lose the bodies?”

“We had the bodies,” he said. “From a preliminary examination, we think they were murdered. When the big storm came, it washed them down the bank into the river. They must’ve floated away down Cloudy River.”

“Ah,” Tina said again. “The bodies flushed away during the storm? What are y’all going to do now?”

Again pointing at Rosswell, Frizz said, “Judge Carew is not going to do anything. I’m calling out the search and rescue volunteers.” He smoothed the wet brim of his hat. “I guess that they’re really just going to be the search volunteers. Going after corpses. No live people, so there won’t be any rescue.”

Neal said, “We’d best be finding them today.” Frizz said, “Or there’s hell to pay this weekend.” From Thursday until Sunday, the Harley Spring Ride—Hogfest—would inundate Marble Hill with a couple of hundred hog lovers. The courthouse would be closed Thursday, Friday, and Saturday to keep citizens from using the toilets and generally messing up the place. Foggy Top State Park would be crammed full of campers. The small town’s streets would be packed with folks attending the street fair that accompanied the deluge of riders. Saturday night would be a full moon.

They had to find the bodies and solve the murders quickly. Today. Tina began calling out the volunteers.

Without bothering to close the door, Neal and Frizz conferred in the sheriff’s office, a place the sheriff called “headquarters.” Rosswell relinquished the Nikon to Tina so she could download the pictures of the crime scene to the sheriff’s computer.

“Nice mushrooms,” she said, winking at Rosswell. He hoped Neal and Frizz didn’t catch her flirt. She whispered, “I wrote you a letter.”

Before he could answer, the volunteers began drifting in. Tina finished the download and handed the camera to Rosswell.

He said to her, “More later.”

“Yes.” She winked again.

Beep
. A MISSED CALL message popped up on Rosswell’s phone. It was a call from Frizz early that morning.
Beep.
A VOICEMAIL notice. Rosswell clicked to play. “I’m finishing up at home and then I’ll call Neal,” Frizz said. “Stay right there at the park.”

“Great service,” Rosswell muttered.

Frizz appeared and instructed the assembled searchers. Most were local farmers and ranchers, with a healthy dose of teenage boys driving four wheelers. All of them were high on testosterone, searching for adventure.

Rosswell hoofed it across the courthouse square to Merc’s Diner, hoping to find a certified genius, the town drunk, and his personal snitch, embodied in one person. Ollie Groton. Several of Ollie’s jail stays could be credited to Rosswell, but Ollie never took it personally. A judge needs a snitch to keep himself informed on the activities of the criminal classes. Ollie promised Rosswell that he’d spill the secrets he found and Rosswell promised Ollie he wouldn’t ask where the secrets came from. Information was handy when sentencing a perpetrator. Clearly, Rosswell wasn’t supposed to have a snitch, but no one need ever know.

The restaurant coffee shop, operating in a refurbished hotel, served as the headquarters for the local gossip mill. Folks traipsed back and forth, carrying tales like ants carrying sugar. The interior of the cedar-sided building was as crusty and ancient as most of its customers. The rumor was that the booths were built from the wood of barns torn down before the Civil War. Merc Leadbetter kept the place immaculate, although no matter what he did in the way of cleaning, he couldn’t hide the floors worn slick or the graffiti carved into the booths. Such things, according to Merc, “gave the place character.”

For gainful employment, Ollie had built a healthy business installing, maintaining, and repairing computers. When not busy at his job, he sat eating, drinking coffee, and sopping up the local chatter at Merc’s. He soaked up tidbits of information like a dry sponge thrown
into a rainstorm. Ollie was the gossip’s gossip.

Some of the less charitable folks in the county said that “Merc’s” actually meant “mercury,” which described the taste of the tuna sandwiches. If there was mercury in Merc’s tuna, then Ollie’s brain was as full of it as an old-time thermometer.

Ollie kept his entire body shaved and boasted a star-shaped tattoo on his bald head. The purple tat beaconed his location in the coffee shop, especially since he’d given his skull its daily sheen of Vaseline. He sat alone. Rosswell slid into his booth.

Ollie said, “You look like shit.”

“You have a purple tattoo on your bald head and you say I look like shit?”

Ollie squeaked, a high-pitched sound a mouse might make after the bar of a trap slammed across its spine.

“I feel like crap,” Rosswell said, rubbing his face. He could still smell the corpses. He suspected that he smelled like them also. “I need to stand in a shower for a couple of hours.” His eyes were more blood-shot than usual.

Without asking him, the waitress brought his standing order, a 20-ounce cup of the strongest coffee this side of New Orleans. He snagged the sugar jar and shook it, working the lumps loose, stirring ferociously.

Ollie said, “The coffee danged near melted the spoon.”

“The way I like it.” The coffee was blacker than midnight on a cloudy night at new moon and thick enough to need two hands for stirring. Rosswell heaped in sugar until the jar ran empty and the liquid became syrupy. The brew smelled sweeter than an angel. He dipped his forefinger in the boiling sludge, then touched it to his tongue.

The waitress tapped her pencil on her order pad. “Anything else?”

Rosswell said, “No, thanks.” He waited for her to leave before he spoke to Ollie. Without so much as a
You’re welcome
, she sauntered off. Her manners ranked right down there with Ollie’s. Rosswell would’ve crossed her off his Christmas card list, but he didn’t send Christmas cards.

A large man stomped through the front door and barreled for the waitress. He spoke to her and, although Rosswell couldn’t hear what he said, the man didn’t sound happy. The waitress replied and the man grabbed her arm.
Merc stormed from the kitchen and yelled at the man, “Get the hell out of here. She’s busy.”

The waitress said, “It’s nothing,
Merc. He’s okay.” The man left without another word.

Rosswell said to Ollie, “What the holy crap was that all about? Is that guy stalking her?”

Ollie pointed to Rosswell’s cup. “That stuff will kill you.” When Ollie didn’t want to talk about something, he changed the subject. Rosswell knew better than to try working any information out of his snitch. It had to come voluntarily or not at all.

“Wrong.” Roswell stirred and stirred. “Cancer will get me before this stuff gets a chance.”

“Judge Carew, you’re mighty cheerful today.” Ollie’s nose twitched. Another mouse-like attribute. “Have you had a bad day?”

They weren’t within earshot of anyone. “We had a little problem this morning.” The coffee needed more sugar, which Rosswell filched from the adjoining table.

Ollie’s eyes searched the area around them. Rosswell scanned as well. Nearby, but out of earshot, were ten to twelve other patrons. A real estate agent, whose name—was it Nadine?—escaped Rosswell, talked to a young man and woman that Rosswell supposed might be buying a house from her. Across from her at another table, Gerald Somebody, a farmer, sat chowing down with his pimply son. Some tourists were scattered inside the place. Three giggling teenage girls sat in one corner drinking Cokes.

Rosswell assured himself that no one was paying any attention to him and Ollie. Apparently, Ollie had decided no one was listening either. The patrons at Merc’s had long ago stopped going goggle-eyed when Ollie and Rosswell sat together. Strange people attract their own kind. That’s probably what the patrons thought when they spied the
two of them together.

Ollie rubbed the tattoo on his head, then wiped his hands on a paper napkin. “You mean losing the bodies out at Foggy Top?”

Rosswell wondered if he did that head rubbing thing for good luck. Or wisdom. Or maybe his noggin just itched.

Rosswell stirred the sludge and then took a tiny sip. Pouring in a touch more sugar made it better. A dash of salt made it perfect. He took a big swallow. It burned all the way down. The caffeine and sugar began to work their magic. The buzz he needed revved up his brain.

“How do you hear about stuff so quick?” he asked Ollie.

“Why did you want to talk if you didn’t think I knew something?” Ollie countered.

Rosswell gave Ollie his heartless glower. Sometimes it was hard for Rosswell to look at Ollie. Ugly? The best that Rosswell could say about Ollie was that he resembled a giant, hairless rat. Ollie didn’t succumb to the heartless glower. Rosswell figured his lack of caffeine diminished its effect.

“Ollie, are you going to tell me or do we have to dance all day?”

Ollie whispered, “You want to know how I know all that stuff?”

“Yes,” Rosswell said, also in a whisper. “That’s what I asked you.”

No one paid them any attention, yet if two grown men kept whispering to each other, they’d eventually raise eyebrows.

“We have an agreement that I don’t have to divulge my sources.” Rosswell leaned close to Ollie. “Make an exception.”

Ollie nodded, pointing his head toward the waitress. “Her.”