Buried Alive (18 page)

Zeke Tanner’s naked body was hanging in the space between the arch and the water, ankles lashed together with rope, arms dangling down, as if frozen in the process of diving. He was twisting in the breeze and as the body swirled toward us I saw a rough zigzagging of tattoos from his pubis to his sternum. They looked like black lightning bolts.

The sight froze me in my tracks. Cherry was half the distance closer, her hand cupping her mouth in horror.

“What’s with the tattoos?” I said.

Cherry turned, her face ashen. “They’re not tattoos, Ryder. They’re stitches.”

It was late morning when Harry Nautilus and Conner Sandhill met Sheriff Babe Ellis at a Dairy Queen in west-central Alabama, climbing into Ellis’s county-cop cruiser, unmarked. All three men gazed longingly at the window posters of caloric treats offered by the DQ. “Eve didn’t tempt Adam with an apple,” Nautilus said. “It had to have been a banana split.”

Ellis, six foot six, almost three hundred pounds, patted his belly, a soft roll over his belt. “Tell me about temptation.”

“Tell me again why we’re here,” Conner Sandhill said, tugging at his thick black mustache. Like Nautilus and Ellis he was well over six feet tall. “Some sudden impulse of Ryder’s, right?”

Nautilus nodded. “Carson’s pretty sure he doped out Bobby Lee Crayline’s escape method, wants us to put the screws to a guy named Farley Oakes.”

“How’d Carson figure it out?” Ellis asked, still gazing wistfully at the poster of the banana split.

“He says he got the idea from Mexicans and corn. Don’t ask.”

“Where the hell is Ryder?” Sandhill snorted. “I haven’t seen him in weeks.”

“Vacationing in Kentucky,” Nautilus said.

“But he’s still thinking about a six-month-old case not even in his jurisdiction?” Ellis chuckled.

Nautilus shook his head. “You know Carson. Can’t let anything go.”

“Ryder’s probably spent thirty years investigating why the Tooth Fairy doesn’t visit any more,” Sandhill said. He turned to Ellis. “You said you had a rap sheet on Oakes?”

Babe Ellis passed Nautilus and Sandhill copies. The men studied the crimes. There wasn’t much, but it was telling. Ellis put the blue Crown Vic in gear.

Farley Oakes lived in a small frame house a couple hundred feet back from the road. It needed paint. There was a work truck on blocks in the front yard. The barn was a hundred feet beyond, a small corral to the side. A rusting green tractor nosed from the barn
like sniffing out visitors.
Nautilus counted two
No Trespassing
signs, three
Private Property
-
Keep Out
signs. Mr Oakes seemed a tad fearful of outsiders.

“How you want to work it?” Ellis asked.

“I’ll lead,” Sandhill said. “But I need you to be an irritant, Harry.”

Nautilus grinned. “It’s the sand in the oyster that gives us pearls.”

“Lawd,” Ellis sighed. “You guys stay up nights working on the routine?”

They pulled to a stop at the end of the rutted drive. Ellis pointed to a bright red Dodge Ram pickup parked in the side yard. It glittered with chrome.

“There’s about forty thousand bucks’ worth of truck. Looks a little out of place, don’t you think?”

“Let’s hit it and git it,” Nautilus said, opening his door.

Ellis looked at the property, then at the house. “You guys handle the inside stuff. I’m gonna go look for a place to take a leak, right?” He grinned and disappeared around the side of the house, heading for the barn and moving mouse-quiet for a man so large.

Nautilus and Sandhill were a dozen paces from the door when it banged open, Oakes framed in the doorway, wearing an angry look and holding a shotgun. He glowered at Nautilus.

“Git off my property, whoever you are.”

Nautilus held up his badge. “I’m Detective Harry Nautilus, Mr Oakes. My partner, Detective Carson Ryder, was at the prison-van situation - remember him? This is Detective Sandhill.”

“Oh my goodness,” the man said as he digested the
information. “I’m sorry. I thought you was insurance salesmen.”

The weapon was quickly tucked behind the door.

“We’re flummoxed by the killings, Mr Oakes. We’d like to ask a few more questions. Just to see if anything’s jogged in your memory over the past few months.”

Oakes shrugged, tapped his forehead. “I cain’t think of anything. I been trying.”

“May we come in for a couple minutes, run some questions by? It won’t take long.”

“Hang on a sec. I got to tidy up a few things.”

He disappeared behind the door. It reopened three minutes later, Oakes gesturing them inside.

The tight space was cluttered with magazines, unwashed clothes, a dining-room table strewn with a disassembled alternator, the pieces interspersed with plates, dried food clotted to them, cigarette butts studding the food. Nautilus shot a look at the magazines:
Handgun Digest, Modern Weapons, Southern Partisan.
The only clean place was a computer desk in the corner, a large monitor behind a keyboard. Hanging above the desk was a Confederate battle flag.

“I ain’t as neat as I should be, but then if any of you fellas are single, you know we’re all pretty sloppy.”

Time to put the sand in the oyster,
Nautilus thought. He smiled benignly.

“I’m single, Mr Oakes,” he lectured, a ghost of condescension in his voice. “I keep things neat by setting aside fifteen minutes daily for putting things in their proper
place. Just amazing at what that fifteen minutes can do, if you put your mind to it.”

“Mebbe I’ll give that a try,” Oakes said, voice tighter. “Fifteen minutes, you say?”

Nautilus looked around Oakes’s home. Frowned.

“Here, maybe more like an hour.”

Oakes’s eyes flashed. He turned away and shunted aside a pile of clothes on the couch. “You can sit here, you want.”

Nautilus studied the ragged couch like it was infested with lice. “I think I’ll stand, thank you.”

“Do what you want,” Oakes grunted.

Sandhill leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “You know, Mr Oakes, that a man named Bobby Lee Crayline escaped from the van that day. You said just before you got to the scene you heard motorcycles moving away.”

“That’s what I told the cops.”

Sandhill stepped close, his broad body all Oakes could see. “Crayline was a member of the Aryan Conquest. It’s like a prison club for white guys only. You ever heard of that particular organization?”

The farmer scratched his temple with a yellowed nail. Shrugged at Sandhill.

“Can’t say as I have.”

“It’s figured that a person or persons unknown drove by the van on motorcycles,” Sandhill said, “blew off the driver’s head with a shotgun. The van crashed and the fuel tank ruptured. They would have worked fast to get Crayline out and on a bike, haul his ass away. Was that what you heard?”

“I was hauling hay bales with my tractor. It’s loud. I just barely heard them bikes over it. Then I seen the smoke and run over fast.”

“And you found?”

“The front window was busted on the van and the guy on the passenger side was crawling out of the fire. I pulled the guy away. That’s when the cop came up, the Ryder fella.”

Sandhill doodled in his notebook. “Tell me, Mr Oakes, was the—”

“Where’s that black guy?” Oakes said, suddenly aware that Nautilus was no longer in the room.

“In the john, maybe. Tell me, Mr Oakes, was the back door open on the van?”

But Oakes was heading around the corner to the kitchen, looking for Nautilus. “Hey, you there, come on out here. There ain’t nothin’ back there.”

“I was just taking a tour, Mr Oakes,” Nautilus said, standing in front of an ancient, shuddering refrigerator. “I haven’t been in many farmhouses. Just seeing how you people live.”

Nautilus emphasized the words
you people.

“What people you talking about?” Oakes said.

Nautilus did wide-eyed innocence. “Just you people, you know? Agrarians.”

Oakes’s eyes went dark. “I’ll tell you how my people live, Mister Detective. We live out here in the clean and open air. Not all piled up together. We live righteous, God-fearing lives and—”

“The door on the van, Mr Oakes,” Sandhill interrupted. “Was it open?”

Oakes spun. “How’m I supposed to remember that? There was a crash and a fire and I was busy tryin’ to save a man’s life and—”

“Details, Mr Oakes,” Nautilus interrupted, stepping closer to Oakes. “Sometimes at a crime scene there are details that people remember after time has gone by.” He spoke as though trying to make a slow child understand a simple concept. “It’s like they suddenly see the scene with more clarity. Clarity means—”

“I goddamn know what the hell clarity means.”

“You were pulling a trailer full of hay bales?” Sandhill asked, his turn to take a step closer to the farmer.

“I just goddamn said so.”

“Where did you get the bales, Mr Oakes?” Sandhill asked. “And where were you taking them?”

“Get the bales?” Oakes slapped his forehead. “It’s a farm! Don’t you know nothing? I think it’s time for you two to—”

“Were you feeding animals? Taking the bales to a feeding station?”

But Oakes was looking from side to side, Nautilus no longer in sight.

“Where the hell has it gone now?” Oakes spat, angling his head to peer into the kitchen. Sandhill stepped aside, revealing Nautilus sitting at Oakes’s desk. Nautilus looked up, two dog-eared paperbacks in his hand.

“I’m right here, Mr Oakes. I was just admiring some
of the books you enjoy.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, The Confessions of Nat Turner.
Are you aware scholars have found both to be of spurious origin? Spurious means—”

Oakes snatched the books from Nautilus’s hand.

“I’ll read whatever I goddamn want. It’s a free country - least it used to be. And I think it’s time for you to get your snooping black ass out of here.”

Nautilus shot Sandhill a
get-ready
nod and the pair shuffled to the door. Oakes stood in the center of his living room with his arms crossed, framed by yellow newspaper clippings, rotted food, broken machinery and a deceased flag. Nautilus paused and turned.

“I checked your past, Mr Oakes. You and four buddies harassed two black women you thought were lesbians, punched one of them. A couple years later you burned a six-foot cross in the front yard of—”

Oakes jutted his chin. “I stand up for my own.”

Sandhill opened the door. Nautilus winked at him;
time to shuck the oyster.
He walked to the threshold. Paused as if something had just become clear in his head. He turned to the farmer.

“I know that you were part of the escape plan, Mr Oakes. The bales on your trailer were a shell. The shooter wasn’t on a motorcycle, but on the road, maybe holding up his hand like he needed help. The van stopped, the shooter went to work. Bobby Lee Crayline and the shooter slipped into the space in the bales, and you dropped more bales in place to close them off. You answered all the questions,
then hopped on your tractor and pulled away.” A hint of a smile crossed his lips. “How’d I do?”

Oakes’s eyes shifted from Nautilus to Sandhill and back again. “Prove it,” he spat, his chest puffed in defiance. But Nautilus saw fear in the man’s eyes and heard the quiver in his voice.

“We always do,” Nautilus said, stepping outside, talking over his shoulder as he and Sandhill went down the rickety stairs. “Be a lot better for you if you tell us now, Mr Oakes. A judge will knock years off your sentence for telling the truth. By the way, we already know about that other nasty stuff you did. Everything.”

Sandhill
tsk-tske
d. “We’ve been watching you for some time, Farley. You’ve been a bad boy.”

With these people, Nautilus and Sandhill knew, there was always other stuff. It made them natural paranoids.

“Wh-at stuff?” Oakes said, voice cracking. “What are you lying about now?”

As if cued by Cecil B. DeMille, Babe Ellis appeared from the side of the house, grinning like a delighted goblin.

“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?” Oakes railed at Ellis. “WHAT WERE YOU DOING BACK THERE!”

Ellis didn’t look at Oakes. He smiled broadly at his fellow cops and brandished a pudgy yellow envelope with the word EVIDENCE stamped over both sides.

“I ASKED WHAT YOU GOT THERE?” Oakes screeched. He sounded like a terrified child.

Nautilus high-fived Ellis, as if he had a major crime-breaking find in the envelope instead of his own
handkerchief. The men walked to the car, laughing as though every wish they’d ever made had just been granted in triplicate.

Come on, come on
… Nautilus thought.

“I didn’t have any fucking choice,” Oakes whined to their backs, defeat in his voice. “Bobby Lee said I had to do it.”

Tanner’s body went straight to the state morgue in Frankfort. Cherry arranged to have the body put atop the post-mortem list, going from transport to autopsy. We ate a light breakfast to give the transport a head start, then drove the ninety minutes to Frankfort, the state capital. McCoy returned to the scene to see if he could make any further reconstructions using his woodsman’s knowledge.

“It’s unreal,” Cherry said as we zoomed down the ramp from I-64 to Frankfort, “the perp carried Tanner’s body almost a half-mile. He went down steps, up and down the trail, pulled it to the top of the arch. Oh yeah, he was also carrying a big coil of rope. You know the kind of strength that would take?”

I shook my head in disbelief. I was fit and relatively strong and would have crapped out halfway down the
trail. If it was one person, he was built like Mike Tyson in his prime.

The attending pathologist was a man named Vernon Krogan, late fifties, close-cropped gray hair, wide blue eyes incapable of surprise. I knew Doc Krogan, his species anyway, closing in on retirement after a lifetime dis-assembling bodies, many of them victims of hideous and violent crimes. He’d performed the autopsy as if tearing down a carburetor, not interested in philosophical aspects of the device - carburetors have neither philosophy nor theology - but only in such things as carbon accumulation and surface pitting.