Carnosaur Crimes (13 page)

Just the thought of the drawing circulating the local dump annoyed Ansel, let alone that Permelia wanted to put such a garish creation on a book stand. But what could she do? It was a work for hire. Maybe she'd even get a quirky new following of art fans who would be into Phoenix Studios comic book art. Yeah, fat chance. Could this week get any worse?

“Of course,” she said, clenching her teeth and pushing the remainder of her artwork into the portfolio.

“So what will I owe you?”

“I'll do some figuring and send you an estimate within the week. We'll talk again. I can't start the cover art until after I finish a prior book deadline next month. Is that agreeable?”

“Surely is.” Permelia rose and put the drawing down tenderly on the dining room table. “Now that we're done talking business, I'll show you that hodgepodge I've got from Barnum Brown's dig that my daddy left me. Bet your itching to see it.”

“I certainly am,” Ansel enthused, a bright spot shining on her gloomy day at last.

“Did I tell you that my second husband, Elam Gruell, bought quarry land outside Jordan?”

Ansel nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, Elam got the bone bug in 1950 and bought four-hundred acres of range in the Badlands. Said it was part of an ancient creek bed and bursting with potential. Thought he could run it as a sideline besides ranching Herefords. He worked it for a year, then lost interest. After Elam died in a farming accident in 1954, I married Loren Chance, you know.

“Loren decided in 1963 to switch from Herefords to Longhorns, which is what my first husband, Kenny Knox, started the ranch with after World War II,” Permelia continued as they walked past the kitchen. “Anyway, in the sixties, Loren found out that the Texas breed was on the brink of extinction with only fifteen-hundred left in national parks or zoos. Before the open ranges disappeared about six-hundred thousand were driven to market every year. People talk about the buffalo going extinct, but Longhorns stampeded that dead-end trail first. Loren died from cancer ten years ago, and I've been herding the critters alone.”

Ansel barely focused on Permelia's words because the kitchen they passed held her enthralled. She took in the vintage, black iron gas and wood-burning stove, white kitchen cabinetry with old porcelain sinks, and original 1940's Linoleum flooring with amazement. She wondered what the bedrooms and bathrooms looked like.

“Did Elam ever find anything good in the quarry?” she finally asked.

“Oh, he found a lot. Big bones and little. Plenty more left behind, I reckon. Still own that parcel. Don't know why I keep it. Maybe you'd like to putter around on it some day.”

“I'd love that, Permelia. Thank you for offering.”

“Now what I'm going to show you is the stuff my daddy, John Reading, helped Barnum Brown with from June to July 1908 around Big Dry Creek. That's where Brown found the most complete Tyrannosaurus out of three, plus a lot of other bones. Daddy was in charge of the horses they used to prospect for bones and to haul the wagons carrying out the plastered bones.”

They'd walked along a narrow hall with dark gray wallpaper and stopped at a thick, white door. “Here you go,” Permelia exclaimed. She grabbed a white porcelain doorknob and pushed the portal open.

Ansel nearly tripped when Starr, wearing a hand-sewn outfit of matching blue denim shorts, vest, and bandanna bolted between her feet. She was barely able to brace herself against the wall with one arm as the ten pound dachshund keened like a canine wraith, then raced around her legs in toe-scrabbling circles on the tongue and groove floorboards.

“Shut up, Belle Starr,” Permelia hollered loud enough to split firewood.

Starr quit but began an incredible, two-foot high rabbit-hop against Ansel's knees. The dachshund's tail wagged like a joy meter and cow hoof drool sprayed her boots.

“You two are sure gonna have fun,” Permelia cackled. “Go on in.”

Ansel dared a step forward. She suddenly felt like she was entering a temple of doom.

Chapter 17

“There is nothing as eloquent as a rattlesnake's tail.”

Navajo

Detective Odie Fiskar shifted his massive, muscular body against the driver's seat, exhaled loudly, and adjusted his bear paw hands on the steering wheel. Reid Dorbandt looked up from his small leather notebook. Odie had been trying to find his saddle seat for the last thirty minutes. Compact sedans weren't designed with giants in mind.

“Almost there,” Reid said, staring through the gumbo-dusted windshield at the crispy sheep land surrounding them. “I'll fill you in on Flynn's nephew. His parole officer says he works the midnight to eight shift at Swoln Stockyards. Best to corner him when he's home for shuteye.”

“Worth a try, I guess. The jailbird nephew is all we've got,” Odie said woefully. “Sheriff Combs will keep busting our chops until we find the Chief.”

Reid stared at his notebook again. He was actually thinking of Chloe Birch. He hadn't had a moment to call her since he got back from Billings, and she'd been on his mind a lot. Hopefully He hoped to go back into town to reclaim the Indian's head and see her again. Out of nowhere, Ansel's scowling face popped into his head like a subconscious chimera.

Yesterday had been a roller coaster of emotions. First he was furious with her, then he was practically making a pass at her. And last but not least, he'd driven her to tears with his insensitive actions with the windshield wipers. He'd never meant to upset her. What a disaster.

Odie's voice slammed through his wall of confusion. “Hey, you napping on me?”

Reid blinked and blew air out his mouth. “Hokay, here we go. Flynn, Cyrus Kelley, thirty-three, white, male, five-foot-eleven, one-hundred eighty pounds, red hair, green eyes. No wants. No warrants. Now, that is,” he added. “Possession of drugs, 1984. One year probation. Possession of drugs, 1985. Thirty-six months. Possession of drugs with intent to sell, 1988. Thirty-six months. Criminal Mischief, 1991. Thirty-six months. Theft, 1995. Twenty-four months. Burglary, 1997. Thirty-six months. Burglary, 2000. Thirty-six months. Prison release from Wyoming Honor Farm in 2003 with two year probation.”

Odie guffawed, sending a deep boom across the front seat. “He's like a Bosch painting done with finger paints. Sounds like a simpleton.”

“Bosch. Isn't that a soup?”

“Not Borscht. Heironymous Bosch. He was a famous artist who portrayed the evil of man in scary images – demons and half-human animals and machines.”

Reid closed his notebook with a snap. “Stop it, Odie. You're the one that scares me when you flex your brain muscles. You've been doing too many
New York Times
crossword puzzles again.” He peered through the windshield. Ahead was a disintegrating, wood house. “Here it is.”

Odie parked the car next to a green El Camino in the dirt drive and killed the engine. Then he reached for the radio mike and called dispatch, notifying dispatch of their arrival. Meanwhile, Reid got out and surveyed the place: an overgrown yard with a gray-white house sporting a badly leaning porch and broken windows.

Reid walked around the sedan and surveyed the area for signs that other vehicles had been there recently. Hard to tell because the long, dead vegetation in the drive was constantly crushed by Flynn's car going in and out. Nothing else looked amiss.

He wandered over to the El Camino in front of the sedan. The doors were locked and the windows up. Nothing on the inside except holey, gray fabric seats and faded blue carpeting on relatively clean floorboards. Unusually fastidious for a con driving a junk heap.

The same wasn't true for the outside. The flatbed was empty but badly dinged and rusting. Reid surveyed the truck body which was caked high up with gumbo dust and dirt. The wheels undersides, and chassis however, were gummed over with globs of black mud. That intrigued him. Where in the middle of a drought did you find mud? Against the dark splatters, something pink on the right rear undercarriage caught his eye. He squatted and peered closer. A tiny speck of fluffy material was pinched in-between the decorative metal molding and the wheel well.

“Find something?” Odie stood behind him.

“Maybe.” Reid used his fingernails to pinch the fibers up, then stood.

Odie moved in closer. “Looks like shotgun wadding.”

“I'd bet it is.”

It wasn't unusual to find such wadding in areas where a shotgun had been fired. He pulled a small glassine envelope stored inside his suit breast pocket for just such treasures, and bagged it. They looked at each other and silently headed across the knee-high weeds to the house.

Once up the rotten porch steps and onto the creaking, warped planking, Odie pounded on the green door with a sledgehammer fist. Reid wandered toward an adjacent window with cracked glass and peered around the dirty sheet doubling as drapes. He could see a small living room containing cheap furniture and unpacked boxes. Odie knocked again.

The front door whipped open and a man with wet, long red hair, beard, and moustache glared at them. He wore blue jeans and a baggy, red pullover sweater more suitable for fall temperatures than summer. “Yeah?”

Reid stepped quickly to the door. “Cyrus Flynn?” he asked as the distinct smells of mildew, rotten fruit, and human waste wafted past him.

“Yeah.”

“I'm Lieutenant Dorbandt. This is Detective Fiskar. We're from the sheriff's department. We want to ask you some questions about your uncle, Chief Cullen Flynn.”

Reid kept smiling and took in Flynn's sallow face, red-rimmed eyes, and puffy nose. Cyrus looked like he was either strung-out or had one doozy of a cold. He made a mental note to check Flynn's jacket for a list of drugs the con had used and dealed.

Cyrus casually placed one hand on the door frame, effectively blocking the entrance. His face morphed into a mask of dire sadness. “Oh, man. My uncle. I've been worried sick about him. Have you found him?”

Reid doubted the sentiment but held his friendly expression. “We're working on it. We need to come in.”

“I'm trying to sleep. Just got home from a job about fifteen minutes ago. Anyway, to be honest, I can't tell you much. I haven't seen or heard from Uncle Cullen since last April. Given his line of work, he's not too fond of me.”

“To be honest with you Mr. Flynn, because of your record, we've got to probe a little deeper into what you've been doing lately,” Reid said. “We can do that here and now,” he said, looking pointedly at the door, “or we can do it at the sheriff's office.”

“It
would
be more expedient to do it here, Mr. Flynn,” Odie added, towering over the smaller man.

Cyrus coughed, sniffled, and then pulled the door open. “Sure, okay. Excuse the mess.”

Odie went in first, entirely filling the doorway. Reid didn't really want to enter, but he did. The place was worse on the inside. It looked like Cyrus had quit housekeeping months ago. The carpet was full of dirt and the dingy, fading wallpaper swallowed what little light came in through the makeshift curtains. It was hard to tell whether Cyrus had gotten stalled moving in or out with all the boxes. There was no air conditioning either. The room was a miasma of stale air.

Flynn immediately sat on a black sofa that looked like he lived in it. Magazines, empty soda cans, non-prescription medicines, and unwashed food dishes spotted the floor around the sofa and the coffee table in front of it. “What can I help you with?” he asked agreeably.

Reid forced himself to take a nasty-looking recliner on the right side of the sofa. Odie remained standing. This was how they operated. He'd ask the questions while his partner slowly circulated the room. Odie would peruse the immediate area within eyesight for anything suspicious or telling and if Flynn bolted, Odie would nab him in a second.

He pulled out his notebook and a pen from an inside breast pocket. “Exactly when was the last time you talked to Cullen Flynn?”

Cyrus watched him carefully. “The end of April. The thirtieth, I think. Pay day for both of us. Uncle Cullen brought me some extra cash.”

“How often does Cullen do that?”

“Not much. Maybe twice a year. Like I said, we aren't close, but he helps me out.”

Odie shifted to the left and walked around the sofa. Reid held Flynn's attention. “Do you ever argue with your uncle?”

Cyrus shrugged. “Sure, sometimes. He gets on my case about my past. He's a cop. I'm the black sheep of the family.”

Cyrus looked over his shoulder at Odie, who had moved beyond the sofa toward the kitchen. “Hey, I thought you just wanted to ask questions.”

Odie turned around and smiled, but kept walking toward the kitchen entrance and a closed door against one wall. “This place sure brings back memories. My grandmother had a house like this. What year was it built?”

“I don't know,” Cyrus said, eyeing the detective warily. “I rent. I'd prefer it if you didn't wander too far, okay?”

“You ever have a serious disagreement with Cullen? One that got physical?” Reid said.

Cyrus' head snapped around. “What? No. He yells at me and I yell back. That's it. He was a pain in the ass sometimes, but I've never hurt him.”

“Was?” he asked, staring carefully.

“I mean is, of course,” Cyrus corrected, rubbing a hand across his face. “I'm tired. It's been a long night, and you're making me nervous.”

“You just got off shift from the slaughterhouse, right?”

Cyrus snorted and leaned back against the cushions. “They call it a beef kill, not a slaughterhouse. You know what I do? I'm the shackler. It's the filthiest job in the whole plant, man. Cows come in three at a time, and another guy called the knocker shoots a three inch long spike through their heads before they drop down, twitching and kicking, into a pit with me. I wrap a chain around their left rear legs so they get hoisted thirty feet over my head and moved to another guy who cuts them throat to breastbone. Bleeds them out.”

Cyrus glanced at Odie, who had returned near the sofa. He heaved his shoulders dramatically and then gazed hard at Reid, “Hell, I stand in that bloody piss and shit hole eight hours a day, and you guys wonder why I can't talk straight?”

He had listened with one ear as Cyrus rattled on and perused the room with both eyes. The sympathy ploy was standard fodder for ex-cons. When they weren't jiving, hustling, or lying about one thing, they were wheedling, whining, or wowing you about something else. So far, he'd only seen one item in the house that interested him.

“You're using drugs, aren't you Cyrus?”

“No, dammit. I'm clean.”

“You don't look it. What is it Crank? Crack?”

“I've got a cold. You can test me. I'm clean,” Cyrus flared.

“How about a gun?” he asked, going straight for Cyrus' jugular. “Got one stashed here?”

Cyrus' face went flat. “No. What are you doing? I haven't done anything wrong.”

“You've got a gun and ammo magazine on the coffee table,” Reid pushed.

“I used to hunt a lot. A man can read about guns can't he?”

“Ever use a shotgun?” Odie queried.

Cyrus calmly reached for a pack of smokes on the table. “Oh, now you've got me, boys.” he retorted, as he pulled a cigarette out and stuck it between his lips. “I confess. I used one plenty before becoming a guest of the states of Montana and Wyoming. Gut shot three deers and a turkey if a recollect right. Is that illegal these days?” He used a lighter to stoke the smoke in between a few congestive coughs.

“Lying to a sheriff's detective is,” Reid snapped. “If I have to come back again, it will be with a search warrant, a DAF swat team, and an army of sheriff's deputies. Get smart, Cyrus. Is there anything you want to tell us about your uncle's vanishing act before we leave?”

Cyrus glared back, cigarette burning between his pale, trembling fingers. “I don't deserve this. I'm out of jail and off the drugs. Just trying to straighten my life out, man. You should be detecting what really happened to Uncle Cullen, not harassing me.”

He closed his notebook and stood. “Don't leave Swoln.” He headed for the front door at a jaunty pace, Odie's heavy footfalls behind him. Cyrus didn't bother to leave the couch, just sucked on his cigarette with short angry puffs as they opened the door and departed.

Once at the sedan, Odie said, “He's lying.”

“Like a cur dog in dirt,” Reid agreed as they both slid into the car. “Have you ever been to a slaughterhouse?”

Odie shook his head. “No. Why?”

“Well if you had, you'd know that anyone who works there smells like blood. They can't come home and wash it away. It's in their clothes. It's in the skin. It's in their hairs. Cyrus had taken a shower, but he still didn't smell like blood, feces, or urine. Either did that house. Makes me wonder what he's really doing at Swoln Stockyards.”

“Yeah, I see what you mean. What's next?”

Reid strapped on his seatbelt and grinned. “Today we'll stop in Swoln and ask some questions. See if anybody saw Chief Flynn's Jeep pass through town the day before yesterday. We'll also ask about the Indian with a gimp. I got the lab results back from Butte. My buffalo tongue sandwich matched the poacher's stomach contents. He was at Humpy's all right.”

“That was good work, Reid,” Odie said reverently.

“If you like that, you're really going to like this. I've got an idea how we might slap a face on the poacher without having to wait for the reconstruction from Billings,” he said, thinking as he had been for the last few days about Chloe Birch. Who knew when he'd get back to see her again with the Cullen Flynn dilemma?

“Odie started the car and backed down the drive. “How's that?”

“There's a bank across the street from the restaurant with a money machine. It has a closed circuit camera on it. Maybe it catches people going in and out of the restaurant. That means he's on tape.”