Dead Soul (15 page)

“She saw someone putting the sand in a
what?
”

“You heard me the first time.”

Moon wrote it down.

Daisy cleared her throat. “That’s all I have to say.”

The tribal investigator was relieved to hear this. “Next time you see this young lady, give her my phone number. Tell her she can call collect.”

“Charlie…”

“Yeah?”

The tribal elder took a deep breath. “You be careful.”

“Careful is my middle name.”

“I coulda swore it was Jug-Head.” She hung up.
Okay. I’ve passed her message on to Charlie. Now I’ll be able to sleep
. Hours later, her dark eyes were still wide open. Staring at a place where the ceiling should be. Above her was a dark, infinite abyss. Daisy Perika hoped—prayed—that Charlie Moon would not fall in.

Chapter Nineteen

THE SANDMAN

CHARLIE MOON WAS MAKING A BATCH OF FLAPJACKS
.
WHILE OCCUPIED
with this pleasant task, he mused about one of life’s many conundrums. Almost three years ago, he had taken a hard blow on the head. The neurosurgeon had made it clear that the concussion was a serious injury. The clinician had not exaggerated. To this very day, he had not recovered completely.
But Patch Davidson claims he is knocked unconscious by some hardcase who had already beat his driver’s head to a pulp—and the politician doesn’t even get a bump on his noggin
.

Life was just one prickly puzzle after another.

He removed a pancake from the cast-iron skillet, put in on the stack, poured in the last of the batter. These dregs were a lumpy mix: a multitude of miniature islands floating on a thick, yellow sea. The great puddle sizzled and popped around the edges. Gradually, disparate elements coalesced into a single disc-shaped continent.

Charlie Moon stared at the flapjack sizzling in the iron skillet, but did not see his breakfast. His mind was focused on something far more interesting. Sand.
A regular thief might steal a truckload. But another man might just take just a handful. Because that’s all he needed
. He watched the pancake burn to a crisp.

STANDING AT
the rear entrance of the Blue Light Cafe, Charlie Moon made a careful inspection of the employees’ parking space. There was not much to see on the graveled lot. Three sedans, a rusty Japanese pickup, a muddy mountain bike chained to an iron post. The blacktopped area for customer parking—where Oscar Sweetwater had been when he heard the senator screaming—was off to his left and around the corner of the cinder-block building. To Moon’s right was Nelson Street, where Billy Smoke had entered the smaller parking lot in the black Lincoln. Across Nelson there was a crumbling brick building. It was shared by an Ace Hardware, the Loco Lobo Pawn Shop, and Martin’s Twenty-Four-Hour Laundromat. In front of him, along the opposite side of the small parking lot, a scraggly row of cottonwoods and elms bordered a drainage ditch. A large sheet-metal building squatted just beyond the ditch. If the yard-high letters painted on the side of the structure were to be believed, this was the
P.I.E
.
CARTAGE WAREHOUSE
. The tribal investigator turned to study the rear exit of the Blue Light Cafe, where Senator Davidson had emerged on that dark, wet night, looking for his Ute chauffeur. A metal sign was nailed above the door.

NO SOLICITING
NO LOITERING
VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED

Below the threat, as if in symbolic warning of the stern punishment to be meted out for petty misdemeanors, a naked lightbulb hung on a twisted cord. While Moon watched, a five-mile-long cloud blotted out the sun. The photoelectric element embedded in the bulb’s socket sensed this false twilight; a sixty-watt filament was heated to a pale yellow incandescence.

Having memorized every detail of his immediate surroundings, the tribal investigator turned to his inner landscape. Charlie Moon seemed to be taking in the modest skyline that defined the small university town, but he was barely aware of the gathering of peaked roofs congregated about the soaring steeple on the First Methodist Church, or even the mountains, where a swirling, ice-speckled shawl wrapped itself about blue-green peaks. While the Ute thought his thoughts, he also waited. And presently, his patience was rewarded.

A sleek GCPD sedan pulled into the employee parking lot. A stocky, square-shouldered man got out of the black-and-white Chevrolet, pulled on a faded denim jacket.

The Ute smiled at the chief of police. “And they say the cops never come when a citizen calls.”

Scott Parris zipped the jacket, buttoned the collar snugly about his neck. He muttered something about hating these chilly days that threatened a hard winter to come. In his imagination, the blue-white monster lurked just over the mountains—a roaring blizzard of a storm whose sole purpose was to make a policeman’s life utterly miserable.

A sudden gust whipped up whatever it could from the parking lot.

Charlie Moon stood shoulder to shoulder with his best friend, holding onto the brim of his black Stetson. Like a pair of stubborn sentries, the chief of police and the tribal investigator leaned against a brisk wind that whipped across the open space, flinging stinging sand and grit into their faces. Along the ditch bank that bordered the employee parking lot, bare limbs of cottonwood and elm shuddered and shivered in their nakedness. The worst of it was over in seconds.

“Well,” Parris grumped, “I guess our two weeks of summer are about done with.”

“Rain or shine, hot or cold, it don’t matter a whit to me. I am content in all kinds of weather.”

The six-footer looked up at the taller man. “Charlie, nothing in this dreary world is more annoying than a man who is always happy as a fuzzy puppy. And won’t keep it to himself.”

Moon patted his friend on the shoulder. “What’s chewing on your leg, pardner? You’re a tad more testy than usual.”

The white man’s face twisted into a painful grimace. “Anne and me…we’ve split up.”

Having nothing to say, the Ute said nothing.

“But I’m doing all right.”
As long as it’s light outside. But after sundown…

“You should take some time off. Come out to the Columbine.”

“What would I do at your ranch?” Parris snorted. “Shoot at snuff boxes and kick cow pies?”

“I’d put you to doing some productive work.”
That’d get your mind off the woman
.

Parris rubbed at his cold nose. “Hell, Charlie—I’m no kinda cowboy.”

“No need to apologize—everybody knows you’re a pathetic tinhorn. But I could find something simple enough even you could do it.”

“Like what?”

“Let me think.”

“Hey, take all day.”

“You could clean out the stables.”

“Why’n hell would I want to do that?”

“Shoveling manure makes it hard for a man to think about his love life.”

“Thank you kindly. But I’d just as soon stay in town and be miserable in a more hygienic fashion.”
Maybe I’ll take out a second mortgage; buy me a brand-new red Corvette
.

“Suit yourself.” Unexpectedly, the sun came out. Moon grinned at this welcome omen. “We could go fishing.”

“Fishing.” A dreamy look slipped over the white man’s face. “Yeah. I could swallow a big dose of that.”

“Then we’ll do it.”

“Great.”

“You feel better now?”

He squinted at the Ute. “Charlie, don’t expect instant results. My fiancé has left me. I’m passing through middle age at ninety miles an hour, and it’s all downhill from here.”

“Anne’s leaving is already history. And getting old and feeble is way off in the future. Try to think about here and now.”

“Okay. Right
now,
I’m standing
here
. Freezing my ass into brass.”

This was a hard man to cheer up. “Where did Billy park the Lincoln?”

Parris pointed toward the trees lining the drainage ditch. “Over there. Under that big knotty-looking cottonwood. When the first two officers showed up, they found Patch Davidson about six feet from the driver’s door, which was open. The old man was on his back, hurting like hell and cussing a blue streak. Mr. Smoke was behind the car. He was way past complaining.” The lawman sighed. The wind sighed with him. “But what am I beating my gums for? You’ve read the report. Seen the photographs.”

“Yeah.”
About twenty times
.

“So clue me in—what are we doing here?”

The Ute exhaled smoky breath onto his hands, rubbed palms together. “Where was the chunk of rebar found?”

Scott Parris pointed again. “Right behind where the Lincoln was parked—at the edge of the drainage ditch. And like I already told you, there’s no doubt it was the murder weapon. We found smears of blood on it. Most of it was from your tribal member, the rest was from the senator. State police lifted a few fibers off the rebar—they were from common cotton work gloves, made in Argentina. In the previous six months, over six thousand pairs were sold in Colorado.” He paused long enough to growl. “We’ll never know who did it unless we get a lucky break—like if the guy is picked up and convicted for another capital crime and confesses to this one. Or maybe he gets high and brags to one of his buddies about killing an Indian and busting up a U.S. senator.”

“Maybe this wasn’t a random robbery attempt, pardner. What if somebody got here before Billy Smoke showed up in the senator’s Lincoln, then waited for him?”

“Waited for Billy—why would you think that?”

The Ute nodded to indicate the electrical fixture over the Blue Light’s rear door. “The light was out. So the bad guy could wait in the dark.”

Parris followed his friend’s gaze. “Look, Charlie, I was here that night, not twenty minutes after the killing. Restaurant manager told me he grabbed a shotgun and ran out back right after Oscar Sweetwater reported the assault. The lightbulb was burned out. Manager told the dishwasher to replace it. By the time my uniforms showed up, there was a new bulb in the socket.”

“Anybody talk to the dishwasher?”

Parris thought about it. “I don’t remember.”

“I found him this morning. Nowadays, he’s burning beef over at the Burger Barn. Fella told me he went to replace the bulb, just like he was told. But when he started to unscrew the bad one, he noticed it was already pretty loose in the socket. So he tightened it just a tad—and there was light. Somebody had unscrewed it just enough to turn it off.”

There was a long silence before the
matukach
policeman responded. “If the bad guy did loosen the bulb, that does cast a dark light on the random-mugging theory. But it don’t necessarily prove that the guy with the rebar was waiting for Mr. Smoke in particular.”

“If not Billy, then who?”

“I dunno. Some restaurant employee going home.”

“All the Blue Light evening crew leaves at the same time—midnight. Think about it. Nine or ten people coming out the back door within a couple of minutes. Not exactly prime time for a mugging.”

Parris considered the tribal investigator with a thoughtful gaze. “You’ve really been working hard on this.”

Moon assumed a virtuous tone. “You take the tribe’s dollar, you do the tribe’s work.”

“Okay. I admit it. You’ve got a point about the loose lightbulb.”

“There’s something else.”

Parris grinned. “Wait. Don’t say another word—allow me a moment to speculate.” He closed his eyes. “Aha—I got it. You already know who murdered Billy Smoke and maimed Patch Davidson.”

“Better’n that.” The Ute nodded toward his F-150. “Got that sorry sack of bones in the back of my pickup. Trussed up like a hog for slaughter.”

For the flicker of a moment, the white man’s eyes widened. Then he remembered who he was talking to. “When you get some spare time, drop him off at my jailhouse.”

“Before that, I’ll need to get a signed confession.”

“How’ll you manage that?”

“Bury him up to his neck beside to a boom box. Make him listen to Harlem gang rap for six or seven days. Whichever comes first.”

For the first time since Anne had informed him that they were basically incompatible, Scott Parris laughed out loud. It felt extremely good. Right down to the tips of his toes.

The Ute waited for the right moment. “Like I said, pardner—there’s something else.”

“Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.”
I want to go fishing
.

The tribal investigator shrugged. “Okay. But don’t say I didn’t tell you.”
Twenty seconds should do it. One. Two. Three.

“It won’t do no good—standing there doing your silent-Indian routine. I said I don’t want to hear about it and I flat out don’t. And that’s final. Phoenix can freeze over. Yuma to boot.”

Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen.

“Oh dammit, Charlie—don’t stand there sulking. Go ahead, have your say.”

“Seventeen,” the Ute said.

“Seventeen what?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Dammit, Charlie—”

“Senator Davidson says he got bopped on the head, lost consciousness. When he woke up, the guy with the iron bar was bashing him on the legs.”

“So?”

“There’s no medical evidence the senator was hit on the head—not with something as hard as rebar.”

“So maybe the perp slugs Davidson with his fist. When Patch bites the dust, he gets whacked across the legs with the rebar. The bad guy is about to go to work on his noggin when your tribal chairman comes to the rescue and the mugger takes off.”

The Ute nodded. “Could’ve happened like that.”

The white man squinted at his dark-skinned friend. “But you don’t think so.”

“Nope.”

“Is there a sensible reason for this emphatic ‘nope,’ or are you just naturally contrary?”

“If you hit a man hard enough in the head to knock him unconscious—whether you use a honey-cured Virginia ham or a chunk of firewood—it’ll generally leave a good-sized bump and a bruise the color of a ripe plum. The doctor who treated Senator Davidson at the emergency room told me there wasn’t any evidence of serious trauma to his head.”