Pale Gray for Guilt (18 page)

Crickety little Burgoon glanced over at Tom and then looked at the fat girl again. "Girl, I don't think you rightly know just how much trouble you're asking for. You see, I know you're lying."

Tom, responding to his signal, came in on cue. "Bunny, why in God's name you being so kindly to this fat dumb slut? Let me run her on out to the stockade and turn her over to Miss Mary. Leave her out there three or four days and Miss Mary would purely enjoy sweatin' off fifteen pounds of slop and teaching her some manners. She'd have a nice attitude when you have her brought back in."

Arlene Denn turned and stared at Tom. She bit her lip and swallowed and looked back at Burgoon, who said, "Now, if we have to come to that, Tom, we'll come to that. But this isn't any ninety-day county case. And this isn't any one to five up to the state women's prison. What the law of the State of Florida says is that giving false testimony in a capital case, or withholding evidence in a capital case is punishable by a maximum sentence of imprisonment for the rest of her natural life."

She stiffened as much as her figure permitted, sat up straight and said, "You've got to be kidding, Sheriff!"

"You know how to read, girl?"

"Of course I know how to read!"

He dug a battered manual out of a desk drawer, licked his thumb and found the right page. He handed it across to her. "Second paragraph down. That there is sort of a short form of everything against the law. It's what new deputies have to study up on and pass a test."

She read it and handed the manual back. She looked over at me. The look of vacuous stupidity was gone, and I realized it was the mask she wore for the world she was in.

"Now, without me saying I would change my story, Sheriff, let's suppose I did. What would happen to me?"

"Would the new story be the exact truth, Arlie?"

"Let's say it would be."

"Would it have you out there seeing anything at all?"

"Let's say it would have me seeing somebody else instead of Mr. McGee. Let's say that when I looked in the window, Mr. McGee and Mrs. Bannon were just talking."

Burgoon said, "What do you think, Tom?"

"I think she ought to do some laundry work for Miss Mary for thirty days."

"Maybe. Maybe not. I'd say it's going to depend on why she showed up with those lies."

"Regardless," said Arlie, "would you bust me for any more than thirty days?"

"Only if it turns out you're telling more lies. We are going to check this new one out every way there is, girl."

"Okay then, here is the way it really was…" The sheriff told her to wait a moment. He spoke into his intercom and got hold of Willie and told him to bring in some fresh tape, and told him the Denn girl was changing her story, and stop the transcript on the old story. Willie groaned audibly. He came in with the fresh tape, took the old one off the machine and set it for record.

"It's mostly all still good what I said before," Arlene said. "I just have to change some parts. I mean it would save doing the whole question bit right from the start, wouldn't it?"

"Then, save that tape, Willie," said Bunny Burgoon, "and close the door on the way out."

He started the tape rolling, and established time and place and the identity of the witness.

"Now, Mrs. Denn, you have told us that you wish to change portions of your previous statement."

"Just two… no, three parts."

"What would be the first change?"

"I didn't hear anybody say anything that sounded like Jan. The two men were mad at each other, but I didn't hear any word like that."

"And what is the second change you wish to make?"

"What if you decide to protect your own and throw me to the dogs, Sheriff?"

"What is the second change you wish to make?"

"Well… it wasn't Mr. McGee I saw. The man I saw did everything in the other statement the way I told it. But it was Deputy Sheriff Freddy Hazzard."

"Oh, God damn it!" said Tom.

"Hush up," said Bunny.

"And the third change?"

"I looked in the window back in October but they were just talking. Drinking tea. That was all."

"Now, hold it a minute, girl. Tom, you go tell Walker and Englert to pick Freddy up and bring him back here and… Damn it, tell them to take his weapon and put him in the interrogation room and hold him until I can get around to him. When does he come on duty, Tom?"

"I think tonight he's on the eight to eight again. But you know Freddy."

"Sheriff?" the girl said as Tom left the office. "You weren't having me on, were you? About how big I could get busted for telling something that didn't happen?"

"I never said a truer thing in my life, Mrs. Denn."

"Why box me?" I asked her.

The vacant blue look she gave me was a total indifference. "Every straight one looks exactly alike to me."

Tom came back in looking distressed. "Damn it all, Bunny, he was out there checking the skip list when you came over the box telling Willie this girl was changing her story. And he walked right out and took off. He's in uniform, driving number three. Terry is trying to raise him on the horn but no answer. All points?"

Burgoon closed his eyes and rattled his fingers on the desk top. "No. If he's running, there's eighty-five back ways out of this county and he knows every one of them. Let's see what more we've got here." He leaned wearily and put the recorder back on.

"Who induced you to lie about what you saw that Sunday morning, Arlie?"

"Deputy Hazzard."

"What inducement did he offer you?"

"Not to get busted for possession, and some other things he said he could bust us for."

"Possession? Do you mean narcotics, girl?"

"That's your word. That's the fuzz word. But all we had was acid and grass. Booze is a lot worse for you."

"Arlie, are you and your husband addicts?"

"What does that mean? We're affiliates with the group up in Jax. And we get up there now and then. We take trips sometimes here, but it's a group thing. You couldn't comprehend, Sheriff. We all have our own thing. We don't bug the straights, and why shouldn't they leave us alone?"

"How did Deputy Hazzard learn you'd been a witness?"

"Like an accident. Last Thursday night out at the Banyan Cottages there was a complaint from somebody, and I guess it would be on your records here someplace. I didn't even know Hazzard's name. But he was the one who came there. Five of the kids had come down from Jax, three of them gals, in an old camper truck in the afternoon, from the Blossom Group in Jacksonville, and they had some new short acid from the Coast that never gives you a down trip and blows your mind for an hour only. We had almost two lids of Acapulco Gold, and we just started a lot of turn-ons there in the cottage, relating to each other, that's all. At night, sometime, I don't know what time, maybe the music got too loud. An Indian record. East Indian, and the player repeats and repeats. Maybe it was the strobes. We've got one and they brought two, and each one had a different recycle time, so there was a kind of pattern changing all the time. I guess you have to know the way it was when Hazzard came busting in. We had the mattresses and the blankets on the floor, and one of the gals was a cute little teeny-bopper and I'd painted her all over eyes."

"Ice?" said the sheriff.

"Eyes," she said impatiently. "Like eyeballs and eyelashes. All colors. And one boy and girl were wearing just little bells and rattles. You do whatever. Who are you hurting? It was blossom-time. A love-in, sort of, and our own business. Just with the strobe-lights and the samisen music and he came breaking in because maybe we didn't hear him. Him and his gun and his black leather evil thing for hitting and hurting. You can't turn off a high like in a second. So he found the lights and ordered things in a big voice and nobody did what he said or cared. So he starts yelling and chunking people. The teeny-bopper wanted to tune him in and turn him on I guess and she started throwing flowers at him and he chunked her too. Of the seven of us he chunked the four that were turned on to the biggest high, chunked them cold, and he chunked the record player, busted it all to hell and got the other three of us finally sitting in a row on the cold bare bed springs holding onto the backs of our necks. Not scared or angry or anything. Just sorry there's no way of ever getting through to that kind of a straight. All he thinks of is busting people and busting things. And he chunked all the three strobes and broke them up. They're expensive and hard to find ones that don't overheat and burn out when you keep them cycling a long time. In my high I understood all about him. He was breaking things and hitting heads because he hated himself, and I had seen him mushing Mr. Bannon with that heavy motor, and I knew that was why he hated himself. He collected up all the grass and the three little vials of powdered acid, and he picked up all the color po laroids laying around that a boy had taken earlier to take back to Jax to the group on account of the girl painted all over eyes was a big turn-on for him."

"Lord Jesus God Almighty," said the sheriff in a hushed voice.

"He was going to radio for help and take everybody in and bust them, and I just felt sorry for him being so empty of love and so I said to him that he hated himself for what he did to Mr. Bannon. He looked at me and he picked up a blanket and wrapped it around me and took me out in the night. He shoved me up against his car and I told him the whole thing, just the way I saw it. I told him he could trade in his hate for love, and we could show him the way. I could feel myself beginning to come off the high, because I began to think about it being a lot of bad trouble, and it was a poor time to get busted because of orders Roger and I had to fill. He kept wanting to know who I'd told about it, and while I was coming off the trip I got smart enough to say maybe I had and maybe I hadn't. So he said he was going to keep the evidence and think about what he was going to do, and we should cool it and he would come talk to me the next day.

"So in the morning the kids headed on away in the camper truck and the first thing I did was tell Roger the whole thing. That was Friday, and Hazzard came out in the afternoon and sent Roger out of the place and talked to me. He said he'd put the evidence away in a safe place, and in the pictures he had proof on both Roger and me on the teeny-bopper on corrupting a minor, and lewd and lascivious conduct. Then he questioned me over and over on what I saw that Sunday. Then he brought up if I knew a friend of Bannon's named McGee. I told him about just that one day, and he made me remember every little part of it. So he walked back and forth and then he told me I was going to come in and make a statement and what I was going to say. I asked him why I should do anything he said, because if he left us alone, I wouldn't say anything about him. He said if I didn't do it, he would bust us both good, and he had enough proof and enough charges to get us both five to ten anyway. And I said if he tried to bust us that way, when he took us in, I'd tell what I saw him do. And he said then it would be pretty clear to everybody that I was making it up just to try to get him in trouble for doing his job and nobody would believe it because nobody ever believes an acid head about anything, and those pictures would make a hog sick. He said if I did my part, then after McGee was convicted, he'd give back everything he took. Then he gave me a chance to talk it over alone with Roger and for a while we thought maybe we ought to just take off and go merge into a colony someplace, but we went that road for a while and we relate better like plastics."

"What? What?" asked the sheriff.

"Take the group thing now and then, and have a square thing we do for bread. We take off and we lose the trade we've built up that comes to maybe a hundred and fifty a week on average, and then maybe that Hazzard could get us brought back anyhow." She combed the fingers of both hands back through the dark blonde stiffness of her long hair, shook it back and said, "So we decided okay, only what we didn't know is how I could get busted a lot bigger for the statement than for what he's got on us, and I didn't know McGee would be in the clear, because he said maybe McGee might not even get to answer any questions at all. So where are we?"

"Where are you?" the sheriff asked. "Honest to God, I don't even know what you are, girl."

I looked at my watch. It was just eleven o'clock. The sheriff told Arlie he'd like to hold her and her husband in protective custody on a voluntary basis, and she agreed. I knew that part of the case against Freddy Hazzard would be Press LaFrance's testimony about whatever conversation he'd had with his nephew, triggered by my comment to LaFrance about the possible reason why Tush had been killed. But had I reminded Burgoon of that point, he was going to mess up my timing, which was already two hours off. So I wondered out loud if Tush could have come in by bus early Sunday morning and if Hazzard, cruising around, had picked him up near the bus station and driven him out there.

Arlie had been taken off to the female detention tank. Tom, the chief deputy, said that if anybody could place Hazzard and Bannon together in town at dawn on Sunday, it would lock it up tighter.

"Tighter than the way he run?" Burgoon asked. "He was a good boy. He worked harder than any two others I got. Just a little bit too handy with that mailorder pacifier sometimes. But you take a county where you got some hard cases back in the piney woods, a little head-knocking keeps things leveled off. He lived clean and straight. It must have shook that boy when he checked out that complaint, walking in on that. Like looking into a bucket of mealy grubs. What's going wrong with folks lately McGee?"