Shoofly Pie & Chop Shop (35 page)

Nick stared thoughtfully into the sky. “So this big problem was that his old friend found out he had a nasty habit—and that was worse than the war? Worse than bombs and tanks and dead people? So bad that he could never even talk about it—even years later?”

The sheriff shrugged. “You’d have to ask Jim about all that.”

“Yes,” Nick nodded. “And that’s not easy to do.”

The sheriff grew impatient. “Anything else?”

“Yes,” Nick said. “Where did Jim McAllister get all his cocaine? In a small town like this, for all those years?”

“Beats me.”

Nick did a double take. “You don’t know? You knew your friend was a user when he came back from the Gulf. You knew he must have had a supplier. You mean there were drugs being sold in your nice little town for all those years, and you never even knew about it?”

“Not in my town. Maybe his connection was up Fayetteville way. That’s a rough town, an army town. There’d be plenty of connections up there.”

“You knew your friend was a user, and you didn’t like it. Didn’t you ever think about cutting him off from his source?”

“I didn’t know the source, okay?” the sheriff said angrily. “Jim stuck to himself a lot. Disappeared for weeks at a time. Nobody knew what kind of people he was hanging around with—nobody,” he said with a glance at Kathryn, then turned back to Nick again. “Any more questions, Doc?”

“Just one more.” He paused. “The night before last—the night Teddy was murdered—where were you? I checked the phone records. Teddy didn’t call your office, and he didn’t call your home; he called your cell phone. Where were you when he called?”

The sheriff shoved his hands deep into his pockets and kicked furiously at the dirt. He muttered something to himself and glanced quickly up at Kathryn—but it was a full minute before he finally answered.

“I was … with Jenny McIntyre,” he grumbled.

“After midnight?”

“After midnight.”

“How long were you there?”

“Most of the night.”

“All night?”

“All night, okay?”

Nick smiled.

Kathryn stared at Peter in embarrassment and confusion, and Peter did everything he could to avoid her gaze. “Will you excuse me?” she said awkwardly, and the two men watched in silence as she walked away.

“Okay, Doc.” The sheriff turned to Nick. “It’s just the two of us now, just you and me—so why don’t you drop the act and tell me what’s on your mind? I’d like to know how you’ve got this whole thing figured.”

Nick studied the sheriff’s face carefully.

“I figure you’re in love with Kathryn. It’s not really love, of course—it’s more like a pathological obsession—but it’s the closest thing you’ve got. It must have really popped your cork when she decided to marry Andy. But then you got a lucky break when he was killed in the Gulf, and you had a second chance. You played the knight in shining armor to the grieving widow—you were her savior, her deliverer. You couldn’t win her love, so you tried to earn it—but it didn’t quite work, did it? I think she wants to love you, but for some reason she can’t—maybe because deep down inside she sees through you, just like I do. You kept pursuing her, but somewhere along the line she started to feel the heat, so you backed off. Like they say in these parts: If you send in the dog too fast, you flush the bird. That’s where Jenny McIntyre comes in. The sheriff got himself a girlfriend—in name only, of course—and that took the pressure off Kathryn. Now you two could be buddies again. That was a neat bit about spending the night with Jenny. Boy, I would have loved to be a Diptera on that ceiling. You should have seen the look on Kathryn’s face when you told her—but then, you were staring at the ground at the time, weren’t you?”

The sheriff stared at Nick with the eyes of a shark—eyes gray and flat and impenetrable; eyes capable of masking an entire ocean of rage and wrath with utter, absolute coldness.

“You seem to enjoy pushing me, Doc,” he said with no hint of emotion. “Why is that?”

“It’s hard to say,” Nick said thoughtfully. “You seem to bring out the worst in people.”

“I’m not a fool, Doc.”

“Believe me,” Nick said, “I never took you for one.”

There was a long, icy silence.

“Something really bothered Jim McAllister after the Gulf,” Nick went on. “I call it guilt. I think ol’ Jimmy knew more about what happened to Andy than he let on. They served in the same unit, went into battle side by side … I think Jimmy saw an opportunity to have a second chance at Kathryn—and I think he took it.

“So he wrestled with his conscience—but it wasn’t bad enough to stop him. He still had to deal with you—after all, only one of you could have her. That’s where you come into the picture. I’ll bet the two of you had a very interesting competition going over the years—vying for position, trying to outdo one another in service to the grieving widow.

“About a week ago it finally came to a head, and that’s when you murdered him. I’m not so sure you planned to. Maybe the two of you had an argument, and it got out of hand. Maybe he wanted to kill you; after all, he had his gun with him. Maybe you just meant to hit him, and he fell backward—with his right leg propped up. Then you saw your opportunity, so you shot him in the head with his own sidearm and then placed the gun in his hand. No gunpowder residue, remember?

“Not very sophisticated, was it—a phony suicide? I mean, for a professional like you who’s seen enough murders to know how to do it right. So sloppy, so many potential questions. Now what do you do? How would you ever get away with it? It took you several hours to figure that one out—time enough for the lividity in the left leg to become fixed. Then it suddenly dawned on you—what better place to bring the body than your own backyard, where the county coroner is the ice cream man! You knew that Mr. Wilkins’s incompetence would allow you to avoid an autopsy and all the nasty questions that would go with it. So you dumped the body here—with the leg flat this time—in a meadow where you knew hunters would stumble across it in just a day or two. Very neat. But the ironic thing—the funny thing—is that your plan was spoiled by the only person in the world you care anything about.”

The sheriff shook his head. “You’re in the wrong business, Doc. You should be writing those detective stories.”

“Truth is stranger than fiction, Sheriff. Two nights ago the final specimen emerged from its puparium, and Teddy called to let you know; the poor guy was actually naive enough to cooperate with you. There could only be one reason to make a fuss over that last specimen—it must have been indigenous to some other area, verifying our suspicions that the body had been moved. But there was only one fly, and Teddy was the only one who knew about it. So you sent poor Teddy home, then released the fly—and left the door open to make it look like an accident. And then, for the coup de grâce, you somehow made it to Teddy’s trailer ahead of him and waited. Very tidy; no evidence, and now no witness.”

Nick began to slowly shake his head. “But the thing I find incredible—the one real shining moment in all of your pathology—is when you put a bullet in the face of an innocent old woman just to help cover your tracks. Her death wasn’t even essential. You could have gotten away with Teddy’s murder without it. It was that extra little touch that shows what a truly demented individual you are.”

The sheriff said nothing at all for a moment. Then he began to smile and finally laughed outright.

“So that’s your story?” he said through his laughter. “If I spent all that time at your lab that night, how could I beat your partner to his trailer? And how could I murder your partner and poor old Mrs. Gallagher if I was with Jenny the whole night? And most of all, why would I want to kill my own best friend? Why would I need to? To win Kath? I’ve been first in line for Kath ever since Andy. It was never about Jimmy, Doc.”

“There are still a few missing pieces to the story,” Nick said. “I don’t suppose you’d care to help me with the details?”

“What are you going to do with a cockamamie story like that? You’ve got no evidence or witnesses at all. You think you can take a fairytale like that to the law?”

Nick smiled and leaned forward. “I’m not a fool either, Sheriff. The evidence is gone—you’re in no danger from the law. The only way I can hurt you, the only thing that really matters to you, is if I can sell my story to Mrs. Guilford.”

The sheriff stopped abruptly. He stood silently for several moments, expressionless once again, and then he began to smile once more.

“You hang on like a tick. I got to give you that. She must be paying you a fortune.”

Nick shook his head. “This isn’t about money. This is for Teddy.”

“Go ahead,” the sheriff shrugged. “Try to sell your story to Kath. There’s one piece of the equation you’re overlooking, Doc: You’re the outsider here. She’s known you for, what—a week now? Kath and I grew up together. She loves me.”

“Like a brother,” Nick needled.

“Maybe so—but that still makes me the brother and you the blind geek from Pittsburgh. Who do you think she’s going to believe?”

“You, of course. Unless.”

“Unless what?”

“Unless one of those missing pieces turns up.”

“So long, Doc.” The sheriff waved. “I’ll be seeing you around.”

Nick gazed after him as he moved away. “I’ll be watching for you.”

Nick headed slowly across the churchyard, the sheriff’s questions kept returning to him.

How could the sheriff murder Teddy and Mrs. Gallagher if he was with Jenny McIntyre all night? Was he really at Jenny’s, or was it just an empty alibi? He must have been there at least part of the night—the story would be too easy to check out. But if the sheriff came and went during the night, Jenny would certainly
know. Would she lie to protect him—maybe to win him away from Kathryn?

He approached the picnic table lost in thought when the glint of sunlight from something on the table caught his eye. Beanie stood beside the table like a towering totem with a band of tiny worshipers gathered about him. The deputy held them back from the table with his trunklike arms. The children were oohing and aahing over Beanie’s police sidearm, shining in the hot afternoon sun.

“Don’t touch,” Beanie said with great authority. “Everybody look, but don’t touch.”

Nick stepped closer and peered over the heads of the solemn assembly. “What kind of gun do you have there, Deputy?”

“A police gun,” Beanie said proudly.

“It looks a little like the sheriff’s gun.”

“ ’Zactly like Unca Pete’s gun.”

It was exactly like the sheriff’s weapon—a 9 millimeter Beretta 92F, the civilian equivalent of the standard army sidearm. They were identical except for the absence of the engraved emblem of the All American Division.

“I think Uncle Pete’s gun is bigger.”

“ ’Zactly the same!” Beanie repeated with obvious irritation.

Fifty yards away and thirty feet in the sky, a single black Calliphora vomitoria hovered in the breeze, head into the wind, sensing and sampling the air as it rushed past. Suddenly, the blow fly detected an airborne cluster of blood molecules—and then another. She eagerly followed the elusive scent forward, drifting down from cluster to cluster, the scent leading it irresistibly onward until it finally came to rest on the handgrip of the deputy’s gun.

Nick spotted the fly even before it landed. “That’s enough,” Beanie said. “I got to put it away now.”

“No!” Nick grabbed his arm as he reached for the gun. “Tell me more about your gun, Beanie. Do you ever get to use it?”

The fly wandered over the serrated grip, its extended proboscis in constant motion—probing, sensing, tasting.

“Can’t talk about that.” Beanie shook his head.

“Do you ever clean it? You can tell me that.”

“I wipe it off sometimes.”

The sun bore down on the gleaming chrome pistol, and the
metal grew steadily warmer. The fly worked its way slowly over the Beretta, first to the trigger guard, then the frame, then the slide, its senses leading it inerrantly toward the muzzle of the gun.

“But do you ever really clean it? Take it apart? Clean the barrel?”

Beanie shook his head. “Wipe it off, mostly. Makes it shiny.”

Nick held his breath as the fly hesitated for a moment at the very tip of the muzzle—then disappeared into the deep blackness of the barrel.

Nick stood paralyzed, watching as Beanie carefully picked up the weapon and slid it neatly back into its leather holster—exactly as he had done two nights ago after firing a bullet into the base of Teddy’s skull.

Nick turned and drove his right fist into the center of Beanie’s face. The nasal bone shattered beneath the blow, and blood spurted from both nostrils. The children scattered like startled doves. Beanie staggered backward from the force of the blow, and Nick was on him like a spider on a fly, driving his massive body to the ground with a thundering whump. With his left hand he grabbed for Beanie’s bulbous throat, and he brought his right fist back for a crushing blow—and then he stopped. For one split second he met Beanie’s eyes, and there he saw … nothing. There was neither malice nor anger nor cruelty of any kind. There was nothing but confusion and sorrow and pain. They were not the eyes of a killer—they were the eyes of a little child. Nick lowered his fist. In his rage at the puppet master, he had attacked the puppet.