The Blight Way (14 page)

A brick chimney rose straight up through the open rafters of the house between the kitchen and the living
room. A wood range was piped into the chimney on one side and a wood heater on the other. Two bedrooms and two baths were off one side of the living room. The kitchen window overlooked a small stream that meandered down through a grove of birch. Tully still heated and cooked with wood, which he cut with a chain saw. He cut cottonwood and quaking aspen for the range, because it burned hot and fast, and birch for the heater, because it burned longer and cooler and because his property contained a lot of birch. Originally, he and Ginger had intended the house to be self-sufficient, so they could survive as artists, he as a painter and she as a potter. Later, they added electric baseboard heaters. “Just in case,” Ginger had said. “Just in case” had been one of her favorite phrases. She liked to have a backup. Tully sometimes wondered if she had a backup for him, and exactly what that might be. Ginger was a much more social person than he. She had loved parties and dancing and hayrides through the snow with friends at Christmas, all of which Tully could easily have done without. Ginger also had trouble with common sayings, which she would change only slightly, thereby adding to the confusion. Water always passed over Ginger's bridges, not under. “Well, that's water over the bridge,” she'd say. Perhaps that was more appropriate for life with Tully. His bridge always seemed to be half underwater, anyway.

“You're just an old stink in the mud,” she had said once, in response to his refusal to attend some social function.

“Stick,” he had said. “The expression is ‘stick in the mud.'”

“Stick!” she said. “That doesn't make any sense.”

“Neither does stink.”

“Yes, it does! In your case, anyway!”

Tully stuffed some paper, cedar kindling and a few small pieces of birch into the heater and lit the paper.

The fire was soon crackling away. He plopped into his rocker in front of it and watched the flames leap and dance behind the tiny glass window in the door. Someday he would sell the place. But not quite yet. He wasn't ready yet.

The phone rang. He walked over and picked it up from his desk in the corner of the living room. “Tully here.”

“Hi, Sheriff. This is Susan Parker. I got your home number from Daisy Quinn. She said she didn't think you'd mind.”

“The pleasure is all mine.”

“I thought you might be interested in the result of the autopsies. Holt, the guy over the fence, probably died about four in the morning, but it's difficult to get any closer with body temperature, because it was so cold that night. As you know, we can pin the time of death of the two victims in the car to exactly three thirty-eight, because one bullet hit the driver's watch. Assuming Holt got out of the car, he would have died after that.”

“How about the bullets?”

“The two men in the car were killed with nine-millimeter full-metal-jacket bullets, military rounds. Passing through the car door pretty well wiped out any useful striations. The guns had to be automatics, probably with
thirty-round magazines, strictly illegal, if that makes a difference. Might have been Uzis. Cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds, as you would expect. Holt, the guy at the fence, was killed with two-twenty-three-caliber rounds with exploding tips. As you probably know, they're like hollow points but with a plastic plug in the hole. The base of the bullets remained intact, though, and we've got good striations there. All you have to do is find the rifle that fired the rounds and we can get a match. That fits with the casing Dave found by the gatepost, a two-twenty-three. Because the two bullet holes are so close together, I suspect they came from a semiautomatic rifle. Neither slug exited. You find any more evidence?”

“A matchstick I may want you to send to the Idaho Crime Lab to see if they can pick up any DNA off of it. Also, I'd like the lab to see if they can give us a match between that pool of blood in the woods and the patch of blood on the skid trail.”

“Anything else?”

“Not much. I'm pretty sure drugs are involved with this whole scene, but I haven't figured out how. Anyway, would you consider having dinner with me tonight? We could kick this whole thing around for a while.”

“Sure. I'm not going to get wrapped up with work over here until about seven, if that's okay.”

“Where can I pick you up?”

“I don't have an apartment yet. Right now I'm staying at the Goddard Bed and Breakfast. I assume you know where that is.”

Bad news. Tully had once dated Carol Smiley, back before she had married that clown, Rich Goddard. “You bet. How does eight sound?”

“Super. That will give me time to shower.”

She at least left Tully with a pleasant image, one that could go a long way toward erasing his images of her carving up dead bodies. But not quite.

He hung up his jacket and eased into his rocking chair with one of the Danielle Steels. He read three chapters and then started thumbing through the book, looking for useful advice. Then he saw it: “He looked at her warmly.” Nothing too smarmy, just a look. This has to be it, he thought. Just a look, a way of looking. He couldn't remember ever looking at a woman warmly. Hungrily, perhaps, but not warmly. He walked into the bathroom and tried out his warm look in the mirror. It was harder than he had expected. He practiced it a few times, until he had it down. Someday he'd read more of the Danielle Steel, but so far he had found it almost painfully boring.

He phoned the office. Daisy said there were no new developments, except the usual reports of prowlers and chainsaw thefts. He told her to get hold of Buck and have him return to Blight City for the night. Then he showered and shaved and put on fresh clothes—gray slacks, a black shirt and his black leather jacket. He slipped into his black loafers, which felt surprisingly light and comfortable after his boots. Tying a length of paper towels around his neck, he trimmed a few unruly hairs from his mustache and eyebrows. His hair was a
bit long. He checked his watch. Four o'clock. He still had time to stop by Clyde's Barber Shop for a trim. He held his hands up to the bathroom light. The knuckles of his right hand were bruised and cracked. Well, nothing he could do about that.

Chapter 22

Clyde Swartze and Everett Barnes were sweeping up the barber shop when Tully walked in.

“Got time for a quick trim?” he asked.

“Always got time for the sheriff,” Clyde said. He indicated his chair. “Have a seat, Bo. How come you're all dolled up? Off on one of your infamous dates?”

“None of your business, Clyde. Just give me a nice neat trim and watch out for the ears.”

Everett sat down in his own chair and began to read the paper. He was about twenty-five and skinny and already going bald.

Clyde tied a paper slip and a big blue barber's cape around Tully's neck. “How's your murder investigation going up in Famine, Bo?”

“It's going, Clyde. That's about all I know.”

“You figure it's got something to do with drugs?”

“Maybe, but we've never had much of a drug problem in Blight.”

“A lot of money in the drug industry,” Clyde said.

“Yeah,” Everett said, “I seen in the paper where the cops up in Spokane busted some wealthy housewives for growing pot in their houses with grow lights. I guess the cops figured out the women were using about five times as much electricity as they should have been. You'd think some of the folks around here would show that kind of initiative.”

“I hate to crush your hopes, Ev,” Tully said, “but Blight County is too cold for much of a drug industry.”

“It's always something,” Clyde said.

A story about food stamps in the paper caught Everett's attention. “Boy, if there's one thing I hate to see, it's people using food stamps.”

“Why is that, Ev?” Tully asked.

“If they'd get out and get a job, they wouldn't need food stamps. They're just lazy. I hate like the devil to be supporting them.”

“I know what you mean,” Tully said. “I ever tell you my theory about poverty, Ev?”

“I don't think so, Bo.”

“I've heard it,” Clyde said. “And I bet I'm going to hear it again.”

“Yes, you are, Clyde. It goes like this. First thing we need to do is to withdraw all support from poor people. If they can't earn their own way, they starve.”

“I'm for that,” Everett said.

“Of course,” Tully went on, “we wouldn't want women and children and babies and old people starving to death out in public, all bony and their eyes bulging
out and like that. I mean that would be disgusting. It would be uncivilized, don't you think, Ev?”

Ev nodded mutely, no longer looking at his paper but staring out the shop's front window, as if imagining people starving to death on Blight City's Main Street.

“No, sir,” Tully went on, “what we would need is some kind of warehouse, out in the country maybe, where we could put the poor people who were starving to death, get them out of sight, for heaven's sake, don't you think, Ev?”

Ev said, “I don't think I'd go that far.”

Tully glanced in the mirror. “Maybe a little more off the top, Clyde.” He looked over at the young barber, who was still staring out the front window.

“Hold still, Bo,” Clyde said.

“Sorry,” Tully said. “I just get carried away every time I hear about food stamps. You don't like the warehouse idea? That's awfully hard, Ev, awfully hard. You'd just let the folks starve to death out there in the street?”

“No, I mean I don't like the idea of letting them starve.”

“I never said curing poverty would be easy. And I wouldn't look forward to hauling starving poor folks off to the warehouse. But I would do it. It would just be too disgusting having them die out here in public. By the way, Ev, you're not one of them bleeding-heart liberals, are you?”

Everett shook his head no.

“Good.”

“You want any cream or anything on your hair, Bo?” Clyde asked.

“Maybe just a tiny bit of tonic, Clyde. Not too much, though, because I've got a business engagement tonight.”

“Anyone I know?” Clyde said.

“I hope not,” Tully said.

Clyde undid the cape and paper strip from around Tully's neck. “There you go, Bo, good as new. That'll be eight bucks.”

“Eight bucks! Boy, speaking of folks getting robbed!”

He gave the barber a ten, slipped on his jacket and started out the door. He stopped suddenly and turned back toward the young barber. “You sure you're not one of them liberals, Ev?”

Everett was still staring out into the street. He shook his head no. “But I'm not totally against food stamps,” he said.

Chapter 23

The restaurant was packed. Fortunately, the owner, Charlie Crabb, had reserved Tully's usual table for him off in a quiet corner. A small lamp shaped like a lantern threw a red light over the tablecloth. Crabbs was the only restaurant in town with actual tablecloths. Both Charlie and Tully thought it gave the place a touch of class. Tully didn't much care for the waitpersons, who seemed to project an attitude that the diners had been granted a considerable privilege to spend their money at Crabbs.

“I thought there would be crab on the menu at Crabbs,” Susan said, obviously disappointed.

“Afraid not,” Tully said. “As you can see from the menu, this is basically red-meat country. I do recommend the prime rib, though.”

“Thanks,” she said, “but I've had enough red meat for one day. Maybe I'll go with the catfish.”

“Good choice,” Tully said. Susan's red-meat image
had taken the edge off his appetite. “I think I'll have that, too.”

“So what do you think that business at the Last Hope Mine Road was all about?” she asked.

“I don't have much of an idea yet,” he said. “The clothes, the money, the fact that all the dead guys were from L.A., make me think drugs had to be involved. But we've never had much of a drug problem in Blight County. For one thing, most folks here are so poor they can't afford drugs. Maybe that's the reason they have such a dim view of them. A known drug dealer here would not be viewed highly. Blight is still pretty much back in the fifties, particularly in regard to dope fiends.”