The Blight Way (20 page)

“Sorry, but I can't. That's my father waiting in the car. He just turned seventy-five and is terribly cranky about it.”

Cindy Littlefield returned with a pad and pen, and he gave her his home number.

“By the way, Ms. Cassidy,” he said, “I appreciate your recommendation on Danielle Steel.”

“You found a book you liked?”

“I did, indeed.”

She laughed. “You don't seem the type.”

“Really?” he said. “Well, I loved the book.” He was about to try his warm look on her, but then thought better of it.

Pap stuck his head out the window of the Explorer and yelled. “Bo, get over here! Fast! We just got a call on the radio!”

“Sorry, gotta go. If Vern calls again, tell him I have to talk to him right away. Very important.”

“Is it about those people who were killed?”

“I can't discuss it. Please have Vern give me a call.” Tully turned and ran back to the car.

“For heaven's sake, Pap, what is it?”

“It just came over the radio! An officer's down out on Highway 95! I think it's Buck.”

He took out his cell phone and called Daisy.

“Yes, it's Buck!” she told him. “Someone shot through his windshield right before a turn. Buck didn't make the turn.”

“Is he . . .”

“No, not yet, anyway. He got broken glass sprayed in his face and a bunch of cuts from that. The bullet hit him in the right shoulder but didn't go through his vest. He got banged up, too, from going off the road and flipping over. That's the info from the State Police. The ambulance is on its way out there now.”

“So he's going to be . . .”

“I don't know. The patrolman didn't think his injuries were fatal.”

“Pap and I are on our way into Blight City right now. We'll stop by the hospital on our way in.”

As he wheeled the Explorer around to head out the driveway, Tully noticed the two women still standing on the porch, watching.

“I don't know why anyone would shoot Buck,” Pap said.

Tully tugged hard on the corner of his mustache. “That's what I was thinking.”

Chapter 38

At the accident scene, they could see Buck's Explorer lying on its top in tall grass off to the side of the highway and on the outside edge of the curve. A state patrolman was directing traffic around a Blight City wrecker that blocked one lane.

Tully walked over to the patrolman. “What happened, Bill?”

“Buck took a bullet through his windshield, sprayed glass all over his face and hit him on the right shoulder. I think most of the damage was done when he went off the road.”

“Any idea where the shooter was?”

The patrolman pointed up the hill. “I'm out here all by myself and haven't had a chance to look around. I think he had to be up there, somewhere in direct line with the road.”

A car in the line behind them began to honk irritably.

“I should rip out that jerk's horn wires,” Tully said.

“I wish you would,” said the patrolman.

“Anyway, Pap and I are going to look at Buck's vehicle before it gets towed.”

Tully drove around the curve and found a place to park. He and Pap walked back along the highway and climbed down to the wreck. The two wrecker men were arranging straps to roll the Explorer back onto its wheels.

“Hold up a second,” Tully told them. “We need to have a look at this.”

One of the wrecker men shrugged and dug out his pipe and began to fill it from a leather tobacco pouch. His partner finished fastening a cable to the vehicle, then sat down on a rock.

Tully got on his knees and looked into the front seat.

“Not too much blood,” he told Pap. “The medics must have got to him right away.”

One of the wrecker men walked over and stood above him, gesturing with his pipe. “He crawled out the passenger-side window. It had all the glass knocked out of it. There's more blood over there but not too much, I guess.”

“Was Buck gone when you got here?”

“Yep. The ambulance was just pulling away. We're only about twenty minutes from the hospital, so they did get to him pretty fast. A motorist called the wreck in on a cell phone.”

Tully studied the shattered windshield. “Whoever shot him meant to kill him. A few inches to the left and it would have been a head shot.”

“Bad business,” said the wrecker man.

Tully got back to his feet. “Wait for me in the car, Pap,” he said. “I'm going to climb up the hill and see if I can find the place the shot came from.”

“Suits me.”

Tully scrambled up the bank and crossed the highway.

Cars were now backed up twice as far, the patrolman standing in the middle of the curve, directing cars around him in the single lane. Tully pulled himself up the hillside by grabbing small trees and branches. Once he reached the woods, the ground leveled out slightly and he was able to climb standing up. Thirty feet up he found a spot where the shooter had sat, his rifle resting on a stout tree limb directly in line with the highway. He had broken off some tiny branches to make a clear rest for the rifle. Tully closed one eye and aimed an imaginary gun at one of the cars in line down below. It would have been an easy shot, the car coming at him head-on. The shooter had to know it was a Blight County Sheriff's Department car. As he had hoped, a shell casing lay on the ground next to the base of the tree. Either the shooter was careless or stupid. Tully hoped the latter.

He picked the casing up with his pen, put it in his pocket and then climbed farther up the hill. The shooter certainly wouldn't have walked to this place, he thought. A couple dozen yards up the hill, he came to an old logging road. It was covered with pine needles too thick to allow a foot to make an impression. He walked down the road and soon came to a rotten tree that had fallen across it. He climbed over the tree. There were
some scuff marks where some of the loose bark had been kicked away. There were also impressions of tires on the lower side of the log. The tires were set close together. The shooter had arrived and left by ATV. He would get Lurch up here to make impressions of the tracks.

Chapter 39

It was ten o'clock at night. Tully and Pap had talked to the doctor who had treated Buck. “Coming through the windshield glass pretty well messed up the slug,” he said. “It was stuck in Buck's vest. I've got it in my office. You can pick it up there.”

“Thanks,” Tully said.

A nurse told them Buck was awake but heavily medicated and that they weren't to stay long.

Buck seemed glad to see them. He smiled weakly. His massive chest was wrapped in bandages and his right arm was in a cast. The entire right side of his head was also covered with bandages, leaving only his left eye to blink at them.

“How you doing, Buck?” Pap said.

“Okay,” Buck said. “After that camping out, I needed a vacation, anyway.”

“I think you may have taken a bullet intended for me,” Tully told him.

“That's about what I figure,” Buck said. “Who would want to shoot me?”

“I don't suppose you have any idea who shot you,” Tully said.

“Naw. I did see a flash of light up on the hillside. I must be getting jumpy, because for some reason I thought of sun reflecting off a scope. I would have swerved left and back until I got around the curve, but a car was coming in the other lane. Then there was a terrific explosion, the shot hitting the windshield, I guess. The next thing I remember I was laying on some grass alongside the Explorer. And there was some people standing around me, and some guy was yelling, ‘Don't touch him, don't touch him.'”

“You get a look at any of those people?” Tully asked.

“No, I thought I might be blind. I had some cuts in my forehead and the blood was running down in my eyes. Couldn't see a thing.”

“You'll have some good-looking scars, anyway,” Pap said. “No point in having scars people can't see. I have a few of those myself.”

“I'll bet you do,” Buck said. He laughed and then winced.

Tully said, “We've got a couple of your pretty nurses telling us to leave you alone, that you need your rest, so we'd better leave.”

“Pretty nurses? I guess I haven't seen them yet.”

“Take it easy, Buck,” Pap said. “And give the nurses a hard time.”

“You bet,” Buck said.

Tully and Pap rode the elevator back to the lobby.
There were three chrome coffee thermoses on a table near a couch. Tully walked over and flopped back on the couch.

“Pour me a cup, will you?” he said to Pap.

Pap got two foam cups out of a packet next to the thermoses and pumped out two coffees.

“Cream and sugar?”

“How does it taste?”

Pap took a sip. “Like you'd expect hospital coffee to taste.”

“In that case, dump in some of the white stuff.”

Pap dumped in some white stuff and stirred it with a little stick. He handed the cup to Tully. He didn't put any of the white stuff in his own coffee, but tore open two packs of sugar and dumped them in.

Pap sat down on the couch next to Tully. “I hope you're not conking out on me, Bo.”

“I'm not conking out. It just upsets me that one of my men got hurt.”

“Upsets me, too,” Pap said. “A lot of folks deserve to get shot, but Buck isn't one of them.”

“Why would someone shoot Buck? Do you suppose we've got some nut out there randomly shooting cops?”

“Could be, but I don't think so. You know that red Explorer of yours looks exactly like Buck's red Explorer. Except his is cleaner.”

“So you think someone mistook Buck for me?”

“That's what I think.”

“Who knew we were headed back to Blight City?”

“As far as I know,” Pap said, “the only person you
mentioned it in front of was Ed, back at the station. So probably the whole town knew within half an hour.”

Tully tugged thoughtfully on the corner of his mustache. “You don't think Ed is involved in this business, do you?”

“I never count out anybody in a murder. The good news is, if that shot was intended for you, somebody must think you're getting pretty close to solving this thing.”

“I wish somebody was right,” Tully said. “Anyway, as soon as I pick up that slug from the doctor, I've got to stop by the office and check on things there. So I'll probably stay in town tonight. I'm heading back up to Famine the day after tomorrow. You want to come?”

“No. But I will. You aren't smart enough to handle a difficult situation like this all by yourself.”

“Thanks.”

“You're worrying these murders to death, Bo. Maybe Susan could take your mind off them.”

“She probably could do that, all right. Don't know if she would, though. She seems like a very orderly person. I'm pretty much a mess most of the time.”

Pap drained the last of his hospital coffee, shuddered slightly and stood up. “Sounds like the perfect combination to me.”

Chapter 40