The Drifter's Wheel Read online

  Behind me I could hear Crawdad trying to talk the school bus driver into moving along. He had to shout. Mrs. Henley had opened the doors to better see the hubbub and the kids on the bus were louder than the old engine. Combined they made a righteous noise.

  “We’re in the middle of an investigation,” Crawdad hollered as politely as he could manage. “That’s all I can say.”

  Mrs. Henley was loath to leave it at that. Several children began to catch on to the situation, and a wildfire of speculation rampaged through the bus. The words “dead body” were flying about with a good deal of vigor.

  Without turning to look at the bus, Skidmore bellowed, “Ms. Henley, if you don’t move that bus right now, today will be the last day in your life where you drive a school bus.”

  The sound of Skid’s voice was piercing. The children fell silent. Even the bus seemed to quiet down.

  “Please, ma’am,” Crawdad added.

  Without further ado, Mrs. Henely sniffed, closed the bus doors, and edged her mammoth vehicle around the police cars, slowly, staring at Skidmore the entire time. The children inside were frantic, filled with glee: it was coming up on Halloween, and they’d seen a dead body. Life was wonderful.

  Mrs. Jackson was more difficult.

  “Who you say it was?” She craned her neck trying to see underneath the blanket.

  “Vagrant,” Skid sighed heavily, “like Melissa said, ma’am.”

  “Then what’s he doing here?” She lifted her head in my direction.

  “I told you,” I muttered to Skidmore, “people are starting to worry when they see me because there’s always a dead body around.”

  “Ask around if you want,” Skid told Mrs. Jackson, his patience straining. “Last night there was a vagrant wandering around up here bothering folks. The final house he came in was Fever’s, and so I called him to see was this man here the same one that was in his house. That’s all.”

  “Well, is it?” She folded her arms and leveled a defiant look at me.

  I was momentarily saved by the sudden, grating siren of an ambulance. The driver had turned it on only half a mile away to let us know he was coming.

  Skid moved closer to Mrs. Jackson.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to go on up to your house now, ma’am.” His voice was granite. “We’ve got to get the body over to the Deveroe boys.”

  The Deveroes were our funeral parlor owners, previously wild boys from the back woods whose chief occupation was hunting feral swine. Everyone knew them. They had undergone a miraculous transformation when their sister had gone temporarily missing—it had changed their way of living. They had gone to mortuarial school. Their funeral parlor had in it a lab that the county coroner used.

  “He didn’t answer my question,” Mrs. Jackson said firmly. “Is that the man who came to your house last night?”

  I looked at Skid.

  The ambulance clattered up the dirt road, siren swelling.

  The sun began to burn off its red color, working its way toward daylight. Light comes up in the morning in the mountains almost as quickly as it disappears at night.

  Skidmore only glanced at Melissa for a second, but she sprang into action. With little more than a lift and a leap, she was over the fence and headed toward Mrs. Jackson.

  “Let me help you back to your house, ma’am, would you mind?” Melissa’s voice was honey.

  “I don’t need any help to get to my own house,” Mrs. Jackson complained.

  “You don’t need any,” Melissa shot back sweetly, “but isn’t it nice to have some?”

  She sounded like a good daughter; even I was calmed by her voice. Mrs. Jackson took one more look at the body, then acquiesced, pulling her sweater around her and taking Melissa’s arm. In truth, it was a bit of an incline up the hill back to the Jackson house, and Melissa really was a help.

  As the ambulance came to a stop, siren silenced, Skid motioned for me to come have one more look at the body. He pulled back the blanket.

  I leaned over and stared. The sky was at least half blue. I could see the man’s face clearly. The hair was different, the nose, the mouth—and the coat fit better. The dead man was bigger than my visitor. Still, the resemblance was uncanny.

  I straightened up.

  “Sorry.” I shook my head. “This is not the guy.”

  The ambulance men appeared behind us. They stood for a moment before one sniffed.

  “Okay, Sheriff, what’ve we got here?” His voice was a parody of authority.

  Skidmore was watching Melissa help Mrs. Jackson back up to the house at the top of the meadow’s rise.

  “I have no idea,” Skid said finally, rousing himself from an odd reverie. “Let’s get him over to the Deveroes and see.”

  Three

  Skidmore and I stood outside the Deveroe Brothers’ Funeral Parlor in the autumn air. The sky had turned a cloudless, steel-hard blue. The breeze was filled with smoke from burning leaves, and the Deveroes had set several pumpkins on the front porch of their place of business.

  The parlor itself was a Victorian-era mansion, once the finest home in the county. It had long since been converted to an Addams Family establishment, but the boys weren’t stuffy about their occupation. At Christmas there were always twinkle lights on the porch, at Easter the railings were hung with baskets of eggs, and in October there were pumpkins—never carved into jack-o’-lanterns—decorating the steps. The only vehicle in the parking lot was a relatively new motorcycle, an incongruous invader. I assumed it belonged to one of the brothers.

  “It’s not a suicide.” Skidmore stared off into space.

  “I didn’t say it was.” I stared at his profile. “You mentioned—”

  “The angle of the bullet when it went in,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard me, “means that somebody held a pistol to his chest and shot him through the heart.”

  “It does?”

  “My conclusion is that the man who was in your kitchen last night killed the man who is in the funeral parlor this morning.”

  “What are you talking about?” I took my hands out of my pockets. “Why would you come to that—”

  “The dead man is dressed in the same clothes as your visitor. How else could he have gotten those clothes? The simple answer is that the man you saw changed clothes with the dead one, don’t you think?”

  “No, I don’t think.” I scowled at him. “Did he kill the man and then change clothes? Did he talk the victim into trading coats and then shoot him?”

  “ After the change of clothing, the man in there was shot through the heart with a pistol.” Skid twitched his head in the direction of the funeral parlor, and the dead body that lay within.

  “I see.” I did my best to make it obvious that I was humoring him.

  “And the man in your kitchen threatened you with a pistol.”

  “It wasn’t so much a threat as a display, as it turned out,” I corrected, “but I understand your point, I think.”

  “So you see that your visitor killed the man we found this morning.”

  “I see that as one possible scenario, yes.” I shrugged. “I don’t know how good it is.”

  “You tape-recorded the man?”

  “I did.”

  “I’ll want to hear those tapes pretty soon.” Skid turned to me, caught my eye. “What was he talking about?”

  “It was a little spooky, actually. He seemed to think he’d been born before World War I. He talked about the murder of his father by his uncle. Like Hamlet. And he referred to himself as a wandering spirit.”

  “He was crazy.”

  “Yes. But he was also one of the more intelligent people I’ve ever met.”

  “Up here, you mean.” Skid looked down.

  “I mean anywhere.”

  Skid was impressed. “Why do you think that?”

  “A lot of things. He was kind of a history buff, knew a lot of meaningless academic minutiae. We also talked about Greek philosophy and the introducti
on of the Tango in Chicago.”

  “Damn.” Skid shook his head, the hint of a smile on his lips.

  “Of course, as I was saying, he also seemed to think he was this transmigrating soul who didn’t pertain to any one particular time.”

  Before Skid could comment on that, the front door of the funeral parlor scraped open and we both turned. The sour county coroner, Millroy, appeared in the doorway. He was a Jack Webb look-alike: cheap cotton suit; tight crew cut; gaunt, tired face.

  I didn’t care for Millroy, and Skidmore liked him less. He’d come to town from Rockford, Illinois, and took every opportunity he could to demean people in Blue Mountain because he considered himself something of an urban sophisticate. He’d been a coroner in Chicago for about twenty minutes before they’d dismissed him for, it was rumored, taking liberties with one of the dead bodies in his charge. I was certain that the stories were unfounded, but the fact that they were still circulating around town was evidence of the general disdain most people felt for the man.

  “Well, it was suicide,” Millroy announced, not really looking at anything. “Gun was pressed right up on the victim’s chest. One shot was fired. No evidence of a struggle. I need to see the gun, of course.”

  Skidmore shot me a glance before he responded. “No gun at the scene. I looked for a good while, and Deputy Mathews combed the area for two hours after I left. No gun.”

  “Deputy Mathews.” Millroy sighed.

  It was impossible for me to tell whether the sigh was a result of his longing for Melissa Mathews, which was oft-repeated gossip in town, or the fact that he didn’t really trust a woman to do a deputy’s job, which was certainly an element of his other-century attitudes in general.

  “Also—and I’m certain you took this into consideration,” Skid said slowly, “but it looked to me like the bullet went straight in.”

  “It did,” Millroy confirmed.

  He stepped off the porch and joined us in the sunlight, pulled a pack of Camel cigarettes from his inside suit coat pocket, and fished for a smoke. It was just one more image of a man out of time.

  “Make a gun,” Skid said to me.

  “What?” I had no idea what he meant.

  “Make a gun.” He held up his thumb and index finger, the way we had when we were kids playing soldiers or cowboys in the woods.

  I smiled, remembering hundreds of long summer days when Skid and I had killed a thousand imaginary villains—with a gun like the one I’d just made.

  “Point it right at your heart,” he instructed.

  I did.

  “Look here.” He motioned for Millroy to stand next to me. Millroy lit his cigarette and moved my way, making a show of his reluctance.

  “Don’t take too long,” I told him, straight-faced. “I don’t like this thing pointed right at me.”

  “What is it?” Millroy’s tone was a full-voiced demonstration of weary indulgence.

  “See how the gun barrel’s at an angle?” Skid offered. “You’ve got to extend a bit of conscious effort to make the gun point straight in. It’s not a natural position.”

  I looked down. My gun was a little angled. In order to make it perfectly straight I would have had to contort my wrist and my shoulder.

  “I don’t care,” Millroy objected. “What kind of person is going to just stand there and let someone else press a gun on his chest without any struggle at all?”

  “Somebody really scared?” I ventured.

  “Somebody who didn’t take the gunman seriously?” Skid added. “Maybe because he knew the gunman?”

  “It was a suicide!” Millroy insisted, louder.

  “It was not a suicide.” Skidmore’s volume matched Millroy’s. “Damn.”

  “Who is the coroner in this hick town?” Millroy exploded.

  “Where’s the actual gun?” Skid fired back. “If he killed himself, why wasn’t the gun in his hand, or right nearby? And I didn’t notice any powder or discoloration on either of the victim’s hands. I mean, damn, Millroy, you don’t think I thought about this at the scene? You don’t think I checked everything?”

  “I don’t know what you checked and what you didn’t,” Millroy snaped. “I don’t know why you’re getting worked up at me. And now I wonder if I want to go up to the scene and have a look around for that gun myself. You and Deputy Mathews seem to be pretty good at distracting one another. Maybe you missed something.”

  “Swing and a miss,” Skidmore said, smiling a little too broadly. “If you mean to insult me, you’ll have to use something a little more current. Gossip about me and Deputy Mathews died down about two years ago. You might try talking to me about the music my oldest girl is listening to on the radio. That gets me pretty mad sometimes.”

  “All I said—” Millroy sighed.

  “If you call it a suicide, you moron,” Skid snapped, “I can’t go out and find the murderer. That will keep me up at night, and I’ll get mean. I don’t like to be mean. I take it out on people around me. It can get really bad.”

  “I’ve seen it,” I volunteered.

  “Watch that ‘moron’ talk, you dumb-ass cracker, I’ll put a hurt all over you.”

  “Boys, boys,” I intervened, mostly kidding, “name calling will get us nowhere. I’m going to have to ask you to go to your respective corners.”

  “Did you already make out the report?” Skidmore asked, obviously unwilling to let it go.

  “Yes, I did.” Millroy threw his cigarette on the ground, blew out a gray steam, and squinted.

  “If you file it as a suicide—” Skidmore hissed.

  “ When,” Millroy declared.

  Skidmore sucked in a deep breath, held it for a second, and closed his eyes.

  “If you file it as a suicide,” Skidmore began calmly, “I say again: It makes it harder for me to go out and catch the murderer. I have to go about it unofficially—in secret—and I don’t like secrets. So I’ll tell you what I’d like you to do. I’d like you to wait a bit, just a little bit, before you file officially.”

  “I understand there’s been some sort of computer virus going around that’s wreaking havoc with the county system,” I improvised. “Maybe it would be best to wait, say, forty-eight hours before you trusted the system with your report?”

  “If I’m right,” Skid added, “it’ll keep you from looking like a moron, which I’m sorry I called you. And if I’m wrong, it’ll give you a really good opportunity to lord it over me.”

  “Win-win,” I told Millroy, smiling.

  Millroy stared down at his cigarette. It was still glowing orange in his shadow on the ground.

  “I guess I’d hate for that virus to screw me up,” he said finally, crushing out his smoke. “What’s today? Tuesday? How about if I do a few more tests. But if you don’t bring me something to stop me by the end of business on Thursday, I’m filing as I see it now.”

  Skid nodded once.

  Though we had barely more than forty-eight hours, that didn’t seem too short a time. The man we would be looking for was almost certain to be hiding on the mountain where Skid and I grew up, a place we could walk in our sleep. No one would hide him; he’d be on his own, easy to find.

  We’ll most likely get him tomorrow, I thought.

  “And I’m sorry I called you a dumb-ass cracker.” Millroy was staring at the ground. “‘Cracker’ has implications of racism, and I know you’re not remotely a racist, not anything like it. You’re a perfectly ordinary dumb-ass. That man in there killed himself.”

  “Long as I know where I stand.” Skid blinked once at me and headed for his police car, parked beside my truck.

  I followed Skidmore; Millroy went back inside the funeral home.

  “I’m not sure I completely grasp—” I began.

  “If he files his report with the county,” Skidmore explained, opening his car door, “and it says suicide, I have a whole lot of explaining to do when I log in hours and fill out reports about an ongoing murder investigation concerning the same d
ead body. And don’t even begin to suggest that I could do the work and not file the paper. I have to file the paper.”

  “There’s that much paperwork in your job?”

  “It’s all paperwork,” he sighed. “There’s no job to it.”

  “Jesus, really?” I stood beside my truck. “Your work’s almost as bad as a college professor’s.”

  “I don’t see the point of insulting me.” He started the car.

  “So we have a little more than forty-eight hours.” I leaned back on the passenger door of my truck. “So let’s get started. Where do I go?”

  “You could have a talk with the other two people the stranger visited. I mean, he bothered about ten people one way or another, but he only talked to two.” His eyes were glued to the ground. “I believe you’re really going to want to talk to them.”

  “Why is that?” I could tell he was uncomfortable.

  “Well, one of the people is Hovis Daniels, that old man you used to interview so much before he started getting put away all the time. He’s out again, living on the Jackson property as usual—about five hundred yards from where we found the body. I still don’t think he pays any rent. Mrs. Jackson’s just—”

  “Doing her Christian duty.”

  “Something like that,” he agreed. “I went up to question him when I first found the body, but he wasn’t there. It’s a pretty good coincidence that a dead body was found so close to his shack, though.”

  “Yes. I’ll talk to him almost immediately. Who’s the other person?”

  “That’s the thing.” He shifted in his seat. “The guy visited your—well, your fiancée, Lucinda, last night, too. She’s the one that called me first. That’s how I knew the guy had been—”

  “What?” I snapped. “You’re just now telling me this? What’s the matter with you?”

  “I didn’t want you to get upset.”

  “Well, of course I’m upset!”

  “Because you’re concerned about Lucinda,” he began, looking down, barely holding back a grin, “or because I used the word ‘fiancée’?”

  “Damn it, Skidmore, is she—”

  “She’s fine. Don’t you think I would have told you before now if there was a problem? The guy left; she locked her door; then the guy came to your place. That’s the story.”