Back of Beyond (8 page)

Kill the man first, he thought. A double-tap into the thickest part of his torso as fast as he could squeeze the trigger, then swing on the woman and do the same. Then, if necessary, killshots to the head.

Could he kill a woman? The idea sickened him. “There,” the man said, his voice rising. “Right
there.
Look.”

Had they found it? he wondered.

He saw the pool of their flashlight before he saw them. There was a glint of gold in the muck of the floor.

“It looks like a coin,” she said.

“Yes, it does,” he said, distressed. “I don’t know how I could have missed it.”

Because,
Cody thought,
I put it there two hours ago.
Gold-foil-wrapped chocolate coins went for $1.89 at Walgreens these days.

And he cleared the edge of the logs and barked, “FREEZE, YOU FUCKERS!”

She screamed and threw her flashlight into the air with the same motion that she covered her mouth.

He blinded Cody with his light but before he did Cody saw a hand reach down and grip a pistol and raise it and there was a star-shaped explosion of fire tinged with blue and a deafening crack. And something white-hot and angry slapped the side of his face.

And that’s when Cody shot the county coroner. Double-tap, two loud snaps and two yellow-green tongues of flame. Skeeter went down like a puppet with its strings clipped.

Cody lowered his weapon, the sharp smell of gunpowder and his own blood biting at his nose, and said, “Oh, shit.”

Carrie Lowry didn’t stop screaming until her sobs and admonitions took over.

6

Cody sat back in an uncomfortable
chair across from Sheriff Tubman in his cramped little office. The door was closed, and had been for an hour. There had been no eight thirty briefing that morning. Undersheriff Bodean perched on the corner of Tubman’s desk, looking almost straight down at him. On the credenza behind the sheriff was his hat, brim-down, and the morning’s
Independent Record
with
EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT: CORONER SHOT BY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT
blaring across all four columns of the front page. Cody thought,
Carrie got that big story I promised her after all.

“You really ought to put your hat crown-down when you’re not wearing it,” Cody said. “You’ll ruin the brim that way.”

Tubman closed his eyes, to keep from exploding, Cody guessed.

“How you can joke at a time like this is beyond me,” Bodean said, shaking his head.

“Really,” Cody said, “it’ll flatten the brim. Trust me on this.”

“Look at my phone,” Tubman said. “All the lights are blinking. Everybody wants a statement and they’re willing to stay on hold until they get it.”

“Sorry,” Cody said.

“Yes,” Tubman said, “you are.”

Bodean cleared his throat and stuck his chin out. “In case you don’t know the procedure, Detective Hoyt, this is an officer-involved shooting, so give me your badge and your gun.”

Cody shifted in his chair and unclipped the badge and slid it across the desk to Tubman. He pulled his Sig Sauer and handed it grip-first to Bodean. “Careful,” he said, “it’s loaded.”

Bodean walked the weapon over and put it gingerly on top of a metal filing cabinet. He said, “You are officially on administrative leave with pay. We’ve got a call in to the state to send an outside team to investigate the incident. They’re likely to be here tomorrow, so stay in touch with us at all times.”

Cody nodded.

“Don’t go anywhere for seventy-two hours. That’s when we’ll take your statement and based on what the state criminal investigation team says, you might be placed under arrest.”

Even though he knew it could happen, Cody felt a chill crawl through his scalp.

Said Bodean, “It’s my duty to advise you to keep your mouth shut until you give your official statement. At that time, you should be aware that under
Garrity versus New Jersey,
you may be disciplined if you refuse to answer questions about your conduct on the job. You have no Fifth Amendment rights as a cop. In the meantime, the only person you should talk to is a peer counselor we’ll assign. Do you understand what I just said?”

“Yeah, but I don’t mind talking. And if you send a social worker to my place I’ll mace him,” Cody growled. “It went down exactly like Carrie Lowry wrote in the paper. Skeeter drew first and fired after I told him to freeze. I shot him in self-defense.”

Tubman continued to shake his head, as if he were watching his career slink away.

Bodean said, “She wrote that you didn’t identify yourself.”

“I didn’t get the chance. Skeeter was fast for a ghoul.”

“You refused to take a breathalyzer test.”

“It’s my right. I don’t trust those portable things. I took one later here at the station.”

“
Hours
later,” Bodean said, “after the alcohol in your system had a chance to metabolize. And you still came in a .88. That’s barely sober and it was four hours after the shooting. And the officer on the scene said you smelled like a still.”

“Dougherty wouldn’t know a still if he tripped over it,” Cody said.

“You’re lucky Skeeter was wearing a vest. Your first slug hit him here,” Bodean gestured toward his heart. “The second one was above the armor and really messed up his shoulder. But he should be okay and giving press conferences any time now.”

Instinctively, Cody reached up and touched the compress taped over his right ear where Skeeter’s round had clipped him. The bullet had taken a half inch of his earlobe and the wound bled like crazy until they got it stopped.

After the emergency room docs had bandaged and released him, he’d tried to talk to the coroner, who was upstairs in the same hospital. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to yell at Skeeter or apologize or shoot him again. He didn’t get an opportunity to make the choice because a hospital security officer wouldn’t let him past his desk until visiting hours.

“Why in God’s name was Skeeter wearing a vest and carrying a weapon in the first place?” Cody asked. “He’s the
coroner.
And he shouldn’t have snuck a reporter into a crime scene just so she could get some photos. That’s not right. He was acting suspiciously.”

“We’d all like to know that and it’ll come out in the investigation,” Tubman said. “He might be in as much trouble as you are or more. But in this instance I’m glad he had the vest or we’d have a homicide investigation going and you’d be in our jail.”

Cody shrugged. “Speaking of homicide,” he said, “I’d still like to help on the Hank Winters murder investigation.”

“It wasn’t a homicide,” Tubman said with force.

“It was,” Cody said.

“Stay away from it,” Tubman said. “Stay away from this office. Stay away from Larry.” He leaned forward on his desk and balled his fists. “And stay the hell away from
me.
”

The door opened and Edna stuck her head in. “Sheriff, the governor is on the line. He wants a briefing.”

Tubman moaned and sat back. To Cody, he said, “Go away. Go straight out the door and go home. Don’t even talk to anyone. And stay by your phone.”

Before Cody left the room, he ducked behind the sheriff and turned the offending hat over.

*   *   *

Larry was alone in the detective
room, scrolling through digital images of the crime scene Cody had shot two nights before. Although his shoulders tensed when Cody entered the room, he didn’t greet him. And when Cody shut the door behind him, Larry seemed to be studying the screen even more intently than before.

“I’ll be out of here in a minute,” Cody said.

He went to his desk and started filling an empty box he’d grabbed outside the evidence room with his papers, gear, and the nascent murder book he’d begun.

“Next time,” Larry said finally, “go for a head shot.”

“Ha.”

“Man, when you dive in you go
deep.
I’ll give that to you.”

Cody grunted.

“A gold-wrapped chocolate coin?” Larry laughed.

“It worked, sort of,” Cody said. “If the killer thought he’d left one behind…”

“You know what’s going to happen,” Larry said. “Skeeter knows he’s in trouble, too. So he’s going to try and get out ahead of it with the press and the voters. He’s going to start yapping and paint you in the worst light possible and try to taint the investigation.”

Cody shrugged.

“So, what happened with the sheriff?”

“I’m suspended until they clear me.”

“You are so fucking lucky, Cody. You could have killed the coroner or gotten killed yourself. And I don’t doubt for a second that you were hammered at the time.”

“I was blitzed,” Cody said. “But when I pulled the trigger I felt completely sober. Strange how that happens. Adrenaline trumps alcohol: remember that.”

“Are you over it? The binge, I mean?”

Cody said, “I think so. I’m not promising anything, though.”

“Yeah,” Larry said, finally swiveling around in his chair to face him, “I found out how solid your promises are.”

“I’m really sorry about that,” Cody said, looking out the window at the lawn in front of the Law Enforcement Center. “And I want to thank you again for covering for me.”

“The last time,” Larry said. “Ever.”

“That’s reasonable.”

Larry let a beat pass. Then, “I’m rethinking the Winters death.”

“You are?” For the first time in forty-eight hours, he felt a little nudge of hope.

“Yeah. While you were partying with your old pals yesterday, I was doing police work.”

“And?”

“The preliminary autopsy shows blunt head trauma. Of course, they don’t know yet whether is was pre- or postmortem. I mean, the guy was covered with the beams from his roof that fell on his noggin. But there wasn’t any smoke in his lungs. Meaning he was likely dead before the fire got out of hand. As you know, it’s never the fire that kills ’em. It’s the smoke.”

“Interesting there was no inhalation.”

“And there’s another thing good about all that rain and cold weather,” Larry said. “According to the lab, there had been too much time between the death and the discovery of the body to find out if there was any alcohol in his bloodstream. Plus, the heat of the fire could have literally burned it out. But because the body was kept fairly cool, they’re going to cut his eyes out and test ’em.”

Cody winced. “His
eyes
?”

Larry read from his notes. “The vitreous humor can be tested. This is the jellylike substance within the eyeball. Alcohol can be detected there and it lags behind the blood level. That is, it reflects the blood level about two hours prior to death. If it is elevated, the ME can say that the victim was likely intoxicated. They can’t get a blood alcohol level, but they can
possibly
say it was there at the time of death.”

“When will they call you back?”

Larry shrugged. “Soon, I hope. It’s not definitive, but if there’s no smoke in the lungs and no sign of alcohol consumption, it will pretty much kill my accident or suicide theory. Because that means somebody opened a bottle and left it to be found with the body, and somebody opened the door of the stove.”

Nodding, Cody said, “So our killer bashed him in the head, drank or poured out the bottle, and set the place on fire.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions,” Larry said.

“Well,” Cody said, “here’s another jump. Whoever did it knew Hank once had problems with alcohol. Since Hank hadn’t had a drop in five years, they’d have to know Hank’s history. A stranger wouldn’t likely know that, would he?”

Larry started to argue but the edges of his mouth turned down and he nodded. “I see where you’re going. But who would know, besides you?”

Cody didn’t answer. He let Larry figure it out.

“Every other person in your AA group,” Larry said. “You people confess everything to each other.
They
would know.”

Cody said, “Exactly.”

Larry said, “So we need to establish the whereabouts of all of the Helena AA members between the hours of eight and midnight three nights ago.”

Cody paused. “How’d you determine the time of death? The ME?”

“Naw. The receipt from when Winters bought the steaks had the exact time on it: 6:03
P.M.
It takes almost an hour to drive from the store to his cabin, so let’s say he was there by seven. Montana Power and Light said the cabin had a power outage at midnight, which I attribute to the fire. So there’s our window.”

Cody was impressed. Larry
was
good.

“Back to the alcoholics,” Larry said. “Do you know them all?”

Cody nodded.

“Do you have a list?”

“At home,” Cody said. “There’s thirteen in our little group. Of course, there are groups all over and a hell of a lot more alcoholics in Helena than you’d imagine. But our group is small because of when and where we meet. I can e-mail it to you. I can’t officially work on the case, but I can feed
you.
”

“Cool,” Larry said. Cody could see a light behind his eyes. They were getting somewhere.

“I hate this, though,” Cody said. “I’m betraying their trust. This is really a shitty thing to do to them. I mean, you’ll be surprised. We’re talking doctors, lawyers, a couple politicians. Even somebody in our office.”

Larry
was
surprised.

“Edna,” Cody said. “But you don’t need to question her. She was working dispatch here every night this week.”

“Don’t worry,” Larry said. “I won’t even hint at how I got their names. I’ll say we’re simply following up on everyone we could find who might have known him. I might even fudge it a little and say we recovered an address book and we’re just calling all the names in it. I won’t mention AA and I won’t bring up your name.”

“Thank you, Larry. Really.”

“But you’ve got to understand something, you asshole,” Larry said. “I’m not being your pal here. I want you to go back. You
need
to go back to AA, or I’ll never work with you again. And I’m not blowing smoke.”

“I know you’re not.”

“Oh,” Larry said, slapping the tops of his thighs, “I forgot to tell you something else. I sent the hard drive of that fried computer down to some IT guys at MSU. They think they may be able to retrieve the data off it. That surprised the hell out of me because I thought data would, you know,
melt.
”