Cold Quiet Country (17 page)

Brady cracked the side door and a cloud of stink spilled out. Exhaust fumes and the beginning of bloat—the whisper of death before the smell gets rank. I told Brady to open all three garage doors and the air began to clear. A station wagon occupied the middle bay. Inside, two men faced the far wall—one of them so big the car tilted to the passenger side. Marshall Pounder. I walked to the driver window, which was rolled partways down. They’d buckled themselves in. Their eyes stared at a pinup calendar on the wall above the workbench.

“Open it up,” I said.

Brady lifted the latch on the driver side. It was stuck. Brady fumbled, looked back at me. “Should I be doin’ this? I mean, is this a crime scene?”

“Don’t know that yet, Brady. What do you think?”

“It don’t look good.”

“No, it don’t.” I shouldered him aside and lifted the latch. The heavy door croaked on its hinges. Steward sat with his hands on his lap, crossed like an undertaker’d seen him last.

I hunkered down and looked inside. Marshall was the same, though his belly didn’t leave as much lap.

I reached around the steering wheel to the column. The keys were in the ignition, left in the “on” position. I left them.

“Get the print case,” I said.

Odum lollygagged across the lot to the Bronco.

“Whaddaya suppose happened?” Brady said.

“Both these boys died.”

Brady snorted.

“This don’t look like a Pounder derby car. What was they building?”

“I dunno,” Brady said. “They keep me working in the yard, bustin’ parts loose.”

“Well, you seen ’em build cars.”

He nodded, looked at the wagon. “For one, the brothers always strip a car first. Get rid of everything they won’t want later. Pull the seats, radio, glass, upholstery, everything. They rebuild it the way they want. Reinforcement welds. A roll bar. A big-ass V-8. The regular stuff.”

“So a demo car doesn’t have any glass.”

“Not a bit.” He looked at the windows.

“What about headlights.”

“No, sir. Nothing. Too dangerous. You don’t want chunks of glass flyin’ at you in the arena.”

“Pop the hood.” I circled to the front. “Don’t stand there lookin’ at me. Pop the goddamn hood.”

Brady wiped his hand on his pant leg and reached inside. The latch snapped, and I lifted the hood. “Come around here for me.”

Brady stood beside me.

“You know any station wagons come with a five-oh-two?”

“No, sir. No, I don’t. But I ain’t a car man—”

“No, you ain’t a car man. You just spend every day tearin’ them apart. How many ladies need a big block to haul groceries and rugrats?”

“Don’t make sense.”

“So these boys souped up a station wagon before they took out the glass.”

Brady’s face twitched. He shook his head back and forth. “No, Sheriff. No, sir. I see where you’re going here.”

He moved sideways, past the workbench. I followed.

“This how you found them?”

“Just so. I opened the door and the exhaust was thick as, well, it was thick. I came in, saw them, and made the phone call.”

“From which phone?”

He pointed to the section of garage that had existed before the add-on. “Right around the corner. On the wall.”

“You called from inside, in all the exhaust?”

“Uh, yessir, Sheriff.”

I stood closer to him. “Why didn’t you take off? Coulda been halfway across the state before you was missed.”

“Yeah, well, but I’d a had everybody thinking I killed Stu and Mars. And I didn’t. Kill them, that is. No, sir.”

I grabbed his neck and shoved him into the wall. Knocked a Craftsman wrench from a nail. Brady choked and his eyes flared like a horse seen a rattler.

Odum entered behind me. “Got the fingerprint kit—” His footsteps stopped.

“I’m not going to fuck with you all afternoon, Brady. I say the word and you spend the rest of your life jacking off to a concrete wall. You need to convince me you ain’t bein’ cute. Nod your head.”

I nodded his head for him. Bounced his skull on cement blocks.

“You know the thing about a shop phone? It’s got a lot of grease on it. You know what makes a fingerprint?”

“Gggghhht.”

“Speak up.”

“GGGGHHHTTT.”

“When I dust that phone for prints, am I going to find yours?”

I eased up so he got his wind. He shook, said nothing.

“I asked you a question.”

He shook his head.

“Where’d you call from?”

His eyeballs twisted toward the house.

“So you killed these boys and went to the house and called from there?”

I let him go. He stooped, hands on knees, and breathed raspy breaths. “No, Sheriff! I didn’t kill ’em! I found ’em!”

“Odum, go look around the house. You remember how to dust a print?”

“Yes. Yes, Sheriff.”

“Then do it. I need to talk with Brady another minute.”

I circled Brady and slapped him into handcuffs before he heard them jingle.

“Aw, shit, Sheriff. I didn’t do these boys. They was good to me.”

I stood him up and walked him toward the bay door, and glanced inside Marshall’s side of the station wagon. The floor caught my eye. Rusty and flat, not contoured like you’d expect.

“Stand here,” I said, releasing his elbow. “You run, I shoot. Crime solved. Savvy?”

He nodded jerkily.

The Pounder boys had welded a sheet of half-inch steel under the seats that extended all the way up the foot well. The inside panel of the door was loose. Pulling it back, I saw they’d welded half-inch steel inside.

“Brady,” I said. I pulled my piece. Cocked it. “I think you’re trying to escape right now.”

“No, sir. Shit!”

“What were they doing with this car?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, have mercy!”

“He can’t hear you. Don’t want to listen. You better answer my goddamn question.”

“They called it a war-car, is all I know. That’s all. I swear.”

“Well, your word’s good with me. Just one more thing—and if I think you’re lying I’m going to blow your fuckin’ head off. Where’d you stash what you took from the house?”

Brady trembled and a wet spot swelled between his legs and down the inside of his right thigh.

“Blue mustang, below the spruce. Couple guns. Little cash. Fifty bucks. That’s all.”

“Keep talkin’.”

“That’s it. I came here and found them just like that. Went to the house, scrounged a bit. Got scared. I only took a couple things for safekeeping. Then I called.”

“I’m havin’ trouble with that.” I pointed my piece at his head. Closed one eye and greeted him over the sights with the other.

“Look at them!” Brady said. “You saw them. Their faces wouldn’t turn dark in just a couple hours, would they?”

Odum came out of the Pounder house shaking his head. Stowed the print case in the Bronco and joined Brady and me. As he approached, Odum watched my suspect, and his eyes followed Brady’s arm to the cuffs. “He do it?”

“There’s no work release on Sunday!” Brady said. “Couldn’t have been me.”

“How long can a car idle on sixteen gallons of gas?” I say.

“Not that long!”

“Half-gallon an hour,” Odum said.

“Thirty-two hours,” I said. “Was you here Saturday?”

“No work release on Saturday either.”

I faced Odum. “He didn’t do it. But he robbed them.”

“Didn’t see anything missing in the house.”

“I didn’t expect you would.”

When we got the Pounder brothers out of the vehicle, neither had a mark—almost as if they’d made a suicide pact but forgot to leave a note. They’d been dead since the night before. Their faces were black and their eyes bulged. The gas tank was empty and the ignition was on. The car had idled until it ran out of gas, filling the air with a cloud of carbon monoxide that didn’t dissipate until Brady opened all three garage doors. Engine must have run all night and only stalled shortly before Brady arrived.

I uncuffed Brady. Told him to fetch whatever he’d taken and put it back in the house. He watched me and walked backward the first few yards, jumpy as a fart on a griddle. Like facing me would stop a bullet, midair.

“Go ahead,” I said. “But you remember this. I want you out of this state the day you get released. Y’hear?”

He picked up his pace.

After the Pounder boys killed themselves, things were different at the Lodge. The same suck-asses brought me beer and talked mindless shit, but the group’s militiamen kept away. They stayed away from Burt, too.

It bothered me a little, the Pounders dying without any holes or bruises, until one day I overheard talk of the Militia losing track of a couple items. A gas mask, among other things. Burt lifted his brows at that. It wasn’t hard to guess from there. I figure he held the Pounders at gunpoint and watched through half-fogged lenses while they got dizzy and passed out. Then he left.

Something about the way Burt done them kind of tickled me. If I’d have turned out bad and not good, I’d have been one of the cleverest killers ever. Like Burt. But there’s nothing clever about Gale G’Wain. His blood is cold and he’s got the brains of a cement block.

Councilmen I’d kept loyal for thirty years made new friends, new alignments. By the time Deputy Travis’s daddy, the Mason, predicted the town council would find the money to fund another slot, so long as it went to Travis, I knew the fix was around the bend.

I’m accustomed to folks knowing who wears the brass ring. They don’t have to kiss it, but they damn well need to know who wears it. My family’s been prominent since my great granddaddy named Bittersmith after himself. Then these yahoos get gumption.

Odum’s been with the Masons a few years now, and three of the four on the town council are brothers in the Masonic sense. And Travis’s daddy was one of the crew that aligned against Burt after the Pounders died.

Long story short, I don’t trust nobody.

* * *

Full of dread, I crest the knoll. Ahead, between trunks and bowed, snow-covered limbs, Cooper kneels.

He’s in a bowl beside an ice-age boulder, and with no trees immediately above, the snow falls straight on him. His back is to me, but the wind goes out of me as I study his posture. His shoulders are curved, and from this angle, he looks like a man who has taken a fist to the gut.

I had a knot on my head and a three-inch ache beneath it. If anything, I bet Cal walloped me with a rolling pin. But I wasn’t thinking about that with Burt dragging me by my boots, getting snow up my back. The cover was only a couple inches and plenty of rocks poked through. My time spent blacked-out let my temper cool, so I wasn’t inspired to rip Burt’s head from his shoulders anymore. I figured he’d tire and drop my legs, and if I skedaddled, there was no way he’d have the strength to chase me.

It was funny, letting him drag me without a fight. Every minute, him wearing himself out and me getting stronger. I’d have let him drag me all night, but having spent the fall working in those fields, I knew my location almost from the slope of the terrain. His direction would have me at the edge of the woods soon. Burt was big, not huge, but a life of farm work will make an average fellow’s muscles tough as steel. Burt must have already dragged me a half mile, and I took that as the measure of jealous fury.

There were a dozen ways he could have gotten me from his house to the woods. He could have thrown me over his shoulder and carried me, and it would have been less work. Or even tied me to a tractor. I think he wanted to drag me.

He mixed guttural sounds with curses. It took a lot of strength to lift my head high enough to see exactly where he was taking me. He hadn’t bothered with a coat or hat. He had my ankles in the crook of one arm, and used the other to lock his elbow. He dragged me through a depression. Coming out the other side, he slowed and his grunts were strained.

We’d be at the woods in a few seconds, and I bet he’d rest before trying the scrap wood and briars. A few years ago, he’d cut the timber at the edge of the field and let it lay, and came by when he had spare time to saw the half-dried trees into firewood. In a moment we’d arrive where there was a lot of brush and short branches lying around. He’d have to switch to carrying me, or brain me there.

Burt dropped my legs and bent over, supported his weight with his hands on his knees. His breath came out like from a blacksmith’s bellow.

I reared back and kicked. Caught his behind and sent him face-first into the snow. I flipped to my belly and jumped to my feet. The knot on my head made me woozy and it took five or six steps to the right just to get my balance. In that time Burt rolled to his feet, and my advantage was gone.

He gulped air, and I thought if I could sprint thirty yards, there was no way he’d have the lungs to catch me. But I stood there. If I took off, he’d have a few steps to grab me, but with my balance off and all my blood in my head from being upside down for fifteen minutes, my legs didn’t have any confidence.

He lunged and I sidestepped. Lost my balance again while he came at me. I was at the edge of the woods. We squared off. His arms hung like a knuckle-dragger’s and though his eyes were feral, his mouth curved in a smile. It was a frozen moment, him looking at me, me looking at him, and I figured the longer I waited the better shot I had at feeling normal, but I couldn’t wait too long because he’d get his strength back, too.

“Does Missus Haudesert mind you fucking Gwen?” I said. “Or does Cal visit his mother while you’re with your daughter?”

His eyes remained glazed but the corners of his mouth were like a wave that had crested and now sought the other extreme. He hadn’t shaved for Christmas. He crept sideways, still stooped, arms spread wide, like those
National Geographic
tribesmen who can catch rabbits by leaping to one side and it’s fifty-fifty whether they guess right. Burt and I moved partway in a circle, only five feet apart.

“You know there’s a special place in hell for men like you,” I said.

He smiled.

I swooped to a maple shaft sticking through the snow, the end of a branch cleaned from a limb, but it was frozen to the ground. Burt didn’t move, only grinned, and his eyes worked sideways.