Still Life With Crows (35 page)

“You know very well that’s my land. It’s leased to Buswell Agricon, KSU’s partner in the project.”

“Did you know Dr. Stanton Chauncy?”

“Of course. The sheriff and I showed him around town.”

“What’d you think of him?”

“Probably much the same as you.” Lavender gave a little smile that told Sheriff Hazen all he needed to know about Lavender’s opinion of Chauncy.

“Did you know in advance that Chauncy had chosen Medicine Creek for his site?”

“I did not. The man played his cards close.”

“Did you negotiate a new lease with KSU for the experimental land?”

Lavender shifted his body languidly and leaned his heavy head to one side. “No. I didn’t want to queer the deal. I said if they chose to go with Deeper, they could have it at the same rate as Buswell Agricon.”

“But you were planning to increase the leasing fee?”

Lavender smiled. “My dear fellow, I
am
a businessman. I was hoping for higher fees for their future fields.”

My dear fellow.
“So you expected the operation would expand.”

“Naturally.”

“You own the Deeper Sleep Motel, am I right?”

“You know very well I do.”

“And you own the Hardee’s franchise?”

“It’s one of my best businesses here.”

“You own all the buildings from Bob’s Sporting Goods to the Hair Apparent, right?”

“This is a matter of public record, Sheriff.”

“And you own the Grand Theater building—currently empty—and you’re the landlord of the Steak Joint and the Cry County Mini-Mall.”

“More common knowledge.”

“In the past five years, how many of your tenants have broken their leases and gone out of business?”

Lavender’s wide face remained smiling, but Hazen noticed that the man had begun winding the diamond ring around his pinky.

“My financial affairs are my own business, thank you very much.”

“Let me guess then. Fifty percent? The Rookery closed down, the Book Nook’s long gone. Jimmy’s Round Up went out of business last year. The Mini-Mall is about two-thirds empty now.”

“I might point out, Sheriff, that the Deeper Sleep Motel is currently running at one hundred percent occupancy.”

“Yes, because it’s filled with media folks. What happens when the big story ends? It’ll go back to being about as popular as the Bates Motel.”

Lavender was still smiling, but there was no mirth now in those wet lips that stretched across the lower half of his face.

“How many tenants are behind on their rents? Trouble is, you’re not really in much of a position to get tough and kick ’em out for missing a payment, are you? I mean, who’s going to take their place? Better to lower the rents, stretch things out, write a note or two.”

More silence. Hazen eased up, let the silence build, taking a moment to give the office another once-over. His eyes fell on a wall of photographs of Norris Lavender with various big shots—Billy Carter, brother of the president; a couple of football players; a rodeo star; a country-and-western singer. In several of them, Hazen could see a third figure: hulking, dark-complected, muscle-bound, unsmiling: Lewis McFelty, Lavender’s sidekick. He hadn’t seen him when he came in, although he’d been looking out for him. More evidence to back up his theory. Hazen took his eyes off the creepy-looking man and turned back to Lavender with a smile. “You and your family have owned this town for almost a hundred years, but it looks like the sun might be setting on the Lavender empire, eh, Norris?”

Sheriff Larssen spoke. “Look here, Dent, this is sheer bullying. I fail to see how any of this could possibly connect with the killings.”

Lavender stayed him with a gesture. “I thank you, Hank, but I’ve known what Hazen’s game has been from the beginning. This dog is all bark.”

“Is that a fact?” Hazen shot back.

“It is. This isn’t about the killings in Medicine Creek. This is about my grandfather supposedly shooting your poor old granddaddy in the leg.” He turned toward the KSU security man. “Mr. Raskovich, the Lavenders and Hazens go back quite a ways here in Cry County—and certain people just can’t get over it.” He smiled back at Hazen. “Well, sir, it just isn’t going to warsh. My grandfather never shot your grandfather, and I’m no serial killer. Look at me. Can you imagine me in a cornfield carving someone up like one of those turkeys you people turn out over there in Medicine Creek?” He looked around smugly.

Warsh.
There it was, rising to the surface like fat in a stew. Norris Lavender might sprinkle his speech with all the “indeeds” and “my dear fellows” in the world and it still wouldn’t cover up the smell of white trash.

“You’re just like your grandfather, Norris,” Hazen replied. “You get other people to do the dirty work for you.”

Lavender’s eyebrows shot up. “That sounded remarkably like an accusation.”

Hazen smiled. “You know, Norris, I kind of missed your pal Lewis McFelty when I came in just now. How’s he doing?”

“My assistant, poor boy, has a sick mother in Kansas City. I gave him the week off.”

Hazen’s smile broadened. “I certainly hope it’s nothing serious.”

Another silence.

Hazen coughed and continued. “You had a lot to lose with this experimental field going to Medicine Creek.”

Lavender opened a wooden box full of cigars and pushed it across the table to Hazen. “I know you’re a committed smoker, Sheriff. Help yourself.”

Hazen stared at the box. Cubans, wouldn’t you know it. He shook his head.

“Mr. Raskovich? Cigar?”

Raskovich also shook his head.

Hazen leaned back. “You had
everything
to lose, didn’t you?”

“Does anyone mind if I indulge?” Lavender reached into the box and removed a cigar, holding it up like a question between two thick fingers.

“Go ahead,” said Hank, casting Hazen a malevolent glance. “A man has a right to smoke in his own office.”

Hazen waited while Lavender slid a little silver clipper off his desk, trimmed and clipped the end of the cigar, admired his handiwork, picked up a gold lighter and heated the end of the cigar, then licked the other end, placed it in his wide mouth, and lit it. The process took several minutes. Then Lavender rose and strolled to the window, folded his tiny hands behind him, and stared out across the parking lot, puffing languidly, from time to time removing the cigar to stare at its tip. Beyond his slender figure, Hazen could see a horizon as black as night. The storm was coming, and it was going to be a big one.

The silence stretched on until Lavender finally turned. “Oh,” he said to Hazen, feigning surprise. “Are you still here?”

“I’m waiting for an answer to my question.”

Lavender smiled. “Didn’t I mention five minutes ago that this interview was over? How careless of me.” He turned back toward the window, puffing on the cigar.

“Take care not to get caught in the storm, gentlemen,” he said over his shoulder.

Hazen peeled out of the parking lot, leaving precisely the right amount of rubber behind. Once they were on the main drag, Raskovich looked over at him. “What was that story about your grandfather and his?”

“Just a smokescreen.”

There was a silence and he realized, with irritation, that Raskovich was still waiting for an answer. He pushed the irritation aside with an effort. He needed to keep KSU on his side, and Raskovich was the key to that.

“The Lavenders started as ranchers, then made a lot of money in the twenties from bootlegging,” he explained. “They controlled all the moonshine production in the county, buying the stuff from the moonshiners and distributing it. My grandfather was the sheriff of Medicine Creek back then, and one night he and a couple of revenuers caught King Lavender down near the Kraus place, loading a jack mule with clearwater moonshine—old man Kraus had a still in the back of his tourist cave in those days. There was a scuffle and my grandfather took a bullet. They put King Lavender on trial, but he fixed the jury and went scot free.”

“Do you really think Lavender’s behind the killings?”

“Mr. Raskovich, in policework you look for motive, means, and opportunity. Lavender’s got the motive, and he’s a goddamned son of a bitch who’d do anything for a buck. What we need to find out now is the means and opportunity.”

“Frankly, I can’t see him committing murder.”

This Raskovich was a real moron. Hazen chose his words carefully. “I meant what I said in his office. I don’t think he
did
the killings himself: that’s not the Lavender style. He would’ve hired some hitman to do his scut work.” He thought for a moment. “I’d like to have a chat with Lewis McFelty. A sick mother in Kansas City, my ass.”

“Where’re we going now?”

“We’re going to find out just how
hurting
Norris Lavender is. First, we’re going to take a look at his tax records down at the town hall. Then we’re going to talk to some of his creditors and enemies. We’re going to learn just how deep in the shit he was with this experimental field business. This was his last chance, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he bet the farm on this field coming through.”

He paused. A little public relations never hurt. “What do you think, Chester? I value your opinion.”

“It’s a viable theory.”

Hazen smiled and aimed the car in the direction of the Deeper town hall. It sure as hell was a viable theory.

Forty-Three

A
t two-thirty that afternoon, Corrie lounged restlessly on her bed, listening to Tool on her CD player. It had to be at least a hundred degrees in her room, but after the events of the other night she didn’t have the guts to open her window. It still seemed impossible to believe that guy from Kansas State had been killed just down the street. But then, the entire last week was beyond belief.

Her eyes strayed to the window. Outside, huge thunderheads were spreading their anvil-shaped tops across the sky and a premature darkness was falling. But the approaching storm only seemed to make everything muggier.

She heard her mother’s voice through the bedroom wall and cranked up the volume in response. There were a few muffled thumps as her mother tried to get her attention by knocking on the wall. Jesus. Of all days for her mother to call in sick, when Pendergast no longer needed her and she was stuck at home with nothing to do and too freaked out for her usual retreat on the powerline road. She almost longed for Labor Day and the start of school.

The door to her room opened and there was her mother, standing in her nightgown, too-skinny arms draped over a too-fat stomach. Smoking a cigarette.

Corrie slipped off her earphones.

“Corrie, I’ve been yelling myself hoarse. One of these days I’m going to take away those earphones.”

“You
told
me to wear them.”

“Not when I’m trying to talk to you.”

Corrie stared at her mother, at her smudged mascara and the remains of last night’s lipstick still staining the cracks of her lip. She’d been drinking, but not, it seemed, enough to keep her in bed. How could this alien be her mother?

“Why aren’t you out
working?
Did that man get tired of you?”

Corrie didn’t answer. It really didn’t matter. Her mother was going to have her say regardless.

“As I figure it, you got paid for two weeks. That’s fifteen hundred dollars. Is that right?”

Corrie stared.

“As long as you’re living here, you’re going to contribute. I’ve told you this before. I’ve had expenses up the wazoo lately. Taxes, food, car payments, you name it. And now I’m losing a day’s tips because of this nasty cold.”

Nasty hangover, you mean.
Corrie waited.

“A fifty-fifty split is the
least
I can expect.”

“It’s my money.”

“And whose money do you think’s been supporting you these past ten years? Certainly not that shitbag father of yours. Me. I’ve been the one working my fingers to the bone supporting you, and by God, young lady, you’re going to give something back.”

Corrie had taped the money to the bottom of her dresser drawer and she wasn’t about to let her mother see where it was. Why, oh why, had she ever told her mother how much she was making? She was going to need that money to pay for a fucking lawyer when her trial came up. Otherwise she was going to end up with some crappy public defender and find herself going to jail. That would make a terrific impression, mailing her college applications from jail.

“I told you I’ll leave some money on the kitchen table.”

“You’ll leave seven hundred and fifty dollars on the kitchen table.”

“That’s way too much.”

“For supporting you all these years, it’s hardly enough.”

“If you didn’t want to support me you shouldn’t have gotten pregnant.”

“Accidents happen, unfortunately.”

Corrie could smell the acrid scent of burning filter as the cigarette was inhaled right down to the butt. Her mother looked around, stubbed it out in Corrie’s incense burner. “If you don’t want to contribute, you can go find yourself another place to live.”

Corrie turned roughly away and replaced her earphones, cranking up the music so loud her ears hurt. She faced the smudged wall, stone-faced. She could just barely hear her mother shouting at her.
If she so much as touches me,
Corrie thought,
I’ll scream.
But she knew her mother wouldn’t. She’d hit her once and Corrie had screamed so loud the sheriff came. Of course, the little bulldog did nothing—he actually threatened
her
with disturbing the peace—but it had the effect of keeping her mother’s hands off her for good.

There was nothing her mother could do. She just had to wait her out.

Long after her mother had gone back to her room in a fury, Corrie continued lying there, thinking. She forced her mind away from her mother, from the trailer, from the depressing empty meaningless hell that was her life. She found her thoughts drifting toward Pendergast. She thought about his cool black suit, his pale eyes, his tall narrow frame. She wondered if Pendergast was married or had children. It wasn’t fair, the way he’d just dumped her like that and driven off in his fancy car. But maybe, like everybody else, he was disappointed in her. Maybe in the end she just hadn’t done a good enough job for him. She burned with resentment at the way the sheriff had come in and just laid those papers on Pendergast. But he wasn’t the kind to roll over and play dead. And hadn’t he hinted he was going to continue working on the case? He
had
to take her off the case, she told herself. It wasn’t anything she’d done. He’d said it himself:
I cannot have you defying the sheriff on my account.