The German (4 page)

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His deputy, Gilbert Perry, greeted him with the news about Harold Marker Ashton before Tom made it into the office. Limping through the front door at a good clip, Gilbert wore an expression of nervous disbelief and it took him three tries and a terse order to “settle down” from Tom before the deputy managed to say, “Jerome Blevins found the body in the woods between his place and the lake. Said it was murder. Said it was bad.”

Tom accepted the news with a slow nod of his head, but inside he felt knots tying. He thought about the boy’s parents, Charles and Ruth, and how proud they’d been, bragging on about how Harold had enlisted to serve his country. Charles had made quite a show at the Longhorn Tavern about his brave son, and how he’d been a man long before his time. Running off to enlist in the army had simply been the latest example of his boy’s maturity and courage.

He cast a glance up and down Main Street. The ease of the morning rituals, performed by people Tom had known his entire life, suddenly looked wrong. Clete Matheson casually swept the sidewalk in front of the drugstore, his round body rocking back and forth with the broom, looking like a buoy on calm waters; Dick Washington climbed out of his Ford and crossed the road to Milton’s Barber Shop; Doctor Randolph sat on the wooden bench in front of his office, smoking his pipe and shamelessly eyeing Hattie Barnes washing the window of her dress shop; Carl Baker stood at the window of his bakery, watching the street, his lips pursed as if whistling. By mid-afternoon they’d all be helping the Ashtons mourn and looking to Tom for answers.

Tom couldn’t help but notice Gilbert’s disappointment at being left behind, and Tom hated doing it to the kid, but he didn’t want Gilbert’s bum leg to slow them down, and the woods behind the Blevins place could be tricky even under the best of conditions. He knew Gil wanted to prove himself, and he thought the kid made a fine deputy. He’d just had a bit of bad luck involving a speeding car when he was a boy, and the leg had never healed quite right.

“Go ahead,” Tom told him. “Have them bring along the evidence kit.”

“Yes, Sheriff,” Gil said, turning away and limping back into the sheriff’s office.

As he waited for his men, Tom returned to the car and lit a second cigarette. Normally he wouldn’t have touched another of the things until after lunch, but he figured normal had left town, at least for a few days, and he hoped the smoke would file away the edges on his nerves.

Though premature, he tried to build a suspect list in his head, sorting through names and incidents like flipping through the library’s card catalog. By the time Rex Burns and Don Nialls emerged from the office, both wearing white short-sleeved shirts, cream-colored slacks and fat blue ties, Tom hadn’t come up with a single viable name. Harold Ashton had been a good kid, a fine student and athlete, and his parents’ pride. If he had a taste for causing trouble, Tom knew nothing about it.

Rex climbed into the passenger seat and Don slid in the back, and then Tom pulled away from the curb, made a U-turn in the middle of Main Street, and headed back toward the farm route he’d followed into town. As he drove, Rex and Don fell into their usual banter. The two could talk for hours about absolutely nothing, and they were usually funny as all get out to listen to, like Abbott and Costello with East Texas drawls. Today they kept the conversation respectful and professional, and Tom heard the uneasy timbres of their voices. By the time he’d turned left onto Lakeland Road, his men were sharing their thoughts about the Ashton case.

Don said, “Jerome thinks it’s the Mexicans.”

Rex snorted and replied, “Jerome thinks everything’s the Mexicans. This time he might be right though. Has to be a drifter at any rate. No one in Barnard would hurt a boy like Harold Ashton. I’d eat my hat if that weren’t true.”

“Did either of you get any details about what was done to the boy?” Tom asked.

“Nah, sir,” Rex said. “Just that he was murdered.”

“I’d say that’s for us to decide,” Tom said. “For all we know, Harold went walking in Jerome’s woods, fell down and hit his head and coyotes and badgers did the rest.”

“All due respect, Sheriff,” this from Don in the backseat, “The Ashton boy’s been gone for a good two weeks, and Jerome said he’d walked by the place at least a dozen times since then, and he never saw a thing.”

“Coyotes’ll drag a meal,” Tom pointed out.

This silenced his men. Tom knew he hadn’t convinced them, though; they just weren’t up to arguing with the boss.

After kicking up four miles of dust on Lakeland Road, Tom turned onto the dirt track that led to Jerome Blevins’s house. As the house came into view through a thatch of scrub oak, so did four of Jerome’s children: three young boys and a little girl who’d recently traded diapers for the graying sundress that had once been robin’s egg blue. They stood at the edges of the drive like vagabond orphans eager for a meal.

“Why doesn’t Jerome buy his kids some proper clothes?” Don asked. “The lumber company pays him big for the right to cut on his land.”

“He’s still got his head in the Depression,” Rex said. “He had it tough there for a lot of years. It made him cautious. Stingy.”

“Those overalls look like they’re held together with spider webbing,” Don said. “You can about see through the knees. And a little girl like that shouldn’t have to wear rags.”

“Just keep your mind on why we’re here,” Tom said. “It’s none of our business if Jerome’s kids wear potato sacks or silk trousers. Let’s just see what he’s got to show us.”

Tom pulled to a stop before the Blevins house, which looked about as flimsy and cheap as the children’s clothing. The porch tilted significantly to the side and the roof above it sagged in the middle like a rope bridge with too little tension; he saw gaps in the boards siding the front of the house, and the glass in the living room window wore a long jagged crack. The oldest boy, whose name Tom couldn’t recall, walked up to the side of the car, invited himself onto the running board, and peered in at the three men. Fingers with dirty knuckles clasped on the door and the boy rocked back a bit like he might give tipping the vehicle over a try, and then he spoke.

“Daddy says to take you on back. He didn’t want the Mexicans to come and steal Harold’s body, so he’s a-waiting in the woods and I’m supposed to show you where.”

“That’ll be fine,” Tom said, though he felt it would be anything but. What was Jerome thinking, letting his ten-year-old son walk through the woods to a murder scene?

Tom and his men climbed out of the car and gathered at the nose of the Packard. He checked to make sure Rex had hold of the evidence kit and seeing that he did, he waved at the blond boy, a quick shooing motion that sent Jerome’s son to trotting across the drive and between two poplars. They crunched their way through the woods, not speaking. Their pace would have seemed casual to anyone watching their progress. Truth was Tom wasn’t eager to see what remained of Harold Ashton, and he rationalized that a few minutes faster or slower wasn’t likely to change the boy’s circumstances.

After fifteen minutes, the Blevins kid veered to the left, taking the party in the direction of the lake. Light flickered through the treetops, shimmering like the surface of a river at sunset. The air smelled fresh and good, heavily scented by pine and the rich odor of decomposing deadfall. A branch snapped loudly under his heel and Tom reared back, startled.

Eventually they emerged at the water’s edge where the land jutted like a finger to the east, and Tom paused. He stared over the peaceful water back toward the small neighborhood south of downtown. Bits of yellow and white siding from the houses on Dodd Street peeked through the trees. A few people already lay out on the grassy shore, and a handful of folks had taken to swimming.

“Almost there,” the Blevins boy said.

Tom turned away from the comforting scene and saw that the Blevins kid was hooking back into the tree line. The ground angled upward and a density of fallen tree limbs made the going rough. This was the type of terrain he’d considered when telling Gilbert to stay at the station, and as he tromped up the hillside he knew he’d saved his deputy a lot of physical grief and a bit of embarrassment by keeping him off of this particular hunt.

They neared the top of the hill and Rex said, “There’s Jerome.”

The man stood at the peak of the hill and to their left. He wore a threadbare cotton shirt over gray trousers. A porkpie hat had been pushed far back on his head. He held a shotgun in his beefy hand, and he turned toward Tom and his men as they approached, looking annoyed.

“He’s here,” Blevins said, pointing at the ground ahead of him. “Jesse, you stay put. Let the officers of the law come on up.”

Tom couldn’t see anything but the direction of Blevins’s arm. He continued to trudge up the hill and after another three steps, the scene revealed itself clear enough. He suddenly regretted the large breakfast Estella had prepared for him.

The body lay propped against the trunk of an old pine. The boy’s legs had been crossed and the hands folded neatly in the lap like a kid sitting on the floor, waiting patiently for his mother to give him a cookie. Flies swarmed the body, thick as a cloud. Tom approached as slowly as he could manage without looking like a coward, swiping his hand through the air to scatter the flies. The terrible expression frozen on Harold Ashton’s face came clear in the same moment the reek of his decaying body reached the sheriff’s nose. Tom’s momma had always told him that dying was a restful thing, like going to sleep, but Tom had seen enough bodies to know that wasn’t true. Harold Ashton certainly didn’t look like he was napping. The muscles about his mouth had tensed, pulling his upper lip away from his teeth. His eyelids were half open, and the eyes behind them had grayed in death. Tom kept his gaze on the murdered boy’s face, because for all of its dreadful composition, it was much easier to deal with than what had been done to his body.

“The Mexicans cleaned him like a deer,” Blevins said, seemingly unaffected by the observation. He spoke with all the assurance of a man who’d predicted a hurricane and survived its landing. “That’s how they do,” he continued.

Rex dropped a hand on Tom’s shoulder, startling him and sending his heart to racing. Tom inhaled deeply and pulled away, turned to his deputy, who looked as ill as Tom felt.

“Do your job, Rex. Find what you can find.” Tom stepped away from his deputy and approached Blevins. Blevins’s full cheeks wore two days of beard, and his forehead gleamed beneath the brim of his hat as if polished. The man appeared so calm and unaffected; Tom didn’t know what to make of it. “Jerome, can you tell me what brought you out here this morning?”

“It’s my property, Sheriff Rabbit,” Blevins said. “I’ve got the right to walk my own property.”

“Yes, you do,” Tom agreed. “But this doesn’t seem like the most reasonable place to take a stroll, so I’m just wondering why you came out this way.”

“That’s my business,” Blevins said. His eyes hardened and the corners of his mouth ticked down. “Best keep your mind on the Mexicans that done this to Harold Ashton.”

Tom knew that Blevins had a history of bootlegging; it was about the only thing that had kept him and his family fed during the hard years. He imagined Jerome maintained a still or two, probably one nearby, and though Tom had absolutely no interest in a shine shop and wasn’t going to press for details, he’d need a better answer from Blevins for his report.

Tom nodded and looked around the woods, the density of trees, the difficulty in navigating the terrain. He cast another glance at the Ashton boy’s body and winced. As Blevins had heartlessly noted, Harold had been gutted. From what Tom could see, his killer had completely hollowed him out, leaving ragged lips of skin around a gaping hole just below Harold’s rib cage. Rex and Don knelt at the side of the corpse, taking turns swatting flies that insisted on returning for a meal and a place to nest their larva, neither deputy seeming to know what to do with the body but stare.