The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man (18 page)

“Help ya?” he wanted to know. His neck was as thick as his head and his big frame supported a lot of beef. His nameplate read
TIMMS.
He looked like the kind of guy who would drive his elbow into my sides after tackling me, but only when he was sure the ref wasn't watching. His hair was so short it stood up like brush bristles.

“I think I know this guy. His name is Dwight Timms. His dad runs a bait shop. I can't believe he's a cop, he used to be in trouble all the time,”
Alan murmured.

“Hey there, Dwight. Sheriff in?” I asked casually.

He'd been leaning on the counter for support. Now he straightened, a doubtful look in his eye. I gave him a cheerful grin, like we were buddies, and he was plainly disconcerted. “Um, got an appointment?”

“No, but he wants to see me.”

Reluctantly, Deputy Dwight Timms slouched away from his post, taking my driver's license and disappearing for a moment. When he returned he nodded for me to follow him down the hallway to a door marked
BARRY STRICKLAND, SHERIFF, CHARLEVOIX COUNTY.

The sheriff was standing, waiting for me, and gave me a look of complete authority as he shook my hand. I told him my name and accepted a seat at his invitation. He settled down behind his desk and fixed me with a pair of clear blue eyes. He was my size, though at least two decades older, with white hair and a face roughened from repeated exposure to sun and Michigan winters. He was chiseled, fit, and handsome. In his snug uniform he looked like a Hollywood version of what he was—a small-town sheriff.

“How can I help you, Mr. McCann?”

How indeed. This was, I reflected, not the most thought-out action I'd ever taken. I took a breath, then laughed lightly at my embarrassment. Strickland's expression didn't change. I was wondering how I might extricate myself from this whole situation when Alan made a barely audible sound and my irritation punched through my caution. “It's about a missing person case you've got from back about eight years ago. An East Jordan man named Alan Lottner. I was wondering if … if you ever found his body.”

Strickland's eyes registered something at the word “body” and I tried not to wince. “And what is your interest in this matter, Mr. McCann?”

“I'm a friend of Alan's. At least, I was. Until he disappeared.”

Strickland regarded me carefully for an uncomfortable minute, then stood. “Wait here,” he ordered. I'll bet not too many people disobeyed Sheriff Strickland when he used that tone.

“I don't think you should have used the word ‘body' just then,”
Alan advised helpfully.

“Alan, I really don't want to be caught talking to myself in a sheriff's station,” I warned.

When Strickland returned he carried a manila folder in his hands. Grunting, he lowered himself back in his chair, wet his thumb, and leafed through the papers, taking his time. Finally, he raised his eyes and looked at me. “I'm afraid your name appears nowhere in this file, Mr. McCann.”

“I didn't make any statement or anything at the time,” I responded lamely.

Strickland closed the file and set it on his desk, then eased back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, staring at me. I tried to remain still under his tight examination. “Case is still open,” he told me.

I found myself very unhappy that I had aroused the sheriff's curiosity.

“Do you know something about this man's disappearance you would like to report?” he probed, his instinct taking him right to the heart of the matter.

“Not that I'd like to report, no,” I answered evasively. I decided the bravest thing to do was flee. I moved to stand. “I'm sorry to have taken your time,” I apologized.

“Just a minute.” Strickland tried to give me a friendly smile, then, but the effect under those hard blue eyes was even more intimidating than his glare. “Can I get you something, a cup of coffee, maybe?”

“No, no thanks.”

“Mr. McCann. Ruddick McCann, right? That's what your license says.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you ever been in any trouble with the law, Ruddick?” Strickland asked with forced casualness.

I gulped. Why was he asking
that
? “It's Ruddy,” I stalled. “My friends call me Ruddy, I mean.”

“Ruddy.” Nothing in his expression indicated that he wanted to be considered one of my friends. “Answer my question, please.”

“No. Actually, no,” I responded.

We sat there as he processed my lie, the disbelief clear in his expression. The clock ticked on the wall with a loud, intrusive pulse.

Strickland opened his desk drawer, pulled out a toothpick, and inserted it into his mouth. A flash of insight told me that the slim stick of wood had come to replace cigarettes for Sheriff Strickland not too long ago. “Why don't you tell me what you came here to tell me, Ruddy,” Strickland suggested.

I sighed. In for a penny … “Well, I think I know where to find Alan.”

Strickland waited.

“I was in the woods today. And … I think I know where he is. His body.”

“Uh-huh.” We sat in the room for a solid minute—I know because I heard sixty ticks from his clock. Then Strickland started asking more questions—what was I doing in the woods, how had I come to know Alan Lottner. Every query dug up another lie, until I felt helplessly lost in my own deceit. I stood up.

“Look, Sheriff, I came to do you a favor, here. Are you interested or not? I need to get back home.”

“Sit back down, son,” he commanded. As I did he sighed, reaching for his hat. “All right, you give me a minute to round up a couple of people, and we'll head out to take a look.”

The “couple of people” turned out to be three carloads' full. I rode with Timms and Strickland, but in the rear seat, separated from the two lawmen by a steel mesh screen. Timms kept turning to stare at me with a burning intensity, but it was Strickland that I was worried about. I imagined most people who came to his attention were ultimately sorry they had done so.

“What if I'm not there? My body, I mean,”
Alan fretted as we bounced down the familiar one-lane road toward the burned-down cabin. I had no way to alleviate his concerns, and at that particular moment didn't care about them anyway.

When I directed the sheriff to pull over near the fallen oak tree, everyone jumped out and began messing with equipment. Timms carried a shovel, the coroner a black bag, and another fellow a huge tackle box and two cameras slung over his shoulders. He took pictures of the trail and the woods before Strickland would allow us to proceed to the spot I showed them.

“Here we go,”
Alan said, his voice trembling with tension.

“Sheriff, mind if I wander over there a minute? Take a leak?” I asked.

Strickland surveyed the woods with his cold eyes and then nodded.

I stepped away from the little group, making fresh tracks in the snow. “Look, we've got a problem,” I said urgently. “If they find your body down there, how do I explain how I knew where to find it?”

“You ever see the movie
Ghost Story?
When they find the body, the ghost ceased to exist. That's the rule
.
”

“That's not what happened in the book,” I replied.

“Okay, but the book was fiction,”
Alan answered.

“Like the movie
wasn't
?” I snapped. “Would you listen? I told the sheriff I was walking in the woods and I saw your body, and now they're having to dig for it. The ground was covered with snow! How do I explain that?”

“If that happens, if I disappear forever, promise me you'll stay on the case,”
Alan begged.
“See that Burby and his accomplice go to prison for murder.”

“So this is all about you,” I noted.

“Well yeah, it is,”
Alan shouted. I winced as his voice echoed around inside my skull. “
They are digging for my
body.
Any moment and I might
cease to exist.
”

“Okay. Okay, I get it. Though wouldn't that be best? Suppose this is what it is all about—we find your body and then your spirit can stop wandering the earth, searching for repos in northern Michigan. Would that really be so bad?”

“Yes! I want to find out what happened. I want to see Kathy again. Dammit, Ruddy, I don't want to die!”

“Got something!” Timms shouted. More pictures were taken. The coroner knelt in the dirt, spoke to Strickland, and then Timms dug some more, moving carefully. The photographer opened his box and removed some tools, including what looked like small paintbrushes.

I crept closer, conscious of Strickland's eyes on me. What Timms had found didn't look human to me, just a bunch of dirt. The coroner kept reaching in and gingerly poking at it. “Sheriff,” he called softly.

Strickland gave me a glare to freeze me in place, then squatted next to the coroner, who was pointing at the ground.

I saw what the cops saw—some finger bones protruding from the muddy pool that had filled the black cavity in the earth from when the toppled tree pulled up its root ball. Alan was under water.

“Use the shovel and bail this out,” Strickland directed Timms. “Carefully.”

I turned away, feeling a little sick, when Timms's efforts revealed a muddy skull. I walked a few yards away.

“I'm still here. I'm still here,”
Alan babbled.
“If that's it, if they found my body, I'm not going to vanish after all.”

After a time, Timms finished his work and the men huddled around the hole. Strickland straightened, looking right at me with an unreadable expression. He brushed off his pants, coming over to put a hand on my shoulder. “Well now, we got a ways to go before we can identify the body as Alan Lottner, but it is definitely big enough to be a male.” Strickland was eyeing me carefully, thinking something over.

“Yeah, shot in the head!” Timms exclaimed as he came up to us. A sharp look from his boss shut him up.

The three of us stood there for a moment, and then Strickland made his decision. “Mr. McCann, there's a lot here I don't understand, but the one thing I'm sure of is that you haven't been truthful with me. You're involved in whatever this is a lot more than you've admitted to. Until I get it all sorted out, I need to keep my eye on you. I'm afraid I am going to have to arrest you on suspicion of murder.”

With undisguised joy, Deputy Timms clamped the cuffs down on my wrists, sending a quick bite of pain up my forearms. I ignored Alan's outraged jabbering and concentrated on exercising my right to remain silent as I was led to the sheriff's car and put in the backseat.

How could I have been so stupid?

Timms kept staring at me in his rearview mirror as he steered the car down the highway. “Happened so long ago, probably be no charges if you just tell the truth,” he ventured after a few miles, using his expert interrogation skills on me. He twisted around and gave me a friendly, innocent look so phony it looked like it was hurting his face.

“Eyes front, Deputy,” Strickland murmured.

The color climbed up Timms's neck at the mild rebuke, and the glare he shot my way in the mirror indicated he felt it was somehow all my fault. I pointedly ignored him.

Strickland was mostly quiet, going over things in his mind. He'd sniffed me out as an ex-con and my story was collapsing under its own weight, but other than the fact that I knew where a body was buried there really wasn't any reason to suspect me of killing anyone. He shifted in his seat to glance at me and he could read my resolve in the tight press of my lips—now he might never find out what happened.

A few more deputies were waiting for us as we pulled up to the jail, looking like an overstaffed valet parking service. Though their behavior in front of their boss was strictly professional, something in their high energy let me know they were pretty excited about all of this. Timms was less restrained, grinning openly at his pals.

The booking sergeant instructed me to hand over my personal belongings, and that's when I broke into a sweat. I did
not
want to go through this again. “Sheriff Strickland?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“In my wallet, there, you'll find a business card for a Ted Petersen. Would you mind calling him for me? I think that will get everything straightened out here.”

Strickland broke my request into segments. “Are you giving me permission to search your wallet?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Who is Petersen?”

“He's a lawyer now, but he used to be my parole officer.”

“Parole officer.” Strickland gazed at me. People don't have parole officers unless they were convicted of a crime—I was pretty sure Strickland knew that. “So you want me to call your lawyer for you,” he stated finally—not saying he wouldn't, but letting me know this was not something he would normally be inclined to do.

“I just think you should talk to him. It will help clear some things up.” I waited for the question I knew was coming.

“Parole officer. What were you in for, McCann?”

I sighed, feeling defeated. When I spoke, it was with a considerable ration of self-loathing. “Murder. I was in prison for murder.”

 

 

13

Out of Control

 

My words hung in the air for what seemed a full minute.

Strickland hid his surprise behind those steely eyes. He nodded: I'd traded him enough information for him to make the phone call.

Behind me, I could sense Timms and his buddies glancing at each other, and, of course, Alan was going nuts.

“Murder! You've committed murder? You're a murderer? You murdered somebody?”

I let him go on conjugating the verb
murder
without betraying anything in my expression. Strickland motioned for the sergeant to continue processing my admission, and a few minutes later I was led down a row of completely empty cells and shoved into the one farthest from the door. I looked around and shivered.
Not again
.