The Other Shoe (13 page)

He leaned on his knuckles to read the four short police reports spread across his desk; these bore smeared notations from previous readings, his leaking ballpoint. The briefest of them had been written by Sheriff Utterback, typed all in caps, and in it Utterback said he'd
been summoned at approximately 0216 hours on August 22 to Law and Order, where he met with two persons of interest who were being questioned regarding a possible homicide. The sheriff had personally spoken with both Henry and Karen Brusett, and neither of them was willing to offer any information regarding the incident or the body they'd been found with. Neither individual was known to him from previous law enforcement contacts. It was the sheriff's impression that, considering the circumstances, they were both quite calm, especially Mr. Brusett. Utterback said that Henry Brusett appeared to be somewhat crippled and that he had left the complex in the middle of the night, refusing a ride home and all other offers of help or advice. The sheriff had directed his officers not to write any citations until the investigation had been completed.

The investigation did not promise of completion. Meyers's notations were smeared ink and question marks; everyone who'd touched this case so far had fobbed it off on someone else to try and understand. It was a funny, small set of facts, and what more would ever be discovered? What was left to know?

Deputies Lovell and Sisson had arrived on scene together because Lovell, known to his fellow officers as “Skippy,” had torn the oil pan out of his cruiser responding in haste over bad road, and Sisson, who'd been ten minutes behind him, had picked him up along the way, and the deputies' reports described their arrival at the Brusett property in essentially the same way—Mr. and Mrs. Brusett were outside their mobile home, in the dark, sitting on the ground near an outbuilding that appeared to be some kind of bathhouse. Henry Brusett held the victim's head in his lap, and he had been smeared with blood. Lovell asked Mr. Brusett if he was hurt, and when Mr. Brusett did not respond, Lovell examined him, as best he could, as he sat there. Lovell had determined that all of the blood was the victim's and asked the Brusetts if there was anyone else nearby, anyone who might be cause
for concern; Karen Brusett told them there was no one. She would not say if anyone else had been there earlier, but she did confirm that she'd been the party who'd called dispatch, and she provided the officers with her own and her husband's full names.

Then Lovell asked her about the identity of the deceased person, and she said she didn't know it, and she refused to say anything more except, when Sisson asked her if there was something wrong with her husband so that he couldn't talk, she said that there was nothing wrong with him, only that “I think he's a little bit too upset to say anything right now. It's been a lot to take in.”

The deputies' reports described the deceased by his coloring, his condition, his approximate dimensions. They said his clothes were wet and that he was wearing just the one shoe. Sisson included a list of things they hadn't found—there was no vehicle found on the premises that was not registered to the Brusetts, no weapon had been discovered, there was nothing to indicate a struggle had taken place, nothing on or about the person of the deceased to say who he might have been. The investigation, as described by the deputies, ended with the arrival on scene of Detective Flaherty and the ambulance.

Detective Raymond Flaherty had been with the sheriff's department even longer than Hoot Meyers had been the county attorney, and he had achieved his present status entirely by longevity. As a deputy, Flaherty had been lazy and wary of any information that might disturb his equanimity, and he'd patrolled the inscrutable cedar forests west of the Taurine River avoiding all but about ten arrests a year. Since his promotion, though, Flaherty had proven to be an often able if still lazy investigator. Much of his report was cribbed directly from Sisson's, with the addition of one fresh observation—Flaherty noticed how thoroughly the dead man's naked foot had been abused, that it was scratched and bruised and covered in ruptured blisters. Flaherty said that as soon as he was satisfied that they wouldn't need
medical attention, he'd asked Mr. Brusett to come in with him, and he'd arranged for Mrs. Brusett to ride with Deputy Lovell, and in this way the subjects of his investigation had been separated and transported directly to Law and Order.

Detective Flaherty's skill—his only professional enthusiasm—was sufficient in Conrad County to clear many cases. Flaherty made people confess themselves. When the detective succeeded in capturing these performances on videotape, Meyers often had all he needed to dictate terms, but watching the tapes again and again, as might be necessary with evidence, was not pleasant work. Flaherty was far from deserving his good opinion of himself, and his wormy methods were hard to see in operation. His report made mention of such interviews with the Brusetts, but said of them only that tapes and transcriptions were soon to follow for further review by the county attorney. In accordance with the sheriff's order, he'd written no charges.

Now, of the unknown traveler who had dropped into nowhere, from out of nowhere, and been found wet and weirdly wounded and dead, Hoot Meyers would be expected to make an official story, a case. Some sense must be made of this, however artificial. Often these days he was called upon to tell courts of law and tell the victims proliferating in this county like ants at a picnic that he no longer knew why people did the things they did, that purely pointless crime was often hard to solve. Motives unknown and unknowable. Facts insufficient. So it may be for his old friend Henry, a man whom Meyers had known as a simple and immaculately sane boy. What a nightmare. Poor Henry had got himself mixed up in yet another death by misadventure.

Unless Meyers was mistaken, however, and he was willing to be a little mistaken in this, the Brusetts were harmless. There was a body, which would be admissible as evidence, and Henry Brusett's silence, which was not, and it would be that silence that should be most suggestive and most damning in the affair, but it was nothing Meyers
could use to convict him. Meyers thought that probably someone had done something out of sudden necessity up on Fitchet Creek, or out of character—and he was curious about it, but he would this once spare himself the search for the damning detail. He held about a pair of deuces for his hand, and he would stand pat. They were meek people, Henry and his woman. It was hard to imagine how in the course of their normal affairs they might ever again hurt anyone. Between the lines of these spare reports what was there to be read? A desolation. Meyers knew the lives that were led in the deep woods. The Brusetts were already confined there, and probably chastened, and all at no cost to the Department of Corrections. He'd passed on stronger cases than this, hadn't he? He'd been handed another muddle, and there were good and practical reasons to believe it might never be anything else.

His phone began to wink.

“County attorney. This is Meyers. Hello? Nelda, did you . . . ? Hello? I'm on the line here, Nelda, if . . . ”

“Hello.” A man's voice, reluctant.

“You'd be Mr. Teague. From Iowa?”

“Sorry, my wife's sort of distracting . . . Midge. Midge, just wait a second. Yes, well anyway, I'm, or we were . . . Midge, just wait a second, will you please?”

“Is this Mr. Teague? Teague, is it?”

“Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Wesley Teague, we were told to call you, I forgot about the time zones. So—your secretary told you? I called before, before you came in. I think she might have been a little annoyed with me. It was quite early there.”

“Nelda lives at that desk, Mr. Teague, and she always likes talking to people. That's why I keep her around. She tells me you might have some information for us.”

“No information. Oh no. No. I'm sure we don't know anything that might be of use to you. Or that anybody could want to know.
We're just, we don't know anything ourselves. I mean, what would we know? About? From here? You're in Montana? But we did have a few questions. We debated whether we should call you at all, but we are curious now.”

Meyers, a father himself, knew exactly the species of curiosity that springs forth full-blown at the birth of a child to stalk a dad's head forever, the bull in the china shop, the greatest love of all, and all for a creature who, after you've only just taught it not to eat its own shit, is off somewhere, somewhere out of sight, making its own decisions. Though his trade was in bad news of every kind, Meyers had never delivered news as bad as this. “There's been an accident here.”

“Oh, I doubt we'd know anything about that. My wife took the message, spoke to some young lady. Or it might have been a real young boy, she thinks. Didn't get her name, or his name. No, I guess she
wouldn't
give her name. But she did insist, this girl or whatever she was, she said we just had to call you, and she gave us this number and everything, and told us to ask about the boy from, what was it? ‘Up on Bishop Creek'? What would that mean?
On
Bishop Creek? That's a place somewhere?”

“Do you think she might have said ‘Fitchet Creek'?”

“Maybe. Midge? Midge? My wife won't come to the phone. This young woman, this young woman spoke very fast. She was hard to understand. There was something funny in the, maybe some static in the line. But, anyway, it happens our son is off on a trip right now. He was gone on a vacation, I guess you could call it. At first he was saying Austin, Texas, but then he changed his mind and said he was just going, and he left it at that, and he left.” Teague's voice issued through a long, tinny tube, fear overmastering him. “He said the whole idea was to get away for a while, completely away. He wanted to go off and think. And you can't really discourage that sort of thing. That was fine
with us. Fine. So he's been . . . we didn't know how it was supposed to go. When children went off like that. Off on their own vacations. Should they be expected to call home? You'd like them to check in, but I suppose it gets to be too late in the day.”

“Your son is how old, Mr. Teague?”

“Twenty-four last May. Getting on up there. They get so . . . they need a little bit of independence, so you just have to say . . . Well, there isn't much you can say. But Calvin is, believe me, he's just as reliable as they come. Almost too reliable, if you can believe that.”

“You say the name was Calvin?”

“Yes. Calvin. Calvin
Winston
Teague,” said the father. “But . . . do you . . . ?”

“You didn't know where he was going?”

“No.”

“How he was going?”

“Oh, he was driving. He took his car, of course. He's a great one for those roadside monuments, points of interest.”

“And you're calling from Iowa, wasn't it? Have I got that right? Mind if I put you on the speaker phone so I can take some notes?”

“Yes. I mean, I don't mind. Yes, Iowa.”

“You don't know who called you? Who that was?”

“No,” said Mr. Teague. “We don't know how she got our name, but we know she did, and that's a little funny, don't you think? That this young woman, or boy—this person—that they should have our names? How would they? Our telephone number? How would they get that? This person told my wife we were supposed to get in touch with you immediately. But we weren't sure. It sounded like a hoax. What kind of accident?”

The armored beast got up to pace Hoot Meyer's gut. “Fatal. We've got a body we can't identify.”

“What, drowned? Because that wouldn't be Calvin. He had years and years of swimming lessons. I mean, that's the whole reason for maintaining a municipal swimming pool, to . . . ”

“Drowned? Oh, Fitchet Creek. No, that's just where we found him.
Near
Fitchet Creek, would be more accurate, or off in that drainage somewhere.”

“Found?”

“Did this woman, or this girl, say how she knew to call you?”

“No. I don't understand. Drainage? No, I don't think . . . Why would she be calling us? Do you think? Did she call you?”

“Sir, does your son have blond, dirty-blond hair? He'd be about five-nine, five-ten, a hundred and sixty-five pounds?”

“No. Calvin's one-seventy. At least. At least. Sometimes quite a bit heavier, I think. It's nothing, I think this might be a practical joke. Is that what they call them? Some of these kids don't always use the best sense. But we did think we should call when we're . . . what? Not knowing.”

Meyers put best evidence into play. “Has your boy got a slight deformity of his left ear? Ear lobe is kind of withered, looks like a—say, a pale raspberry?”

There was scraping, a bump in the line. Wesley Teague said nothing then, but Meyers heard Mrs. Teague hovering near behind him, her sudden keening.

T
HIS WAS THEIR
third call in an hour, and it was developing that Midge just could not bring herself to fly and that she wasn't about to let her husband go through something like that by himself, and so the Teagues had decided they would drive up to see about identifying the remains if that was all right with Meyers. Meyers told Mr. Teague to come as best he could, as soon as he could.

“I've got a pretty serious form of night blindness,” Teague explained. “My license actually prohibits me from driving after dusk or before full dawn, so it's going to be a minimum of thirty hours, I think, and maybe forty-eight, maybe even a little more. Midge gets tired. So, would that be all right? If we took that long to get there?”