They Call Me Crazy (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Benny

“S
he blew up a damn house!” I’ve spent all day listening to that little pain in the ass in the basement. No matter how nice or how professional I try to be, Cass won’t say anything that doesn’t involve a catty tongue. Now, here I stand, listening to her fancy-assed lawyer telling me to let her out of jail. Immediately.

“No, Chief Cloud, she did not ‘blow up a house,’ as you say. She may have set her own house on fire by accident. That’s not a crime.” He wiggled a crooked finger at me, and it was all I could do not to grab it and snap it in two.

I haven’t dealt with many of these city lawyers. Usually it’s just the local suits, the DA, and the public defender’s office. But the way this guy has his nose scrunched up when he talks, I can tell he thinks of me as a slug, one that he has no problem pouring a beer on.

“It’s arson, Mr. Warner. And it is a crime.”

He peers at me through tinted designer glasses. “It would be arson if she maliciously set someone else’s house on fire. Or if she burned hers to collect insurance. But she has no insurance, and she was aware of that. So it’s not arson. And besides, it was an accident.”

I’ll be damned if I let her out of here again. She’s nothing but trouble. “Fine. Then she started a fire without a proper permit. A fire of that size requires a permit.”

He crosses his arms in front of him and clicks his tongue. “According to your city code, a permit is required of anyone residing within the city limits. Booker Hill straddles the line. I’m still trying to determine if this whole mess is a city issue or a county one. In fact, to protect yourself, you should get permission from her to go out there.”

“That’s a crock of shit. It’s a crime scene, and she and her boyfriend down there disturbed it. Are you telling me she admitted to blowing that place up?”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s her house, paid for free and clear. She went out to get a few things and left a kerosene lamp burning in the bedroom. Let’s call it an accident for right now, shall we? After all, she does have a history of forgetfulness, and—”

“And violence. Oh, yeah, you forgot that part, didn’t ya? And what the hell did she get out of the house? Was she removing evidence, too?”

“She took one cat-shaped hanging wall clock. Sentimental value. If it was evidence, you would have had it in your possession already. In fact, she has offered to give it to you if you feel it will help in your investigation. Besides, as far as I know, the house isn’t part of the crime scene, unless, of course, you have uncovered something in your investigation you aren’t sharing with me?”

What an asshole.
I hate lawyers.

He looks at his watch. “Well, I’ve already talked to the judge about this, so why don’t we give him a quick call and get this done with. Technically, I’m retired, and it’s time for my afternoon cocktail with my lovely wife.”

“You’ve already talked to the judge? Then why the hell are you standing here busting my chops?”

He smiles. “Oh, just having some fun. Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

I want to reach for my gun. Another thing about lawyers is that not one of them is right in the head. I swear being a bit loony must be a prerequisite to get into law school.

I’m about to read him the riot act when Jimmy interrupts. “Uh, Chief, you might want to take this call.”

“Well?” Richard says.

I ignore him and reach for the phone. If nothing else, I’m going to make him stand there until I’m good and ready to let him go. “Chief Cloud here.”

“Chief Cloud? This is Tim Greene, County Coroner.”

I roll my eyes. “For God’s sake, Tim, you act like I don’t know who the hell you are.” I’ve known him for a decade or more.

“Oh, yes. Well, I need to see you about this Adams case. And the lawyer, too. What’s his name again?”

“Warner? He’s right here, standing in my office. Can’t you just tell me what the report says?” I shut my eyes and, with two fingers, start rubbing that spot between them. I swear I can feel the mother of migraines coming on.

“I think it would be better if you come over. Both of you. Would you let him know, please?”

I hang up the phone and curse under my breath. Just when I thought the day couldn’t get any longer. Richard can take his own car. I don’t want to have to worry about getting the smell of attorney out of my upholstery.

I grab my Stetson off the hat rack and turn to Warner. “Coroner said he’s finished his report, but he’d rather give it to us in person. That is, if you can hold off on that cocktail for another hour or so.”

The county coroner’s office is in the basement of the Columbia Hospital, which is in the county seat, twenty miles away. I hate to go to that waiting room full of dead bodies; I’ve seen enough of those in my day. The morgue is a modern facility, a pristine and polished examination room, but I always picture it in my mind as dank and dark, like something out of a Vincent Price movie.

Tim Greene has been the coroner for coming on forty years, probably because no one else really wants the job. I’m thankful that someone does it, even if he does tend to miss things. Back in ’98, before I was chief, he claimed Cotton Jeffcoat killed himself—with one shotgun blast to the back of his head. Everybody knew it was impossible, unless Cotton pulled the trigger with his toe while doing yoga, but no one said much. The general consensus was that Cotton was an asshole and whoever pulled that trigger probably did the town a favor. Maybe Greene is getting old and just isn’t as sharp as he should be for the position. Or maybe he just likes to see assholes get their due.

His office is a second home to him. He’s adorned it with live plants and pictures of his family, as well as a few of his best catches stuffed and mounted on the wall. It’s life colliding with death in a white room in the basement.

After I introduce Warner, Tim leads the way to his catacomb. He has a fresh pot of coffee and Styrofoam cups waiting. He doesn’t get many murder cases, so I guess these are his few minutes of fame, maybe the real reason he does the job. Everyone needs a rush, and for some, it comes from strange places. I prefer to sit on my couch, drink a beer, and keep watch over my dolls. Tim Greene cuts open dead bodies.

We settle into the two leather chairs opposite his desk. Tim sits straight backed behind it, his hands folded on the desk.

“How come you couldn’t just fax the report over?” I ask.

“I don’t want any questions later. And I have the body on the table, so I can show you.”

I cringe at the thought of seeing Roland Adams laid out on a slab. He wasn’t too pretty the other night at the river, and now he’ll be pasty white, the blood drained completely out of him.
Kind of like Warner here
, I think with a little internal chuckle. I also know what’s involved in an autopsy, and I’m not too thrilled about seeing Roland’s insides spilling out of a Y-shaped incision.

“What’s the problem, Mr. Greene?” Warner looks a tad bit agitated about the mystery, too. This makes me smile.

Greene gives us each a copy of the single-page summary. I know from past experience that there must be at least twenty other pages to back it up, all written in doctor-speak.

“She didn’t kill him.” Greene is fighting hard not to smile.

Warner does a fist pump, as if he just found out that his long shot won the Derby.

“Come on, Tim. How can you know that?” I ask.

“There was no trauma to the skull, at least nothing that would indicate he had been hit with a shovel, or any object, for that matter. There was some minor trauma on the left side of his head and his arms, but that occurred post mortem, probably when she was digging him up.”

“But she admitted that she killed him. She said she whacked him in the head with a shovel and he fell into the hole he was digging for that pond.”

Warner clicks his tongue. “Cloud, you know better. You can’t use anything she said—”

I raise my hand to stifle him. Greene is enjoying this. I am not.

“The man had a heart attack,” Greene says. “And from the looks of his eyes and lungs, he must have fallen face down in that hole. A real mess.”

I stare at him. “A heart attack? He was only thirty-eight years old.”

“Happens all the time,” Greene continues. “Besides, he had a minor heart defect, one he probably didn’t know anything about. That, combined with poor eating habits… well, he had a lot of buildup, and he was working out in the yard after a night of excessive drinking. It’s not as uncommon as you might think.” Greene stands, his face lit up like a schoolboy on Friday. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

Warner gets to his feet. “Yes, thank you. A closer look would be helpful.”

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. I don’t need to see anything else. I have everything I need on this one sheet of paper.

An hour later, the stench of formaldehyde is still in my nostrils. We had examined Roland Adams as if he were a piece of discarded meat. I can’t quit rubbing my nose. We walk out into the parking lot, Warner moving faster with a little skip unbecoming a man of his advanced years.

But I wasn’t letting Cass—or Clay—off that easy. “She still lied about it, Warner. Don’t forget that.”

He wrinkles his nose and waves a hand as though he’s swatting a fly. “She’s mentally ill and was on the wrong medication. A couple of wrong medications. Dr. Button will testify to that. In fact, he’s already started a report. Besides, it’s not against the law to lie unless you’re hiding a crime. But there wasn’t a crime, was there, Cloud?”

“She buried him in the damn koi pond!” I imagined her shoveling dirt on top of Roland, filling in the hole that he fell into.

He shrugs. “Her land, her body. Don’t a lot of the Native Americans in the area do the same with their dead?”

“Not without a permit. And a death certificate. Failure to report a death is a crime. So is dumping a body in the river.”

“She didn’t dump it in the river. That fisherman saw to that. Failure to report a death? Maybe. But what’s the punishment for that?”

I should be mad about the whole thing, and in a way, I am. I worked so many hours in the past four days, and now it seems that it was all for naught. This whole mess could play hell with my bid for sheriff. Something still seems fishy to me, but the coroner’s report makes the situation pretty cut and dried, and maybe I won’t take flak for closing it out and going back to my daily routine. I’d just as soon get this whole murder thing over with and move on. There’s always a little dope floating around, but lately, I’ve got zoned-out crackheads showing up at the 7-Eleven. And I have an election to worry about.

I stop at my cruiser. “Fine. But I’m still going to talk to the DA about charging her with everything I can. It’s not right what she did, and she needs to pay for it. You can fight him in court all you want. “

He gives me that shit-eating grin. “Sounds fair. Rent on that fine hotel you operate, I assume. Now let’s go back and get her out of there, shall we? I’m sure you don’t want to be holding anyone without being charged.”

He starts to walk away then turns back. “Oh, and Cloud? Tell the coroner to release the body to the Deacon Funeral Home. Cass has a funeral to plan. And I’d appreciate you calling that life insurance company first thing in the morning. I think the widow has a nice hefty chunk coming to her for the loss of her young husband. Kind of sad, don’t you think?”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Cass

“I
’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday.” I’m sitting at the table in the visitor’s room with Dr. Button. He isn’t taking notes like the doctors on TV always do. He just sits and listens, seeming to let my words soak in. “About me getting better over the past years, when I thought I was getting worse.”

“And?”

He is a mind doctor, and I know from watching TV that their favorite response is “And?” I smile. “I’m thinking maybe I was starting to see Roland differently than I had in the past. Is that ‘getting better’?”

He taps his index finger on the table, just the pad of the finger, lightly touching in a tap-tap-tap. This nervous habit would annoy me in some people, but with him, it’s as if he’s thinking with his finger. “You told me that you knew you were in love with Roland from a very young age, right?”

We talked about Roland the first day I met Dr. Button, how the four of us—Clay, Roland, Maryanne, and I—had done everything together as teenagers, and how Roland used to take up for me when people would call me names. “He protected me.”

“What was he protecting you from?”

The thing about head doctors is that they rarely give a direct answer. They keep talking until, finally, you answer your own question. Frankly, I think it’s a waste of time. But I fancy Dr. Button. He reminds me of my grandfather.

I shrug. “I don’t know. Everybody. Maybe the whole world.”

“But did you really need to be protected? From what I hear, you can be quite the firecracker. You take care of yourself.”

I have to think about that. Roland’s been dead for a few days, and it seems I’ve done fine without him around. People are still talking about me, but I don’t mind. I tell them to shut up, and most of the time, I stay around people who don’t talk about me much anyway, like Grams and Clay.

“What about Clay?” he asks, as if he read my mind.

“Clay was always with us. He was the oldest, so it was kind of his responsibility to make sure we didn’t do anything too stupid. He’s quiet, the opposite of Roland, but not shy. Just quiet. People always thought him and Maryanne were a couple, but they weren’t. He didn’t care for her like that, and he didn’t make her think that, either. Clay wouldn’t do that.”

“What is Clay like?”

I don’t know why we are talking about Clay, but I don’t mind. “Other people think he’s odd. He lives by himself, doesn’t go out much, and has that worm farm. And maybe he is a little strange. But aren’t we all? He always seems to be watching, taking things in, keeping me safe.”

“Protecting you?”

He caught me off guard with that. I’d never thought about it in that way, but yes, Clay protected me.

Jimmy Ray comes in and tells us that Clay has been released, thanks to my hotshot lawyer. I’m glad to hear that. Clay was fretting over his worms. Doc Button asks if we can get sandwiches so we can keep talking through dinnertime. He also requests a blanket and two pillows with his dinner. I know he’s old, but I hope he isn’t planning on a nap.

But when Jimmy brings the blanket, Doc spreads it out on the floor and puts the pillows down for us to sit on. “Let’s have a picnic, shall we? I’m tired of sitting at that table.”

It’s a good idea. We sit on the blanket and eat our sandwiches.

“Why do you think Clay prefers to be alone?” he asks after a few bites.

“Maybe it gives him time to think. Maybe if he’s alone, he can do whatever makes him happy. Maybe he doesn’t really want to be around a lot of people.”

He takes a drink of his Diet Pepsi. “Sounds like you, doesn’t it?”

Yeah, maybe it does.

He finishes his sandwich and wipes his hands on the single sheet of paper towel that came with our meal. “So back to your question. Are you getting better? Being alone at your home outside of town gave you time. You were taking too much medicine, and that sometimes made the world a little fuzzy. But your mind was working. What were you thinking about, Cass?”

I still have half of my sandwich left. “Toward the end? That’s easy.” I pull a piece of wilted lettuce that hangs from the corner under the crust and put it back in the wrapper.

Doc Button looks at me over his tiny glasses.

I stare him dead in the eyes. “I thought about how much I hated Roland. How everything had been a lie. How I wanted out. To be away from him. Away from the hill. And how the only way that would ever happen was if he were dead.”

I hear the big door up top swing open and heavy footsteps on the stairs. I can tell it’s Benny and that he has someone with him. When they get to the cell, I see that his companion is Richard. My lawyer presses his palms together softly as though he’s clapping.

Benny says, “Let’s go, Cass. Get your things. It’s over.”

“It’s about damn time, Benny,” I say. “Hell, I told you it was an accident.”

Richard chuckles. “No, Cass. He means it’s
all
over. The fire and Roland. We just came from the coroner’s office.”

I glance at Dr. Button, then at Benny, and back to Richard. Benny doesn’t appear too happy, but Richard’s smile is a crescent moon. Benny stands there, not saying another word, waiting for me to get up and move.

“According to the coroner,” Richard announces, “you didn’t kill Roland.”