Almost Midnight (18 page)

On May 18, Jack Merritt and Chip Mason shot down to Harrison, Arkansas, where a guy named George Shaw had just been taken into custody. Shaw had gotten into a shootout with the local police and wounded an officer after trying to sell some jewelry at a pawnshop in town. This was potentially a case-breaking development. Jack and Chip knew that some rings and a watch had been taken from Lloyd’s body after he was murdered. His children had insisted
that he’d always worn these items and they’d given a precise description of them to Tom. Maybe the shooter hadn’t been Darrell after all. As it turned out, the trip was a wasted afternoon. The items that Shaw had been trying to hawk didn’t fit the description of Lloyd’s missing jewelry and the shotgun he’d used in wounding the Harrison cop didn’t match with the Taney County murder weapon.

Jack and Chip had better luck two days later when they met with Rocky Redford off a side road north of Branson. Chip had phoned Rocky at his father’s house in Hutchinson, Kansas, a day or two after the murders and told him he’d better return to Missouri for a face-to-face conversation.

So now here they were, and Rocky seemed eager to please. He said that Darrell had sometimes described how he’d go about killing someone. He’d use a shotgun with double-aught buckshot and slugs and then he’d destroy the firing pin, cut the gun into pieces, and throw them in a lake. He said that Darrell was an excellent shot and very knowledgeable about guns and that he’d talked now and then about wanting to acquire a Benelli. He said that Darrell and Mary had fantasized about becoming a hit team.

Now that Rocky was warmed up, there was no shutting him down. He speculated that Travis and Bush Clark had put Darrell up to stealing drugs from Lloyd and, perhaps, killing him. He said that Darrell would have come onto the Lawrence property by foot off Bear Creek Road. He suggested that the Clark brothers might be hiding Darrell down in Arkansas at Roger’s place.

Jack and Chip knew better than to take all this at face value. They knew that snitches tended to overplay their hands. Rocky was trying to impress them, make himself look important. Some of the things he was telling them simply didn’t add up. Darrell hiding out at Roger Widner’s? Not likely, Rocky, not likely at all.

Nevertheless, there were certain things they couldn’t ignore. Double-aught buckshot and slugs had been used in the killings, for example, and the murder weapon might very well have been a Benelli. What’s more, they had canvassed the area around Lloyd’s
property, talked to all the neighbors, and no one had seen a strange vehicle coming or going the day of the murders. Chances were the shooter had in fact come down Bear Creek Road by foot.

For Chip this just about cinched it. He’d strongly suspected Darrell from the start; now he was almost certain.

“It doesn’t look good for Darrell,” he said to Jack after they’d sent Rocky on his way.

“You might say that,” Jack agreed.

At the courthouse in Forsyth, Chip briefed county prosecutor Jim Justus on the rendezvous with Rocky. The two men agreed they’d definitely want to locate Darrell and pick him up for questioning. The problem was finding a way to do so. They couldn’t very well go to a judge and expect, on the strength of Rocky’s blabbering, to get a warrant issued for Darrell’s arrest. Rocky was a mere informant—and not a terribly reliable one at that. This left them a little short in the probable cause department. Anyway, it was still early. Who could tell? Maybe they’d get lucky and Darrell would turn up somewhere in Missouri. Maybe Darrell and Mary would turn up together and one or both of them would be ready to talk.

CHAPTER SEVEN

B
UT DARRELL AND
Mary weren’t about to turn up somewhere in Missouri. They were already long gone. After spending that first night at the foot of Bald Knob Cross, they cut north through Illinois and then went west along Interstate 80 all the way to Nevada, finally stopping in Elko. Along the way they picked up fake IDs at a truck stop and Darrell cut his hair and shaved his beard. By the time they hit Nevada they were passing themselves off as Kyle and Mary Hamlin.

They hadn’t planned on sticking around Elko. They were driving through, looking for something to eat, when Darrell saw a construction site on the edge of town. A couple of Mormon contractors from Utah were building an extension on the Red Lion Casino. Darrell found out who was in charge and said he wanted a job as a carpenter.
The Mormons said they’d take him on as a laborer and see how things worked out.

The promise of some steady money: maybe this was the fresh start they’d been hoping for. Elko was a town that seemed built for fresh starts. A neon oasis in the barren lands of northern Nevada, it had long been a hangout for gamblers, roughnecks, and desperados. Idaho Street, the main drag, was a glittering parade of all-night coffee shops, whiskey joints, and quick-jump motels. In the older section of town, along Railroad and up and down Fifth, you could take your chances at the Stumble Inn, Stray Dog, or Poker Slots Bar, or maybe test your luck at Stockmen’s Casino. Everywhere you went there was a sense of new possibility, surprises sneaking up on you, sudden prospects lurking around dark corners.

About a mile south of town Darrell and Mary turned onto a dirt road off Lamoille Highway and wound their way into the hills. At road’s end, on a high ledge studded with clumps of sagebrush, they parked the station wagon and got the camper ready for the night. It was an enchanting location. To the north were the dusk-drenched lights of Elko and miles beyond the rolling foothills of the Adobes. The Ruby Mountains sprang up in the distance to the south, and immediately below their hilltop perch—too late now to be clearly visible—there was an archery range and a small dirt racetrack.

Darrell was pleased. They could make their home here indefinitely, he thought. It was private and out of the way; there was a good chance nobody would bother them.

For most of the next two months they camped out in the same spot, cooking supper over an open fire, falling asleep to the rustle of the desert wind. Nobody bothered them; nobody seemed concerned whether they were up there or not. Most mornings Mary would cook breakfast and then Darrell would go off to his construction job at the casino. At lunchtime they’d usually meet for burgers and ice cream at the Dairy Queen on Idaho. Sometimes after work or on weekends they’d go down by the railroad station off Twelfth Street and sit on the bank of the Humboldt River drinking beer. Darrell and Mary didn’t realize it at the time, but over the years this area
by the river had served as a vagrants’ camp, with hoboes and busted-out gamblers putting up tents and shanties and the local police periodically coming and clearing everything away.

Darrell had been a big fan of Louis L’Amour Westerns growing up, so it wasn’t surprising that the high desert country around Elko held a special romance for him. He enjoyed visiting the original Pony Express cabin that sat on the front lawn of the Northeastern Nevada Museum on Idaho. The cabin had been erected in the Ruby Mountains in 1860 and relocated to Elko a century later.

Darrell had read about the Rubys and was eager to check them out in person. One long weekend he and Mary decided to do just that. They drove down scenic Route 228, all sagebrush and open sky, hardly a building in sight. After a stop for lunch in Jiggs, a tiny frontier outpost twenty-seven miles south of Elko, they took a treacherous rutted road twelve miles deep into the mountains. Two miles beyond Harrison Pass, right by a steep bend and dip in the road, they came to an abandoned mine tucked into the crevice of a canyon. It was the old Star Tungsten Mine, lost and forgotten, six dilapidated shacks, some still bearing traces of their original white and pink and yellow paint, a collapsed shaft and storage shed, and a small wooden building, probably the old mining office, standing beside a crackling mountain stream. The rusted-out hulk of a 1940s pickup truck and the skeletons of two other ancient vehicles lay in the rabbit brush near the front gate.

Darrell and Mary liked the haunted feel of the place—the prehistoric boulders and gnarled junipers perched on the surrounding cliffs, the hushed solitude, time at a standstill. They decided they’d bed down here for the night and see what the morning might bring.

The next morning Mary poked her head out the door of their camper and gasped in astonishment. They were snowed in. It was the middle of July and the Rubys were blanketed. Stranded, they survived the rest of the weekend on potatoes, the only food they’d brought with them. At one point a mule deer ran straight through their camp, but Darrell was caught off guard and didn’t have a gun close at hand. He also saw some partridge, which he later found out
were Himalayan snow cocks, but they came and went before he could make a move.

Darrell had taken a small quantity of meth with him when they fled Missouri after the killings. It was part of the batch he’d retrieved from the fire tower road and then buried at the campground near Chadwick. He’d been carrying it around in the station wagon, dipping into it occasionally behind Mary’s back (though he suspected she knew exactly what he was up to). Now the two of them, stranded and bored, decided to dip into it together. It wasn’t a good idea. Before long, Mary was complaining of feeling sick and disoriented. She said she hated taking meth and she also hated Darrell having anything to do with it. She insisted he swear off the stuff for good. Darrell agreed, saying that was it, never again. This time, more than ever before, he truly meant it.

The snow melted and they got back to Elko in time for Darrell to make it to work. He would have hated missing a day. Things were going well on the job. The Mormons were treating him decently and seemed to value his contributions. A few weeks earlier one of their carpenters hadn’t shown up and they’d asked Darrell to fill in for the day. He’d quickly proven himself more skilled than the regular guy and ever since they’d been piling more responsibility on him. They also liked Darrell personally and Darrell and Mary as a couple. They’d given them access to private showers in the casino and offered them free weekend use of a Winnebago that was parked at the construction site. Darrell and Mary happily made use of the showers but politely declined the offer of the Winnebago. They were content enough sleeping up in the hills.

Toward the end of July the construction job at the casino came to a close. The Mormons didn’t want to lose Darrell. They asked him to join them in Provo, Utah, where they had another job scheduled. Darrell turned them down. He was grateful for the invitation but was anxious to move on. His fake ID was shoddily made and he was concerned it might catch up to him if he stayed with any one outfit too long. Besides, he had already promised Mary a trip to Colorado.

Their last night in Elko they splurged on a steak dinner at a
restaurant across the street from the Red Lion Casino and then took forty dollars apiece over to the slot machines. In no time Mary had lost all her money and talked Darrell out of half of his. Soon they were both tapped out. They had another six hundred, saved from Darrell’s job, which they’d agreed they wouldn’t touch. They were counting on it for gas and food. Mary searched the station wagon for loose change and found a dime buried behind the front seat. She held it up triumphantly and went back inside for one last crack at the slots. Darrell was impressed. Mary loved to gamble but she’d been able to shut it off without siphoning into their travel funds.

The next day, Colorado-bound, they stopped for a breather at Cherry Creek, a map-speck five miles off U.S. 93. They didn’t find evidence of an actual creek, just a few beat-up shacks and a dirt road that petered off into the desert. Not to mention a rattlesnake that appeared out of nowhere and sent Mary and her dogs scurrying for cover. After the snake had gone its way, with no harm done, Darrell left Mary at the camper while he took a little walkabout.

When he returned, he found her balled up in the station wagon with her hands covering her face. He’d never seen her so distraught. He tried sweet-talking her but she didn’t respond. He realized the pressure she’d been under, carrying the terrible burden of their recent past, and he wondered how much further she could go.

They sat together in the front seat, brooding, the two of them buried in their own private thoughts. Then they saw it, the red, purple, and yellow glow of the desert sunset, hauntingly beautiful. They’d never seen anything quite like it. Mary took their camera from the glove box and tried to capture it forever.

B
Y MID-JUNE
Jim Justus and Chip Mason had given up on Darrell surfacing in the Ozarks. If (as seemed likely) he had committed the murders, he had probably fled the area soon afterward. Tom Martin and his team had looked everywhere, followed every lead, but Darrell was nowhere to be found.

The best way of tracking him down would be through an arrest
warrant. Get Darrell into the NCIC computer system and he’d eventually be pulled over and taken into custody. Every cop in the country would be on the lookout for him. The problem was, they still didn’t have probable cause to get a warrant issued for his arrest on the Lawrence homicides. It had occurred to them, however, that they might have another card to play. The previous June, after Darrell had been caught with a concealed weapon and a small stash of marijuana up by Rocky’s place, Justus had placed him on deferred prosecution for the marijuana. The deal was that Taney County would dismiss the charge after two years providing Darrell abided by certain conditions. One of these was his notifying the county within forty-eight hours of any change in his residence. This, apparently, he had failed to do.

On June 15, Jim and Chip met with Judge Joe Chowning at the Taney County Courthouse and requested a warrant for Darrell’s arrest on the grounds that he had violated the terms of the deferred prosecution. Chowning gave them what they wanted; the warrant was issued the very next day. Somewhere along the line, however, there must have been an administrative screwup. The arrest warrant was issued on the wrong charge: not the misdemeanor marijuana charge but rather the felony weapons charge that had been wiped clean when Darrell paid a $73 fine in Judge Chowning’s courtroom the previous June. The weapons charge was dead and gone; there was no just cause for resurrecting it. Nevertheless, Jim and Chip had their arrest warrant, though technically an invalid one. Now they were in business. Somewhere, sooner or later, Darrell would be picked up and held for questioning. It was simply a matter of waiting.