Blanco County 03 - Flat Crazy (16 page)

Marlin knew what Sweeney was thinking: The tracks they’d found were made by some other exotic animal from Kyle Dawson’s stable. Marlin knew it was a possibility.

“How long before the lab can identify those samples?” Sweeney asked.

“Couple of weeks.”

Trey laughed. “Well, I’d say we better keep our eyes open for something weird.”

Marlin’s call waiting beeped.

“Gotta go, Trey.”

Darrell Bridges, the night dispatcher for the sheriff’s department, was on the other line. “Sorry, John, I know you’re trying to go ten-seven.” Marlin had called Darrell before going to bed, asking him to hold any calls that weren’t urgent. “But we’ve got trespassing calls coming in all over the county. Some of these landowners are pretty pissed off.”

Just what Marlin had expected. Thrill-seekers were out looking for the chupacabra. Marlin got some addresses from Darrell and told him he’d respond.

He went to grab his gun belt, when the phone rang yet again.

“It’s me,” Darrell said. “Forget those trespassing calls for now. We just got a call from a lady on Flat Creek. Said she was attacked by some kind of strange animal.”

21

THE SET THAT was used in most of Marty Hoffenhauser’s films was really just an old airplane hangar on Marty’s property. One half of the hangar housed a wide variety of furniture, clothing, and other props. Depending on the script, the small crew could slap together a bedroom one morning, then have a restaurant standing in the same spot that afternoon. Just outside the hangar was a travel trailer that the cast used as a dressing room between shots.

Marty asked Mike Hung to meet him at the hangar Saturday morning. Just the two of them, with no distractions. Shooting was on hold for the time being, while Marty tried to solve this delicate problem. This particular morning, the crew was prepared to return to the set on a moment’s notice.

“So how’s it going, Mike?” Marty asked, handing the star a glass of orange juice. He wanted to approach this topic just right. Casual, not worried. Concerned, but not in a panic. They both took a seat.

“Aw, so-so,” Mike replied. He appeared downright depressed. It broke Marty’s heart to see this once-proud dwarf with such a hangdog expression.

“You been getting plenty of sleep?”

Hung nodded, but he stared into his glass.

“Yeah, well, that’s good. Plenty of sleep can do you a world of good. I gotta have eight hours every night myself.”

Mike was not exactly bubbling with conversation.

So Marty continued. “I’ve been thinking about something, Mike. Something that could be the answer to our small … issue.” Marty shifted in his chair. “From what I understand—in your country—when a man isn’t feeling quite as … masculine as he would like, there are certain items that can give him a … boost. Is that right?”

Mike made eye contact, but appeared confused. The language barrier was sometimes a problem.

“You know—aphrodisiacs?” Marty said.

Mike didn’t appear to know that word. Marty didn’t know how to say it in Chinese.

“For instance”—Marty had done some research on the Internet—“the penis from a horse? Bear gallbladder? Moth larvae?”

Mike began to grin. “Yes, yes, velly good stuff.” He frowned. “But not available here.”

“No, no, they’re not,” Marty replied. He leaned over and opened a brown grocery bag. “But there is something we have here that can do the trick.”

Marty pulled the items out of the bag. Two matching antlers, four points on each. Junior Barstow had been kind enough to lop the antlers off what he had called a “basket rack eight.”

Marty watched Hung’s face, and was pleased to see that he appeared interested.

“You ever use these?” Marty asked.

Hung shook his head. “But I hear they much powaful.” The little guy used a voice—a whisper, really—that one would normally reserve for talking about a saint.

Marty laughed. “Damn right they are! They’ll make you more virile than you’ve ever been before!” Then Marty wondered if he was overdoing it. He sounded like a cheesy late-night infomercial for a Viagra knockoff. And besides—judging from Hung’s expression—he didn’t need to be sold. According to many different Web sites, deer antlers were one of the leading Chinese aphrodisiacs, their potency coming solely from the fact that they were considered phallic in design. The theory was, if you ingested something that had phallic qualities, your own phallus would be affected.

“I use it all the time,” Marty lied. He knew that in reality the antlers worked the same way as a placebo. Mind over … well, in this case, penis. If Hung
thought
the antlers would make him a raging sex fiend, that’s exactly what they would do.

A smile spread across Mike’s face.

“And here…” Marty opened a large plastic Save Mart bag and withdrew a blender, still in its box. He’d purchased the most durable high-performance model available. Then he pulled a heavy-duty saber saw out of the bag. (Marty had received a strange stare when he had asked the salesgirl if the saw would cut through bone. “Yeah, I guess so,” the young lady had replied, then quickly scurried down the aisle, leaving Marty standing there.)

Antlers were generally ground up into a powder, then sprinkled over food or into a drink. Marty decided the best way to grind them would be to cut them into small slivers and puree them in the blender. Probably not the way the Chinese did it, but Marty didn’t think that really mattered.

Marty said, “Now, see, this blender has several different speeds. You just—”

But Hung wasn’t listening. He was scooping the blender and saw into his arms, the antlers riding on top of the pile. “Thank you,” he said, even going so far as to bow. “Thank you velly much.”

Then he dashed to the travel trailer, the door slamming behind him.

* * *

Marlin pulled into the parking lot of the sheriff’s department at five minutes before ten o’clock. After responding to Darrell’s call last night, and then chasing trespassing calls all over the county, Marlin had managed to get to bed at five in the morning and get four solid hours of sleep. Then Bill Tatum had called at nine o’clock, wanting to set up a meeting. “I’d like to get everybody together,” the deputy had said. “We’ve got some new developments, and I want to talk ’em through.”

Inside the office, Marlin grabbed a cup of coffee and made his way to the small conference room. Already seated around the table were Bill Tatum, Rachel Cowan, and Ernie Turpin.

Marlin took a chair while Tatum finished up a conversation on the phone. When he hung up, the chief deputy rubbed his hands together and said, “Okay, things are moving damn fast and we need to get a handle on it all.” He sat at the head of the table. “Let me bring you up to speed real quick, John. Kyle Dawson’s house. The three of us finished the search about four this morning—and the short version is, we didn’t find squat outside of that lock. No prints on it, by the way. We did find a pretty good stash of cocaine—about eleven grams. We
didn’t
find any kind of travel documents—but Dawson had a computer, and we’re sorting through it to see if he bought plane tickets on-line. If he
did
buy tickets”—Tatum slid a small item across the table to Marlin—“he’s not going far.”

Marlin glanced down and saw a passport. He thumbed through it and saw a photo of Kyle Dawson. “Maybe he forgot it,” Marlin said.

Tatum shook his head. “Doubtful. We busted a few chops at the Houston airport, got them to hustle up some video from one of their cameras.”

There was a laptop computer in the center of the table, and Tatum swung it around to face Marlin.

Rachel Cowan ran her fingertips along the computer’s mouse pad. The young deputy was the unofficial high-tech guru for the department. She had set up a new computer system there the previous summer.

“They e-mailed this clip late last night, while we were at Dawson’s place.” She clicked on a file and a grainy black-and-white video began to play. It was a wide shot, showing a long row of vehicles in a parking lot lit by vapor lights. Behind the cars was a high chain-link fence and then a busy boulevard.

“Resolution’s bad because each camera has to cover such a big area,” Cowan explained.

Looking at the far end of the row of cars, Marlin saw a low-slung sports car—Kyle Dawson’s car, presumably—pull into an empty spot at least forty yards from the camera. Bad luck. If the car had been closer, they would have gotten a much better look. When Dawson got out of the car, though, he would likely walk right past the camera on his way into the airport. After a few seconds, a figure climbed out of the car. The quality of the video made it impossible to make out any of the man’s features. He was wearing a dark jacket … or maybe a long-sleeved shirt. Even details as simple as that couldn’t be ascertained. It was all too blurry.

The man appeared to glance around, then leaned back into the car.

“We think he wiped away prints,” Tatum said. “Houston didn’t find any on the driver’s side or the mirrors.”

The man in the video reemerged from the car, carrying something bulky.

“What do you think, John?” Tatum asked. “Is that the deer mount from Searcy’s house?”

It was impossible to tell. The man’s body partially shielded the object, and if there were antlers protruding from it, the video was just too poor to make them out.

“Could be,” Marlin said, but he knew he sounded uncertain.

Now the man proceeded to walk
away
from the camera.

Marlin started to state the obvious. “But—”

“Yes,” Tatum said, “the airport is
behind
the camera.”

Marlin watched dejectedly as the man walked out of the frame. Cowan paused the video. “The employees in the ticket booths never saw him. We think he climbed the fence.”

“None of the other cameras picked him up?” Marlin asked.

Cowan shook her head.

“So Dawson didn’t fly out?”

Tatum spoke again. “Hell, we can’t even be sure that’s him. We checked with all the airlines, and Kyle Dawson wasn’t booked on any of them. At least not under his real name. He could’ve used a fake passport, but that doesn’t seem likely.”

Cowan said, “I’m checking with a few people to see if the video can be cleaned up a little, maybe give us a better look, but I’m not holding my breath.” She leaned toward the computer. “Here’s the next clip….”

This segment of video showed a man from behind as he walked down the same row of cars. He stopped at the sports car, as if admiring it, then leaned over and peered into the window. He nonchalantly opened the door, climbed in, and drove away. It all transpired in about fifteen seconds.

“Terry Hobbs?” Marlin asked.

“Righto,” Tatum said.

Cowan ran the clips again, but it wasn’t much help. There simply was no way of determining whether it was or wasn’t Kyle Dawson.

“What about the gun from the glove compartment?” Marlin asked.

“Registered to Dawson,” Tatum said. “It wasn’t the one Bobby got shot with. Wrong caliber.”

As evidence, in its present state, the video wasn’t worth much.

Now Tatum slid a large manila envelope across the table. “Early this morning, we got an overnight package from one of the nurses that worked for Oliver Searcy. She found this in Searcy’s files, under the last name of ‘Deer.’”

Marlin opened the envelope and pulled out an X ray. The item on the film was instantly recognizable. A deer mount, complete with antlers.

What Marlin noticed first were the bolts threaded upward into the base of each antler. Marlin had seen this type of work before, done by cheaters trying to win big-buck contests. The antlers were probably “sheds,” meaning they had fallen naturally from a buck’s skull, as they do every year. It was a fairly simple job to take a pair of sheds, attach them to a skullcap from another deer, and then cover it all with deer hide, making it more difficult to spot the fraud. Officials for some of the larger contests, however, had begun the practice of x-raying questionable entries. Marlin didn’t need to explain any of this to the deputies. As natives of Texas, the state with the largest deer population in the country, they were more than familiar with this type of scam.

What Marlin noticed second was the long drop tine dipping down from the left antler. Drop tines were a fairly uncommon and therefore highly prized characteristic of a trophy buck.

“Is this actual size?” Marlin asked, holding the X ray.

The deputies glanced at one another. “I guess so. Aren’t most X rays?” Ernie Turpin said.

“Because, damn, if this sucker wasn’t a fake, it would score about one eighty.”

“What’s a buck like that go for nowadays?” Tatum asked.

“It varies, but five grand easy. Sometimes ten.”

“Here’s the theory we’ve been working with: Searcy hunted with Mr. X. He shoots a deer, and Mr. X passes off a fake later. Searcy figures it out, gets pissed off, and comes after him.”

“Waldrip or Dawson?”

“Damned if I know. Could be either, or both. Or, hell, somebody else entirely. We do know that Searcy placed a call to Waldrip on Sunday, six days ago. He was officially missing as of Monday, and you found him Tuesday morning. Searcy made no calls to Dawson, and no recent calls to other guides. He did call those other two guides several weeks ago….”

Marlin was trying to remember the conversation he and Garza had had with Duke Waldrip. He said, “What if Searcy hunted with somebody else—someone we haven’t even talked to yet—and then he discovered the mount was a fake? Let’s say he was embarrassed about getting ripped off and wasn’t going to do anything about it … or maybe he was going to deal with it later. But with the deer season ending, he still wants to get a good deer … so he calls Waldrip again.”

There was silence as the deputies mulled that scenario over. Cowan said, “But let’s not forget about Bobby getting shot. I mean, we
know
it’s gotta be the same guy, right? Whoever killed Searcy broke into the house to steal the deer mount. We agree on that?”

“I’d say so, at least for now,” Tatum said.

“Then we’re back to one of our original questions. Why steal the mount?”

Turpin said, “If the theory’s right—meaning Searcy got ripped off and came to settle the score—then whoever killed him might be identified by that mount, right?”