Blanco County 03 - Flat Crazy (24 page)

30

FOUR HOURS LATER, Tatum and Marlin stood back and watched the Bobcat operator tear at the soil. Marlin was impressed by how quickly Tatum’s team had responded to his radio call. Within thirty minutes, Tatum and his deputies had arrived, along with the medical examiner, Lem Tucker, and the forensics technician, Henry Jameson.

A cluster of county vehicles was parked thirty yards from the site of the body, with a KHIL news van looming behind the yellow tape that had been stretched in a wide arc around the crime scene.

So far, the deputies had bagged the following evidence: the toaster, what appeared to be the remains of a swimsuit that had been torn from Dawson’s body, and an extension cord found inside the hole that had obviously served as Dawson’s tomb.

But Tatum wasn’t content with merely peering into the hole or having a deputy crawl inside. He wanted every last scrap of evidence possible, so he was having the hole slowly excavated by the Bobcat, a small tractor equipped with a backhoe.

Meanwhile, Ernie Turpin was back at the office, typing affidavits for a search of Duke Waldrip’s office, his home on Flat Creek Road, and his truck. “Yesterday,” Tatum had said earlier, frustration in his voice, “Hilton didn’t think we had probable cause on Waldrip. Now I’d say we do. I’d say he and Kyle teamed up on Searcy, and then their little partnership went south. Hell, we got Waldrip’s fingerprints on the deer mount, calls from Searcy to Waldrip … and now somebody offed Kyle. Am I crazy, or is that probable cause?”

They were all hoping the judge would see it the same way. Just after three o’clock, they received the news they were waiting for. Ernie Turpin came over the radio to Tatum: “On that matter with Judge Hilton, we’re a go. Repeat, we are a go.”

“Ten-four,” Tatum replied. “First things first, Ernie. Let’s get his truck towed to the lab.”

“I’m on it.”

Tatum turned to Marlin. “I’ve got two locations to work, and I need every warm body I can get.”

“Tell me where you want me,” Marlin said.

Duke stretched out on the cot and waited.

Weak bullshit, that’s all this was. A lame attempt to unnerve him. The county jail cell was easy time compared to Huntsville. If they were trying to scare Duke, they’d have to do a lot better than that.

And all those photos and documents on the wall of the interview room—what a goddamn joke. Then that deputy coming in, making a big production of handing Tatum some mysterious note. Fucking Barney Fife could come up with a better plan.

They were desperate, grasping at straws, because they didn’t have a single piece of physical evidence, the kind that really mattered. Duke knew all about that stuff from his trip to the joint. He’d heard story after story about some poor slob getting tripped up by a carpet fiber or a single drop of blood. That’s why he had taken care of everything.

Searcy’s gun, the screwdriver, the bolt cutters—they were all at the bottom of Pedernales Reservoir. The plastic dropcloth and the clothes Duke had been wearing were now ashes in a barrel in his backyard. He’d tossed his boots in a trash bin at a roadside park on Highway 290. He’d even gone back and mopped the floor of his office three damn times with bleach, sponging away any last trace of Searcy’s blood that might have remained.

Now all he had to do was keep quiet and he was home free.

Marlin had never seen a team of officers more dedicated to searching every square inch of a structure—and he was more than happy to take part.

They started with the Waldrip house on Flat Creek Road. Henry Jameson went in first, because the deputies didn’t want to contaminate any trace evidence by walking through the home. His job was to scour the house for any possible forensic evidence and collect a broad sample of available hairs and fibers, on the chance they might be able to link it to Searcy later. If they could prove Searcy had been to the house, they’d be catching Duke Waldrip in a lie. When Henry was finished, he took three additional items with him for testing: screwdrivers he’d found in a desk drawer. He left the scene and moved on to Waldrip’s office next to the feed store, where a reserve deputy was standing guard. Meanwhile, Marlin, Bill Tatum, Rachel Cowan, and Ernie Turpin began a methodical search of the contents of the house.

“Every last shred of paper, every photograph, under every stick of furniture,” Tatum called out, “I want every last thing checked out. And if you find a pair of bolt cutters, I’ll personally buy you a steak dinner.”

It was slow, painstaking work, and they bagged any items of interest as they went. A list of phone numbers. Photos from hunting expeditions. Bank statements. They’d have to explore all of these more closely later. For now, if any item had any possible value in the case, they took it with them. They searched the small attic and the crawl space under the house, they checked for loose floorboards, and they even removed air-conditioning registers and peered into the ventilation ducts. Five hours later, however, they had found nothing that was blatantly incriminating. Marlin sensed the mood of the officers sinking. Tatum, especially, was looking more grim-faced by the minute.

They loaded the bagged items in the trunks of two cruisers, then proceeded over to Waldrip’s office.

When they arrived, Henry was down on his knees in the back room. “Been waiting on you,” he said.

“Find something?” Tatum asked.

“Just one thing, right here on this chair leg. A small streak of what looks like blood.”

The deputies moved in for a closer look, and Marlin could feel their hopes rising. Jameson placed a numbered placard on the floor next to the chair leg, then swabbed the blood carefully as Rachel Cowan photographed the process.

Bill Tatum said what they were all thinking: “He’s a hunting guide. Could be deer blood.”

What Bill Tatum had been hoping for was direct evidence linking Duke Waldrip to the murder of Oliver Searcy, or even to the death of Kyle Dawson, which couldn’t be ruled a homicide until Lem Tucker had done an autopsy. Wild pigs had worked the body over pretty well, and nobody knew yet whether Lem would be able to discern the cause of death.

When they were finished with the searches, at six o’clock in the morning, he was afraid they had come up short. They had bagged a wide variety of items from both locations, but Tatum’s intuition told him they were chasing red herrings. The blood evidence might lead somewhere—but then again, it might not.

Tatum, the other deputies, and John Marlin gathered around their cruisers outside Waldrip’s office. Cowan reached into her car for a thermos of coffee and some paper cups. “Anybody?”

Turpin took a cup, but Tatum shook his head. His hands were trembling from the amount of coffee he’d already consumed.

“We’ll get right on this stuff,” Ernie Turpin said, gesturing toward the trunks full of Waldrip’s possessions.

Tatum nodded. “I really appreciate all of you working so hard. Y’all have busted your asses on this case, and we’ve made some good headway. But the truth is … we’re hitting a dead end.”

Tatum could tell each member of the group knew what he was saying. It was time to ask the Rangers for assistance. Turpin slouched against his cruiser. Cowan stared at the pavement.

“I know it ain’t easy,” Tatum said. “But we’re all beat, we’ve been working nonstop, and we need a fresh set of eyes on this one. I’ve already talked to Bobby about it, and he thinks it’s a good idea.”

“We’ve got the blood,” Turpin offered.

“I know it, Ernie, but let’s face it—Waldrip probably has blood on his boots or pants every time he steps into this place. Besides, it’s gonna take weeks to get the DNA results. I hate it as much as you do, but we can’t afford the time.”

“That’s it, then?” Cowan asked.

Tatum glanced at his watch. “Listen, I’ll make one more run at Waldrip, see if I can get anything new out of him. After that, I’m gonna have to make a call.”

Duke was startled awake by the sound of his cell door opening, and for one brief moment, he was back in Huntsville, the dark early morning suffocating him like a woolen blanket. Panic began to grip his insides … until he remembered exactly where he was. His eyes adjusted and he saw a deputy watching him. Tatum, the short, beefy son of a bitch. Guy looked strong as a bull moose.

“Damn, what now?” Duke said. “Can’t a guy sleep to a decent hour around here?”

Tatum stepped into the cell and stood silently for several moments. Fine. Duke was more than happy to play that game. He rolled over and faced the wall.

“It’s not looking good for you, Duke,” Tatum said behind him. “In case you haven’t heard, we found Kyle.”

Duke’s eyes popped wide. He rolled over slowly and sat up, his back against the wall, one knee up. “What’re you talking about? What happened to—” Duke snapped his mouth shut. The deputy hadn’t said they’d found Kyle’s
body;
he’d simply said they’d found
Kyle.
From the deputy’s standpoint, as far as Duke knew, Kyle was still alive. He tried to cover his slipup. “What happened to him? Where’d that cocksucker run off to?”

The deputy leaned against the bars but didn’t answer. Duke was fully awake now and already craving a smoke, but these jerks didn’t allow it in the cells. He’d have to ask Boots about the legality of that bullshit.

“You got something to ask me?” Duke said. “Otherwise, I’d just as soon—”

“I’m wondering about the blood on the chair in your office. You care to tell me about it?”

Duke tried to study Tatum’s face in the dim light, but the man was a stone.
Is he bluffing?
After all of Duke’s cleaning, could they have found blood? “Something I might’ve left out the last time we talked. That time when Searcy came to see me, the man had a nosebleed.”

The stout deputy smiled, and that threw Duke off balance a tad. Guy had no reason to smile. Tatum walked to Duke’s cot, bent right over into his face, and said, “Bullshit.”

“Hey, whatever. Believe what you want. You could use some Listerine, by the way.”

“I’m not buying it, Duke. You’re saying he just stood there and bled? No handkerchief or nothing?”

“That’s what I’m saying. Bled real fast at first. I got the guy some towels from the bathroom, end of story. Blood on my floor, on the chair. I cleaned it up later.”

“Why are you just now telling me this?”

Duke waved his hand, going for disgusted. “Y’all already made up your minds I done it. What, I’m supposed to say, ‘Oh, by the way—that dead guy? You’ll find his blood in my office.’ Don’t think so. How dumb do I look?”

The deputy crossed his arms. “Tell me about Kyle.”

“What about him?”

“You wanna tell me what happened?”

“What happened where? Man, you’re talking in goddamn riddles again. You ask me a question I understand and maybe I’ll answer it.”

Then Duke changed his mind. Talking to this guy—any cop, for that matter—was plain stupid. Just an idiot’s way to get locked up. “On second thought, I’m all done. You got any more questions, ask my lawyer. I’m tired of trying to help you out.”

Bill Tatum knew it wasn’t enough, not even for an indictment. That smug asshole could sit in there and tell lie after lie, and there wasn’t a damn way Tatum could prove otherwise. Not with what they had so far. Waldrip was either lucky as hell or smart enough to realize the implications of forensic evidence.

Nosebleed, my ass.

The problem was, Waldrip’s story sounded just plausible enough to be true. A trial jury would think, well, hey, we’ve all gotten nosebleeds at some point. Could’ve happened here. With today’s advancements in forensic technology, even grand juries expected each case to be a slam dunk. For God’s sake, in the biggest fiasco of all, O.J.’s team of lawyers had shrugged off a mountain of DNA evidence to set him free. In comparison, what they had in this case was paltry.

Bill Tatum was just so damn tired. Maybe he and Garza should have called the Rangers right when this thing began.

Sitting in his cruiser outside the sheriff’s office, Tatum made the call. “This is Bill Tatum with the Blanco County Sheriff’s Department. Is Lieutenant Foster in yet?”

31

JOHN MARLIN DIDN’T usually eat chocolate-chip cookies for breakfast, but since these were left on his kitchen counter by a sexy, nationally adored TV personality, he figured he could make an exception. The only question was, where had she gotten the ingredients? She’d left a note:

John—

Got bored and played around in your kitchen a little. Hope you don’t mind. Did you know there are places known as “grocery stores,” and you can give them money in exchange for food? (Ha!) I bought a few things, so now that six-pack from last night doesn’t look so lonely. That white stuff in the jug is milk. It comes from cows. Enjoy.

Rudi

P.S. I’m back at the motel—or maybe out exploring the Hill Country by the time you get this. I’ve got my cell phone.

Marlin munched a handful, then brushed his teeth and climbed into the shower. When he got out, there was a message on his answering machine:

“John, it’s Tatum. Listen, I already told Ernie and Rachel, but I wanted you to know … I called Lieutenant Foster in Waco and he’s sending Brad Anderson down here tomorrow morning. I appreciate all your help. I’ll keep you posted.”

Tatum sounded none too happy, and Marlin couldn’t blame him. Brad Anderson was a tough, smart Ranger out of Llano, but for Tatum, it would be tough giving up control of the case.

Marlin picked up the phone and dialed.

“Hello?”

“It’s John. Where are you?”

“On my way to Enchanted Rock,” Rudi said.

“Hey, good choice.”

Enchanted Rock, forty minutes from town, was a massive dome of pink granite that loomed hundreds of feet in the air and covered more than six hundred acres. Visitors from around the world came to the state park to hike to the top of the monumental batholith. The view from the top was breathtaking.

“By the way, thanks for calling me yesterday. Are you just getting up?” Rudi asked.

“No, just getting home.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Wish I was. Long night. Anyway, I wanted to thank you for the cookies. In person. Maybe tonight?”

“Are pigs dangerous?” Charlie asked.

Mr. Townsend, Charlie’s English teacher, said, “Pigs? You mean like barnyard pigs?”

It was right after class, and most of the students had already filed out of the room. Mr. Townsend was wiping the blackboard.

“No, wild ones.”

“Well, not really. Some of them might get pretty upset if you cornered ’em, or if they were wounded. And the mama pig doesn’t like you messing with her piglets.”

Charlie liked Mr. Townsend a lot, and the teacher was a hunter. Charlie figured Mr. Townsend knew what he was talking about.

“You’ve hunted them, right?” Charlie asked.

“Plenty of times. Are you going on a hunt, Charlie?”

“No, I don’t think so. I just wondered what they were like.”

“Just like any other pig, really, except feral. That means wild.”

Charlie nodded. “Are they scary? I mean, are most men scared of them?”

Mr. Townsend chuckled. “Not anybody who’s hunted them. Most pigs run the other way as soon as they see you. There’s really not much to be scared of.”

For six hours, Marlin slept like he was getting paid for it—the kind of deep, dreamless sleep that comes from being thoroughly whipped and mentally exhausted.

He didn’t hear the ring of the cordless phone, which he’d left in the kitchen, and he never budged when Trey Sweeney left a message:

“Marlin, are you there? Pick up, will ya? Hel-lllooo? You’re not gonna believe this. I just got some film back from my automatic camera. You remember—I set it up on Kyle Dawson’s place, in the woods near the stable? Threw a deer carcass in front of it last night. Anyway, I checked it this morning and the whole roll of film was shot up. I figured varmints at first, but … man, this is too weird … I’ve got it, John. I know what the chupacabra is. Call me as soon as you can. I don’t want to just blurt it out on your answering machine. So call me.”

The machine beeped and a small red light began to blink. Fifteen seconds later, the phone rang and the machine picked up again.

“Aw, what the heck. It’s a hyena, John. I know, it sounds crazy … but I’ve got twenty-four photos of a friggin’ hyena. Swear to God. Call me as soon as you can.”

Jimmy Earl Smithers, you do-si-do that girl like you mean it!
His fifth-grade teacher, fat ol’ Mrs. Griffith, always loved square dancing. Where was he? Who said something about morphine?

Had he paid his electric bill?

Babies really aren’t that cute, when you stop to think about it.

Jimmy Earl couldn’t open his eyes. His head hurt.

I bet kangaroos can kick really, really hard.

He had to get that load of something over to El Paso.

The black guy at the gun shop thinks I have a small penis.

Something wasn’t quite right. Jimmy Earl was so tired.

Six days on the road and I’m gonna make it home tonight.

“Jimmy Earl, can you hear me? You’re in the hospital.”

He wanted to respond, but he couldn’t move his mouth. Or his arms.

Gotta cage that rabid squirrel.

It was nearly one o’clock before Duke finally saw the judge, and he took that as a good sign. If it
was
a murder charge—which would have been damn big news in Blanco County—they’d have rousted him bright and early, paraded him around for everyone to see. The courthouse would’ve been buzzing with reporters, but when the deputy walked Duke over from the jail, just across the street, there wasn’t a news van in sight.

Three minutes later, he was sitting in the courtroom of Judge Daniel Hilton. He was an older man, maybe in his sixties, and he didn’t look like he had much of a sense of humor. Place was nearly empty, except for an assistant district attorney, a couple bailiffs milling around, and a few sorry-looking punks with their lawyers. Duke had to sit there and listen to their stupid, shitty cases.

One guy was a Mexican busted for driving drunk. Didn’t know a word of English, and there was a lot of confusion about whether he did or didn’t want to plead guilty.

Next came a skinny white boy, maybe eighteen, charged with burglary. Apparently, he’d broken into a hunting cabin and stolen a bunch of rifles. Turned out the cabin was owned by one of the county commissioners. Kid was dead meat.

There were a couple more small-potatoes cases, and then Duke finally heard his name read aloud. Duke stood and faced the judge, a deputy still by his side.

“Richard Anthony Waldrip,” the judge said, reading from some papers. He raised his eyes and glared at Duke. “I notice you don’t have an attorney with you today.”

“Judge, they never even told me what the hell they arrested me for.”

“Mr. Waldrip, you will watch your mouth in my courtroom, do you understand?”

“Sorry, Judge. Just a little pissed … uh, upset about the whole thing. Seems wrong to lock a man up and not tell him why.”

“You are receiving a prompt arraignment, sir, and that’s all that’s required. Now then, the charge against you is possession of a dangerous animal, a Class-A misdemeanor. How do you plead?”

A fucking misdemeanor?
Duke had been right all along. It had been a bluff. That deputy had filed this crappy case, one he could never win, purely as a fishing expedition, just so he could pump Duke about Searcy.

“I’m gonna go with not guilty, Judge. In fact, I make a motion to dismiss based on lack of evidence.” What the hell, it was worth a try.

Now the judge gave Duke a stern look, maybe ready to do some cussing himself.

“This isn’t the place for motions. Besides, have you even
seen
the evidence in this case, son?”

“No, sir.”

“Motion denied.”

Five minutes later, Duke was released on his own recognizance and was free to go. Trial date in two months—but Duke knew it would never get that far.

It took Duke thirty minutes to walk home, and when he got there, the Explorer was still sitting in the driveway. A notice on the front door informed Duke that the sheriff’s department had searched the place, which Duke already knew. They’d searched the office, too, from what the deputies had told him, and hauled his truck away.

Duke swung the front door open, expecting to find Gus on the couch watching TV. But the place was quiet. He walked down the hall and saw that the suitcase was missing from Gus’s bed.

“Gus?”

“Well, you’re right,” Marlin said, scratching his head, still waking up. “No doubt about it. That’s a hyena.”

Trey had fanned out a selection of photos on Marlin’s countertop. All of the photos had been taken at nighttime as the hyena feasted on the deer carcass, and the flash from the camera didn’t appear to have scared the hungry animal at all.

Trey said, “I compared the tracks I lifted to some images I found on the Web, and it’s a match. And the hair we collected from Kyle Dawson’s place seems about right.”

Marlin nodded. “Guess we’re lucky it wasn’t one of the big cats, or something even worse.”

“The question is, what do we do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“How do we go about catching the dang thing? And do we alert the public or not?”

Marlin picked up one of the photos and studied it more closely. The hyena was a fairly fierce-looking creature, with a powerful muzzle and sloping muscular shoulders—but how on earth this animal could have been mistaken for the mythical chupacabra, he had no idea.

“I’m not sure we need to do anything at all, Trey,” he said. “This thing is no more dangerous than a coyote, actually. Chances are, someone will shoot it or trap it. But it’s not like it poses any immediate threat.”

“No, I guess not.” Trey dropped the photo to the counter.

Marlin eyed him. “Disappointed, huh?”

“What? No, not really.”

“You were hoping for something a little more, I don’t know … momentous. Hell, you can see one of those in a zoo.” Frankly, Marlin was relieved. Now they knew exactly what they were dealing with, and it wasn’t much to be concerned about. But if Trey wanted to mount a campaign to capture the hyena, more power to him.

Trey gathered up his photos. “You know, everybody thinks hyenas are just scavengers and cowards, but they’re not.”

Here was Trey, dejected, trying to gather one last ounce of excitement out of it.

“They’re not?”

“Not at all. People think hyenas wait around for lions to finish their kills and then the hyenas creep in and scoop up the leftovers. But most of the time, it’s the other way around. Hyenas are very capable predators.”

Marlin didn’t point out that Trey’s own photos showed the hyena dining on a long-dead whitetail.

“I think I ought to at least let the newspaper know,” Trey said. “Maybe give them a photo or two.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Marlin said. “Good idea.”

For nearly three months—since the beginning of deer season back in November—Marlin hadn’t had a spare moment. Now, suddenly, he found himself with time on his hands. Unless a call came in, his afternoon was free.

He threw a load of laundry into the washing machine, then sat at his computer and did paperwork for several hours. At four o’clock, he put a roast from a wild pig into the oven, nice and low at three hundred degrees. By seven or eight, it would be falling apart.

At five o’clock, with an hour of sunlight left, he and Geist stepped out the back door and took a stroll around his seven-acre homestead. The air was crisp, and the dog was full of pent-up energy from being left alone so much in the past few days. She bounded after white-wing doves and even flushed a small covey of quail, but Marlin could tell it was nothing but play. She wasn’t a born hunter and wouldn’t know what to do with one of the birds if she caught it.

Back at the house, Marlin straightened things up, ran the vacuum, and even lit a few candles to freshen the air a bit.

At seven, he returned to his computer, Googled the words
spotted hyena,
and got a hit from the San Antonio Zoo Web site. The site informed him that the spotted hyena can grow as large as 190 pounds, with females generally larger than males. Bigger than he thought. They can gallop at speeds approaching forty miles per hour and can easily top thirty for several miles while pursuing prey. Trey was correct, too, in that the hyena does more hunting than scavenging. Most of the hyena’s power is in its forequarters and its powerful jaws, which can crush bone. And, of course, there is the hyena trademark: the laughing sound it makes when being attacked or chased.

Maybe Trey was right about trying to trap it. So far, all of the reports had come in from the Flat Creek area, but the Web site didn’t mention the size of a hyena’s home range. Would it remain in the area, or roam into another county? As Marlin searched for more information, the doorbell rang.

He opened the door, and there was Rudi, looking great in the glow of the porch light.

Gus leaned back and listened to the bus engine roar.

This was a lot of fun, really, not knowing where he was going. When he had come back from the bank, Duke was gone, but Gus’s suitcase was sitting right there on the bed. So he’d grabbed it, thumbed a ride to Austin, gotten a cab to the bus terminal, and bought a ticket. But he’d had an episode at the counter, and then, the next thing he knew, he was in a seat. Couldn’t remember what he’d told the ticket agent. Then again, did it really matter? This was an adventure.