Easy Death (11 page)

“How did you know he drove off with the money?”

“Pardon?”

“You said the other one drove off with the money. How do you know if you didn’t see him?”

“Tracks in the snow,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Time I got there, you could still see tracks in the snow.” I spelled it out to her. “And there weren’t any looked like somebody dragged big bags of money. Besides which, there wasn’t any money there.”

Up ahead, the track of the getaway car still rolled out in front of me—but now there was something funny about it. Couldn’t tell what, in all that snow, but…

“They split up?” Callie interrupted my squinting at those tracks. She must have thought my story was getting interesting now. “Why on earth did they do such a thing?”

“Well, this guy the farmer caught, he didn’t feel like talking about it much.” I tried to keep part of my mind on telling her this and part on figuring out those tracks. It was like I could see them going up halfway to the tower but no further. The tracks just stopped, but there was no car there.

And I kept talking: “But I knew was I to get after his partner I had to move out quick, and I also knew I wasn’t going to make it very far or very fast in the car I was driving. But there was that truck.”

“The truck he got caught trying to steal?”

“Right. There was that truck and it was a darn sight better for getting over roads like these. ’Most as good as this Jeep.”

I could see it for sure now. We were maybe a quarter-mile from the tower and it was like driving up to big giant legs. There was some kind of small Park Service truck setting under it, and whatever tracks it made getting there had been long-ago covered in snow. But I could see pretty clear the tracks I’d been following, and they didn’t go no further than maybe forty yards up from the tower.

Callie acted like she didn’t notice it, and maybe she didn’t.

“Perhaps that’s why your man got out and tried to steal it,” she said, “and then when he got caught his partner simply drove away with the money.”

“Likely that or something just close to it.” I slowed up. We were close enough to the tower now that I couldn’t see the top of it through the windshield, but I wasn’t looking at it anyway. I was trying to see where those tracks in the snow had gone. “Anyhow, I handcuffed our man to a radiator, got the farmer to loan me his truck—”

“And showed up on my doorstep.”

“And couldn’t call for help because Chief Hannon, he didn’t suppose I ought to be there to start with.”

She was ready to talk. Driving in that snow I couldn’t take time to look at her face, but I could tell it anyway. Feel it just from the tone of her voice and the air in that Jeep.

“So now,” I said. “What’s your story about this Captain Scranton?”

And then I saw them; saw the tracks, saw where they went.

That little rise we’d been climbing to where the tower sat, it had a sharp drop-off to our left. And now that we were right up on them, I could see those tracks veered off, maybe forty yards in front of the tower and went sideways down the slope.

At the bottom of that slope the snow suddenly turned flat and level for maybe a half mile, so I figured there was likely a lake down there. And right at the edge of that lake, almost covered in snow there was a black-and-white car.

And footprints.

“It looks like a police car,” Callie said helpfully.

I hit the clutch and the brake, pulled up the Jeep and pressed my face up against the freezing-cold window, trying to see through blowing snow: one set of tracks, running from the passenger side of the car to the tower and back. Or maybe from the tower to the car, then back. I couldn’t be sure. Tried to look closer.

Which is how we were, just sitting there, stock-still out in the open like that, when I heard a sound I’d only heard the like of once before; it only come on me one other time, back in the war, but that was too many times to mistake it for anything else.

There was that short-sharp-sudden noise and all to once the windshield of that Jeep tuned into a crystal-white spiderweb with a big nasty hole in the middle of it.

December 20, 1951

12:55 PM

Sarge

At Sarge’s Spot, the only business for two miles in either direction out on Highway 12, Sarge himself looked disgustedly around the soft-lit polished-plastic room full of empty booths and tables, the only noise there coming from the flashing red-and-yellow jukebox,

Sleeeep in heavvvvenly peee-eeece
,

Slee-eep in heavvvv-enly peace.

“You got that right,” he muttered to himself, took off his spotless white apron and walked to the big glass door leading to the gravel parking lot out front.

Nothing there but snow. White, deep, and unbroken by any tire tracks all day.

“Hell,” he said to nobody but himself.

Behind him, Joe opened the door from the kitchen and looked timidly out.

“You want I should pitch this coffee and make some fresh, Boss?”

“Nah.” Sarge couldn’t take his eyes off the empty, money-losing parking lot. “Ain’t nobody gonna come out in a mess like this.” He reached up to turn off the bright blue-white-and-gold sign outside with the three stripes and the big letters

SARGE’S
SPOT
Dining – Dancing – Good Food
Beer –Wine – Liquor

He wondered vaguely if he’d make enough yet this year to pay off Brother Sweetie and get clear. Maybe if he got a good crowd on Christmas Eve…and then New Year’s…. Yeah, he could count on a good crowd New Year’s Eve, and Sweeney wouldn’t expect to get paid right away anyhow, not right around the holidays like this, so if things broke right, he might make it. With a little luck and a good crowd. Not today, though. Nor tonight either. Might as well—

Something out there caught his eye. Some kind of car, big and black, coming up Highway 12 as fast as it could on a day like this. Sarge tightened his fingers on the light switch.
Just one car
, he thought,
and if they decide to stop and get out of this mess they might sit here for hours waiting for the snow plow to come by, just sitting here drinking coffee and using up my electricity….

He almost turned off the switch. Then he reflected that whoever was out there might really need a chance to stop and rest. Might want something hot. Maybe need it bad, out there driving in all this. He listened a moment to the sentimental music coming from the jukebox and figured he might as well wait and see if whoever it was stopped in. Just for Christmas’ sake.

Sure enough, the car slowed as it got closer and Sarge swore softly to himself.
A damn cop car. All I’m going to get out of this is some damn cop wants a free cup of coffee and take a leak, using up my water….

He paused. Funny, the car didn’t really park out front. Not like the cop inside wanted to come in. He just pulled up fast, sliding in the snow right up to the door, and jumped out as soon as it stopped.

Sarge watched with growing interest as the cop went to the driver-side back door, hunkering down in the pelting snow like a boxer in the ring, and pulled out some guy in handcuffs. Took off the cuffs, turned the guy toward Sarge’s big glass door and gave him a gentle push that sent him reeling toward the building. By the time the man outside got his balance the cop was already back in the car, spinning his wheels in the snow and moving back out onto Highway 12.

Sarge watched him depart, then turned his attention to the discharged passenger.
Damn, it’s Slimmy Johnson out there! What’s he doing clear out—

Sarge looked closer. What Slimmy was doing was relieving himself against the wall by the door.

He flipped off the switch for the electric sign outside, wondering how he was going to get rid of him. Couldn’t just leave him out in the snow; even a pill like Slimmy Johnson you couldn’t leave out on a day like this. “But I sure as hell ain’t gonna keep him here long,” Sarge muttered. He wondered how Slimmy come to ride up to his door in a black-and-white taxi. Sarge figured there maybe was an interesting story here, and he put on his best professional smile as Slimmy finally got his bearings and reeled through the door saying, “Hey, where can a man get a drink around here?”

December 20, 1951

12:58 PM

Officer Drapp

“We’re under fire!” Callie yelled.

Which was thoughtful of her, I guess, but I didn’t need her right there with the news. I was already rolling out the door into the snow, trying to keep as much of that Jeep body between me and the tower as I could while I fast-crawled to the back.

That’s where I ran into Callie again. Didn’t know a big woman like her could move so fast, but then she looked a little surprised to see me there too.

We were both hunkered down in the snow, hugging the back of that Jeep like a baby getting mama’s milk, just staring at each other.

I got to say she handled it all right. Most folks, they don’t much care to get shot at, and it shakes them up some, but she just had this look on her face like this was a job of work now, but she wasn’t going to let it scare her much.

Me, I was scared.

I mean, there we were, sitting in the snow back of that Jeep and the only thing warm was the fumes coming from out the tailpipe. Somewhere in the back of my head I was glad I’d put the gearshift in neutral before we jumped out, and I remembered I’d pulled the parking brake automatically—another good habit the Army taught me—so the Jeep wasn’t going to roll away from us any.

But this was still a damn mess, and we were in it.

Callie sat close down beside me and got her legs up like I had, both of us hoping we weren’t leaving anything out for whoever was in that tower to take a bead on. “Looks like your bank robber got here ahead of us.”

All I said was, “Somebody did.”

“You mean that police car?” Inside the big fur hood she moved her head towards the slope to one side of us. “Another officer got here ahead of us?”

“I don’t see how,” I said. “We’ve only been following one set of tracks.”

“Well obviously your bank robber got up in the tower somehow and started shooting at us. Perhaps he even shot at the police car. Isn’t that what you think?”

“Doesn’t figure.” I rolled carefully to one side, keeping the Jeep between me and the tower, and looked down the slope at the black-and-white car that was already getting lost in the falling snow. I rolled back.

“Those footprints. You saw them?” I asked.

“Between the car and the tower?”

“Yeah. You got a look at them?”

“A short look, yes.”

“I’m no woodsman,” I said, “but the way I read those tracks, whoever it was just made one round trip. One trip to and one trip from.”

Somewhere inside that Eskimo hood, she caught on, and her eyes narrowed. “Let me see that.”

Then all over sudden she was rolling on me like one of those heavyweight wrestlers you see on TV, like the Iron Russian or Two-Ton Frank or somebody like that, trying to get a look at those tracks without making a target of herself. Reminded me of once when I was a kid I got sat on by a horse, only this didn’t have that rosy afterglow. She sprawled across me, squinting into the snow, studying the footprints best she could, her breath making heavy steam in the cold air, then she rolled back off me, praise God.

“I can’t be certain.” She pulled her eyebrows together—it was to help her think, I guess, but it made her face look like a clenched fist. “There’s been a great deal of snow, and whoever made those tracks walked back in his own footprints.”

“Another thing,” I said. “Those tracks are at the passenger side of the car, closest to the tower.”

“I don’t see your point, I’m afraid.”

“Did someone get out of the car and went to the tower, they would most likely have used the driver-side. But did someone go from the tower to the car…”

“…they would have gone straight to the passenger side, which is closer,” she finished. “My, you
are
a detective, aren’t you?”

“Don’t need to be a detective to tell where those shots came from,” I said.

“So it’s your conclusion that someone went from the tower to the car, then back.”

“Where they took a shot at us, whoever it was.”

“Officer Drapp, I’m getting a terrible suspicion…”

“And I’m thinking maybe you better tell me about this Captain Scranton.” I hugged my coat a little tighter around me. “And do it quick.”

She thought on that a second. Then something inside her relaxed and let it come pouring out, what she’d been trying not to tell me.

“Well, they have ways of getting back at one…” She said it like a sigh. “You may remember I told you that.”

“Those folks that didn’t think you ought to be a Park Ranger?” I leaned back on the jerry can mounted next to the spare tire on the tailgate of the Jeep, and pulled my feet up a little closer. “Them, you mean?”

“The ones who didn’t think any woman should be in a job like this.” She almost snarled it. “And believe you me, there are plenty of them out there.” She pushed her back against the spare tire, and I felt the Jeep sway. “So when they saw they had to keep me on, they sent me here to work with Captain Scranton; I believe they supposed he’d drive me into quitting all on my own.”

“He’s tough on you? Tough to get along with?”

“Like Hitler on a bad day, only not nearly so calm and rational,” she said. “And not much of a ranger either, if you ask me. He frequently comes to work drunk—or so badly hung-over as makes no difference. He swears at visitors sometimes, and I rather suspect him of pilfering.”

“You figure he’d shoot us over pilfering?”

“Well he also likes to hunt here.”

“Didn’t know could you hunt in a park like this.”

“It’s against the rules,” she said patiently, “very clearly and plainly against the rules. And as if hunting in a nature preserve weren’t bad enough, he’s begun bringing in paying guests. Other hunters, I mean. Men who would pay him to hunt on the park grounds here where game is plentiful.”