HardScape (6 page)

It occurred to me that the Longs might have gone broke. The Castle wouldn't be the first great house to mask its owners' private desperation. But knowing more about her than I had any right to, I figured she was more likely considering leaving the husband, and the money, for the boyfriend.

I wanted to warn her that her husband knew. The question was what loyalty—or discretion, at least—did I owe Alex Rose. I had, after all, accepted his job and his money. Did quitting absolve me?

I looked at her, and she looked away and stood up and moved to the opening in the wall. She stared out. I drank champagne. Suddenly her whole body stiffened. She thrust her head and shoulders through the opening in the stone, straining to see.

“What's that?”

I stood up beside her and looked where she was pointing. The sun had deserted a meadow but for the eastern edge along the woods, and there in the last rays something gleamed white. It was quite a distance away, and yet I could sense it shiver when the wind riled the grass around it.

“I don't know,” I said. “Looks a little like a deer's white tail, but they don't lie down in the open, and certainly not at this hour. It's feeding time. You've never seen it there before?…Maybe your husband shot another one.”

“No,” she said impatiently. “He's away.” She turned to the stairs, worried, and said loudly, “I have to see what it is.”

She started down the metal steps, fast. I left my glass and followed. Down the steps, my hurt knee locking, through the big door, down a hall, and into the kitchen and out the back door. On the lawn she broke into a run. I limped after her, to the edge of the meadow. She plunged into the higher grass before I could warn her about the deer ticks. I stopped to pull my socks over my pants and trotted after her. She could shower off later. I could dry her back.

She crossed the meadow, exactly where I had trod last night, and up the slope to the woods. Suddenly she slowed, then stopped, rigid, and put her hand to her mouth. I caught up. The white thing blowing in the wind, gleaming in the sun, was hair. Blond hair. Her boyfriend was sprawled on his back, with a brick-size bloody exit wound where his muscular chest had been.

Chapter 6

There's truth in the cliché that people seem to shrink when they die. My father's body had looked hollow at Butler's Funeral Home; by the time we got him to the churchyard he was almost transparent. A prisoner I saw shanked—a big man—fell like laundry. Mrs. Long's boyfriend was different—robust—drinking in the sky with wide-eyed wonder. I remember thinking that the last innocent had escaped the planet, and those of us still stuck here were the dead ones.

His name was Ron; she kept calling him Ron as she knelt beside him and took his body in her arms. I reached to comfort her and lead her away, until I thought, Wait, this isn't television, let the poor woman grieve. I backed off, and stood guard, or something, at a distance.

It could have been a hunting accident. Some damned fool poaching out of season, spotting the white flash of Ron's hair, mistaking him for a whitetail deer. It happens, both in season and out, though most often when they issue doe licenses, because then the hunter doesn't even have to try to confirm he sees the buck's antlers. Just spot a white tail and blast away—Oh, my God, it was my kid; or my father; or my cousin. Or my wife. (Sometimes called a country divorce.) High-powered weapons, low IQs, and plenty of booze; little wonder we have too many deer.

I wished I hadn't smelled the gunsmoke in the turret.

It would be dark soon. I really should call Oliver. But Mrs. Long—Rita—she just wasn't going to be Mrs. Long for me any more, or anyone else, when it was established Ron was on the property—Rita was still holding him, still whispering in his dead ear.

Poachers tend not to have hunting accidents. They are, in their way, professionals. A woody who puts deer meat on his table, or earns some spending money selling to butchers, usually treats guns with the respect they deserve. I'm not saying that a Chevalley boy—or one of the Jervis clan—would never have an accident poaching, but it's less likely. Still, Oliver Moody and the state police investigators would be combing the woods for evidence. As soon as I called them.

I went back to Rita and said, “Mrs. Long, I'd better call the police. Are you all right here, or do you want to come with me?”

“I can't leave him here.”

“I'll come back with a blanket.”

“No. I can't leave him here.”

I misinterpreted her to mean that Ron's body should not be found on her property, which struck me as both unrealistic and surprisingly cold. I said, “We shouldn't move him. The police have to investigate.”

“He's dead. It doesn't make any difference. Help me get him inside.”

“Inside?”

She took my heart again.

“There'll be animals at night. It's getting dark. I don't want him hurt any more.”

I wished to God I could make things right for her. “I'll call the police and I'll come right back with a blanket and flashlights and we'll stay with him until they come.”

Halfway to the house I looked back. She was dragging him through the grass. “Christ!”

I ran to her. The damage was done. She'd gotten her hands under his arms and had somehow moved him ten feet from where the bullet had killed him. She was breathing hard, gasping with each step. The expression of total concentration on her face said there wasn't a thing she wanted to do other than get her man indoors.

I took one shoulder and arm, she the other, and we pulled him through the grass, his heels beating a path, the blood trailing down his pinstriped shirt and spilling under his belt. On the mowed lawn, I knelt, worked both arms under him, and carried him, cradled. Rita held his hand, letting it go only to open the front door. At her direction, I laid him down on a couch in the living room. It was upholstered with a silk brocade, but I knew enough not to suggest a towel. She arranged his arms and legs, and when she had him lying there as if he'd dropped off for a nap, she knelt on the Persian carpet, put her head on his shoulder, and wept.

I went into the kitchen and telephoned Oliver.

“What do you want?”

“A guy's been shot at the Long place.”

“Dead?”

“Yes.”

“Who shot him?”

“I have no idea.”

“Who's there, now?”

“Just me and Mrs. Long.”

“Don't touch a thing.”

***

Angry, Ollie looked even bigger. “I told you not to touch anything.” He stood close, muscles gathered, ready to throw a punch.

“You told me too late.”

“You moved the goddamned body. You're impeding an investigation.”

“It's done.”

“Done, hell. I'll charge you.”

“You want me to show you where we found him, while there's still light enough to see?”

He did. We walked across the lawn and through the meadow, Oliver fuming at the track we'd scored in the high grass. “Jesus, Ben, you've pulled some dumb stunts in your life, but this one takes the cake.”

“We found him there.”

“Stand back.”

He strung yellow crime-scene tape in a fifty-foot circle around Ron's blood. It had looked to me when I first saw the body that Ron had fallen dead and hadn't moved an inch; now, who knew? Rita and I had flattened the grass. Oliver stayed outside the tape, and scanned the dark woods.

“What were you doing out here?”

“Appraising the house.”

He took off his mirrored glasses and fixed me with his pale gray eyes. I had always preferred him in sunglasses. His eyes were reptilian: cold, and stupid. Komodo dragons are stupid, too, but they eat mammals.

“Appraising the house or appraising the wife?”

“Appraising the house.”

“Did you know the guy?”

“No.”

“Did she?”

“She didn't say.”

“So why's she bawling?”

“She didn't tell me.”

I supposed I'd be wise to cover myself in advance by relating last night's fiasco—bring it up before they back-tracked to Alex Rose through Mr. Long, Rose saying, Oh, yeah, I paid a local bumpkin to film them screwing. Ask him—he'll confirm they were lovers—but that reeked of snitch. I was caught in the middle. I couldn't cover myself by snitching and I couldn't lie; I never was a liar. So dancing Trooper Moody in circles was really a dress rehearsal for the state police major crime unit, which the cops themselves, I noticed, called the major case squad.

They arrived at last, a young, cleancut couple in plainclothes who looked like poster children for the FBI, Sergeant Arnold Bender and Trooper Marian Boyce. They listened to Oliver's report, then ordered him to rig lights at the death site. The woman, Boyce, went into Rita's house; Bender came to me.

“Why'd you move the body?”

“It was getting dark.”

“So what?”

“Animals would eat it.”

“Are you trying to be funny?”

“We've got raccoons, crows, turkey buzzards, weasels, rats, and mice.” I was winging the weasels; I had no idea if they ate dead meat, but everything else did, which I wanted to establish before this moving-the-body thing got out of hand and led to charges. I sensed blood in the air; money, sex, and beauty demanded arrests.

“You shouldn't have moved the body.”

“I found a dead raccoon the other day. By the time I got a garbage bag so the health department could test it for rabies, crows had eaten everything but the fur.”

Bender sighed like a man who missed street corners. “Do you remember how the body looked? Before you moved it?”

“I saw a huge hole in the guy's chest. His eyes were open. He was staring at the sky.”

“Was he on his back?”

“Yes.”

“Curled up? Spread out?”

“Spread out. Like he'd laid down to look at the sky.”

We walked to the site. Bender shook his head at the crushed grass. “Try to remember, Mr. Abbott, did it look to you like he crawled there, wounded? Had he come far?”

As he'd fallen on his back, even though he'd been shot from behind, I assumed he had probably staggered, caught his balance, then collapsed backwards. But that was Bender's department, so all I said was, “No. I got the impression he hit the deck, dead.”

“Which way was he lying?”

“Head up toward the woods. Feet facing where we are now.”

“Did you hear shots?”

“No.”

“How'd you happen to find him then?”

I turned around and pointed at the tower. “We were in the top of the turret, looking out that window. See that square opening? We saw his hair.”

“His hair?”

“It was shining in the sun. We went to investigate.”

“Why?”

“It's Mrs. Long's property. She saw something out of place. I thought it was a deer lying dead.”

“Why dead?”

“They don't lie down in the evening. It looked like a white tail. So I figured it was dead.”

“You some kind of hunter?”

“My uncles were hunters. They taught me how to get along in the woods.”

“What were you doing in the tower?”

“Drinking champagne.”

“You got a thing going with the lady?”

“No.”

“Trooper Moody tells me you're covering for her.”

“Trooper Moody should stick to speeding tickets.”

Sergeant Bender was half Moody's size, but he had the state police stare, which he gave me full force. “Trooper Moody informs me you did time.”

“I served my time. I'm not on parole. You are way out of line.”

“I got a dead man, apparently shot. You moved him. When my lieutenant reads my report he's going to ask, Why didn't you bring the jailbird in?”

“My false-arrest suit will be based on two facts: First, I was charged with a white-collar crime; second, when whatever happened to that poor guy happened, I was grilling burgers for three hundred people at Town Hall.”

“You got some kind of problem with Trooper Moody?”

“Oliver has a problem with me.”

“Why?”

“Ask him sometime. If you want a good laugh.”

“Does Mrs. Long know the dead man?”

I had deliberately not asked her, so all I had to do was answer, “She called him Ron.”

An elderly diesel Mercedes chugged into the drive, decanting Dr. Steve Greenan, who served as one of the part-time assistant medical examiners for the county. Largely retired, he was a tall, white-haired, handsome man whose big shoulders had begun to slump with age. He trudged our way, seeing the yellow tape; Sergeant Bender ran to intercept. I followed, passing Oliver, who was stringing extension cords from the house.

“Ben,” Greenan called.

“How you doing, Steve?”

“Wonderful. I was busting my back planting bulbs for Mildred. This call saved me. Okay, Sonny,” he said to Sergeant Bender, “where is it?”

No one stopped me, so I followed them into the house. Yellow tape cordoned off the living room. Ron lay there alone. Someone had closed his eyes—Rita, I supposed—and he seemed to be getting smaller.

“Jesus,” said Steve. “That's it for this couch.” He stepped under the tape.

The cops had a private word, after which Bender headed upstairs, where his partner had left Rita with a female officer. Trooper Boyce took me into the dining room, a vast, high-ceilinged echoing hall that the Longs hadn't yet furnished, except for a grim American Empire sideboard.

She was a nice-looking woman, wearing a knee-length skirt, running shoes, and a crisp white blouse under an unlined beige blazer. She had short hair, a wide, friendly mouth, and a take-charge manner, a little like an eager schoolteacher except for her trooper eyes, which were gray and wise, and warier than her open face. She had big hands. She played it soft at first.

“I'm going to ask you many of the same questions Sergeant Bender asked, just so we can gather as much information as you and Mrs. Long can recall. Okay, Ben?”

“Sure.”

She indeed asked every question Bender had, including the jailbird jibes, couched in the careful manner of a graduate research fellow polishing her thesis: “I understand you served time in prison.”

Her partner's “jailbird” had rankled more than I should have let it. Before she could stick it to me again, I said, “I was rehabilitated.”

She got un-nice very quickly. “Are you trying to be funny? We've got a dead man here.”

“
You
have a dead man here. I didn't kill him. I didn't know him. I just found him. If you want me to say I'm sorry he's dead, I will.”

In truth, I felt very sorry he was dead. In an odd way I felt more for him than many people I'd known my whole life. So I calmed down and said, gently as I could to Trooper Boyce, “I was quite moved when I found him. He looked like a really decent person—very innocent. So I guess in that way he's all of our loss. If I sounded like I was wisecracking, it was because I'm irritated that you and your partner are wasting time on my past while whoever shot the poor man is probably in the next state by now.”

“What makes you think he was shot?”

“Something came out of his chest with great force. Unless you think they're filming
Alien IV
, I'd guess he was shot in the back. Probably with a twelve-gauge deer slug. I'm sure Steve will fill you in.”

“Steve?”

“Dr. Greenan. The assistant M.E.”

“He's your doctor?”

“He delivered me.”

Trooper Boyce frowned at her notes.

I asked, “Is Mrs. Long all right?”

“She's very upset. How well do you know her?”

“Met her this afternoon.”

“At the cookout?”

“She wanted a burger. Then she wanted her house appraised.”

“Just like that?”

“Happens all the time. People at a party ask Steve about their allergies. They ask me what their houses are worth. I'll bet they ask you how many miles over the speed limit they can get away with. Right?”