Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 08 (20 page)

"If I had a deputy, I might be able to take the day off myself. Now that I think about it, there's nothing I'd rather do more than sit in a pew at the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall and listen to one of Brother Verber's inspirational sermons. I just know I'd come out with a hymn on my lips and a halo over my head. Maybe I could even come over here after church to have fried chicken with y'all. Why don't you put in a good word with Jim Bob about increasing the budget so I can afford some of that old-time religion?"

"I will not tolerate sacrilege on the Sabbath," she said, her posture as rigid as a majorette's. If she'd had a baton, she probably would have bopped me on the head, but as it was, she muttered something about mending my ways, shook a finger at me, and started for the door.

I cut her off. "I really do need to speak to Jim Bob for a minute. Is he here?"

"Jim Bob has nothing to do with this."

"Yes, he does," I said, wondering how much she knew about the origin of the note. I'd never thought of their marriage as a close relationship replete with cozy conversations beneath the blankets; they were more likely to have bedrooms at opposite ends of the house, if not opposite corners of the county. "He may not be the one who came up with the scheme, but at some point he became involved."

"You know perfectly well who's behind this. Jim Bob may have unwittingly allowed himself to be used, but anything he did was out of charity, not out of greed."

The conversation was getting so weird I had to resist the urge to step back and check the sky for hovering craft. "Jim Bob did something out of charity?"

"One of the commandments is to love thy neighbor as thyself, Miss Chief of Police. All Jim Bob did was come to the aid of a neighbor who needed a helping hand."

"Who is this neighbor?"

"Are you playing games with me?"

"If I was, I wished someone would slip me a copy of the rules. And a scorecard, for that matter. I'm in the middle of an investigation," I said, "and I need to speak to Jim Bob."

"As soon as he finishes his dinner, he's going down to the SuperSaver, but I don't want you to pester him while he's there either. Shouldn't you be worried about this poor boy's death last night? Murder's a sight more important than whatever little transgressions Jim Bob may have committed."

I opened my mouth to explain the purpose of my visit, decided against it, and gave her a meek smile. "Guess that's what I'll do."

Temporarily thwarted, I drove back to the main road, sat at the intersection, and watched the stoplight change a couple of times while I contemplated my next move. I finally drove out County 102, parked behind Rosemary's car on the now well-trampled shoulder, and walked to the clearing to find out how good my memory was.

It proved to be adequate. Brian had not fallen and hit his head against a rock, unless he'd done so on the gravel bar twenty feet away. If he'd staggered into a tree, the coroner would have found bits of bark in the wound. The weeds were thick enough to cushion a fall.

The true believers no doubt would claim that Brian had been clipped on the back of his head by an appendage on a craft-or attacked by a lurching silver alien. They would also claim that the burn marks were evidence that the craft had utilized some sort of fiery propulsion system-with carbon monoxide as the by-product.

And if the perpetrators were to be brought to justice, I'd have to serve arrest warrants in the region of Canis Majors. We'd have attorneys from Andromeda and a prosecutor from Pegasus. We could round up jurors from the cast of Star Wars.

I walked back to the road and along the shoulder to the illegal garbage dump. The only thing that might be classified as a blunt object was a cracked toilet seat, but it was covered with a layer of dust. The pieces of lumber were too long to be swung with ease. Bouncing a tire off someone's head wasn't likely to do much damage.

It was time to get busy finding out when, how, and why Brian had left the gravel bar across from Raz's field. There were only 755 locals and a couple of dozen visitors (of the terrestrial variety anyway). Unless Brian had been joyriding in a UFO, surely someone had seen him between seven and eleven the previous night.

I headed for the PD to see if Harve could be bullied into sending me a couple of deputies, preferably with hardy knuckles.

After Kevin had quit trying to talk to her through the door and left for work, Dahlia came out of the bathroom, detoured through the kitchen for a can of soda pop, and went out to the backyard. She couldn't see Raz's cabin through the brush, but she could hear car doors slamming and voices calling back and forth as more folks arrived to stare at the crop circles. It was a nice enough day, as sunny and warm as a body could hope for in early spring, but she shivered as she searched the sky for a flash of silver that would warn her they were coming for her -- again.

Dr. Sageman promised her that she'd remember what she said during the session, and as she stood in the yard, hands on her hips, eyes seeping tears, she did. He'd been real careful not to hurry her along but instead had spoken in a honeyed voice and even patted her on the arm when she got to shaking when the images got so horrifying she couldn't hardly bear 'em.

And the ordeal wasn't over, not by a long shot. She had proof that they'd come for her before, and they'd come back when it was time to retrieve the monster growing inside her. As if on cue, it growled like a fierce wild animal, and she would have fainted dead away if she hadn't realized at the last moment that it was her stomach instead of her womb making its desires known.

There was no way to escape them either. With some coaxing from Dr. Sageman, she'd remembered the tiny metal pellet they'd inserted way up in her nose so they could keep track of her whereabouts. She pinched the bridge of her nose, wishing she could sneeze hard enough to make the pellet come shooting out. But Rosemary had suffered with one, too, and she'd said there was no way short of surgery to get rid of the pesky pellet. All you could do was wait until they were done with you.

There was no place to run, no place to hide.

Wheezing bleakly, Dahlia trudged back inside and went to the kitchen to fix herself some lunch. Kevin wouldn't be back till late, so there wasn't much reason to stay in the bathroom all afternoon and evening. But as soon as his headlights turned into the driveway, she figured she'd have to retreat. Refusing to talk to him was causing him pain, but the truth would squash him like an armadillo on the interstate. She couldn't do that.

A deputy showed up toward the middle of the afternoon. We arbitrarily divided the town, and he headed for the Pot o' Gold Mobile Home Park and the little subdivision with what the builder called cul-de-sacs and everybody else called dead ends. I worked my way up the hill toward Kevin and Dahlia's house, although I didn't bother with them or with Raz, who was waving his arms and arguing with several gray-haired visitors who must have demanded a senior citizen discount.

No one admitted having seen Brian Quint at either site or in transit. However, every last soul with whom I spoke had heard all about the mysterious death. The hyperbole had reached such epic proportions that husbands were keeping loaded guns by the front door and wives were sharpening butcher knives. In broad daylight, mind you. When it started getting dark, missionaries and door-to door salesmen were going to discover they were endangered species.

I stopped by the supermarket to see if I could corner Jim Bob. A checker directed me to the office, where I found my potential witness on the telephone. I sat and waited until he banged down the receiver, scribbled a note, and then turned around to glower at me.

"I said I wanted a report first thing this afternoon," he said, his belly inflating and his eyes bulging as if he were a bullfrog. "Maybe you've forgotten that you're employed by the town council, Chief Hanks, but we sure as hell haven't. When's your contract up?"

I unpinned my badge and tossed it at him. "It's all yours -- lock, stock, and flying saucer."

"Save the hysterics for when you get a run in your panty hose," he said sourly. "Tell me what all you found out about the boy that died last night. Then you can get back to investigating and I can run my store -- okay?"

I toyed with the idea of stomping out of the room, but I wasn't sure how far I'd get with less than a hundred dollars in my savings account. "If you want an official report, call an official meeting of the town council. In the meantime, I need to know about the note you gave Kevin yesterday afternoon."

"I don't write notes to the stock boys."

I pulled out the faked note and dropped it on his desk. "The X on the map is where I found the body last night," I said, watching for his reaction.

He picked it up and read it under his breath. "You think I wrote this? I didn't see any silver disk crash anywhere, and if I had, why would I write this pissant note and give it to Kevin? I'd be more likely to alert those reporters from the tabloids and call the television station in Farberville, wouldn't I?"

"It was in an envelope with Reggie Pellitory's name on it. Where'd you get it?"

"Oh, yeah," he said, nodding. "It was stuck under the door when I unlocked the store yesterday morning. I meant to give it to Reggie myself and remind him this ain't a damn post office, but I got busy. When Kevin came here to say he'd finished mopping, I gave him the note and told him to find Reggie." Even though he was a Buchanon, he realized the significance of the note and gave me a puzzled look. "Did Reggie show this to the Quint fellow? Is that why he went to the low-water bridge?"

"Reggie was supposed to deliver it to Dr. Sageman," I said evasively. "I'm still -- "

"Yeah, I talked to Sageman the other afternoon, and he said he's going to give a real important lecture about the circles and all this crazy shit at some conference and maybe even write a book about 'em. Those tabloid reporters are eating it up, too. Next week when their stories come out, we're going to be flooded with tourists." He picked up my badge and tossed it back at me. "Make sure your radar gun's working, Chief Hanks; you might hand out enough traffic tickets to justify the salary we pay you."

"It won't take many," I said, then went back outside, no more enlightened than I'd been. Despite Mrs. Jim Bob's odd remarks, Jim Bob didn't seem to know much about the note. Concluding that she must have been referring to one of his innumerable torrid affairs with women in double-wide trailers, I repinned my badge on my shirt and drove over to Elsie McMay's house to ask her if she'd seen Brian Quint the previous night.

Estelle came into the barroom and took her customary stool. "Dr. Sageman's still in his room," she reported. "I peeked through the window and saw him lying on the bed. I could hear Dahlia's voice, so he must be playing the tape from her session. I'd sure like to hear what all she had to say about being kidnapped by aliens."

Ruby Bee set down a glass of sherry. "You'd think that if the aliens were so all-fired intelligent, they'd have picked someone easier to beam up. If they're really making women pregnant with their babies, like Rosemary says, it seems to me they should have ruled out anyone with a drop of Buchanon blood. Her grandfather was a double cousin Buchanon on his mother's side. He lit so many fires that his wife had to follow him around day and night with a fire extinguisher."

"This ain't the time to worry about family trees," Estelle said. "We promised Jules we'd figure out a way to get Dr. Sageman out of his room. Short of starting a fire ourselves, I can't think of anything. He looked real comfortable and liable to stay there the rest of the afternoon, particularly since he doesn't have a car. He's not the sort that'd hitchhike -- or get picked up if he tried."

"Is Rosemary's car still parked by the low-water bridge?"

"It's not in the parking lot, and she told me that Arly offered to drive her to the hospital this morning. Even if we went and fetched it for Dr. Sageman, that doesn't mean he'll go someplace else so we can sneak Jules into the room to copy the files."

Ruby Bee tried to think of a plan while she took a fresh pitcher of beer to some truckers in one of the booths. "What if," she said as she returned, "we fetch the car and leave it in front of Rosemary's room? Then we tell Dr. Sageman that we heard there was another cow cut to ribbons way on the other side of Emmet. We can give him the wrong directions and have him driving all over the county till dark."

"We don't have a car key, for one thing. Are you aiming to hotwire it?"

"There was a key on the dresser in her room," Ruby Bee countered. She took a room key from the drawer and put it down in front of Estelle. "You go get it while I get those fellows cleared out. I'll be ready to go as soon as you get back."

Estelle picked up the key. "I'll do it, but don't think you can order me around like I'm some kind of private in your personal army, Mrs. Patton." Having made her point, she stalked across the dance floor and continued out the door without so much as a glance over her shoulder.

She slowed down once she came around the corner. Dr. McMasterson's car was gone, but Lucy Ferclift's was parked in front of No. 3. Jules's car was in front of No. 4, but she didn't worry about him since he was the one wanting to get inside Dr. Sageman's room. The curtains were wide open in No. 5, which meant Dr. Sageman might see her. If Jules was right about him being in government intelligence, she might end up in the dungeon of the underground laboratory, making small talk with the painter that'd blabbed about the alien babies.