Off Season (13 page)

So the next morning Zee and I went by Manny's
place and found him in the gun shop he had built in his basement.

“Hail, Red Cloud,” I said. “I've come to find out all there is to know about modern bows and arrows.”

“You've come to the wrong Wampanoag,” said Manny. “I'm a gunpowder guy. Doug Wooten is the man you want to see. He bow hunts all over the place.” He smiled at Zee. “Hi, Zee,” he said. “Nice day.”

When a man looks at Zee, he always thinks it's a nice day.

We went off to find Doug Wooten.

Doug Wooten is about the size of a moose and favors camouflage clothing in the woods, at home and on the job. He is one of those guys who reads catalogues about paramilitary and outdoor equipment (lots of knives, boots, old west cavalry hats and shirts, videos about deadly weapons, etc.), magazines about soldiers of fortune and paperbacks by Louis L'Amour. His wife, Gladys, takes all of this in stride since he's a gentle father to their kids and husband to her even though he looks like he just got out of the woods after being lost there for several years. His sole diversions from family life and his work at his building supply place are his trips around New England to go bow and arrow hunting. Since he brings home the meat as often as not, Gladys does no complaining about his hunting, either.

Doug lives out on the great plains, that flat hunk of land between Edgartown and South Beach. The Katama airport is there, and what was once farmland is now thick with new houses. Once, long ago, Doug decided to learn how to fly and bought himself an elderly airplane which he planned to fix up and keep at the little airport. Gladys wouldn't put up with that idea, but he wouldn't give up the plane, either, so it sits in a homemade hangar behind his house, unused but well maintained for the past decade or so. Doug's shop is out there beside the hangar, and that's where we found him at his workbench doing something incomprehensible to a complex-looking bow. A fire in an old potbellied stove was keeping the place warm and comfy.

“Howdy, J.W.,” he said to me. “Howdy, Zee.” He smiled at her. “Nice day,” he added.

Predictable.

“Doug,” I said, “I need to know something about bows and arrows and how you hunt deer with them.”

“Ah,” said Doug, nodding his big, shaggy head. “That business about Chug Lovell, eh? I seen that in the papers.” He looked up at me from under his thick, prickly eyebrows. “Tell you one thing. I'd sure like to know who put that arrow into him. I liked old Chug.”

“Did you?” I was surprised. I'd never have imagined Chug and Doug being buddies.

“Hell, I sold Chug that Browning bow and them Zwickey heads and that there Loc-On of his . . .”

“Stop,” I interrupted. “You're talking to ordinary English-speaking human beings here. What are Zwickey heads? What's a Loc-On?”

He gave me an impassive look intended to disguise his sorrow at my child-like ignorance, then shook his
head slightly. “Well, the Zwickeys are broadhead points, of course, and the Loc-On's a treestand. Damn shame him buying it the way he done. What's this here island coming to?”

A question worth asking, but one I could not answer. “So you knew Chug was a bow and arrow hunter? Until earlier this month, I thought he was a vegetarian.”

“Vegetarian, my eye.” Doug allowed himself a bull-like snort. “Chug liked his meat as much as the next feller. Yeah, I knew he was a bow hunter. Far as I know, I taught him most of what he knew about it. Tried to get him to join the BOA, but he didn't want nothing to do with any organizations. Just liked to hunt by himself. Funny fella.”

“What's the BOA?” asked Zee, looking at bottles and containers of substances on shelves behind Doug's workbench. “And what's this stuff?” She picked up a bottle and read the label. “Buck rut? What in the world is buck rut?”

Doug smiled indulgently. “BOA, that's Bowhunters of America. And that there stuff you're holding is an attractant scent. Sex scent to pull in the bucks.” He pulled down some other bottles. “This here's one that smells like a cow elk in heat.” He ran a finger along the label. “See here. Contains cow elk urine and extracts from musk glands.”

“Terrific!” said Zee. “I can see why you guys love this sport so much. You get to roll around in female elk urine all day long.”

Doug nodded approvingly. “Stuff works great. And this one here's got skunk musk in it. Deer'll come right up to you and never smell you at all. Good stuff.”

“I'm sure.”

“Thing is,” said Doug, “You got to get your game
up close if you're gonna get a killing shot. The closer, the better. No more than thirty yards. Ten or so, if you can manage it. Don't want to hit and lose your game, so you don't shoot till you got a good shot.”

I was looking around. Nothing I saw looked like the bows and arrows I'd made long ago. “What's all this high-tech gear?” I asked.

Doug brightened and told us. These were his Wasp broadheads, that was his moose call, this was his range finder, those were two of his sights, these were his brand-new graphite arrows, these were his equally brand-new Pucketts Bloodtrailer Broadheads with blades that were closed in flight but opened on impact even if your bow wasn't tuned right; over there hung various camouflage masks, jackets and nets, this was his hunting release, that was a stabilizer and those little spidery-looking things were silencers for your bowstring.

He went on for some time before taking up the complicated-looking bow he'd been working on.

“PSE Phaser compound bow,” he said. “Just ordered myself a new Martin, but it ain't come yet. “Here.” He put it in my hands.

I turned it as I looked at it. I had seen such weapons, but had never held one. “This doesn't look like the one Robin Hood used.”

“Nope. But I got one of them kind, too, if you want to see it. Traditional bow. Lots of guys like to use them. Different kind of shooting.”

“Chug had this kind. I saw it in his house.” I lifted the bow. the bowstring ran back and forth through pulleys, and the grip fit my hand comfortably. I pulled the string experimentally.

“Go ahead,” said Doug. “Pull her all the way.”

I did and felt the resistance of the bow suddenly give way so that I could easily hold it fully bent.

“Let her go,” said Doug.

I did, and the string snapped forward off my fingers.

“That's the advantage right there,” said Doug. “You pull one of them traditional bows, say an eighty pounder, and you got to hold it eighty pounds' worth till you let her go. These compound bows let you hold without hardly no effort at all. Hell of a lot easier, if you ask me, but them traditional bow hunters seem to like to suffer when they hunt, so what the hell, I say . . .”

I handed the bow to Zee. “Here, try this.”

Zee is in good shape. She's one of those nurses who can toss a two-hundred-pound patient around in bed as if he's a piece of cloth. A lot of little nurses can do that, for some reason.

She tugged on the string, gritted her teeth and hauled back some more until, suddenly, she was holding the bow fully drawn.

“Hey,” she said, grinning. “I did it. For a minute there, I didn't think I could, but I did!”

“Let her go,” said Doug, and she did.

“That bow is set for sixty pounds,” said Doug admiringly. “You did good.”

“Hard on the fingers,” grinned Zee, shaking her hand.

“Be easier with this.” He handed her a small device with a pistol grip and a trigger. “Now'days you use a release like this instead of your own hand. Pull the trigger and the arrow goes. Nice and straight. Course this being Massachusetts, naturally these is illegal for hunting here, but you can use them in other states.”

I thought about the bow and looked at some of Doug's arrows. He had a lot of different kinds, including some in camouflage. Camouflage arrows?
Why would you camouflage an arrow? And how would you ever find one if you lost it? I remembered often losing arrows when I was a kid. I picked up one of Doug's. There was a needle-sharp point on the arrow. I touched it with my finger and could feel its razor-like edge.

Doug was watching. “Got a sharpener there.” He gestured. “A dull broadhead is like a dull knife. Not worth a damn.”

“If you shoot a deer with the kind of bow and arrows Chug had, would the arrow go through or just go in partway?”

“Well, that depends on a lot of things. Whether you hit a bone, how far away you are, whether you hit leaves or something before you hit your deer. Even with these broadheads, you hit a bone, your arrow might just lodge there. You don't hit a bone, she might go right on through. Old Chug shot at sixty-five pounds, as I recall. That should put your arrow through most game, even if you did hit bone.”

“Why do you want to know that?” asked Zee.

I put down the arrow. “Because the stories I read about Chug said that he had an arrow still in his body, and I was wondering if an arrow would normally stop there or go on through.”

Doug grunted. “If the arrow was one of Chug's, it had a Zwickey broadhead on it. And if Chug did like I told him to do, he kept them Zwickeys razor sharp. I figure that a Zwickey like that should have gone on through. Funny it didn't. Maybe it hit his spine or a rib or something.”

I took the bow from Zee and the release from Doug, and using the release pulled the bowstring again. Much easier. I pulled the trigger and the string snapped away. “You say this bow is set for sixty
pounds. Does that mean that you could adjust it to pull at some other weight?”

“Oh, sure. Higher or lower. I hunt with a seventy-five-pound pull, myself, but right now I'm doing some experimenting.”

Just like a rifleman or a fisherman. Always trying something different, something new. I knew about the impulse for experimentation, having given into it myself often enough with various rods, plugs, lines and reels.

I had learned about as much about bows and arrows as I could handle at one sitting. Before I knew more about archery, I needed to know more about some other things.

I gave Doug his bow and my thanks.

“You wanna shoot, I got a target range set up back of the hangar. Anytime.”

“I may take you up on that,” I said.

We got back in the Land Cruiser and drove toward Edgartown. The road was empty, a far cry from the congestion of cars, bikes and mopeds that makes summer driving on the Vineyard such an adventure.

“Now what?” asked Zee.

“Now we go by the police department and see if we can get some information from the chief.”

“Why should he give you any information?”

“I can't imagine.”

Neither could the chief, who was in his office at the almost new station on Pease Point Way. “Why should I give you any information?” he asked. He smiled at Zee. “Hi, Zee. Nice day.”

Ye gods.

“I have a client who wants to know everything,” I said.

“You can't have clients. You don't have a license to investigate.”

“If I did have a license, would you tell me anything?”

“Probably not.”

“Exactly. On the other hand, I'm a citizen who helps pay your salary. You owe me access to all public information.”

“Ha!” He looked at Zee. “it's not too late to call off the wedding, you know. I don't think you really want to marry this guy.”

“You're my real love,” said Zee, “but you're taken, so I have to settle for a lot less.” She batted her lashes and smiled sadly.

He looked at me. “You brought her along on purpose, didn't you? Just to soften me up. Well, what do you need to know? Remember that the state police are handling this. They don't trust us small-town cops to take care of anything as serious as a possible murder. Who's your client, by the way?”

“If I were a real detective, that would be confidential information. Since I'm not, it's Heather Manwaring.”

He dug out his pipe and put it in his mouth, but did not light up. Instead, he munched on the pipe stem. “Now why would a nice lawyer like Heather Manwaring hire the likes of you for a job like this?”

“Why don't you ask Heather?”

“I might just do that. Well, what do you want to know?”

“A few things. Was Chug killed by the arrow that was found in his body? Was it one of his own arrows? Was his bow there, too? Was the arrow fired from his bow or by some other one?”

The chief sucked on his empty pipe and answered the questions in order. “Yes. Yes, we think so, since there were others like it in the quiver we found and on the floor. Yeah, there was a bow lying there, too. I don't know.” He sucked some more.

“Could it have been an accident?”

“They haven't said it wasn't. Ergo, maybe it was.”

“Ergo.
I like that. And people say that you ain't got no education! Do you
cogito
and
sum,
too?”

“I'm telling you,” he said to Zee, “you don't want to marry this guy!”

“All right, you two,” I said. Then, “So someone shot him either by accident or on purpose. Right?”

“Maybe,” said the chief.

“Any suspects?”

“Well, I'm suspicious of your client for hiring you . . .”

“I mean besides her?”

“You'll have to ask the state cops that question. While you're at it, you might ask them if they found anything interesting in Chug's house when they searched it.”

“Did they?”

He smiled. “You should ask them. You really should.”

In Massachusetts, the state police handle most homicides and are sometimes overly secretive about what they find. A lot of small-town cops don't like being shut out of the circle of those getting inside information about such crimes when they occur in their territory, so there's often a rivalry bordering on dislike between the state and local cops. A similar dislike often exists between local, state and federal cops.