Out Of Time (26 page)

“What about her?” he said. “She killed him. She has to pay the price.”

“Sorry, I’m not convinced,” I told him. “And I have no proof that he was dirty, except other people’s opinions. Do you have proof?”

He looked annoyed. “Leave it alone, Casey. Believe me, my department has enough proof to bury Roy Taylor.”

“He’s already buried,” I pointed out.

He glared. “Look, I worked with the guy at o S thext”>“Tne time. I knew what was going on. I’m not going to say more than that. Now Roy is dead. What’s the point in bringing it up? You’re only going to hurt people.”

“Do you keep in touch with Pete Bunn?” I said, hoping to throw him off-balance.

He remained unshaken. “I talk to him every now and then, just like I keep in touch with a lot of my old partners. We’re not friends.”

“Did you know he had retired early?”

“Yeah, I knew.” He signaled the waitress for another beer.

“Why did he retire early?”

He paused. “Pete had a drinking problem,” he finally said. “A bad one. When his wife divorced him, it got worse. They put him on white collar because it kept him off the front line. But he took a swing at a lieutenant colonel after a liquid lunch one day. He was gone a week later. He’s lucky he kept any pension at all.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Is he gone?”

I shrugged. I wanted to know how much Hill kept up with his old partners and decided to lie. “That’s what I’m asking you. He doesn’t seem to live in Durham, and I can’t find him. Do you know where he’s gone?”

“Who knows where Pete went. Maybe the shore. He liked to fish and drink. That was about it. Maybe he moved to Myrtle Beach or something. Who knows. And come to think of it, who cares?”

I cared. And I also knew. What I couldn’t tell was if Steven Hill knew that Pete Bunn was living on a farm in Chatham County.

“I read through the transcripts of all court cases involving the drug unit you used to serve on,” I told him.

“All of them?” he asked, so thrown he actually ignored the opportunity to smile at the fawning waitress again.

“I read fast. And there are a couple of odd things about those cases.”

“Odd like how?” He sounded confused.

“Odd like it seemed to me that the charges got dismissed or reduced an awful lot of the time.”

He tapped his fresh beer up and down on the tabletop, staring at the initials some drunk had carved into the cheap wood.

“Well?” I prompted.

He looked up. “I’m only telling you this because those cases are years old by now. I’m not breaking any confidentiality considerations.”

“Of course you’re not,” I agreed.

“We were building up our network,” he explained. “Putting in place informants, trying to build jackets on the bigger suppliers. Those cases involved street dealers. We let them go so they could become informers.”

“That’s a lot of informers. What’d they do? Run around informing on other informers?”

“Are you trying to be funny?” he asked suspiciously.

“No, just trying,” I assured him.

“Look, the system stinks,” he said. “But that’s the way it works. We had to let them walk. If you check the record, I think you’ll find that the guys who came up behind us made a lot of collars thanks to our work.”

“I’m sure I will,” I agreed. I was buying his story about as much as I believed the pre-discount prices at outlets.

“Ask Pete Bunn,” he said confidently. “I’m sure he’ll tell you the same thing.”

“I bet he will,” I said cheerfully. I swear I didn’t mean to be snotty. But Steven Hill sure took it that way.

He pushed his chair back from the table and rose up to his full six-feet-plus height. “I gotta go,” he said abruptly. “I’d say I’ve been helpful enough. Good luck with your investigation.” He walked out the door—leaving me with the tab—only pausing long enough to accept a slip of paper from the waitress. I don’t think it was a shopping list, at least not in the traditional sense of the term.

I put a ten on the table and followed him to the front door, watching as he climbed into a late-model Porsche that was painted a candy-apple red. It was exactly the kind of car that a wanker like him would drive. He peeled out of the driveway in a burst of gravel, and disappeared down Club Boulevard.

“You must be a real charmer,” Johnny called out from behind the bar. “He couldn’t get away fast enough.”

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“Really,” the waitress agreed. She gave me a triumphant smile. “If I had a man like that,” she said, “I wouldn’t let him get away so easily. Good-looking and with a Porsche, too. Yum, yum, did he make my motor hum.”

“Just cross your legs, honey,” I advised her. “It’ll pass.”

I knew she’d be even more insulted when she saw the tip I’d left. 

I got up early the next day to call my friend Slim Jim Jones. He had been awake for hours, milking the cows, slopping the hogs and plowing a plot near the house for a truck garden. Slim Jim lived on one of the last real working farms in Wake County, where he worked hard at being a devoted son to his crusty old mama. He had to get up mighty early in the day to protect the livestock from her trigger-happy, shotgun-toting habits. Mama Jones was suffering from failing eyesight and had been known to blow away a cow or two under the delusion that they were linebackers from the N.C. State football team gone bad and out to rob and rape her. They ate a lot of hamburger out on the Jones farm. You just had to chew carefully.

“Slim Jim Jones,” I said enthusiastically into the phone. “How is my favorite long, cool drink of water this morning?”

“Cut the crap, Casey,” he replied in a nasal voice that had never lost its mountain twang. “That sweet stuff don’t work with me. What do you want?”

Poor Slim Jim. He really could not make up his mind whether he liked me or not. He’d been grappling with the issue for going on ten years now. Secretly, I think he adored me. Why else would I annoy him so much? Besides, he always came to my rescue when I asked, even if he did grumble at first. A few months ago, he’d even helped me track down the killer of a fat-cat real-estate developer, even though neither one of us had been all that sorry to see him dead.

“You still doing that search and rescue stuff for the Red Cross?” I asked casually. You had to sneak up on Slim Jim, or you’d spook him and he’d refuse right off the bat.

“Sure. Me and the boys found an old lady who’d wandered away from her rest home just last month. It was pretty cold, too. She’d have died if Tuck hadn’t found her under some leaves.”

“The boys” were Nip and Tuck, two of the smelliest bloodhound mixes ever sniffed by the human nose. They’d been named by Slim Jim’s mama, who was a Damon Runyon fan and never read anything more current. Those dogs had special oil glands that produced a funky odor akin to fermented toe jam. You could tell they were coming from twenty miles downwind. But they were good trackers and Slim Jim handled them well. He talked tough, but I knew for a fact that he kept two electric blankets out in the barn for those mutts and would have let them into his bed if he hadn’t been afraid they’d be mistaken for women and blown away by nearsighted Mama Jones.
SJonwan

“Can you help me out on a job?” I asked. “I’ll pay you two hundred dollars.”

Slim Jim whistled. “Can’t do nothing illegal for you, Casey.”

“This is legal,” I assured him. Hey, my fingers were crossed, okay? “When have I ever steered you wrong?”

“Ain’t got enough hours in the day to get into that,” he said in a rare burst of humor. Two hundred dollars vastly improved his naturally sour disposition. “Where and when?”

I told him where and negotiated the when. He would meet me out in Chatham County by two o’clock, but had to be back home by six at the latest to finish the evening farm chores. That left me two to three hours to search Pete Bunn’s farm. It seemed plenty long enough. 

I got there early, confirmed that the farm was still deserted, then hooked up with Slim Jim at the country store down the road. He was chewing tobacco with the store’s owner and showing off Nip and Tuck. Like a lot of southerners with the mountains in their blood, Slim Jim was of Scottish descent. It showed in his craggy features. He was tall and lanky, with a long turkey neck and a peculiar way of cocking his round head sideways that made him look even more like a bird. At the moment, he was staring at Nip and Tuck like a proud papa.

Some unidentified breed had shaken Nip and Tuck’s family tree somewhere down the line and they lacked the size and height of pure bloodhounds. Instead, they looked like mutant basset hounds wearing black-and-tan pajamas that were several sizes too big.

“Can they can track?” the store owner was asking dubiously. “They seem awfully low to the ground.”

“Better than any two hounds I’ve ever had.” Slim Jim spit a wad of tobacco on the ground a few inches from my feet as I approached. It was his way of saying hello. I joined them in admiring Nip and Tuck.

“What kind of job are you up to today?” the owner asked. I shot Slim Jim a warning glance and answered for him.

“Just a practice run out by the Haw River,” I lied. “We’re trying to convince the sheriff to use Nip and Tuck for lost-hiker searches, so he wants to see them do their stuff.” Nip and Tuck began to howl, as if sensing my lie. I gritted my teeth and scratched behind their floppy ears to calm them, knowing I’d have to practically boil my hand to remove their stench when I was done.

“This some sort of secret mission?” Slim Jim asked as I climbed in the front seat of his truck and directed him down 15-501.

“You might say that,” I said.

“But nothing illegal?” he asked me again.

“Of course not.” I tried to sound offended but was completely stumped for a cover story. I ended up having to tell him the truth.

Slim Jim surprised me. “So you think maybe this fellow’s body is buried somewhere on the farm?” he asked calmly when I was done. “And that the fellow who owns the farm did it?”

“That’s right. Think Nip and Tuck can find the body?”

He nodded. “If it’s there. But I can’t guarantee it. Hell, we get a good enough whiff of that shirt and I might be able to track him down myself.” He gave me a grin that framed two missing teeth. I smiled back. Slim Jim so rarely made a joke that it was best to encourage him when he did.

We parked the truck in a clearing near where the Haw River crossed 15-501. Anyone driving by would figure we were fishing. Nip and Tuck had fallen asleep in the truck bed and we had to drag them out by their scruffs before they would wake up.

“They’re just conserving their strength,” Slim Jim claimed as they flopped down in the sun and began to snore. I hoped he was right.

The day had turned hot, a rare flash of summer in early spring. I was sorry I’d worn a purple sweat suit as protection against poison ivy. By the time we reached Pete Bunn’s land, I was sweating like a sow in a sauna. Meanwhile, Slim Jim hadn’t broken a sweat. Love those country boys. A little hot sun doesn’t go to their heads.

The heat didn’t seem to bother Nip or Tuck either. They snuffled along at Slim Jim’s feet, eating insects while they waited for a command from their master. He had both on a long twin tether, but the dogs seemed in no hurry to wander away. In fact, Slim Jim had to drag them forward most of the time. I was getting more dubious of their skills by the moment.

“When do we start?” I asked.

“Soon as we get there,” he drawled.

I stopped and got my bearings. We were on the edge of the pine woods overlooking the hollow that cradled the farmhouse. I wanted to confirm that no one had returned home. I crept to the edge of the woods and saw nothing but rolling hills and an empty front yard. “Coast is clear,” I announced. “Follow me.”

We made our way down the narrow dirt lane to the dumping-ground clearing Sounh=“24”>

“You’re lucky, Casey,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“This here is blood. It’ll give Nip and Tuck something to go on. Otherwise, it’s been out in the rain and sun for a long time.” He held out the shirt and I examined some rust stains near one torn edge. I’d missed them before, but Slim Jim was right: they could be blood.

“Any more of his clothes in there?” Slim Jim asked, peering at the junk pile.

I shrugged. “Lots of clothes in there, but it’s hard to tell what else might have been his. It looks like the guy dumped a whole thrift shop here.”

“Okay then,” Slim Jim decided. “We’ll go on what we got.” He cradled the shirt around Nip’s face and then around Tuck’s while he whispered instructions in their ears.

“What are you telling them?” I demanded.

He gave me the evil eye. “My training methods are secret,” he informed me, letting fly with a wad of tobacco juice that splatted to the ground near my feet.

I rolled my eyes and wiped the sweat off my forehead. I keep my hair pretty short, but at the moment, in the afternoon heat, it felt like I had a RuPaul wig weighing me down. I should have worn a baseball hat to shade me from the sun.

The dogs had grown still and sat side by side on the edge of the clearing, staring at Slim Jim. Their haunches quivered with contained excitement. Slim Jim unleashed both hounds, and, holding the shirt like it was a checkered flag at the Daytona 500, he waved it toward the ground and commanded, “Seek! Seek!”