Out Of Time (27 page)

Those smelly low-slung hounds leaped into action with an enthusiasm I reserve solely for Krispy Kreme doughnuts. They dashed out of the clearing and began running in ever- widening circles, their tails wagging furiously and their ears dragging on the ground like miniature dust mops.

“The ears help trap the scent close to the nose,” Slim Jim explained as we waited for Nip and Tuck to pick up a trail. “They can smell nine hundred times better than we can.”

“They smell all right,” I agreed.

Suddenly, Nip gave a sharp bark and took off toward the main road. Either he was taking the easy way downhill or he’d found a trail.

“Is this working?” I asked between gasps as we followed both dogs toward the farmhouse.

“Can’t tell yet,” Slim Jim explained, not even winded. “They’re dogs. They like to take their time.”

They didn’t like to take their time nearly enough for me. For what looked like nothing but a bunch of dog fat and loose skin, those two suckers could move. They dashed around the house, into the barn and out again, along the perimeter of a backyard lawn and then into some bushes leading to the pastures. We had no choice but to tag along, with Slim Jim exhorting them to “seek” and “seek” until I was ready to stuff the shirt down his throat.

Thirty minutes later, I had sweated away at least three pounds and was ready to throw in the towel. Just as I was about to admit it, a remarkable change came over Tuck. He froze and flopped to the ground, his nose resting on his front paws. His tail curled up in a plume, the tip pointing over his head like a one-way sign. He began to make an eerie whistling sound.

“He’s found a trail,” Slim Jim whispered. I felt a prickling rise on the back of my neck. It was one thing to go looking for a body out of desperation. It was another to find one.

Nip joined his brother and lay quietly at the head of the scent trail, with the same posture and the same obedient stillness.

“Ready?” Slim Jim asked. “When I let them go, they’re going to really go.”

“Ready,” I promised.

“Find it,” Slim Jim commanded his dogs and they leapt forward, baying in unison. Their howls echoed over the hills like a primordial warning, primitive sounds of triumph meant to terrify as they closed in on their quarry. We jogged to keep pace, following Nip and Tuck over a rolling hill, part of the broken-down fence and into the pine woods again.

“They’re taking us back to the clearing where we started,” I said, disappointed. “We’re going in circles.”

“Trust them,” Slim Jim told me, his lean frame darting forward. “Nip and Tuck know what they’re doing.”

The dogs picked up their pace, squat legs pedaling furiously. They arrived at the clearing a minute before we did. We found them laying obediently at attention, their noses pointed toward the far end of the junk pile.

“It’s the shirt,” I said. “They’ve probably found the rest of the shirt.”

“It’s not the dang shirt,” Slim Jim answered crossly, annoyed at my lack of faith. “They’re trained for flesh, okay? Help me look around.”

He took the lead and began moving old junk to one side, eroding part of the pile away. Together, we dragged the set of old box springs, the smashed baby seat, broken flower pots and a small mountain of yard debris to one side.

“This section of the pile seems mighty dense to me,” Slim Jim said. “Why would someone want to go piling all the big stuff in the far corner like that?”

Why indeed? I was starting to believe those two bloodhound impostors knew their stuff. It took us almost twenty minutes to uncover the far corner of the pile. Nip and Tuck inched forward with each object we removed, until their noses quivered on the edge of the cleared area.

“It’s here,” Slim Jim said confidently. “You were right, Casey. The boys are never wrong. There’s something here.”

Slim Jim was right. Nip and Tuck were right. I was right. It was only George Carter who wasn’t all right. Because there, beneath the far end of the dumping ground, was an area of earth that had been disturbed and packed back into place. We scraped away a base layer of leaves and discovered the faint outline of an uneven rectangle big enough for George Carter’s body.

Slim Jim imitated his dogs and got down on all fours, sniffing the ground. “How long did you say this fellow has been missing?” he asked me.

“A couple of months,” I told him. “Maybe two and a half.”

“Then we’d better hurry,” Slim Jim decided. He picked through the junk pile and selected a couple of broken farm tools with sharp enough points to serve as makeshift shovels. Together, we worked one corner of the rectangle, carefully probing beneath the earth’s surface and removing chunks of loose dirt by hand. We worked for half an hour, the mound of earth beside us growing, as did the dogs’ whining.

“You sure?” I asked for about the fifteenth time.

“I’m sure,” Slim Jim answered grimly. “I feel something.”

He scraped away another layer of dirt. We were concentrating on an area two feet square and had reached three feet in depth. Nip and Tuck were practically turning inside out with excitement. Even I could smell the change in the air.

“Almost got it,” Slim Jim announced. His face shifted and he blinked rapidly, withdrawing his hand from the hole. “Look for yourself,” he told me, moving away from the grave toward fresh air.

“You okay?” I asked. “You look kind of green.”

“Sure.” He spat a wad of tobacco juice on the ground. “Just not enough lunch. Smell’s not what I expected.” He edged away and gulped for breath.

I crawled forward on my knees to where Slim Jim had been digging, and scraped away a thin layer of dirt. The outline of an arm emerged, or what was left of one. It curved inward toward the remnants of a hand that had detached from the body. Deterioration of the flesh was advanced, but cool weather had helped preserve the underlayer, and you could still tell that the victim had been a black man. I didn’t need to see any more.

“It’s him,” I said, almost incredulously. “We actually found him.” I looked down at Nip and Tuck. “You two are getting the thickest T-bone steaks you ever saw when all this is done.”

I should never have mentioned food. Poor Slim Jim—he was game for the hunt, but green for the quarry. He dashed to the far side of the clearing, heaving the remains of his lunch into the brush. It was nice to have someone else throwing up for a change.

Nip and Tuck gave us a hard time when we tried to leave the site. Like Ghandi supporters, they went limp and refused to budge. We practically had to carry them from the scene. Slim Jim was baffled. I was pissed. Lugging seventy pounds of dog fat around is thirsty work. But soon Nip and Tuck were fast asleep in the truck bed, having earned their rest.

Slim Jim and I sat in the truck back at the country store, sipping Pepsis and eating banana moon pies. Trust me, it’s an old country remedy for nausea. “What do we do now?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I need to think,” I admitted.

“Durnnit, Casey,” Slim Jim complained. “You act like you didn’t expect to find nothing. Don’t you have a plan?”

Strictly speaking, no. But I was trying to come up with one fast.

“I think it’s a good bet that Pete Bunn killed him, don’t you?” I thought out loud. “I mean, with the body being found on his land and all.”

Slim Jim shrugged. “Pretty stupid place to dump a body, if you ask me. I’d have put it on someone else’s land.”

” Swine. Slim JYeah, but he could keep on eye on it there,” I said.

Slim Jim glanced at his watch. He had more important matters on his mind. “Listen,” he said. “I got to be back by six or Mama will have my hide.”

And mine with it, I thought. “I could go to the governor,” I suggested, still working out a plan. “Lay out this new evidence and try to get him to postpone Gail’s execution while they look into this bad-cop angle.”

“Which governor?” Slim Jim asked. “Our governor? Cuz that dog ain’t gonna hunt with him, if you know what I mean. He’s not postponing no execution this year. He’s not real keen on letting killers go, if you hadn’t noticed.”

Slim Jim acted like he was from the sticks, but he was no fool. He was right about the governor. He would only cave in under extreme pressure, and there was still no direct evidence to link the deaths of Peyton Tillman and George Carter to Roy Taylor’s murder. What was needed was a little spin control—and enough public pressure to force the governor to make his decision out in the open where he could be judged by the good citizens of the state.

“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “But it will have to wait until morning. It will be too dark soon. That means I have to guard the body tonight.”

Slim Jim whistled. “You’re going to sit up awake in those woods all night?” he asked. “Listening to every sound and waiting for that Pete Bunn fellow to show up? Casey, you’re a country girl, but you’ve been living in the city a long time now. I can’t see you doing it, to be honest with you.”

“I don’t have a choice. If anyone is on to us and tries to move the body, we’d have nothing. Gail would be dead before we could find another connection.”

“Don’t have a connection now,” Slim Jim pointed out with the practicality of a farmer.

“No,” I admitted. “But I have enough to stop the scheduled execution date while they look to see if there is one. I just need to make some phone calls.” I hesitated before I climbed out of the truck, not wanting to come right out and ask the favor. It was a big one after all. Slim Jim stared at me, waiting out my silence.

“Ah, all right,” he finally said, reading my unspoken request. “I’ll keep you company tonight. But I got to wait until Mama gets to sleep.” He snorted to clear his sinuses, then began to chew his tobacco again. No wonder he never had a girlfriend. You’d have to wear a bib just to kiss him good night. 

It was nearly eleven o’clock by the time I met Slim Jim back at the country store. I’d made my phone calls, though it took a while to track down the right reporter and even longer to locate a tele Sloct>

“All set?” Slim Jim asked. He held a small canister of chewing tobacco. Talk about camping light.

“Didn’t you bring anything else?” I asked.

He stared at me blankly. “We’re just spending one night out there, right?”

I nodded.

“Then what else do I need?” he asked and started the engine.

“We probably should have brought your mama and her shotgun,” I said, somewhat embarrassed that I was toting a sleeping bag, my knapsack with a flashlight and the .44 magnum inside it and enough fried chicken from Hardee’s to feed a starving Confederate battalion.

“I did bring one of her shotguns,” he drawled. I could sense his grin in the dark. “Never know when it might come in handy.”

He shot a rabbit with it. Then he skinned it and ate it for a midnight supper after building a hidden fire between a ring of boulders left behind eons ago when the Haw River had changed direction. It was about the most exciting thing that happened during the first half of the night. We took turns snoozing on the sleeping bag and keeping watch over the clearing. There wasn’t a rustle that we could attribute to human movement, just a night full of owl chatter, deer footsteps, possum squeaks and an attempted raid on the fried chicken by a horde of hungry raccoons. I was on duty for that skirmish. We lost a few drumsticks, but I managed to save the rest. Raccoons can be tough, but I’m even tougher when it comes to protecting my biscuits and white meat.

I walked back to the main road every hour on the hour, but Pete Bunn’s farmhouse remained dark and deserted. I was starting to get a bad feeling about the man. Somehow he’d been warned away. And once he saw his farm all over the evening news, we’d probably never see him again.

It was close to three o’clock in the morning when I heard a truck engine. It began as a far-off drone and grew louder as the vehicle made its way down the long driveway. Slim Jim was snoring softly beside the dying fire, and I left him in peace. I crept down the trail to the main farm road, the .44 firmly gripped in my hand. Clouds blocked the moonlight, shrouding the farm in darkness, but I could see the taillights of a truck glow red and then blink off at the base of the hill. Someone had pulled up in the front yard of the house. The engine cut out and the silence was abrupt. I could hear my heart beating in my chest and the pine needles crackling beneath my feet. I couldn’t get any closer without giving up cover.

The sound of glass breaking traveled up the long drive. If it was Pete Bunn returnin SBunootstepg home, he’d forgotten his keys and was climbing in a window. But I had my money on someone else. Someone who had fewer scruples than I did when it came to breaking and entering.

I was about to chance being spotted on the road for the opportunity to get closer when a hand gripped my elbow. I jumped a good two feet in the air, swallowed a scream between clenched teeth and almost peed in my pants.

“It’s me,” Slim Jim whispered. “Don’t you even think about going down that road.”

“Damnit, Slim,” I hissed. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“Hush up,” he commanded in a barely audible voice. “The sound’ll float right down into that hollow.”

“I need to see who it is,” I muttered.

“No, you don’t,” he said. “I can’t let you go down there. Sorry.”

Geeze, he had a grip like a Sears Craftsman vise. I wasn’t going anywhere until he decided to let go. I shut up and waited.