The Blight Way (7 page)

Chapter 9

Tully, Pap and Dave were seated at a table in the back of the restaurant when Buck showed up with Susan. Even though she was tall, she seemed tiny alongside the hulking deputy.

Buck said, “I would've stopped and beat on Scraggs awhile, but I thought Susan here might not like the violence.”

Pap was the only one at the table to welcome the lady properly. He rose and tipped his Stetson.

“You are a true gentleman, Pap,” she said, beaming. “Not many of you left.”

“I don't think she would be all that bothered by a little violence, Buck,” Tully said.

“A little beating might have taught the Scraggs some manners,” Susan said.

Tully wasn't at all sure this comment wasn't meant for him and Dave. But he didn't care. He was tired already
and the day was just getting started. “It's your restaurant, Dave,” he said. “What do you recommend?”

“Let me see. Hmmm. I think I'd recommend the chicken-fried steak. Hear it's the best in the world. It comes with gravy over the steak and hash browns.”

“The hash browns still got that sheen of grease on them?”

“Still do. Make them by hand right here from fresh Idaho spuds. Cover them with lots of the best grease money can buy.”

“Good.”

Noticing Susan rather thoughtfully perusing the menu, Tully wondered if she would go for the chicken-fried steak, too. She did. Might be my kind of woman after all, he thought. On the other hand, he wasn't sure he could get used to a woman who matter-of-factly shoved a thermometer into a dead man's liver.

A waitress named Shirley came and took their orders. Afterwards, Dave told Susan and Buck about the second murder scene.

“Yeah,” Tully said, “a pool of blood on the ground back in the woods a little ways from the Jeep. Maybe Holt came out of the back seat firing a pistol and hit somebody just by chance. I don't think the victim was a shooter, because none of the bullet holes in the Jeep came from that side. Maybe just an interested observer. Then Holt kept going. Dave traced the track from the fence to the Jeep, but never came across the pistol.”

“Right, no pistol,” Dave said. “So I figure Holt emptied it and dropped it and it was picked up by whoever
shot him. The tracker went right for him, like he knew Holt wasn't armed anymore. Or maybe never.”

Susan said, “You can tell that from the tracks?”

“Pretty much. He wasn't dodging round like somebody was taking shots at him or like he expected the guy to.”

Tully said, “We at least know who the men in the car were and that they came from Los Angeles. But what were people like that doing up here in Blight County? And on the Last Hope Road of all places?”

“Got to be a setup,” Buck said. “No other reason somebody would drive back on that road. I can't guess who might have done it, but the Scraggs come to mind.”

“Pretty hard to believe the Scraggs didn't have something to do with it,” Pap said. “On the other hand, why would Batim call Bo to tell him he had a dead man over one of his fences?”

“Maybe because the trail led right to that fence,” Tully said. “And there's no way they could have cleaned up all the blood at the fence. Batim knows we'd tie the guy on the fence to the guys in the woods, even if the body was gone.”

Two waitresses returned with their orders. The talk at the table stopped. One of the waitresses, blond and voluptuous, suddenly blurted out, “Why, Pap Tully! I thought that was you under that black Stetson.”

Pap, obviously pleased, grinned broadly. “Had to give the boys a hand, Deedee,” he said. “Got some unfortunate business up here north of Famine.”

“Oh, you don't have to be so secretive, Pap.” She reached out, lifted his Stetson and mussed his white
thicket of hair in a gesture Tully thought suspiciously familiar. “Everybody in town's heard all about the bodies in the woods and all. It's pretty creepy, hunh? Nothing like that ever happened around Famine before.”

“Everybody knows about the bodies?” Tully said. “How does everybody know?”

“Well, somebody probably mentioned it down at the gas station. You know how it is, Dave, you want everyone in town to know the news, you mention it at the gas station.”

“You bet,” Dave said.

Susan said, “You may want to check in at the gas station, Sheriff. Maybe you can find out who the ambushers are, too?”

Tully ignored the twinkle in her eyes. “I wouldn't be surprised,” he said, and dug into his hash browns and gravy. This will probably kill me, he thought. Good, though.

“You been out to see Vern Littlefield yet?” Buck asked.

“No,” Tully answered. “But I'm going out there to talk to him right after lunch. Been a long time since I've seen Vern. I worked for him summers when I was a kid, before I went off to the university.”

“What did you do for him?” Pap asked.

“Built fences. I guess Vern figured the fences would keep the Scraggs from rustling his cattle.”

“That sure didn't work, did it?” Dave said.

“No,” Tully said, “it didn't. That's why I later sent both the Scragg boys, Lister and Lem, off to prison. Rustling.”

“Prison didn't seem to do them much good,” Pap said.

“I'll be darned,” Buck said.

“What?” Tully said.

“You went to college, Bo?”

“Don't hold it against him,” Pap said, grinning. “He didn't learn nothing except how to paint pictures. They got a bunch of them up on the walls of the courthouse right now.”

“Why, I saw them,” Buck said. He seemed about ready to offer a criticism but then thought better of it. “These sure are good hash browns, Dave.”

Tully glanced at Susan. He could tell there was at least one person at the table impressed he'd been to college.

“I haven't seen your pictures yet,” she said.

“I have to warn you,” Tully said, “that display has caused a virtual explosion of art criticism in Blight County. Folks who previously came out of the hills only to vote against school-bond issues come to town at least twice a month now, just to voice their criticism of the sheriff's pictures.”

“Hey,” Dave said, “I think Bo's pictures show a lot of promise. The colors are real nice. If his art classes had just taught him something about perspective, they'd be fine.”

“Is that why all your animals look like they're about to fall out of their pastures?” Pap said.

“Basically, that's it,” said Dave. “No perspective.”

Chapter 10

After lunch, Dave stayed at the café, and Susan and Buck headed out to the old mining road. Tully and Pap stopped by the gas station. Ed Grange, who owned and operated the station, was out cleaning the windshield of a car being gassed up at one of the two pumps. At one end of the station were shelves of groceries, along with coolers for milk, sodas and beer. A counter ran half the length of the station. In front of the counter was an open area furnished with tables, chairs and a wood stove. A young woman stood behind the counter at the cash register. She looked too young to be working at the station. Tully wondered why she wasn't in school. She greeted them with a quick little smile when they came in. They pulled up chairs next to the fire.

“There's something you don't see much anymore,” Pap commented.

“What's that?” Tully said, thinking about the girl at the cash register.

“A car getting its windshield cleaned at a gas station.”

“That's because Blight County is thirty years back in time, and Famine is at least fifty years back.”

“Ed still charges a dollar and a half a gallon for gas,” Pap said. “I guess he's not that far back in time.”

“So how much did gas cost when you were a kid, Pap?” Tully thought he should ask, just to be sociable, because he knew he was about to be told anyway.

“Back in the forties, everything cost fifteen cents,” Pap said. “Didn't make no difference what, a hamburger, a pound of bacon, a gallon of gas. I don't know why fifteen cents was the magic number, but it was.”

Tully expressed the appropriate amazement.

Ed put the finishing touches on the windshield, then came into the station and shook hands. “Pap complaining about the price of gas?” he said.

“Naw,” Tully said. “He was just telling me how nice it was back in the olden days, back when folks plugged an artery they got death instead of a bypass. The doctor got fifteen cents.”

“Didn't say nothing like that,” Pap said. “But in some ways it was better back then. What do you think, Ed?”

Ed took off his hat and hung it on a peg near the stove. The few hairs on his head were combed over from ear to ear and glued to his scalp with some kind of spray. He wore clean striped overalls with a blue work shirt showing at the neck. “I think you're right about that, Pap. Seems to me everything is going haywire these days.”

“Which brings me to the problem at hand,” Tully
said, tugging on the corner of his mustache. “Deedee down at the café tells us that everyone in town knows about the killing out on the old mine road.”

“Reckon that's true. I figure it takes maybe an hour for a newsbreak here at the station to reach everyone in town.”

“Newsbreak?” Tully said. “I thought this was a gas station, not a radio station. Anyway, who dropped the word here?”

“Lem Scragg. There were three or four guys hanging around shooting the breeze when Lem come in and said there was a dead guy up at the ranch and he'd heard there were two more over at the Last Hope Mine Road. Next thing I know there was just Lem and me standing here. The others had gone to spread the word. Been a long time since we've had any decent news like that.”

Pap said, “I figure the Scraggs had to be involved in this some way.”

“I wouldn't put it past any of the Scraggs,” Ed said.

“But if you guys said anything about it on the police radio, old Batim would have heard. He got himself a police scanner last year. Anymore, we get most of our police news through Batim.”

“It was Buck, I bet anything,” Pap said. “Probably blabbing everything over the radio.”

“Doesn't rule out the Scraggs being involved in this thing,” Tully said.

“It sure doesn't,” Ed agreed.

Tully said, “You hear anything, Ed, anything that might give us a lead into this mess, call my cell phone.”

“Sure. Hey, how come you brought Pap along?”

“Not for his social amenities, that's for sure,” Tully said. “Mostly, he knows quite a bit about Scraggs and murder.”

“Yep,” Pap agreed. “I got to admit, though, that this trip has pretty much satiated my appetite for both.”

“Mine, too,” Tully said. “I've got my Crime Scene Investigation Unit headed up here. A state patrolman's guarding the site now. How long before the whole town knows that, Ed?”

“Take about an hour. We do what we can with limited resources.”

Tully and Pap went out and got in the Explorer.

Pap rolled and lit another cigarette. Tully didn't complain. It wouldn't do him any good, anyway. The Explorer's ashtray was already full.

The old man said, “You know that orange fluorescent tape at the opening to the mining road? Well, whoever put that up was probably directing the boys in the Jeep into the ambush.”

“You may be right,” Tully said. “Otherwise it would be hard to spot that road entrance in the dark.”

“There might be a useful fingerprint on that tape,” Pap said.

“We should have cut it down. Thanks for telling me now.”

That's why he had brought the old man along. Tully couldn't believe his own stupidity, except he had been a bit overloaded. He braked hard, made a bootlegger's turn on the highway, and headed back through Famine toward the old mine road. Details! he thought. I hate the details.

The radio squawked. It was Florence, the 911 operator, back at the office. “We got the local press here demanding we tell it what's going on.”