A Dead Man's Tale (26 page)

The Town Cop Confides in the Tribal Investigator

The moment Daisy was out of sight, Scott Parris took another gulp of her heavy-duty coffee and regarded his Ute host with a pained expression. “Something’s gnawing at me, Charlie.”

“I’m not surprised. Aunt Daisy’s brew’ll eat the lining out of your stomach.”

“It’s Chico Perez that’s giving me heartburn.” The chief of police reflected his Indian friend’s faint smile. “There’s no doubt that the dead man was the late Mrs. Reed’s boyfriend. Three country-club employees and one of Mr. Perez’s neighbors have positively ID’d his body.” Parris started to take another sip of coffee, hesitated. “The guy’s dead as a doorknob and I’d be happy to let the matter rest there. But something’s fishy about this Perez character’s actual identity.”

“You told me some time ago that Chico Perez wasn’t his right name.”

“There’s more to it than that, Charlie.” Parris banged his coffee cup on the kitchen table. “We found the registration in his old Camaro and a State Farm insurance card—both documents had Perez’s name on ’em, along with his Granite Creek address.” He paused to sop up spilled coffee with a paper napkin. “But when Perez showed up at the Reed residence, he wasn’t carrying any form of ID. “No driver’s license or credit cards. Nada.” He waited for the obvious query.

“Nothing at all in his wallet to give you a clue as to who—”

“The guy didn’t have a wallet on him, Charlie. And before you ask, it wasn’t in his rented house out on Sundown Avenue—or in his Chevy.”

“Maybe the guy lost his wallet, or it got stolen.” Charlie Moon blinked at his friend. “Did he have any money on him?”

“The so-called Chico Perez had exactly six bucks and fifty cents in his jeans.” Parris furrowed his brow. “And I haven’t gotten to the
good
part.”

Now, the Gory Details

Scott Parris got up from the kitchen table to take a quick peek down the shadowy hallway. Relieved to verify that Daisy wasn’t listening from that strategic location, he figured this was a good opportunity to reveal some police-ears-only information to his occasional deputy. After tossing back the thick dregs of tar-black coffee, the well-caffeinated cop began to pace back and forth. “I expect you’d like to hear what Doc Simpson found out when he examined Perez’s carcass.” He shot a sly look at the Indian. “Or maybe you’d like to make one of your famous wild guesses.”

“I’m not much interested in the subject of pathology, or making unfounded speculations—but since you’re my guest and best buddy, I’ll do my best to please you.” Charlie Moon cocked his head. “I already know that the man’s head was bandaged when he showed up at the Reed residence. So I expect that whatever our favorite medical examiner discovered must’ve had to do with Perez’s skull.”

Parris refilled his mug from the percolator. “You’re getting warm.”

“Are we talking room temperature or high noon in Death Valley?”

The edgy cop eased himself back into his chair. “It was Perez’s hair.”

“What about his hair?”

“Well…it wasn’t there.”

Moon stared. “None of it?”

Parris nodded. “Except for a little sprig here and there—it was all gone.”

“Sounds like Perez was altering his appearance. The fella must’ve shaved his head too close, then had to wrap some bandages around it.”

“His head hadn’t been shaved, Charlie—it was more like his hair had been hacked right down to the roots.” Parris held his breath. “And that’s not the worst part.”

Moon assumed a ready-for-anything expression. “Go ahead—get it over with.”

“Charlie, I don’t know how you’re going to take this—you being of the Native American persuasion and me being one-hundred-percent Caucasian—so brace yourself before I pull the trigger.”

“Consider me braced, paleface.” The Indian grinned. “And take your best shot.”

Parris leaned forward and lowered his voice. “According to Doc Simpson, a few days before Mrs. Reed shot him dead—Chico Perez had been…well…
mutilated.
”

The Ute lost his grin. For a long time, he stared at his friend. He didn’t dare ask.

Didn’t have to. Scott Parris told him.

Moon shook his head. “Who’d do a thing like
that
?”

As if in answer to his query, Daisy Perika toddled into the kitchen.

The lawmen turned to gaze at the wily old lady.

She approached the table. “Seems to me, you two coppers could use a little help.”

Her nephew did not like the sound of this.

Daisy Drops a Bomb

Charlie Moon’s aunt placed her thumb on a red square, to rub a small wrinkle from the checkered oilcloth. “It has to do with that missing woman—the one who owned the employment agency.” The tribal elder counted three heartbeats before turning to fix her shifty eyes on the chief of police. “I’m not dead sure about this, but I’d bet next month’s Social Security check that you’ll find her body where Chico Perez dumped it.”

Parris inhaled a deep breath. “And where’d that be, Daisy?”

“In the sewer.” Leaning on her oak staff, the old woman wrinkled her nose at the unpleasant olfactory memory. “If I was you, I’d start by looking for a manhole cover in the alley behind her office.”

Parris cast a querying glance at the peculiar old woman’s nephew.

His face hard as flint, there was a barely perceptible nod of Moon’s head.

Enough said.

GCPD’s top cop used his mobile phone to place a call to Dispatch. After barking the appropriate orders, Scott Parris got up from his chair and began to pace again. A full six minutes passed without a word being spoken. The brittle silence was broken by Parris’s telephone playing a lively rendition of “Turkey in the Straw,” courtesy of Charlie Moon and his fine Stelling’s Golden Cross banjo. “Talk to me,” the cop said.

The dispatcher talked and Parris’s already chalky face blanched a shade more pale with every word. “Tell Officers Knox and Slocum I said don’t touch a thing and—” He listened again. “Yeah, I guess they wouldn’t, at that. Call Doc Simpson. You already did that? Good work, Clara.” After terminating the conversation with Clara Tavishuts, Parris pocketed the telephone. “Eddie Knox spotted a corpse under manhole cover number 128, which is located in the alley behind the Copper Street Candy Shop and maybe twenty paces from the rear exit of Bultmann Employment Services.” He stared at Charlie Moon’s aunt. “Turns out that employees of the candy store have been complaining about a stink of something dead in the alley.”

Daisy could have dropped a second bomb by telling Moon and Parris who Chico Perez really was, but she was saving that explosive for an occasion when it would produce maximum effect. Wearing a deadpan expression that any poker player would’ve envied, Daisy departed from the kitchen for the final time that day. The vain old lady had enjoyed her brief moment in the limelight. And she wasn’t done yet.

Neither of the lawmen could think of a thing to say. But again, the men who knew her so well shared more or less the same thought.

If we ask Daisy how she knew where Chico Perez had dumped Janey Bultmann’s body, she most likely wouldn’t tell us.
Then, there was the really scary possibility:
She just might.

Daisy’s nephew had a serious matter to tend to. But the tribal investigator’s business could wait until tomorrow. To that end, Charlie Moon asked Scott Parris to stay the night.

The rancher’s gracious invitation was gratefully accepted.

A Rude Awakening

After enjoying the benefits of a restful sleep and tranquil dreams, Scott Parris awakened in gradual stages of increasing awareness. His drowsy perceptions included the observation that it was still dark outside and that…
I’m not in my own bed.
After realizing that he was in the Columbine headquarters downstairs guest bedroom, the reassured chief of police dozed off and on until the first pearly-gray glow of dawn, which he greeted with a soul-satisfying yawn.
Now this is the kind of life a man ought to live.
Parris stretched luxuriously, popping wrist, elbow, and shoulder joints.
A thousand miles from town and good friends all around and fine horses to ride and enough rolling prairie and rivers and lakes and mountains to satisfy a fella right down to his marrow.
He rubbed his eyes.
Guess I ought to hit the floor and get ready for breakfast
. He poked his foot out from under the covers.
This bedroom’s cold as kraut and it’s nice and warm here under the blankets.
The tough guy yawned again, turned to his other side, and settled in.
I’ll take me a little nap.

Rap-rap!

What the hell was that?
Parris sat up in bed, eyes popped like poached eggs.
Sounded like somebody banged on the wall with a baseball bat.

The solution to the small mystery was provided forthwith.

“Up and at ’em!” Daisy yelled from the hallway. “Breakfast is burning in the skillet, the coffeepot’s boiling over, and after you get your belly full there’s firewood that needs splitting, rusty fences that need mending, and cow pies that need kicking.” The old crone cackled and gave his bedroom door another hearty thump with her walking stick before hobbling off to the kitchen, where Sarah Frank was baking made-from-scratch biscuits and frying sliced Idaho spuds, big slabs of Virginia ham, and mouthwatering pork sausage patties. Also heaps of scrambled eggs.

A Secluded Spot

Best friends have ways of communicating without words. A sideways glance at the window, the merest nod, an eloquent silence—all speak volumes. Before breakfast was over, Scott Parris was informed by several such cues that Charlie Moon had something to tell him—but not where Daisy Perika could eavesdrop on their private conversation. After they had complimented Sarah on the fine meal and Daisy for her top-secret biscuit recipe, the rancher and the chief of police meandered to the parlor with their third cups of coffee, where they had a habit of sitting before the hearth, where famished flames tongued hungrily at select, succulent morsels of split piñon. Not this morning. On this occasion, the wily conspirators crossed the parlor and stepped onto the front porch.

Daisy Perika was watching the sneaky menfolk from the hallway.
That won’t do you any good.
The tribal elder smirked at their vain effort to slip away onto the front porch and discuss matters not meant for her ears.
I’ll creep over by the window like I always do, and hear every word you say.

And so she did. (Creep over to the window.)

But she didn’t. (Hear every word.)

All Daisy heard was the breeze picking up and the happy chatter of cottonwood leaves. The men who she supposed were on the porch were not present and accounted for. The spy arrived at the window just in time to see Charlie Moon open the door to the new horse barn. She watched the men vanish inside and scowled at having her plan foiled.
What are they going in there for?
To saddle up some horses and go for a ride, she supposed. The meddlesome old soul was right on the mark.

After fording the frigid river and getting soaked from the knees down, the horsemen headed for the hill that had been called Pine Knob in one language or another for centuries.

An amber-faced sun was smiling the chill off the morning when the riders got to the top of the lonely knoll where Charlie Moon had personally laid several bodies under the sod. A well-groomed grave with a simple marker cradled the remains of a young woman whose destitute mother could not afford a decent burial for her only child. One of the unmarked graves concealed the moldering bones of a friend the Ute had been forced to pass sentence of death on—
at the drop of a hat
. But that had happened way back when, and Mr. Moon was concerned with right now.

As it generally did on the summit, the light wind was whining in the pines—except for the dead, lightning-scarred ponderosa that stood atop the hill like a fossilized sentry doomed to stand ramrod-straight at his last post until Time itself had ticked its last tock and faded away. It had no needles for the wind to whine in.

The men sat easily on their mounts, the chill northerly breeze on their backs.

After a suitable interlude of comradely solitude, the rancher stretched his lean right arm and pointed in a southerly direction. “On a clear day, you can just about make out the Columbine front gate from up here.”

“Maybe
you
can.”
I guess I ought to get me a pair of spectacles.
The long-in-the-tooth white man sighed along with the breeze.

Moon turned in the saddle and spoke to his companion. “D’you know that if I had a state-of-the-art controller on my front gate, I could open or close it from here on Pine Knob?”

Parris admired all kinds of high-tech gadgetry. “What kind of doo-hickey would let you do that?”

“One that answers a telephone.” Moon watched a dozen or so elk enter a thick stand of willows and aspen saplings along the riverbank. “If I was of a mind to, I could make the call all the way from China, and press two or three buttons on the phone to operate the gate.”

“Imagine that.” At a sudden gust of wind, the chief of police grabbed the brim of his cherished felt fedora before it took flight for Gunnison or Salida. “What’ll they think of next?”

“What’s been bothering me is”—the tribal investigator held on to his black Stetson—“what did somebody
already
think of?”

Parris eyed his friend warily. “I bet you’re going to tell me.”

The elk now lost to sight, Moon directed his gaze at the distant Columbine entrance. “If a man can open or close a gate with a telephone call, he could operate any electrical gadget you might care to mention.”

“Okay, Charlie—who’s the man and what’s the gadget?”

“Sam Reed’s the man.” As the wind fell off to a gentle breeze, Moon let go of his hat. “The gadget was something that could play back recorded sounds.”
Probably a cassette tape player.

Parris studied the inscrutable Ute’s craggy profile. “Recorded sounds of
what
?”

“Wood splintering.” The tribal investigator couldn’t help but admire Samuel Reed’s ingenuity. “Like a burglar would make if he was crow-barring Mrs. Reed’s back door open at about ten o’clock on the evening of June fourth.”

Parris opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

Moon turned again to look at his friend. “You remember that phone call Reed made from a mobile phone just about the time Perez showed up on his property?”

Parris strained to recollect. “The one when he checked on cattle prices?”

The Indian cowboy nodded. “But his call wasn’t about what beef was selling for.” He smiled at the memory of his misunderstanding of Reed’s duplicity. “Sam Reed already knew about the beef market from his computer. Five’ll get you fifty, that call was when our slippery friend activated the break-in sound effects.”

The chief of police was not about to accept the wager.

“Reed could’ve placed the burglar-sound-effects call while he was alone in the parlor, but the man’s a born show-off. I expect it made his day to make his final play with you and me as witnesses.” The Ute’s keen eye spotted a tiny jasper arrowhead on the sandy ground. “And there’s other things a clever man like Professor Reed could do with a mobile phone besides making his wife think the dangerous Crowbar Burglar was breaking into her back door.”

Scott Parris didn’t like the sound of this. “Like what?”

“Like sending a text message to his wife’s boyfriend and inviting the so-called Chico Perez to come over right away.”

“But Sam didn’t do that, Charlie—the text message to Perez was forwarded from the tapped mobile phone that he loaned his wife.”

“That’s right.” The Ute was tempted to dismount and pick up the arrowhead. He decided to leave it for someone to find long after he was gone. “But Reed could have borrowed his phone back from her on June fourth.”

Charlie can be a real pain in the butt.
“Okay. Just for the sake of annoying me, let’s say Sam Reed swiped the borrowed phone back from his wife.” The cop shifted his aching posterior in the saddle. “But having the tapped phone wouldn’t do him any good unless he knew the boyfriend’s mobile-phone number. And even if he’d managed that, how could he send Chico Perez a message that’d pass for one from Mrs. Reed?”

“That bothered me for a while, pard. But what if Mrs. Reed didn’t misplace her original mobile phone like Sam told you she did—what if he slipped it into his pocket when she wasn’t looking?”

This suggestion stung like a slap on Parris’s face.

The descendant of Chief Ouray watched a red-tailed hawk wing her serene way over Pine Knob. Golden drops of sunlight dripped from the tips of her wings. As he enjoyed the spectacle, Moon continued in an easy, conversational tone. “Sam might’ve suspected that his wife had a boyfriend. Having the phone she’d used to communicate with Perez would’ve sure put him in the catbird seat.”

The tribal investigator’s sinister insinuation percolated through Parris’s thoughts, and left a bitter aftertaste.
When I hinted to Reed that he should swipe his wife’s phone so he could give her one that was tapped, the clever bastard told me she’d already lost it.
A pair of arteries began to thump in the cop’s temples.
Sam Reed liked my notion all right, except he didn’t want me to know he’d already taken her phone.

Obviously curious about the pair of horses and riders, Miss Red Tail was circling the lightning-scorched ponderosa.

Time drifts by leisurely on Pine Knob. On occasion, it seems to slow to a dead stop.

As precious moments of his life stole away into the past, Scott Parris sat astride the Columbine quarter horse without moving a muscle or uttering a word. The harried lawman watched the feathery predator land lightly on the tip of the tall pine. When her inspection of the intruders was complete, Parris watched as the hawk lifted off to soar aloft on a thermal and was filled with a melancholy longing.
I wish I could fly away from here to someplace where life was simple and nobody bothered me.
He recalled that they were in a makeshift cemetery.
After I’m six feet under the sod, maybe then I’ll get some peace.
He exhaled a sigh and an admission: “I guess Sam could’ve swiped his wife’s phone and found some messages on it between her and Perez.” He flicked his bridle at a pesky horsefly buzzing busily about his mount’s neck. “And he could’ve borrowed the tapped phone he gave her back long enough to send a phony message to Perez—and received Perez’s reply.” The older cop recalled something that would rip a big hole in Moon’s theory. “But if that’s what happened, how do you account for the fact that I found the tapped phone in Mrs. Reed’s purse right after the shooting?”

“How long is ‘right after,’ pardner?”

“Pretty damn quick.” Parris’s shoulders heaved a shrug. “Well…no more’n a few minutes.”

“Sam Reed would’ve only needed a few seconds to slip the tapped phone back into his dead wife’s purse.”

“You sure know how to ruin a fellow’s day.” The town cop glared at his Indian friend. “And you look like you’re not done yet.”

The Ute seemed about to say something. Hesitated.

“Don’t be bashful, Charlie—spit it out.”

“Don’t know if I should. It doesn’t actually prove anything.”

“But I bet it’s a real hair-raiser.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.” Moon squinted at the hawk, who was getting smaller and smaller. “D’you remember how, at about the time Chico Perez was making his way to the back door of the Reeds’ home—where Mrs. Irene Reed was waiting with a loaded pistol and probably listening to a recording of a crowbar splintering wood—how Sam Reed started humming a tune?”

“No, I don’t.”
Charlie’s pulling my leg now.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but unless I‘ve missed something in the county ordinances, there ain’t no local law against a man
humming
.”

“In an instance like this, maybe there oughta be. I bet you can’t guess which famous composition it was.”

“A real classic, huh?”

“You bet. One of the great musical accomplishments of Western Civilization.”

Parris gave it some serious thought. “‘Cotton-Eye Joe’?”

“Not even close.”

“I got it, Charlie—‘Pistol Packin’ Mama’!”

“No, but I like it.”

“I’m all guessed out. Gimme a bodacious big hint.”

“Leadbelly recorded it way back in 1932.” Charlie Moon enjoyed a nostalgic memory.
But I like Ernest Tubb’s version best.

“Leadbelly and ’32 don’t ring no silver bell. Tell me the name of the song.”

“‘Goodnight, Irene.’”