An Unmarked Grave (13 page)

"Yeah.19

"Johnson's Salvage."

I waited for him to continue, but when it was obvious he
had no intention of saying any more, I asked, "And where
can I find Johnson's?"

He pointed northwest up the highway and snorted. "Everybody knows Johnson's."

With a patronizing grin, I replied, "Not me "

"Oh" He pointed west. "Well, Johnson's is about nine or
ten miles up the highway there, just this side of Woodbine."

As we pulled onto the highway, I spotted Harlan Barton
climbing into a pickup on the shoulder of the road. Buck
Ford sat in the driver's seat.

During the drive to the wrecking yard, I called Tricia
Chester back in Austin. I figured my cell signal might be too
weak, but to my surprise, it was strong.

Tricia answered after several rings.

"Look, I don't mean to bring back unpleasant memories,
but did you see Justin's remains before the cremation?"

"Yes. We all did. Why?"

Ignoring her question, I asked another. "Were there any
marks on his forehead?"

Puzzled, she hesitated, then replied. "A tiny imprint, not
even a bruise, about the size of a dime, but the skin wasn't
broken. Why?"

"One more question. What funeral home did you use?"

Her tone grew impatient. "What's this all about, Tony?
Why do you want to know all this?"

"I'11 explain later. The funeral home? Which one was it?"

"Roth's. Why?"

"What's the number?"

Moments later, she read it off to me. "Now, what's going
on? Have you learned something?"

Ahead loomed Johnson's Salvage. "Let me call you back
tonight. I'm going to take a look at Justin's pickup."

"But-"

I punched off.

I started to call Roth's but on impulse dialed Danny
O'Banion instead. I figured that getting information from
the funeral home about Justin's facial trauma would be difficult for me, but Danny had hundreds of soldiers under
him in every layer of Austin's populace.

"No sweat, Tony. I'll call you back. By the way, everything
going okay?"

"Sure. No problem"

"You sure?" There was a note of suspicion in his voice.

"Positive"

"You sound funny. I'll send someone up there"

I laughed. "No. I'm fine. Talk to you later."

I pulled up in front of Johnson's and glanced at Jack.
"Want to go in with me?"

"No. I'll sit out here and listen to the radio. He opened the
ice chest and pulled out a Budweiser. He offered me one.

I chuckled. "At ten in the morning? Too early for me"

The day was warming quickly. Inside Johnson's office,
an old gentleman in overalls and a plaid wool jacket looked
up from behind the counter. I gave him a business card and
explained my reason for being there.

He motioned for me to follow him. "Just out back"

I shook my head when I spotted the pickup. Typical
Justin. Don't blow money. The truck was a brown 1990 Ford
F-150 going on twenty years old. The impact had crumpled
the front right fender, but that was all.

The old man running the place squirted a stream of tobacco juice onto the ground. "Truck's tore up pretty bad.
Looks like a lot of front-end work"

I knew better, but I didn't respond as I went around to the driver's door and peered inside. I opened the door and wrinkled my nose at the stench of gasoline, wondering how the
sheriff could have smelled the bourbon. "Yeah," I replied,
noting blood on the seat and on the bottom of the steering
wheel. On the floorboard on the passenger's side was an almost empty bottle of bourbon, Jim Beam Black label.

With a hint of suspicion in his voice, he asked, "What
are you looking for?"

"Just looking," I replied indifferently. "The family wanted
me to take a look at it. Make some kind of arrangements"

"They going to be the ones paying storage on it?"

I looked at him through the windshield. Out of a perverted
curiosity, I asked, "How much is the storage?" I opened the
glove compartment. Like Newt had said, it was empty.

"Fifty a day."

Fifty a day! Highway robbery, but it was practiced by
every salvage yard in the country. Tow a vehicle, charge outrageous storage, then, when the sum exceeded the value of
the vehicle, file a mechanic's lien, and you had yourself a
damaged vehicle from which you could sell the parts.

I nodded. "Sounds fair. I'll have to talk to the family, but
what about if they just signed the truck title over to you?"
I stepped back and closed the door. "The parts off an old
truck like this might be demand around here, huh?"

A frown furrowed his brow, but I knew he was just
stalling. With a shrug, I continued. "Otherwise, I can't guarantee what they'll do. They sure won't haul it back to Austin
in the shape it's in, and you'd have to go to the time and expense of placing a lien on it. This way, there's no hassle for
either party."

With feigned reluctance, he grunted. "Reckon that's as
fair as a body could want"

Jack scooted around in the seat to face me when I
climbed back in. "Any luck?"

"Yeah. As much as could be expected"

"Now what?"

"Now," I replied, heading back to Elysian Hills, "we'll
pack Justin's belongings"

For the next few minutes, we drove in silence. Jack sucking on his Budweiser, and me reliving the last conversation
I had had with Justin. I remembered how excited he was
with his discoveries, discoveries just about everyone else
claimed never existed.

What had Justin discovered? And were the items in his
shack? Were they the reason for his death? Or was it really
just an accident?

It was almost noon by the time we reached Elysian Hills. I
started to pull in at Hooker's for lunch but on impulse headed
on down the road to the other convenience store, Fuqua's.

Sam Fuqua was a short, swarthy man with a perennial
grin on his face. His black hair was combed back, and his
thin mustache was neatly trimmed.

Sam grinned. "Hey, I remember you" His grin faded.
"You're the one who took Justin back to his family" He
shook his head. "Me, I wish you had not took the boy back.
He was a good boy. Now-" He shrugged. "I miss him"

"I know" I introduced Jack to the slight man and glanced
around the store, which appeared to contain just a little bit of everything. Unlike Hooker's, there was no restaurant. "Got
any sandwiches? My friend and me are getting hungry"

He pointed to the cooler. "Over there. Microwave next
to it"

Jack nuked two barbeques while I opened a ham and
cheese on wheat and popped a can of Diet Coke.

Sam indicated the worn chairs surrounding the space
heater. He grunted. "Sit. Take a load off" I sat. He poured
some coffee and came to join me. Jack waited at the microwave for his sandwiches. Sam frowned. "Terrible thing, the
wreck. Justin was a good man" He paused, and his grin
grew wider. "Some think he was kind of touched"

"You mean the UFO stuff?"

The slight man grew serious. "Me, I don't know nothing
for sure. My grandparents, they come to America in 1903.
We been here since. I'm just a dumb country hick, but some
of the things Justin told me about .. " He paused and raised
his eyebrows. "I don't know if they be true or not. I'm not a
smart man, but some of the stories he mentioned, they be
too crazy not to maybe have a little truth in them"

I was so engrossed in his remarks that I forgot all about
my ham and cheese. "Such as?"

Sam glanced around the store, then smoothed his thin
mustache with a thumb and forefinger. "Justin, he show me
a piece of metal" He shook his head. "He said he found it,
but I think he was making a joke on me. I don't know how,
but what he had, I never seen nothing like it before. I figure
he got it from some joke shop when he was gone down to
Austin"

ack waddled up and plopped down in one of the worn
chairs. He was too busy chowing down his two barbeques,
bag of chips, and Dr. Pepper to pay attention to us.

I remembered the skin of the aircraft of which Justin had
spoken. I leaned forward. "Was it a piece of metal that unfolded itself?"

Sam's eyes twinkled. "That's it. You see it too, huh? I
figure he must be joking. But when I look at the metal, I
can't see how it does that. I tell Justin it is some new invention that the Army made, but he just laughed and shook
his head. He tell me that soon I would see what he meant.
That the Army didn't have nothing to do with it"

At that moment, the door opened, and a blast of cold
air swept in. Two weathered cowmen wrapped in wool
mackinaws, their western hats tugged down over their ears,
stomped in, slapping their hands vigorously on the arms of
their heavy coats. "Whew! Hey, Sam, it's getting colder out there," one shouted as the other indicated the cigarettes behind the register.

While Sam Fuqua tended his customers, I stared hypnotically into the tiny blue flames of the space heater. Soberly,
I realized the only explanation for what Sam had seen was
the skin of the spacecraft.

Without warning, the enormity of the incident, the worldwide ramifications of the phenomenon, the absolute proof
of all we believed impossible, if it were true, stunned me.

I was still staring at the fire when Sam returned. He pulled
his chair closer to the fire. Outside, the wind howled around
the corners of the building and under the eaves. I shivered.

He wagged a short finger at me. "I tell you what. You go
see Marvin Lewis. He knows all about what goes on around
here." He nodded emphatically. "Some laugh at him, but
that one, he don't care. He say what he think."

I thanked him. "That's where we were headed next."

Jack frowned at me after we climbed into the pickup and
I turned the heater to full blast. "What was that all about,
Tony? Sounds mysterious."

With a chuckle, I replied. "How about it, Jack? You believe
there are people on other planets?"

His brow knit. He snorted and shook his head. "You
mean the little green man with the big head business? Hey,
no way."

I laughed. From what I had heard, except for the color,
that was the exact description of the pilot from the alleged
spaceship. "I don't either, but Justin Chester did, and I have
the strangest feeling that somehow, that spaceship business
seems to be mixed up in his death"

He snorted. "Space aliens! Those are just stories made up
by wackos who are always seeing flying saucers and such
garbage" He tapped a finger against his chest. "No such
thing, and you can take that straight from Mr. Cynic here"

I chuckled. "Mr. Cynic, huh?"

"You bet. Mr. Cynic when it comes to that alien junk."

During the short drive to Marvin Lewis' place behind
the UFO museum, I couldn't help puzzling over Justin's
facial injuries being as slight as they were. I'm not real
swift, but logic suggested that I might be right about Justin's
being dead for several hours before he went into the creek.
If he'd been alive, his forehead would have slammed into
the steering wheel, and there would have been copious
bleeding.

The slight bruise Tricia mentioned had to be a result of
rigor's preventing the full impact. I grimaced, still puzzled.
The imprint, she said, was the size of a dime. What could he
have struck to cause such an impression?

Regardless, I couldn't see any way he could have slammed
the back of his head against the wheel. I glanced at Jack.
He'd been with me on a few cases, and sometimes when I
bounced theories off him, he actually provided some helpful feedback. I cleared my throat. "Suppose you were driving along in your Cadillac, just a lap belt. You run into a
wall. What part of you hits the steering wheel?"

He grunted and patted his protruding belly. "What do
you think? My stomach"

"Besides that," I replied, grinning.

He arched an eyebrow. "My face, naturally"

"What about the back of your head?"

He snorted and twisted left and right in his seat belt.
"Ain't no way"