Shoofly Pie & Chop Shop (34 page)

“I’m afraid so,” Nick said, “unless you leave.”

“You are way out of line,” the sheriff said. “Mr. Wilkins is the official coroner of Holcum County. Now step aside and let the man do his work.”

Nick stood up and dusted himself off. “Before you proceed with your evaluation of the crime scene, may I make a couple of observations? I think you may find them helpful.”

The sheriff nodded doubtfully, while Mr. Wilkins folded his arms and said nothing.

“This is Teddy’s laboratory log,” he said, handing the brown journal to the sheriff. “His last entry was made at 11:56 last night, placing the time of death sometime in the last eleven hours. You’ll notice there is some lividity, which takes about three hours to begin, narrowing the window somewhat more.”

He knelt down and pointed carefully to the entry wound at the back of Teddy’s skull. “Probably not a suicide,” he said in the general direction of Mr. Wilkins. “The entry wound is star shaped, indicating a contact wound. That means the gun was in contact with Teddy’s head when it fired. The gases escaping from the barrel ripped the skin open in a star-shaped pattern. Someone stepped up behind Teddy and fired execution-style. That indicates to me that someone was waiting for Teddy.”

Kathryn interrupted. “But how could anyone have gotten that close without Teddy seeing?”

Nick stepped to the wall switch and flipped it on. Nothing happened. He stepped around Teddy’s body to the single light fixture that hung in the center of the ceiling. The white glass bowl had been removed and one bare bulb stood out like a pearl thumb. He picked up a dishtowel and covered his hand, then reached up and gave the bulb a quarter-turn to the right. The brightness of the light caused all of them to wince and turn away.

“That’s how,” Nick replied. “It looks to me like someone made sure the room was dark and then stepped out behind Teddy when he first entered the trailer.” He pointed to the two crumpled grocery sacks. “He never even made it to the counter.”

“I don’t buy it.” The sheriff shook his head. “The way I see it, your friend just picked the wrong place to live. This is the cheapest part of town all right—it’s also the worst part of town. We get a lot of lowlifes passing through this way looking for a quick buck. Did your friend own a TV? A VCR?”

“No,” Nick said, “but he did own an exceptional sound system.”

“Where?”

In the corner of the room a small particle-board cabinet lay overturned, and a bare extension cord snaked across the floor.

“Looks like a drug-related murder to me,” the sheriff continued. “Some pothead breaks in and grabs the first big-ticket item he can find—but before he can run, your friend comes to the door. The killer backs into the corner and waits for him to step inside. Your friend goes to set his bags down before he hits the lights—the killer steps in behind him, and …” He formed a gun with his right hand and made a recoiling motion. “If your friend had gone for the lights first, he’d still be dead. He just would have got it from the front—like old Mrs. Gallagher did.”

Kathryn spun around. “Mrs. Gallagher? What happened to Mrs. Gallagher?”

“Like I said, it was a busy morning.” He looked at Nick. “Mrs. Gallagher lived just a quarter-mile from here, on the other side of that windbreak. Lived in a trailer just about like this one. Last night somebody walked in and put a bullet through her head too—the front of her head—and then walked off with the TV and VCR. Her boy stopped by to look in on her. Found her early this morning.”

No one said anything for a few moments. They had all known Mrs. Gallagher for years—for decades. She was a kind and gentle woman who had outlived her beloved husband by thirty years and quietly and patiently awaited their reunion in the seclusion of her little trailer.

“Was there any sign of forced entry?” Nick asked.

The sheriff looked around at the flimsy trailer. “In these things?
There is no forced entry—just entry. Anybody can walk in who wants to.”

“Or who is asked to,” Nick said. “What about the light bulb? How do you explain that?”

“I can explain that”—the sheriff looked at him—“but I don’t think you want to hear it.”

“Try me.”

“Okay. I think you did it.”

Nick slowly smiled.

“You know,” the sheriff said, nodding to the floor, “your boy here called me last night.”

The smile disappeared from Nick’s face. “What time was that?”

“About midnight. He was all excited, said he had some big news for you—but he couldn’t find you. You two left a hotel number for him, but apparently you never showed up. Find better accommodations?”

Kathryn flushed. “We were at the Mologne House at Walter Reed, not that it’s any of your business. It was a last-minute change of—”

“Did you go over to the lab?” Nick broke in.

“At midnight? I got better things to do. I told your boy to let it wait till morning. I told him the two of you would be back then, if you hadn’t run off together.”

“Shut up, Peter.”

The sheriff turned to Kathryn. “If your friend here had a little more company last night, he might still be alive. Ever think of that?”

Kathryn glared at him hard. “I don’t deserve that.”

“I’ve tried to humor you as long as I can, Kath, but it’s time to wise up. Have the two of you come up with any answers yet—any real answers? ’Cause if you have, I haven’t seen ’em. I think what you’ve got here is one desperate Bug Man. He’s on your payroll; he knows he’s got to produce something, so he leads you around on a wild goose chase. Says you need to do research, collect evidence, conduct interviews—but where are the answers, Kath? Now he loses his friend—and he still doesn’t have any answers—so he makes his friend’s murder part of the story, part of the conspiracy.
Only he needs things to look a little more sinister, so he unscrews the light bulb. Now he’s got an execution, not just some senseless killing.”

“I don’t believe it,” Kathryn said. “I don’t believe Nick would do that.”

“Really?” the sheriff looked at her. “Did the two of you arrive together or did the doc get here before you did?”

He turned back to Nick now. “That’s how I explain the light bulb. Now here’s a question for you: If your friend was executed, if someone purposely waited here for him, then how do you explain Mrs. Gallagher? How does she fit into all this?”

Nick said nothing. There was an explanation for Mrs. Gallagher’s death—a simple and obvious explanation—but it was so monstrous that it would have sounded absurd. There were only two possible explanations for Mrs. Gallagher’s death: Either it was nothing more than a random and unrelated act of violence, or the sheriff had committed a double murder last night. He had chosen a second victim, an innocent old woman, for no more reason than to draw attention away from Teddy’s death. It was possible—but Nick knew he could never give voice to such a possibility. Even to him it sounded almost unthinkable …

Almost.

Nick slowly turned to Kathryn again, studying her anew as though he had never looked at her before. Here was a woman who had led one man to the altar, another to depression, and a third to pathological devotion—and possibly murder. One loved her, one lost his mind over her, and one killed for her. What was the power this woman possessed? Nick suddenly felt like Odysseus, longing to understand the seduction of the Sirens’ song, begging his shipmates to unlash him from the mast. He looked again at the graceful curves of her hips and thighs, the thick mane of fiery auburn hair, the glistening emerald eyes—but there was something different about her eyes now, something he had never seen before. For the first time there was a strange darkness—it was a look of confusion or hesitation or uncertainty. Then her eyes met his, and he knew in an instant what it was.

It was doubt.

“I should go,” Nick said quietly, “and leave you two
professionals to your work.” He stepped to the door and pushed it open, passing Kathryn without a word.

“Don’t go far, Doc,” the sheriff called after him. “I’ll need to ask you a few questions about all this.”

Well done, thought Nick as he slid into his car and started the engine. You not only got away with murder, you managed to shift the suspicion to me. Not even Mrs. Guilford knows who to trust now.

Well done, Sheriff. Well done indeed.

The memorial service of James and Amy McAllister was held on an unusually pleasant June morning. An unexpected cold front had driven out the two-headed monster of Carolina summer—the oppressive heat and the clinging humidity—and had left in its place a flawless spring day.

Kathryn felt cheated. She didn’t expect everything to stop for Jimmy and Amy, but it would have been nice if the world had at least tipped its hat in the form of a drizzling rain, or perhaps a dramatic haze over the cemetery grounds. Instead, the skies were a crystalline azure blue.

The change of climate was not overlooked by the people at Mount Zion A. M. E. Church, who all seemed a bit more cordial and cheerful than usual—and in Kathryn’s view, a good deal less mournful than the occasion required.

Long folding tables hauled from the church fellowship hall were now draped in white and lined up in long fluttering rows. People stood for the most part, while the older folks sat on folding garden chairs and picked halfheartedly at sagging paper plates. The adults mingled in small groups and did their best to shush the
smaller children, who found it impossible to contain themselves on such a day.

Kathryn worked her way through the considerable crowd, patting a shoulder here and accepting a heartfelt condolence there. Conversations seemed to center on the spectacular nature of Amy’s demise or the dark curse that hung like a shroud over the McAllister family. And did you hear about old Mrs. Gallagher? Shot through the head just two nights ago—and in her own trailer!

Not a single soul mentioned the death of Dr. Eustatius Tedesco.

Kathryn looked up to see Nick slowly approaching from across the yard, dressed exactly as he was the last time she saw him at Teddy’s trailer the day before. She hurried to meet him halfway. He seemed stooped and disheveled and profoundly tired, but there was still an unquestionable alertness in his eyes.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she said.

“Why not?”

“I know you’re not big on funerals. A body ceases to function, it decomposes—what’s the point, right?”

Nick smiled faintly. “A wise man once told me: Sometimes, you have to believe.”

“I wish all this was for Teddy. I wish there was something—”

“He’s on his way back to Lancaster County,” Nick said quietly. “Back to family. Ever been there? It’s beautiful country.”

Kathryn reached up to straighten his collar. “When was the last time you slept?”

“My species doesn’t require much sleep,” he said. As he spoke his eyes searched across the sea of heads until he located one familiar face.

“Come on,” he said to Kathryn, “I feel like mingling.”

The sheriff and deputy stood together near the center of the throng. As they approached, Kathryn flashed Peter a lukewarm smile; the two men exchanged no greeting of any kind. Kathryn reached up and hugged Beanie, then brushed back his wild brown hair and straightened his tie. He hardly seemed to notice; his eyes were fixed longingly on a half-dozen children playing at a picnic table thirty yards away.

Kathryn looked at Peter. He nodded his reluctant approval, and Beanie frolicked off to join his waiting friends.

“I was wondering,” Nick spoke up, “now that the investigation is over, would you mind if I asked you a couple of questions? Just out of curiosity.”

The sheriff glanced at Kathryn. “Why not?” he said pleasantly. “Fire away.”

Nick rubbed hard at his chin. “What was Jim McAllister’s problem anyway?”

“What problem is that?”

“You know—in the Gulf. Everybody says he had some kind of problem—it seemed to bug him constantly. He never got over it—thought it was worse than anything that happened to him in the war. Imagine that—worse than the war! What was the problem anyway?”

The sheriff folded his arms and looked at the ground. “The 82d was based at a place called Ab Qaiq,” he said. “Andy and Jim were in the 4-325, assigned to Camp Gold. It was a temporary deployment, a tent city. Everybody got packages from home, and we used to stash the good stuff under our cots—and we’d raid each other’s stuff from time to time. One day Andy was digging through Jim’s stuff, and he found a little container of white powder. Got it?”

Nick squinted hard. “I ran across an old friend of Jim’s up in Washington. He seemed to think Jim’s big problem was with some guy.”

“Jim was afraid Andy was going to turn him in.”

Kathryn broke in. “Andy would never have turned Jimmy in!”

“Of course not,” the sheriff grumbled. “But Jim was afraid he might. That stuff can make you a little paranoid, you know.”

“You know what they say about paranoia,” Nick said. “Just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean someone’s not out to get you.”

The sheriff rolled his eyes.

“How do you know all this?” Nick asked. “Did Jim tell you?”

“I never saw Jim in the Gulf. We were assigned to separate units, remember? Andy came to see me a few days before the ground war began. He wanted me to know.”