Chapter Forty-One

Raven found Ozy exactly where Willie Lee told her she would. He was beneath a long-abandoned bridge leading out of town. The place he called home was a blue tarp held up by sticks, and his kitchen a Weber grill pressed up against the bridge’s crumbling wing wall.

Raven could smell the sizzling meat as she got out of her car. Ozy looked up from the Weber and waved. He didn’t seem surprised at all to see her.

“Hi, Ozy,” Raven said, looking around. “This looks comfy.”

“It’s all right for me.” Pointing to the blue tarp behind him, he said, “This here is for when it ain’t raining. I use the truck when the water come down, especially like it’s been lately.”

Raven gave Ozy an appraising look. Of all the times she had seen him, she had never really talked to him. She had thought of him as just Speck’s shadow, someone who followed him around waiting for Speck to throw him treasure from the dead.

“You got something for me?” he said, a hopeful spark in his eyes.

Raven chuckled. “What do you do with all the stuff you collect anyway?”

He pointed toward the mouth of the bridge. “Back there,” he said. “Behind where I park my VW. I’m building me another junkyard. I could use some new stuff now that there ain’t no more Willie Lee. I heard that y’all took him to jail. You sure you ain’t got nothing for me?”

“Only a few questions, Ozy,” Raven said, holding out her empty hands.

“Is it about Willie Lee?” he asked.

“Somewhat,” Raven said, knowing that she would have to be careful.

She didn’t know how close Ozy and Speck were. Raven knew that Ozy came from a long line of junkmen. It started off as a legitimate business. His family owned the junkyard on the outskirts of town, but when Byrd’s Landing started growing his family’s property fell victim to eminent domain. They gave them fair market value for the property. It was just enough money for Ozy’s father to drink himself to death. After the father died, Ozy took the old VW, and as if he were acting on brainstem instinct, started collecting junk around town mostly by going door-to-door. She didn’t know how he ended up with Speck, but now Ozy no longer depended on the living for their cast-offs. He took from the dead. Not exactly legal, but for the most part no one challenged him or Speck.

“That man ain’t kilt nobody,” Ozy said.

“That’s not what the police think,” Raven said. “Looks like he was bragging about one kind of life, and living another.”

“Ah, he was just kind of sick in the head from cleaning up after dead folk,” Ozy said, pushing three hot links around on the grill. “His wife left him because he liked the stuff more than I did. Took the kids. He went a lil’ crazy after that. Lost both his first and second mind.” He paused for a second. “I think it was dealing with all them dead people’s leavings. Oh, he tried to be tough and all that, but it got to him. He kept wanting to find the secret. Started cutting things up to see how they go together. Went cuckoo bird.”

“He said you gave him a bolt gun for stunning animals?”

“That I did. From that lawyer’s office. Thought he could use it more than me with what he was doing.”

He stretched his neck to look beyond her shoulder where the Mustang was parked. “You sure you ain’t got nothing in your trunk you don’t want? Lots of people keep things in the trunk that they stop using. They forget about it. I can help take some of that stuff off your hands.”

“No, Ozy. I don’t have anything in my trunk.”

“Backseats?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“Well.” He watched her. “Since you helped me with the onions I guess it’s all right.”

“That’s what I’m here about.”

“You can’t have ’em back. They mine now.”

“I know that,” Raven said. “I don’t want them, but I wanted to ask you about something else I thought I saw that day you and Willie Lee were at the motel.”

“You mean that shotgun place?”

“Yeah, sure. The motel where the young woman killed herself with a shotgun. The day when I told you that you needed to clean the blood off those ceramic onions.”

“Come on over here.”

Raven came closer. She stood next to him while he attended to the hot links on the grill.

“Interest you in something to eat? Looks like you could use regeneration.”

“Sure. I feel like I haven’t eaten in days.”

He reached into a cooler and used a bottled water to wash his hands, and then sanitized them with Purell. They sat on the sidewalk eating the hot links and washing them down with bottles of cold water. Raven let the chilly night cool the bruises on her face, and the fresh air dislodge the images of Speck’s hoard in her head. Even though she knew there was work ahead, sitting and eating with Ozy was a welcome break.

“Lots of folks think I’m crazy.”

Raven barked a laugh. “Fill out a membership card and join the club,” she said, then asked, “Are you?”

“A little bit,” he said. “But not dangerous crazy. Not like those folk going around killing people. I’m just crazy because I got a dream.”

“Rebuilding your daddy’s junkyard?” Raven asked, wiping the grease from her mouth with her jacket sleeve.

“Sure do, and it’s a dream worth having. I can show those assholes who run us out something. We Andersons keep coming back. They ain’t gone keep us down for long.”

Raven almost said that they kept him down for the last two decades, but decided to keep her mouth shut.

“Ozy,” she said after a polite interval. “I’m looking for something.”

“What’s that? I ain’t ready to sell anything yet.”

“I just want to see it for now.”

“Yeah?”

“The other day at the shotgun place, I could have sworn that I saw a bear’s paw in the back of your truck.”

“An ole black bear paw with its claws out?”

Raven nodded, and showed him a photo from her Android of the bear mount from True’s office. “This. I think I saw a piece of this.”

She was losing him. He scooted away from her with suspicion in his bright blue eyes.

“I don’t want it,” she said quickly. “Not now anyway. And if I did, I’ll pay you for it.”

“No pay,” he said. “Trade me for it.”

“Okay, I’ll trade something for it.”

“Something in your trunk?”

She let that go.

“I just need to know, did Willie Lee give that to you?”

“Why would Willie Lee give it to me?”

“Well, you follow…I mean he’s the one you work with the most, right?”

“I do. But he ain’t the one who give it to me.”

“Where did you get it?”

He sat for a moment looking down at his hands. He took a deep breath, and sighed. “Well, you gone have to arrest me if I tell you.”

“Why would I arrest you?”

“Because I took it, that’s all. It was in the garbage, sticking up, I swear. But I still took it without asking. Knew it wasn’t right when I did it.”

“Whose garbage was it in?” Raven asked him.

He thought for a while. Raven could see him searching his memory.

Then he said, “Sometimes I do work in those fancy houses on Lakeshore. They have me clean up and cart away junk. I got this at one of those houses. A fancy white house.”

“Do you know whose house it was?”

“Not directly. I was tootling my van up and down the roads over there and knocking on doors, and I knocked on hers. Didn’t really keep track of where I was.”

“Hers?”

“That’s right. White house. She said she had some old stuff in the backyard I might like, so I went round back. I didn’t see anything, excepting for the bear paw sticking up out of the garbage, so I just took it.” He stopped. “I thought if I asked her for it she’d realize that it was worth something and say no.”

“Ozy,” Raven prompted. “Who was it?”

“Don’t know her name, but I stopped by there on Friday past to tell her that I was sorry about taking the bear paw, and asked her if she wanted it back. She pretended like she didn’t know what I was talking about, but I knew she did because she went all white. So, I figured that she wasn’t supposed to throw it away. I was trying to apologize and said I’d go get it right that minute and she could have it back but she kept saying, no, it was fine. And then I heard snickering and Clyde was there all dirty, so I told her that I’d help them in the garden to make up for what I done but she sent me away.”

“Wait,” Raven said. “Are you telling me you saw Clyde Friday evening?”

“Sure did. He and another boy was helping the woman who had the bear paw in the garbage.”

“Do you know Clyde was killed, and another boy is missing?” Raven said. “Did you tell the police?”

“Well, now I’m right sorry about Clyde. I don’t know nothing about another boy missing. I don’t have no TV and the radio in the VW’s busted. The only reason I know y’all took Willie Lee to jail is because them other boys what work for him told me.”

“Willie Lee didn’t tell you about Clyde?” Raven asked.

“Willie Lee and me don’t talk unless it’s about stuff we find.”

“What about the people who work with Willie Lee? They didn’t tell you Clyde was murdered?”

“Why would they tell me? They don’t like me or Clyde no how. They think Clyde’s taking jobs away, and that I’m touched in the head. But they did tell me that they done arrested Willie Lee for killing all them boys.”

“You sure it was Clyde you saw. Clyde Darling?” Raven asked.

“He was there. But I tell you, nobody should’ve thrown that bear paw in the garbage. It looked all beat to hell, but somebody could fix that up.”

“And you don’t know her name? Could you describe her?”

“I don’t take no names, and don’t study no faces that don’t mean nothing to me. I just pay attention to the junk.”

“Can you take me back there? Tonight?”

“I can’t, they’ll take me to jail for stealing the bear paw. And that crazy lady may go and say I tried to do something to her. I don’t remember no how. We’d have to go up and down all those side streets until we hit on the one, and I don’t pay a lot of attention, so we might even miss it.”

“This is important,” Raven said.

“I’m afraid, Miss Raven, you’d be wasting a lot of time because I don’t know where it’s at. Besides, you know what else is important?”

She took a deep, defeated breath. “No. What, Ozy?”

“Me breathing fresh air. Now kindly say thank you for the dinner and leave me be.”

Raven looked at him for a moment. He had removed his cowboy hat before he sat down to eat. His peanut head was shaved so haphazardly that only a fuzz of uneven gray remained. His bright eyes, as alert as a bird’s, appeared to be the only thing left alive in a face that had become a nest of wrinkles.

“I don’t believe you,” she said.

“Believe what?”

“That you forgot where you got the bear’s paw.”

He stood up when she did, wiping his greasy hands on his denim shorts.

“So, is this where you do your cop thing and make me? You gone knock me around some? I told you that you’d be wasting your time.”

Raven smiled. “I’m not going to make you. But I’ll trade you for your time. You can have anything in my trunk, anything I left on my backseats if you take a ride on over to Lakeshore with me.”

“You just said you didn’t have anything,” he said.

“I know what I said. But how do you know I was telling the truth?”

“How do I know you telling the truth now?”

“Suit yourself.”

She thanked him for the food, and turned to go. She hadn’t taken two steps before he was running to catch up. After he got into the passenger’s seat and clicked the seatbelt across his thin body, he craned his neck so he could look into the backseat to see what kind of a deal he made.

* * *

They drove for hours, until the evening darkness flowed through the streets of Byrd’s Landing along with them. They drove up and down Lakeshore, along the side streets feeding into it, and several times through the adjoining neighborhoods, when Ozy, in a sudden flash of inspiration, exclaimed that maybe it wasn’t Lakeshore where he found the bear paw after all. At one point she thought he was playing with her, but when she saw him with an index finger pressed to his chin, his face set in concentration, she backed away from that thought. It looked like he was really trying.

As they parked in front of Edmée’s house for a second time, Raven asked him again, “Are you sure this isn’t the place?”

He studied the late vegetable garden flanking the wide lawn, the stark, looming whiteness of the house.

“I would’ve remembered those vegetables, those beets and things.” He stopped and turned to her. “Who puts greens in they front yard? I’m old and don’t pay too much attention sometimes, but I hope I would have remembered that.”

“But the house is white,” Raven said. “Like you said.”

“Lots of white houses around here,” he said, his bottom lip poked out. “I’m getting pretty tired driving up and down these streets.”

Raven sighed and started to open the car door. He grabbed her arm. “What you doing?”

“Maybe if we walk up to the front door it’ll jog your memory.”

“It won’t.”

“Well, maybe if you saw the woman again? The backyard?”

“The house dark. Ain’t nobody home,” he said. “All I remember is the stuff I get. I don’t study in particular how no house looks.”

“Then how did you find it when you went back to apologize?”

“I was driving my truck. I remember better when I drive on my own.”

“Then let’s go back and get your truck. You drive.”

“It ain’t no use,” he said, close to tears. “I just don’t remember. I ain’t as crazy as Willie Lee, but I can only keep track of one thing at a time, and that’s the stuff for my junkyard. Now can you take me back so we can finish this trade?”

Raven let her forehead fall against the steering wheel. Ozy was right. Edmée’s house looked dark and empty. Even if she did have something to do with Clyde’s death, and Noe’s disappearance, she wouldn’t have used her house as the place for her crimes. Besides, the video evidence showed Noe being driven in a direction going out of Byrd’s Landing. She put the car in gear and drove back to the abandoned bridge.

When she opened her trunk, he clapped his hands like an excited child. She didn’t protest when he grabbed a jack, and her first-aid kit. From her backseat, he took a fleece car blanket and a six-pack of bottled water. As he happily walked away from her car with his arms full of his new treasures, Raven thought bitterly, You have a nice night, too, old man. I hope all that crap you collect doesn’t wear out before you do.