It was almost three when he started down the dirt road that sloped across the meadow to his log house. He and his wife, Ginger, had built the house themselves with logs from trees they had cut off their own land. The land had been a gift from a corrupt and violent old man, but enough about his father. Tully still appreciated his generosity. Building the house with Ginger had been the best time of his life. Ginger hadn’t remembered it that way, but women tended to be so prissy when it came to wrestling logs.
Halfway across the meadow he braked to a stop and peered at the house. The living-room light was on. It hadn’t been on when he left that morning. At least he couldn’t believe he had left the light on. He turned off the Explorer’s headlights, coasted down to the front of the house, and stopped. He unsnapped the retaining strap that held his Colt Commander in his shoulder holster and pulled the gun out. He opened the car door, got out, and pressed the door shut. Walking on the tips of his boots across the porch, he ever so carefully turned the knob on the front door with his left hand, the Colt Commander pointing straight up in his right, his finger on the trigger. He stepped in.
Daisy was asleep on the couch, a blanket spread over her. His watchdog, Clarence, was asleep on a pillow next to her, his head resting on her hip.
Tully tiptoed over to his bedroom, undressed, put on sweat shirt and sweat pants, and went to bed. He wasn’t worried about burglars breaking in. His former watchdog was back. He had no idea how or why Clarence had suddenly returned. He had given him to a friend months ago. Well, not exactly a friend, but a person willing to accept Clarence. He guessed that anybody willing to accept Clarence had to be regarded as a friend. And now the miserable little beast was back.
Tully awoke to the racket of a large spoon beating on a metal pan.
“It’s almost seven o’clock!” Daisy yelled. “Time a hard-working sheriff should be out of bed!”
Tully groaned, got up, and wandered out to the kitchen in his mismatched sweatshirt and sweatpants. Breakfast was on the table. Huckleberry pancakes and sausage links! He supposed Daisy wasn’t a totally evil person. He pulled out a chair and sat down.
She laughed. “You look like something Clarence dragged in.”
“If you’re referring to my watchdog, Daisy, that’s pretty bad. What’s Clarence doing back? I thought I was rid of him for good. For that matter, what brings you out here?”
“What do you suppose, Bo? I was lonely and needed some company. All I found was Clarence sitting in a car with a dreadful old man.”
Tully frowned and shook his head. “Batim Scragg! Daisy, he is so much worse than a dreadful old man. He is possibly the deadliest human being on the planet, if I exclude my father. Did Batim say why he was returning Clarence? I liked to think of them as two peas in a pod.”
“He said Clarence kept chomping his chickens.”
Clarence had climbed up on a chair at the end of the table and was staring at Tully, a questioning look in his eyes.
Tully stared back at him. “Oh, it’s all right, Clarence. You can stay. But Daisy owes me big time.”
Clarence’s tail began to wag.
Daisy said, “I should think huckleberry pancakes would make us even for my rescuing your cute little dog.”
“Not by a long shot, sweetheart. A down payment does occur to me, however.”
Tully and Daisy’s affair had ended months earlier, but neither of them had quite gotten over it. He got up, walked over, and gave her a quick smooch. “That’s for the huckleberry pancakes. By the way, where did you find the huckleberries?”
“Your stash in the cellar. I used the ones from the freezer, but I noticed you canned some too. You’re quite the handy guy, you know that, Bo? You’d make somebody a good wife.”
“Thanks. I’ll have to think about that. Actually, it was Rose who canned the huckleberries.”
“Old as you are, you still have your momma looking after you.”
“Yeah, and for a nosy old broad she does pretty well by me in the way of food.”
Tully sat back down and sampled a pancake. “Hey, not bad, Daisy. You’d make somebody a pretty good wife yourself.”
Daisy laughed. “Yeah, right! You had your chance, Bo, and you blew it.”
“I thought you were the one who blew it?”
“No, it was you.”
“Well, in that case, I’m sorry. By the way, I do have some gossip, if you’re interested.”
“I’m alway interested in gossip, Bo! Wait till I get a refill.”
She grabbed the coffee pot off the stove and refilled both their cups. She replaced the coffee pot on the stove, sat back down at the table and folded her hands. “Now tell me! I love gossip.”
Tully told her about seeing Grid’s car parked in the widow Danielle Stone’s garage.
Daisy responded, appropriately, with a gasped expletive.
Tully said, “Yeah, my word exactly. This adds a whole new dimension to the bank robbery and murder. I wouldn’t be surprised if Grid ended up with both the widow and the loot from the bank.”
“It’s pretty cold blooded, Bo. You think Gridley Shanks is that cold blooded?”
“I think Grid can be any way he wants to be. The nasty part of this, he has a beautiful wife, absolutely gorgeous, and two young kids that live with a former wife and her husband. The shooting took place on a piece of land he owns. So he knows the terrain out there. He has two so-called hunters on his property who can’t tell a herd of deer from a herd of elk. How they figure in, I don’t know. I thought I heard an ATV take off on the other side of the ridge after the shooting. I saw a four-wheel-drive ATV at Grid’s place. Suppose he has an affair going with Danielle Stone, Vergil’s wife. He not only masterminds a robbery and somehow ends up back at her house with the loot, he does away with his competition for Danielle, her desperate husband. How does that sound?”
Daisy shook her head. “Pretty gruesome. You think this Grid is some kind of homicidal maniac?”
“I have to admit he doesn’t seem like one. Maybe the secret to being a successful homicidal maniac is not to seem like one.”
Daisy laughed. “Well, yeah, you go around acting like a homicidal maniac you’re not going to last very long.”
“My point exactly,” Tully said.
“Maybe he’s one of those weirdos who love to play dice with the devil. It gives him a rush and makes him feel smarter than everybody else.”
Tully finished a huckleberry pancake and forked another onto his plate. “Good point. Maybe he figures I’ll take his accomplices down, and he’ll have the loot all to himself. I’ll go check with the FBI guys and see if they’ve turned up anything.”
“Angie?”
“No way. Notice I said guys.”
He drove to the bank and parked at the edge of the shopping center’s lot. Angie was nowhere to be seen, but two other agents were talking to the bank manager outside the front door. The manager pointed to something out in the parking lot. Tully looked but saw only empty blacktop. Maybe that’s where the getaway car had been parked. The FBI could worry about the car and the robbery, he would worry about the man killed on the mountainside. Maybe Vergil was one of the robbers and maybe he wasn’t. Maybe the car in the ditch wasn’t the getaway car at all but only a car that looked like it. On the other hand, why was Vergil climbing the mountain if he wasn’t trying to get away from the getaway car? And if he was the robber, where was the loot? And why was he shot? No doubt to silence him about others involved in the heist. And to take his share of the loot. It all made his head spin.
He walked over to the bank. The manager, Phil Estes, introduced him to the two agents. They shook hands.
“So you’re the famous Sheriff Bo Tully of Blight County, Idaho,” the one named Mel Jaspers said. “I expected you to be at least nine feet tall.”
“Usually I am,” Tully said, “but I’ve been feeling a little short the past few days. You fellas got the bank robbery solved yet?”
Shaun Dugan, white-haired and obviously the older of the two agents, shook his head. “It appears the robbers had some inside information. They pulled the thing off with perfect timing.”
Tully tugged on the corner of his mustache and thought for a moment. Then he said, “The chap gunned down up on Chimney Mountain worked for the bank until a while back. He may be the one who helped with the timing. So far, though, we haven’t found a penny of the loot.”
“Good heavens!” the manager said. “You mean Vergil Stone! I can’t believe Vergil was involved, but it appears he was.”
Jaspers said, “There’s a lot of loot to find. Shaun and I could retire and live in luxury on a Caribbean island, if we’d had the good sense to think of it. Apparently, the robbers made off with a bundle, actually a large garbage bag over half full.”
The bank manager said, “Yeah, they made a big haul. It’ll take us several days to figure out exactly how much.”
Tully said, “Wow, if I’d known you had that much cash lying around, Phil . . .”
“Yeah, I know what you mean, Bo. We’ve never had a robbery before and didn’t think much about having one. The reason we had so much cash on hand, loggers like it for pay day. A week later the robbers would have got some, all right, but not the big haul they did.”
Jaspers said, “It’s pretty obvious they had inside information.”
“Yeah,” Tully said. “You need inside information for a haul like that. Makes a person think about taking up bank robbery as a sideline.”
“It’s a pretty crowded field right now,” Jaspers said. “With the economy down like it is, I doubt you’d find any openings, Bo.”
Tully shook his head. “Just my luck. Alway a day late and a dollar short.”
He told the agents he would see them later and then drove over to the courthouse and parked in the spot reserved for the sheriff. His three-thousand-dollar alligator-skin boots klocked nicely as he went up the stairs. A man who knows his boots notices such things. Boots were the only thing Tully splurged on. Anyone wearing boots that expensive instantly drew respect in Blight County. He had paid for them with money from the sale of one of his watercolors. That was the most he had ever been paid for one of his paintings and he knew, finally, that he could now make a living from his art, modest though it might be. The boots had earned him the respect of the county commissioners, even though they knew he hadn’t paid for them with graft. They may have been ignorant of the art world, but they understood graft. The holder of a public office never buys anything that showy and expensive with graft. It would set off alarms all over the place. Commissioners go around with holes in their jackets and the soles flopping on their old shoes. But as all the residents of Blight County knew most of their local politicians were corrupt. But they could be bought cheap. Even a poor person could own at least one. As long as the politicians kept themselves affordable, Blight citizens put up with them. The system worked, and nearly everybody was satisfied. It was the Blight way.
When he got to the briefing room, all the deputies were out on patrol. Only Daisy, Lurch, Herb, and Florence were there, Herb reading his newspaper as usual, Daisy on the phone.
“Why thank you, dear,” she said sweetly. “We always try to be of service in situations like this. You’re very welcome, dear.”
She hung up the phone and shouted at Tully. “You volunteered me to do what! Sit all night with the grieving widow of a man who has just been murdered! Are you out of your mind, Bo?” She had inserted a popular expletive randomly throughout the diatribe.
Tully shrugged and walked over to Lurch’s corner. “Find any info on Vergil Stone?”
“Yeah, but nothing you don’t already know.”
Tully went into his office. Daisy followed him in.
She pointed to his window. “I hope you like the view. One of the janitors about drove us crazy scraping the paint off. The screeching was awful. I still get shivers up my spine.”
“Your screeching probably got on his nerves, too.” Tully spun around in his chair and looked at the lake. For as much as the window paint had irritated him, he hadn’t even noticed it was gone. He swung back around and pointed to a chair. Daisy sat. “One of your jobs from now on, Daisy, will be to watch for any boat out on the lake with a man in it holding a rifle.”
“Sure, Bo, no problem. I was just hoping you would come up with an extra chore for me when I wasn’t sitting with the widows of murder victims.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “You have such a hard job. So maybe you can tell me the name of the weather girl at the TV station?”
“Don’t you ever watch the weather on TV, boss?”
“Once in a while, but the weather girl is so cute I don’t hear what she’s saying.”
“Her name is Wendy Crooks.”
“See if you can get her on the phone for me.”
Daisy frowned at him. “I can’t believe you want to talk to a weather girl!”
“I need her to help me solve a murder.”
Daisy laughed. “You really are desperate, Bo.” She went back to her desk and a few minutes later yelled at him. “Wendy on line one, boss!”
Tully picked up. “Wendy, I need you to help me solve a murder. Is there anyway you can check your Doppler thing and tell me the exact time we got a brief snow flurry out on Chimney Rock Mountain, say between six and ten Monday morning?”
“Yeah, we’ll still have it, Sheriff. I’ll see what I can find and get back to you. If we don’t have it here at the station, I’ll have it at home. I record all my weather casts so I can evaluate my performance later. I just get better and better, Sheriff.”
“That certainly has been my impression, Wendy.”
“Thanks, Sheriff. I’ll get back to you as soon as I find out. That’s Chimney Rock Mountain between six and ten a.m. Monday, right?”
“You got it, Wendy.” He hung up.
Lurch stuck his head in the door. “I got five sets of prints off that mess in the blue dishpan. One set is yours, one is Shank’s, and three others belong to guys who have all done time for robbery.”
“Great! I thought so!” He took out his pocket notebook and opened it to the pages the waiter had pressed his finger prints on. He handed the open notebook to the Unit. “You can eliminate this guy. He’s the waiter. The other two sets belong to two of our bank robbers, if my guess is correct.”
“Great, boss!”
“I’m pleased you appreciate my effort, Lurch. Anything going on here besides our murder and bank robbery?”
“Not much. Oh, one of the deputies arrested Petey again.”
“Petey! I can’t believe it! What this time?”
“Another chain saw.”
“A chain saw! Petey doesn’t even know how to run a chain saw! Why does he keep stealing them?”
Lurch shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess because they’re not nailed down. Maybe he figures he can sell it to someone. Luther Hawkins called up and said somebody stole a chain saw out of his garage. Petey lives a couple blocks away. The deputies picked up Hawkins, drove over to Petey’s house and found the chain saw on his back porch. So they hauled Petey to jail.”
Tully sighed. “I wish they would stop doing that. I’d better go down and talk to him. Petey’s probably starting to think of jail as his home away from home.”
Lulu, the jail matron, was sitting at her desk when Tully walked in.
“Come to see the vermin, Bo?”
“One in particular. Petey!”
“Oh, dear. When Petey’s out for more than a week, I start to worry about him.”
“Yeah, well, I worry about him, too, Lulu. Don’t they have special places for people like Petey?”
“Yeah, they do. They call it jail. If it’s not tied down, Petey takes it home with him. I guess this time he walked into a garage and made off with a chain saw. That’s getting pretty close to burglary, Bo. Old Judge Patterson might even send him away.”
“Patterson is senile enough, he might do just that!”
“Don’t knock old Patterson, Bo. He gives you just about anything you ask for.”
“Yes, he does, but I don’t want to risk sending Petey up before him again. Go bring the criminal out here, Lulu.”
“You going to resort to the Blight way again, Sheriff?”
“Afraid so. Destroy all the paperwork you have, and go up and make sure Daisy takes care of any in the office. I’ll have a word with the deputies and Luther Hawkins.”
Lulu shook her head. “Hawkins will be tough.”
“I’ll handle Hawkins.”
As Tully drove Petey back to his house, he warned the little man, “You steal one more thing, Petey, I’m not saving you. This is the last time.”
“But, Bo, it was only a chain saw. I couldn’t even get it started. Luther probably couldn’t start it either. You shouldn’t arrest a person for taking a piece of junk.”
“Petey, if the piece of junk is in a person’s garage, it’s his personal junk. You take it, you’re stealing. Given your record, you could go to jail for a long, long time. Maybe even to prison. For a stupid chain saw that doesn’t even run! One more time before Judge Patterson, and you could be on your way.”
“Luther Hawkins is gonna be pretty mad at you, Bo, for letting me go.”
“I’ll take care of Hawkins. You take care of Petey.”
“I still don’t think I should have been arrested.”
Tully rolled his eyes. “This is the last time I bail you out, Petey, and I mean it. I don’t care how many times I’ve done it before, this is the last!”
Tully drove up in front of Petey’s house, shoved the criminal out the door and watched the little man walk up the driveway muttering to himself.
Tully made a U-turn in the street and drove down to Luther Hawkins’s house. He parked, walked up, and beat on the door. Hawkins answered.
“Luther, I just let Petey out of jail, and I don’t want you raising a fuss about it.”
“Bo, this is the second time he’s stolen my chain saw!”
“I don’t care. The chain saw doesn’t run anyway.”
“I know. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t report it getting stolen.”
“Listen to me very carefully, Luther. You perhaps remember the shop-lifting charge I made go away.”
“But that was all a mistake! I completely forgot about that package of pork chops!”
“You had it stuck down the front of your pants, Luther. Nobody forgets what’s stuck down the front of his pants. Ed Riker is still mad at me for getting you off.”
“I appreciate it, Sheriff. I’d appreciate it a lot more if I’d got to keep the pork chops. My mouth still waters when I think about them.”
Tully sighed. He hadn’t felt like eating a pork chop since arresting Luther. “I’m sorry about your pork chops, and I’m sorry about the theft of your broken chain saw, and I’ve put them ahead of several other things like a murder and a bank robbery, but now I have to get back to solving those minor crimes.”
“Oh, all right, Bo. As a favor to you, I’ll forget Petey stole my chain saw.”
“Good. I appreciate it.”
Back at the courthouse, Tully went up to his office and flopped into his chair. Then he got up and walked to the door. “Hey, Lurch!” he yelled across the briefing room. “Come in here for a second.”
Lurch sauntered over and took a chair across the desk from Tully. “Yeah, boss?”
“You turn up anything of interest on our victim?
“Got the bullet analyzed. It’s a seven-millimeter, all right. If you find the rifle that fired it, we can get a match.”
“Seven millimeter. That’s an elk-hunting caliber. Could be a hunting accident.”
“Possible, but I don’t think so,” Lurch said. “I couldn’t find a shell casing, so the shooter must have picked it up. In a hunting situation, it seems likely he would have jettisoned the empty and jacked a fresh shell into the chamber. My guess is he worried about the empty. Maybe he’s done this sort of thing before.”
“Maybe he likes being tidy.”
“He also had a scope on the rifle.”
“How do you know that?”
“I measured the distance between the grove of trees and the body. A hundred and twenty yards. That would be a heck of a shot with open sights, nailing a guy precisely between the shoulder blades. The guy knew something about shooting. At least a scope would have let him see clearly that his target was a man. You don’t snap off a shot at something over a hundred yards. He would have had to rest the rifle on something, maybe a tree limb. I just don’t think you would risk an off-hand shot at that distance.”
“It wasn’t a tree limb he rested the rifle on, Lurch, it was his knees. He shot from a sitting position. Dave Perkins found two little scuff marks where the shooter dug in his heels. No criticism of your good work.”
“Dave Perkins? Dave is as good as it gets.”
“There’s one more thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Dave showed me an impression the shooter made with his rear end. I’d like you to make a cast of it.”
“A cast of a rear end! I’ve never made a cast of a rear-end. Supposing I do get a usable cast, whose rear end are we going to compare it to?”
“Maybe the shooter’s, if we ever find him.”
Lurch scratched his head and frowned. “Do you think rear ends are unique to each individual, Bo?”
“I don’t know. I’ve seen some unique ones, though.”
“Let’s leave Daisy’s out of this, Bo.” Lurch burst out laughing at his own joke. Tully joined in.
Daisy popped open the door. “What’s so funny? I know it has to be nasty.”
All Tully and Lurch could do was shake their heads. “Forget about that impression,” he told Lurch.
Daisy’s phone rang, and she went to get it. She picked up and said “Sheriff’s Department.” She listened and then said, “One moment please.” She covered the mouth piece and yelled. “Your weather girl on line one, boss!”
Tully walked back to his office, slid into his chair, and picked up. “Yes, Wendy.”
She said, “ I hope this will help you solve your murder, Sheriff.”
“I hope so too, Wendy. What did you find?”
“That dusting of snow on Chimney Rock Mountain was very brief. It started at 6:00 in the morning and ended at 6:30.”
“Super! Thanks, Wendy, you’ve been a big help. I’ll let you know how this turns out. Maybe I’ll take you to lunch as a token of my appreciation.”
“That would be wonderful, Sheriff!”
He thanked her again and hung up.
Daisy was standing in his doorway. “Lunch wouldn’t be your only token of appreciation.”
“This is serious, Daisy. It could unlock our whole mystery.”
Daisy walked back to her desk shaking her head.
He studied the time for the snow flurry. Very interesting. Here he had thought Beeker was the type who couldn’t tell a herd of deer from a herd of elk. To get a dusting of snow in their tracks, the deer would have had to go through between six and six-thirty, which means Beeker would have had to be on the mountain then. He had actually seen the herd of deer, which meant he had to be on the mountain nearly four hours before he claimed to be, over three hours before Tully and the deputies showed up on the scene. What would he have been doing there that early, except getting prepared for Vergil before anyone else showed up?
That afternoon Tully drove over to Judge Patterson’s house. Mrs. Patterson answered the door. “Why, Bo! How nice to see you! You need to drop by more often.”
“Why, thank you, Mildred.” He whispered to her. “Does the judge still drink single-malt?”
She whispered back. “Yes, but he’s awfully stingy with it. You’d think he paid for it himself.”
“One of the perks of being a judge, Mildred.”
“I suppose. There should be some perks.”
“Is himself available?”
“Yes, dear. Unfortunately. Otherwise you and I could have a little party, you know what I mean?” She winked at him.
“I do, indeed, Mildred. The thought of such a party keeps me awake nights.”
“Ha! You lie, Bo. But I like it. I’d better go get his holiness, before we get carried away. Grab a chair in the living room. He’s locked up in his study, supposedly going over some points of law.”
Tully doubted old Patterson had even stumbled over a point of law in thirty years.
The old man came harrumphing into the living room, closely pursued by his wife.
“So, Bo, you managed to track me down in my lair on one of my few days off.”
“Sorry about that, Judge. It’s just that criminal investigation waits for no man, and I’m not sure how much time I have to get to the bottom of this one. So I need a search warrant pronto.”
“Good heavens! You don’t expect me to have search warrant forms here at home, do you?”
“That’s my expectation. If you don’t have a real one, I figure you could phony up something that looks like one. I have to serve it today. So it would be nice if you put yesterday’s date on it.”
“Bo, the things you ask me to do for you, we could both be thrown in prison!”
“It’s the Blight way, Judge.”
“The Blight way! I get so sick and tired of that phrase. Well, it so happens I do have some searchwarrant blanks in my study. Give me the pertinent info you need on it.”
Tully thanked the judge and gave him the information.
“Gridley Shanks?” Patterson said. “That’s a new one on me. I thought all of our citizens had passed through our legal system by now.”
“Really, Judge, I’m surprised this Shanks fellow hasn’t come to your attention before.”
“He probably has. I vaguely remember the name. A name like that is hard to forget.”
Mildred said, “While you’re writing that up, Judge, Bo and I will have a drink!”
“Good idea, my dear. I think we have some rather decent bourbon left, enough for the three of us.”
“Actually, I think Bo might prefer some of the single-malt.”
“Oh, by all means. I’d forgotten all about the single-malt.”
Mildred winked at Bo. “I’ll be right back. You take anything with your scotch, Bo?”
“A glass would be perfect, Mildred.”
She returned shortly with a tray of drinks, all of them substantial.
Tully sipped his. Perfect. He thought it was too bad he hadn’t gone to law school and become a judge. At moments like this, that boring grind seemed almost worth it.
Mildred sat down on a couch, a coffee table between her and Tully. She sat very straight and proper and took tiny sips of her scotch. “I have to tell you, Bo, I was very upset when I heard you and Daisy had broken up.”
“Yeah,” Tully said. “I was pretty upset myself. Actually, I was kind of surprised so many people knew we had a thing going. We tried to keep it a secret. How did you hear about it?”
“Oh, I really shouldn’t say.”
“It was Rose, wasn’t it?”
“Your own mother! Good heavens, no!”
“Remember, Mildred, wives of judges are not allowed to lie.”
“I didn’t know that. You’re right, of course. Your mother let it slip one day while we were having lunch.”
He and Mildred had barely finished their scotch when Judge Patterson walked in. “I don’t know why I let you draw me into your various schemes, Bo, but here’s your doctored-up warrant for a seven-millimeter rifle from one Gridley Shanks.”
“Thanks, Judge. Just remember it’s all in the cause of proper law enforcement for the citizens of Blight County.”
“If you say so. I think it smacks an awful lot of the Blight way.”
“Well, that too. But I’m sure you’ll agree, Judge, that we have to fall back on what works, not stick to minor legalities.”
The next morning Tully drove over to the Shanks’. The red Cadillac was nowhere to be seen. He parked in front of the open-sided woodshed, again glancing at the four-wheel-drive all-terrain vehicle parked near the back. He knew it was four- wheel-drive because he himself had longed for that particular model. If Shanks had one, he thought the only decent thing was for the county to buy its sheriff one. He imagined a chase with him on one ATV and Grid on the another.
He knocked on the door. Sil answered. He was disappointed to see she was fully dressed.
“Why, Bo, what brings you out here?”
“Sorry to bother you, Sil, but I need to see Grid.”
“You may have to wait awhile. I haven’t seen him for a couple of days.”
“Do you have any idea where he might be?”
Sil laughed. “None at all, Sheriff. I learned long ago not to waste my time trying to keep track of Grid. He could be in Japan for all I know.”
Tully glanced at the rack of rifles and shotguns on the wall across from the bookshelves. There had to be twenty or more firearms there, ranging from blackpowder firearms to modern rifles to shotguns to handguns, all showing signs of serious use. He heard a car pull up outside.
Sil said, “You’re in luck, Sheriff. There’s Grid now.”
Tully wasn’t at all sure about the luck part.
Shanks came through the door. “Back already, Bo?”
“Yeah, Grid, but I’m afraid my visit doesn’t give me any great pleasure, though.” Tully handed him the warrant. He detected no sign of annoyance as the man read it. Shanks then walked across the room and with one powerful sweep of his arm sent all the rifles and shotguns clattering to the floor.
“I think there’s a seven-millimeter or two in there somewhere, Sheriff. Help yourself.”
Tully said, “I’m not impressed with grand gesture, Grid, but that’s as good a one as I ever seen.”
Grid’s eyes widened in surprise. Then he smiled. “Usually I get at least a shocked reaction with that one,” he said. “Anyway, you might find a seven-millimeter rifle in that mess.”
Tully studied the mess. “I suppose,” he said. “I’d much rather take a look at where you keep the good stuff.”
Tully glanced at Sil. She hadn’t reacted. She had seen it all before. He looked back at Shanks. The man showed no signs of rage, anger, or even annoyance. “So tell me, where do you keep the good ones, Grid?”
Shanks stared silently at him for a moment and then laughed. “In the bedroom. I do have a seven-millimeter in there. I suppose you want to take it.”
“Correct. Since there’s no point in owning two seven- millimeters, I assume you have only one in the bedroom. Nevertheless I should check for myself.”
Shanks showed Tully into the bedroom. As he expected, the double bed was neatly made and beautifully covered with a patchwork quilt. The room was in perfect order. Tully studied the rifles carefully. “Well, I’ll be darned. You have two seven- millimeter rifles in here, Grid. I’m afraid I’ll have to pencil in a two on the search warrant, if you don’t mind.”
Grid said, “You can do that?”
“Search warrants can change. Hey, what’s this? A forty- five automatic and a revolver.”
Grid frowned. “I suppose you’re going to pencil them in on your search warrant.”
“Naw, that wouldn’t be legal, Grid. I’ll have Judge Patterson add them to my list later.”
“Yeah, go ahead and take them. I haven’t killed more than half a dozen men with those pieces.”
Tully smiled. “I doubt that, Grid, but I will take them, with your permission. Just put your signature next to my note about taking your forty-five and the revolver, to show I had your permission.” Shanks shook his head as if in disbelief, but then signed his name.
“Now, if you don’t mind,” Tully said, “I’d like to have a little chat with you out in my car.” He put a handgun under each arm and carried the two rifles out to the Explorer. “Mind opening the hatch door, Grid?”
Shanks opened the door. Tully put the guns in the cargo area.
Shanks said, “You want me in the front seat or the back, Bo?”
“Front seat will be fine, at least for now. I want to run a theory by you.”
They got in the car. Tully started it and turned up the heater. He reminded Shanks about how he had given permission for two men to hunt his property, men he had just met. The flagging tape with Shanks’s partial print had been right where the getaway car was parked. One of the hunters had shown up there four hours before he claimed to be there. In other words, something very strange was going on with Gridley Shanks.
The suspect showed not the slightest reaction to Tully’s theory. “You done?” Shanks asked.
“That’s basically the picture, Grid. It’s why you keep showing up on my radar”
“No offense, Bo, but you and I are both the victims of converging incidentals.”
“Converging incidentals?”
“Yes. Let’s start with the flagging tape. I have no idea how only a partial fingerprint of mind ended up on the tape. Except for that, you would never have gotten me involved. Then there are the two so-called hunters, Dance and Beeker, which are the reason I put up the tape in the first place. I wasn’t aware Dance and Beeker didn’t know the slightest thing about hunting, only that they were looking for a place to hunt. I had just met them. They both talked elk like old pros. They knew the language and . . .”
Tully interrupted. “I suspected they knew nothing about hunting when Beeker seemed to mistake a herd of elk for a herd of deer. Turned out he did see a herd of deer, because the deer came through during the snow shower, which lasted between six and six-thirty. He didn’t see the herd of elk, because by the time they came through, he had stationed himself in the woods, waiting for Vergil to show up.”
“Could be,” Shanks said. “You think Beeker shot Vergil?”
“Yes, I do. One other thing, Grid, the other night I drove down the alley behind Danielle Stone’s house and saw the tail fins of a bright red Cadillac sticking out of her garage.”
A flash of anger crossed Grid’s face. He sat in silence for several seconds. “Okay, you got me there. I didn’t expect you to go snooping around in the middle of the night, so I didn’t tell you everything. I can explain it, but I don’t want Sil to know about this. Danielle is my daughter. Vergil was such a fool, I didn’t even like talking to him. I’d been giving Danielle money all along. As a matter of fact, I own their house and let them live there for free. I don’t know if Vergil knew about the money I gave Danielle, but that’s how they survived. I also paid for Danielle’s tuition at the community college, along with her books. Vergil was such a wimp! I couldn’t believe he had enough guts to get involved in a bank robbery. It was a step up for him. He worked for the bank a while back, but got laid off. Since then he worked a couple of nothing jobs. But when I heard Vergil had been killed, I couldn’t believe it. He wasn’t a bad guy, just a wimp.”
Tully said, “Suppose you had set up the robbery, Grid. How would you have done it?”
“Probably just the way it was done.”
“And how was that?”
“I’ve given some thought to it, from what I’ve read in the paper. First, I’d find a desperate loser like Vergil, one who knew the bank routine but was mad at the bank for laying him off. Then I’d talk him into robbing the bank, because he had worked there and knew the schedules and timing and everything. I never expected Vergil actually to get involved in a bank robbery. He would turn to jelly right in the middle of it, maybe even before. I’m sure he was used only to supply inside information. The other robbers would know he was a weak link. The cops would break him in seconds. The only safe thing to do was use him as a decoy and take him out after the robbery. Plus they could divide up his share of the loot.”
Tully tugged the droopy corner of his mustache. “So Vergil gives Beeker and Dance the inside information, and they use him as a decoy, the driver of the getaway car.” He sighed. “Only one guy robbed the bank. Which one do you think?”
“The little I know about them, I’d say Dance.”
“Where’s Beeker?”
“I don’t know. You seem to think he was on the mountain waiting to shoot Vergil. I’m guessing everything, Bo. I doubt Vergil would even have thought of running out on Beeker and Dance.”
Shanks thought for a moment. “Vergil probably was desperate enough to go along with the robbery, as long as he didn’t actually have to hold a gun on anybody. I don’t think they had to worry about him taking off. Someone like Vergil wouldn’t have the nerve to run out on guys like Dance and Beeker.”
“Now for the big question, Grid. Where’s the loot?”
Shanks shook his head. “I don’t have a clue. I can tell you this, if I was in on a bank robbery, I’d keep an eye on the loot no matter what. I wouldn’t let it out of my sight. You’re taking a big risk, robbing a bank. You have to be aware your associates are crooks, and that any one of them will take off with the whole caboodle if given half a chance.”
Tully said, “You think Vergil was the kind of person to take part in a robbery?”
Shanks thought a moment. “He was desperate. Desperate people do desperate things. But to tell you the truth, Bo, I can’t imagine Vergil holding a gun on anybody.”
Tully said, “So you think Vergil was just the driver.”
“Must have been.”
“So what happened to the guy that robbed the bank?” Tully asked. “Say Dance was the robber. What’s Beeker doing?”
Shanks thought for a moment. “Maybe it’s like you said. He’s the one who shot Vergil. Maybe that’s why he arrived at the mountain early enough to see the deer.”
Tully tapped his fingers up and down on the steering wheel. After a moment he said, “Or maybe there’s a fourth guy, in addition to Beeker, Dance, and Vergil. Maybe he’s the shooter.”
“A fourth guy? Could be. I’ve never seen anyone else with Beeker and Dance, though.”
Tully had. One Gridley Shanks. A person who owned an ATV, and who was also an excellent shot.
Shanks said, “I tell you, Bo, you got all these converging circumstances pointing at me, and that’s all they are, irrelevant lines of suspicion. You haven’t found a single fact tying me to the robbery or murder, and that’s because there isn’t any to find.”
Tully shook his head. “I’m sorry, Grid. You’re right, I don’t have a single fact tying you to the murder or robbery. And it would make me extremely unhappy if I did. It’s just that every time I pick up a fact, it seems to point to you.”
“That’s all right, Bo. I know you’re just doing your job. No hard feelings. But do me a favor. Don’t ever mention Danielle to Sil. If a wife finds out you’ve been even slightly involved with another woman, it kills something inside of her. The rest of her life she has this little dead spot in there, and the dead spot’s got your initials on it. Sil and I were young and just married when that stupid affair happened. I don’t have many secrets from Sil, but that’s one I’d like to keep.”
“Sil won’t find out about Danielle from me, Grid. I’ll have Lurch return the guns as soon as he’s checked them out.”