CHAPTER FOUR

Just inside the city limits of Sequoya I found myself behind Sheila’s little Datsun. Then, out of the blue, I got one of my bright ideas. I sometimes use ordinary citizens to get information of the sort that a lawman has trouble getting. I don’t see these folks as actual informants. Instead, I view them more as concerned members of the community who are willing to donate a little time and effort in the interests of law enforcement. I think of them as “helpers,” but Sheila, who has been conscripted into such service several times, refers to herself and her fellow victims as my “serfs.” I guess it depends on your perspective. But that afternoon it occurred to me that I needed her help as soon as I saw her car.

I blinked my lights several times and honked my horn, all to no avail. With no other options left, I switched on the flashers and gave her a blast on the siren. When she had pulled over and saw it was me, she launched out of her car with fire in her eyes. “Bo, you asshole!” she yelled. “You scared me half to death.”

“Now you settle down and quit cussing,” I said with a laugh as I exited from my big Ford Crown Victoria. “That’s the second time you’ve used that word today.”

“I may take up cussing full-time. What on earth do you want?”

“I need you to help me with something.”

“Now? I’m on my way to the library to file my story. My Internet is out at home for some reason.”

“You got it on disc?”

“Yeah…”

“I’ll file it for you. I want you to go over to Mary Beth Boscombe’s house and talk to the Twiller boy for me. Find out if he heard or saw anything last night.”

“Mary Beth’s?” she asked.

“Right. That’s where he’s staying until his dad gets out of the hospital this afternoon. In fact, Mary Beth is the one who’s going to pick Reverend Twiller up and bring him home.”

She stared up at my face for a moment, then gave me a sly smile. “Ahhh … I get it. But why do you want me to talk to Tommy?”

“I think it would be a whole lot better for a woman to do it than some man wearing a badge. Especially a woman that he knows. You are acquainted with the kid, aren’t you?”

“Oh, sure. I taught his Sunday school class last year.”

“Then you’re perfect,” I said. “And a brilliant young journalist like you will certainly know what to ask and how to ask it.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” she said dryly. “Let me get my disc out of the car and jot down the email address. But just promise me you’ll do it first thing when you get to the office. Please?”

“Darlin’, if A-rab terrorists have firebombed the place, I’ll duck in under the flames and get this story filed for you. My word of honor.”

*   *   *

When I got to my office in the basement of the courthouse, I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. It was shaping up to be another hot day, with the air full of dust. The city had imposed water rationing a month earlier, and lawns all over town were suffering.

I’d just finished sending Sheila’s story to the Sentinel when my secretary, Maylene Chambers, stuck her head in the door. “Some waitress from the Sawmill Club called for you. You been over there to that Sawmill Club, Bo?”

Maylene was a Baptist who viewed my occasional duty-born forays into the area’s nightclubs with considerable disdain, as she did the bottle of whiskey I kept in my bottom desk drawer in violation of the idiotic ordinance that forbade the imbibing of “spirituous beverages” on county property. Nevertheless, she’d been with me from the beginning, and barring death or dismemberment, we both expected her to be with me to the end.

“Yes, ma’am, I have,” I said. “I went to that den of iniquity this very morning in pursuance of my duties as sheriff of this county. As I have told you before, a lawman can’t get much useful information at the church house. Did she leave her name?”

She looked down at the card in her hand. “Patty French. She said she needed to talk to you bad, and that it had something to do with the Amanda Twiller murder.”

“Hey! That sounds hopeful. Did you get her number?”

She shook her head. “She was on her way to see Dr. Fletcher, and said that she’d come by about noon, right after her appointment. She also mentioned that Parker Raynes told her to call you. Do you know Parker Raynes?”

I nodded sagely. “She’s the bartender at the Sawmill. In fact, I been sparkin’ her right heavy here lately, and I’m getting ready to pop the question any day now.”

“I know that’s a load of bull, but you could do worse. She’s not the bartender, though. She owns the place, and it’s a moneymaker.”

“How come you know so much about the lady, Maylene?”

“She goes to my church.”

“Say what?” I asked in disbelief.

“Well, it’s a legal occupation, Bo. Besides, they don’t serve anything but beer, anyhow. Heck, I’ve been known to drink a little beer myself.” She pointed an accusing finger at my desk. “It’s the hard stuff like you keep in that drawer there that’s the devil’s spawn.” With that definitive statement, she wheeled around and left my office.

“Imagine that,” I muttered to myself. “Baptists drinking beer.” Just when you think you have it all figured out, you get buried under your own ignorance.

I leaned back and stared at my phone for at least a couple of minutes. Muldoon and Hotchkiss weren’t aware of it, but their boss, Mack Reynolds, was an old and valued friend of mine. Mack was the special agent in charge of the Bureau’s Houston office, and I knew he would tell me what I wanted to know. We’d helped each other numerous times in the past, but the question was, did I need to know why the Bureau was keeping tabs on Emmet Zorn badly enough to call on him again? I wanted to find Amanda Twiller’s killer, or killers, as the case might be, but I didn’t want to let the investigation snowball beyond that. In the end I decided to postpone phoning him.

I was just about to get back on the computer and start working my fall budget when County Commissioner Charlie Morton strolled in like he owned the place and pushed the door shut behind him. A couple of years shy of forty, Charlie was big and beefy and red-faced and full of hustle and bustle and alpha male aggressiveness. He was also one of the main wheelhorses in the local chamber of commerce and a successful real estate broker who’d acquired a number of rental houses and a small motel. I was glad he’d dropped by because I had a little something on my mind I’d been meaning to talk over with him, anyway. I leaned back in my chair and got comfortable in order to savor the moment.

“What brings you here, Charlie?” I asked.

“Money.”

“Goody! How much you got for me?”

“Why do you always have to be such a smart-ass, Bo?”

“I reckon it’s in my genes.” We stared at each other for a few seconds, then I said, “Spit it out, Charlie. What’s on your mind?”

“That autopsy you ordered this morning on Amanda Twiller.”

“What about it?”

“Do you realize that it costs this county thirteen hundred dollars more to have an autopsy done locally than it does to do it down in Houston?”

“No, I didn’t realize that. Does your wife realize that you’ve been screwing that cute little Mexican waitress at Poncho’s Cantina in Nacogdoches for the last couple of months?”

Ever see a man break out in a cold sweat on a hot day? It can be very gratifying.

“Bo…” He looked sick.

“Thought you were being real careful, didn’t you?”

“How on earth…”

“I had one of my deputies keeping you under surveillance.”

“That’s misuse of public resources.”

I nodded. “That contention could certainly be made. So you just bring the matter before the commissioners court at the next meeting if you want to make it. I will counter with the argument that every intelligence service in the world has known for centuries that the sexual habits of an elected official have considerable bearing on his ability to do his job, especially when he’s entrusted with public funds like you are. Governments have fallen because of such hanky-panky. Ever hear of John Profumo and the Christine Keeler scandal in England back in the sixties?”

The name Profumo didn’t seem to ring any bells with Charlie. I don’t think he had much interest in Christine Keeler, either. He just stared straight ahead like he was looking down a long, dark tunnel that had no end.

“Bo, my wife and I are already on thin ice, and if—”

“I know where you’re going with this, Charlie,” I said. “You’re gonna tell me that if you wind up in divorce court Judge MacGregor will recuse himself because he’s close to both of you. Then the case will go to Judge Wilson down in Lufkin, a lady who is known to be an ardent feminist and is suspected by some of being a man-hating lesbian, as well. And when it comes time to divide the property, she will, just as she always does in cases of philandering husbands, ram it up your ass so hard it splinters, and then break it off well below the surface.”

“Bo, please…”

“She raped ole Bobby Wells, may he rest in peace. You remember Bobby, I’m sure. With him it was that cute little blond desk clerk at the Fredonia hotel. I was there in court the day it happened, and Judge Wilson barely left him with the clothes he was wearing. He’d gone in there that morning right prosperous too. You remember what happened to him after that, don’t you?

“Bo…”

“Bobby never got it back together. The little blond wasn’t interested in a poor boy, so she dropped him and took up with some hotshot young salesman who came through. The judge had frozen all his assets six months before the divorce, and he had to max out his credit cards to live on. That ruined his credit rating, which meant he didn’t have any latitude to get his business going again. So about a year later he took that old Winchester pump duck gun of his, stuck the muzzle in his mouth, and—”

He raised his head and looked at me like he’d never seen me before. “Bo, surely you wouldn’t…”

I just treated him to a happy smile and we sat and said nothing while he mopped his face with his handkerchief. Finally he gave me a tiny nod. “What do I have to do?”

“I need an advocate on the commissioners court. That’s all. I haven’t had one since Billy Cochran died. I’ve never asked for anything I didn’t really need to do my job, and I’m damned tired of getting turned down. For one thing, you people are way behind on giving my deputies a raise. And while you’re at it, Maylene could use a little more money too. This county never has paid her what she’s worth. I think the JPs could stand a boost as well.”

“Is that all?”

I shook my head. “No. There’ll be more in the future. When I said I needed an advocate I was thinking in terms of a nice long partnership. Now get on out of here. I’ve got work to do.”

He rose to his feet and nodded. “Okay, Bo. I’ll give it my best.”

“I know you will, Charlie, because I’ll be at every one of the meetings to make sure you do. And I’ll never ask you to do anything illegal. Rest easy on that score.”

He nodded and stopped at the door and turned back. Nothing unusual about that. Everybody stops at my door and turns back. It’s like some kind of lodge ritual and I’m the only nonmember in town. “Something else, Charlie?” I asked.

“You know, I never expected anything like this to happen to me,” he said, his voice tinged with wonder. “I just thought—”

“That you’d get a little nooky on the side, and nobody would be the wiser. It probably would have worked if you hadn’t been in public office. Look at it as penance, Charlie. And if you’re smart, you’ll break it off with that waitress and patch things up with your wife. She’s a good woman.”

He nodded his head sadly, then he left and I leaned back and put my feet up on my desk. I laughed and wondered how agents Muldoon and Hotchkiss would have reacted to that little exchange. They probably thought political hardball was confined to the big cities.