Read Blanco County 03 - Flat Crazy Online

Authors: Ben Rehder

Tags: #Texas, #Murder Mystery, #hunting guide, #chupacabra, #deer hunting, #good old boys, #Carl Hiaasen, #rednecks, #Funny mystery, #game warden, #crime fiction, #southern fiction

Blanco County 03 - Flat Crazy (9 page)

BOOK: Blanco County 03 - Flat Crazy
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The sheriff dialed the phone number and waited. Marlin could hear the shrill ring coming through the phone’s small earpiece. Five rings. Then ten. No answer.

“Guess he’s not home,” Duke said.

Garza disconnected and slid the phone back over to Duke. After a pause, he said, “If you think of anything that might be important, you’ll let us know?”

“Yeah, sure. No problem.”

“Thank you for your time.”

11
 

DUKE’S ARMPITS WERE damp and his heart felt like it was going to bust through his rib cage. It was bad enough when he thought it was just the game warden coming to see him. But when he saw the sheriff tagging along—Jesus!—he’d almost had a stroke. This wasn’t about some candy-ass game violation after all. Good thing he’d mentally prepared himself for it.

And thank God Gus hadn’t answered the phone. Duke thought he’d done a fairly good job with the interview just now, but what would Gus say if they came after him with the same questions? It wasn’t all that easy to stay cool and keep your story straight. Thinking about it now, Duke realized it was crazy to have ever thought Gus could pull it off. He’d probably get rattled and start babbling, telling the cops everything they wanted to know.

Duke noticed that Garza hadn’t said a word about Sally Ann, and he didn’t appear to know they’d been shacked up for the past six months. They thought he and Gus were still living together in the old family homestead. Actually, Duke
had
been back staying with Gus again for the last week or so, because of Sally Ann getting pissed about the barmaid. But the cops didn’t seem to know any of this, and that was fine with Duke. Best to keep Sally Ann out of it.

And what the hell was up with Kyle? The only thing Duke could figure was that Kyle must have heard him mention Searcy’s name at some point. Did he know Searcy had been out to the ranch? And the more important thing: What did he tell the sheriff and the game warden? Hell, he didn’t
know
anything—not about what had happened to Searcy anyway. But Kyle
had
known what the cops wanted to talk to Duke about—and he hadn’t had the guts to answer the goddamn phone and warn him. There were no two ways about it: Just like nine years ago, the son of a bitch was covering his own ass again, and hanging Duke out to dry.

Duke decided he had to take care of a few things real fast.

First, go see Gus and make sure he wasn’t freaking out, maybe getting cabin fever or something like that. Take him some food and remind him to stay put.

Second, go talk to Kyle—maybe even kick his ass a little—and find out what he’d told the cops. Maybe Duke was blowing this thing out of proportion. Maybe he wasn’t even a suspect at this point. Hell, he couldn’t blame them for wanting to question him, seeing as how Searcy had called him several times.

And lastly, he knew now he’d have to do something about Searcy’s trophy mount. Duke had claimed he and Searcy had never hunted together, but the mount proved otherwise. He needed to get the damn thing back.

When Rudi’s phone rang, she was in the buff, putting on mascara, swiveling her hips to the Rolling Stones song coming from the cheap clock radio on the nightstand.

Rudi, Barry, and Chad had spent the night at a small motel in Johnson City. Not a bad place. Nothing fancy—her room was small and appeared to have been decorated by somebody’s senile grandmother—but at least it was clean.

Johnson City itself seemed to be an okay little town. A handful of restaurants, a few dozen small businesses, a large stone courthouse, and one traffic signal. That’s all she had seen last night anyway. They had come in late, and most of the town appeared to be sleeping.

Rudi set the mascara down and picked up the telephone.

“Rudi, sweetheart.” It was Chad, using that horrible syrupy voice he reserved for single women. “What are you doing in there?” Rudi suddenly felt a chill and placed one arm across her breasts. Just talking to this vermin gave her goose bumps. She couldn’t remember the last time Chad had pursued a story in the field. The jerk just wanted to come along to see if he could get lucky.

“Almost ready,” she said. “We said ten o’clock, right?” She glanced at the clock. It was five till.

“That’s right, darling. Barry and I are waiting for you outside.”

“Give me ten. I’ll be right out.”

Rudi hung up and quickly finished her makeup. She followed that with a tailored pencil skirt that hit just above the knee, and a French-cuffed, polished-cotton blouse. She checked herself in the mirror.
Not quite what I was ten years ago, but not too bad,
she thought.
Kind of a babe, actually.

The plan today was to begin interviewing locals, maybe see if they could speak with some of the county deputies. When they had decent footage, they’d drive to Austin and send it back home via the network affiliate station. The anchors at
Hard News Tonight
would provide a lead-in and wrap-up to the segment. This was supposed to be the first of several reports from the land of the chupacabra. How long the reports would continue depended on whether there was any more strange activity.

“He didn’t ask many questions, you know what I mean?” Bobby Garza said.

Marlin was driving slowly back to the sheriff’s office. “That struck me, too. On the other hand, he’s been through the system, which might’ve taken all the curiosity right out of him. Or he might be too dense to even realize we were checking him out. But I’ll say one thing: He didn’t seem to want us to talk to Gus.”

“Yeah, I noticed that.”

“And just because his brother’s kind of nutty?”

“Man, in this line of work, who do we talk to that ain’t?”

Marlin pulled into the parking lot at the sheriff’s office. “So what next, then? Try to track down Gus?”

“Yeah, and I guess I’ll get one of the deputies to talk to the other guides again. They checked out okay the first time around, but I think we better have another look.”

“You want me to talk to them?” Marlin didn’t mind getting more involved now that deer season had ended.

Garza glanced at his watch. “Actually, I had something else in mind. It’s ten-fifteen now. What’re you doing after lunch?”

“Nothing too urgent.”

“I’m gonna drive over to Houston and reinterview the widow. Something just isn’t clicking, and I want to dig a little deeper. You want to ride along? Maybe you can help me get something out of her.”

“Yeah, I can do that. Tatum and Cowan already talked to her, right?”

Rachel Cowan was a deputy who had been with the Blanco County Sheriff’s Department for just over a year. Young and very sharp.

Garza nodded. “Yep, twice. But I want to go in with some fresh eyes.”

Red O’Brien was rumbling down Pecan Street after a trip to Dairy Queen when Billy Don yelled, “Holy whorebag!” It startled Red so bad, he dropped his Dilly Bar into the crotch of his pants.

Red tried to steer while wiping at a smear of chocolate along the inseam of his Wranglers. “Damn, Billy Don, take it easy, will ya.”

“Check it out! Right over there! That’s Rudi Vee!”

Red turned to see where Billy Don was pointing. Standing in front of the courthouse was a woman facing a camera, with a large cluster of people milling around her. The woman, who looked kind of familiar to Red, was holding a microphone in front of Ernie Turpin, one of the county deputies. Red couldn’t quite place her, though he could tell, even from thirty yards, that she was definitely headboard-banging material. He figured it was another newscast about that Houston hunter who’d been found dead. Red had seen something about that a few days ago.

“What is she, a reporter from Austin? Big friggin’ deal. What’s everyone gettin’ so excited about?” But Red pulled over to the curb to watch.

“Naw, man, Rudi Vee. Rudi Villarreal.”

“You already said that, Skeezix. But who the hell is Rudi Villarreal?”

Billy Don looked as if Red had just said NASCAR was for pussies. “Jesus, Red. You know, from
Hard News Tonight
? That hot reporter who’s always interviewing big stars and interpreting the economy and stuff.”

Oh,
now
Red remembered. It was a news program, but not your typical tight-ass broadcast with guys like Peter Jennings. Red always wondered if Peter was Waylon’s cousin or something. Anyway,
Hard News Tonight
was, to Red, every bit as informative and a whole lot more entertaining than, say,
Nightlight.
Okay, so maybe their stories weren’t quite as in-depth as those other shows, but damn, look at those hooters! Red could see that ol’ Rudi was packing some major mangoes.

“Damn, I’ve always had a thing for her,” Billy Don said. “Why you think she’s in town?”

Red didn’t know, but—like the knot of bystanders—he was extremely curious. “Who gives a shit?” he said.

Billy Don didn’t seem to hear. He was gazing through the windshield, mooning over the reporter.

“Well, damn,” Red said, “if it means that much to you, we might as well go see what’s going on. No sense in sittin’ in the truck.”

Billy Don heard
that,
and they both climbed out of the Ford.

As they approached the crowd, Red could hear Rudi Villarreal saying that funny word again:
chupacabra.
After the incident with the wetback on Sunday, Red had finally learned what that word meant. According to the papers, a chupacabra was some kind of devil-dog or mutant lizard or something—nobody seemed to know for sure. And you could find them down in Mexico, especially around the capital city of Puerto Rico. Red was listening, and now the deputy was saying no, there hadn’t been any more reports of the chupacabra.

Rudi Villarreal asked about Oliver Searcy—apparently, that was the dead hunter. Rudi was wondering whether Searcy might have been a victim of the chupacabra. After all, she said, wasn’t Searcy killed by a single puncture wound to the neck, the chupacabra’s trademark?

Ernie Turpin shook his head and said he couldn’t comment on that. Hell, this all sounded pretty interesting to Red. Kind of sci-fi and weird. You wouldn’t see Dan Rather offering
this
kind of coverage.

Rudi thanked the deputy for his time, and Red could tell the interview was coming to an end. He figured he owed it to the world to tell what he knew. “Hey, Rudi!” he called out. “We was with that Meski—uh, that Mexican that was hit by the truck on Sunday. The one what saw the chupacabra.”

Rudi looked his way, and so did the rest of the crowd. “You mind sharing your story with us?”

“Heck no!” Red elbowed his way through to the reporter, dragging Billy Don along. “Red O’Brien, ma’am. This here’s Billy Don Craddock.”

“Nice to meet you both.”

“Awwbllghf,” Billy Don said, apparently choking on his own tongue.

Red couldn’t blame him. Up close, this Rudi Villarreal was one hot broad, and Billy Don wasn’t as comfortable talking to a classy piece of tail as Red was.

Red said, “See, what happened was—”

Rudi cut him off. “Give us just a minute, please, Mr. O’Brien.” She said a few things to the cameraman, using terms Red didn’t understand. “Here, stand a little closer to me, please.”

“I’ll stand as close as you want, darlin’.” Red leered, giving her his best smile.

She asked Billy Don to move to her other side, and then the interview began. “Tell us about your experience with the chupacabra,” Rudi said, holding the microphone in front of Red.

“Well,” Red said. “What happened was, we was working on some masonry with this wetback and—”

Rudi lowered the microphone and covered it with her hand.

“What?” Red asked.

“Mr. O’Brien,” she whispered, “I would thank you if you wouldn’t use that term.”

“Masonry?”

“No.
Wetback.
It’s very derogatory, you know.”

Red couldn’t remember what
derogatory
meant, but he figured it wasn’t good. “What should I say instead?”

“How about ‘day laborer’?”

Red nodded. “That’ll work.”

“Okay, let’s start over,” Rudi said, back to her normal tone of voice. “Tell us about your experience with the infamous chupacabra.”

“Well,” Red said, “We was working on this masonry job with a, uh, day laborer when he ran into the woods to take a dump and—”

Rudi lowered the microphone again. She whispered, “Mr. O’Brien, you have to remember that we’ll be broadcasting this during the family hour. Could you please be careful how you phrase things?”

By now, the crowd was giggling. Red couldn’t imagine why anyone would have a problem with the word
dump.
It sure beat the alternatives. “I’ll do my best,” he said.

Now the camera guy was saying something to Rudi. She glanced down at Red’s Wranglers. “Did you know you have a large stain on your pants?”

“Yes, ma’am, it’s chocolate. Wanna taste?”

12
 

DUKE PULLED THROUGH the entrance of the Macho Bueno at 10:30.

He’d stopped by to see Gus, and everything was fine. Duke had made Gus promise again that he wouldn’t leave the house. Then, just for peace of mind, Duke had gone out to the box on the utility pole and unplugged Gus’s phone line.
That
would keep the retard from making any calls.

Kyle’s driveway forked just before it reached the house, and the right path led to the garage on the north side. Duke stayed left, which led to a circular parking area in front. He parked and followed the pathway around the south side of the house. Kyle was usually in the hot tub by now—if he wasn’t taking a nap. It turned out he was doing both. Duke found Kyle snoozing soundly while the water bubbled around him.

Duke sat in a patio chair and pulled out the revolver he’d brought with him—Oliver Searcy’s gun, which he still needed to ditch. He figured he’d just fire a round right into the tub. That would make Kyle wake up and come to Jesus, yessir. But then he thought of something even better.

He stood and walked into the house.

“Cheri! You here?”

No answer.

“Cheri! Get your skanky ass out here!”

Seconds passed. All quiet. Good. He didn’t need that slut hanging around, whining.

He went through the kitchen and out into the four-car garage, where he found a hundred-foot extension cord. Walking back through the house, he grabbed the toaster off the kitchen counter.

He found an outlet on the side of the house—but instead of plugging the cord in, he laid it on the ground. Then he trailed the remainder of the cord over to the hot tub.

Kyle was still sleeping like a baby.

Duke plugged the toaster in and slid the knob down to the TOAST position. He stood at the edge of the hot tub and dangled the toaster over the water, holding it in such a way that Kyle wouldn’t be able to see that the elements weren’t glowing red.

Then
he fired the gun into the tub.

Kyle woke with such a start, Duke had to stifle a laugh.

“Damn!” Kyle sputtered. “Duke, Jesus! Are you fucking crazy?”

“Don’t get out of the water, Kyle. Don’t even move.”

Kyle’s eyes went to the toaster. “Whatever you say, man. But what the hell’s going on?”

Duke gave the toaster a little swing. “You know how Gus turned out when he got a little too much voltage.”

“What are you doing, man? Be careful. Please.”

Duke smiled. “We’re going to have a little talk, Kyle. You tell me the truth and maybe this thing won’t go in the water.”

“Yeah, man. Yeah.” Kyle was as white as a deer’s belly.

Duke took his time, enjoying the power. “Okay, first question: What did you tell the cops?”

Kyle didn’t answer right away, and Duke didn’t like that. “What, you mean the game warden?”

“Him and the sheriff.”

“Man, it was just the game warden that came out. Not the sheriff.”

That was news to Duke, but he saw no reason why Kyle would lie about that.

“Okay, so what did you tell him?”

“What do you mean,
what did I tell him?
There wasn’t anything to tell.”

“Come on, Kyle. About Oliver Searcy.”

Kyle was nodding now. “Yeah, the dead guy. He asked if I’d ever heard of him. That’s all.”

“What’d you say?”

“I told him no. Because I
hadn’t
ever heard of the guy. Least not till he asked me. Did you know him?”

Duke ignored the question. “Did he ask about me?”

“Yeah, at first. He wanted to know if you were still guiding out here.”

“And?”

“Well, I told him yeah, sometimes. Nothing official.”

Duke reached over with one foot and pressed a button beside the hot tub, turning the jets off. The water slowly settled and it was much quieter now.

“He ask you if I guided Searcy?”

“No, not specifically,” Kyle said. “I think that’s what he was wondering, though. He said Searcy had made some calls to you, that’s all. And he wanted to get hold of you.”

“So you wanted to be a good citizen and gave him my cell number.”

Kyle looked at the toaster again. “Well, yeah. I mean, I didn’t have any reason not to. He didn’t ask what kind of animals you were hunting out here, and I figured that was the only thing that might get you in trouble.”

Duke believed him. It sounded like the cops had just wanted to ask Duke about the phone calls. Maybe he’d already been through the worst of their questioning.

“You didn’t know Searcy, right?” Kyle asked.

Duke lowered the toaster, and now one shiny metal corner touched the surface of the water. “Did you tell him I did?”

Kyle was as far back against the rim of the tub as he could be. “No, man, I swear. I didn’t say nothin’.” He was starting to blubber now. “I didn’t even know nothin’ to tell. I swear.”

Okay, then. It wasn’t as bad as Duke thought.

“Dude, please,” Kyle said, “lift that thing up a little.”

The water was almost up to the bread slots.

“What, this?” Duke said. “It’s not even plugged in.”

He smirked and dropped the toaster into the tub.

And everything went all wrong.

Sparks shot from the toaster, and Duke jumped.

Kyle bucked and jerked, letting out a low wail. He went stiff, head back and feet straight out. Blood poured from his nose.

“Son of a bitch!” Duke grabbed the cord off the ground and yanked the toaster out of the water.

Kyle’s body went limp and slowly settled into the water.

Duke was in a panic now, and he knelt to pull Kyle out of the tub. But then he heard something. A car engine, from the driveway in front of the side-entry garage.

Duke ran in that direction, even changed his course and went around the other side, the way he had come in. The driveway went south from the house, and this path would give him a better chance of catching the car as it left.

He raced around the corner, gasping for breath, but he was too late.

All he could see was the rear of Cheri’s car as it sped away.

He yelled, “Cheri!”

She flipped him the bird.

Oh Christ.
Duke couldn’t believe what had just happened.

That little bitch. That crazy little bitch.

Duke waited for doom to come, and while he waited, he had a chance to think.

Cheri’s car had been parked in the driveway in front of the garage. That’s why he hadn’t seen it. She
had
been inside the house when he had called her name. She must have been watching through a window while he was taunting Kyle with the toaster.

Then she went out the front door, snuck around the side, and plugged the extension cord in. That had to be the way it had happened. She was setting him up. Duke had nearly forgotten, but she was Kyle’s
wife
now, even if Kyle had viewed the Vegas wedding as a joke. She stood to inherit everything Kyle owned, and the conniving little bitch was setting Duke up. He had to admit, it was a pretty good move.

He was certain the cops would show up any minute now. She must have called them, right? He could just imagine her on the phone:
Hurry! Duke Waldrip just killed my husband!

That made two now. Two people Duke had killed—both by accident.

If he ran, he’d never make it out of the county. He had no choice but to wait for the cops, and then tell them the total and absolute truth. Even all of his hunting scams. It was the only option he had left, and it was a damn shitty one. Prison time for sure. Maybe the needle, if nobody believed him.

So he waited. And he waited some more.

The odd thing was, the cops never showed.

The phone was ringing in Marty Hoffenhauser’s house when he walked through the front door. He’d just gotten home from the emergency room, and he didn’t feel like talking to anybody right now. He didn’t need any more headaches after the morning he’d had, so he let the machine take it.

He heard a familiar voice. “Hey, Marty! It’s Drew. You around? Pick up, pal.”

Just great.
Drew Tillman, Marty’s silent partner, calling from Los Angeles.

Marty picked up and tried to sound nonchalant. “Drew! What’s up, buddy?”

“I figured you were there. Mr. Hotshot Director, screening your calls.”

Marty chuckled politely.

He and Drew were partners—on paper anyway. But they both knew that Drew held the upper hand in the relationship. After all, Drew had saved Marty’s career. And what a career it had been.

In the late seventies, Marty had written, produced, and hosted one of the hottest game shows on daytime television—
Show Me You’re Nuts!
On the show, contestants performed some of the most harrowing, grotesque, and obscene acts imaginable. Feats involving the mouth were always popular. One guy swallowed a live rat, then regurgitated it, still alive. Another man French-kissed his own grandfather. In one of Marty’s favorites, two young ladies from Newark performed mock fellatio on Popsicles made from Hudson River sludge.

One would think—in an environment as bizarre as
Show Me You’re Nuts!—that
just about any type of behavior would be tolerated. Marty found out the hard way that this wasn’t the case. Scandal erupted when he was caught banging two cheerleaders backstage. As it turned out, they weren’t really in college, as they had said. They were high schoolers. Juniors, not even seniors. Marty was charged with statutory rape. He lost his job, was ostracized by the public, and was lucky to avoid prison. His days as an on-camera personality were over.

His problems, however, didn’t prevent him from working
behind
the camera. In fact, from what Marty discovered, plenty of disgraced celebrities who disappeared from the public eye wound up working as producers. And that’s what Marty did for two decades. The problem was, he wasn’t very good at it. Over the years, he slowly slid in the ranks, going from executive producer to producer to production assistant. He knew it was only a matter of time before he’d be lucky to find work as a grip. He decided it was time to quit the business. It was the late nineties by then, and the dot-com frenzy was reaching its peak. Marty was only fifty years old, but he had ridden the Internet wave perfectly, bailing out before everything crashed. He had plenty of money saved up. So he had moved back to his home state of Texas. He had been born and raised in Austin, then moved to the West Coast when he was nineteen. Austin was bigger and busier now, though, like a miniature L.A., so he decided to relocate just an hour west of town in Blanco County.

He had been enjoying his retirement for exactly one week when Drew Tillman—one of Marty’s oldest industry friends, a man who had stood behind Marty during the cheerleader scandal—tracked him down. And he had a very interesting proposition.

“How do you feel about adult videos?” Tillman asked.

“I, uh … What do you mean?” Marty replied, wondering what the question was leading to.

“You watch ’em? You think they’re okay?”

“Sure, I guess. Why not?”

“How do you feel about Asians?”

“Well, the whole Pearl Harbor thing was kind of uncalled for,” Marty replied, joking.

“But you’re not, like, a bigot or anything?”

“Of course not.”

“How do you feel about little people?”

“Little people?”

“You know, dwarves.”

“Well, gee, Drew, I never really thought about it.”

“But you have no problem with them, either?”

“No, I … What are you getting at, Drew?”

“Let me throw three words at you, chief. Chinese dwarf pornography. How’s that hit ya?”

“Chinese dwarf pornography.”

“It’s huge, Marty. The hottest thing in the industry right now.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I kid you not, my friend. See, in the porn industry, there’s something for everybody. The straight stuff, sure, but if you happen to have a thing for women with facial hair, say, or transvestites in wheelchairs, believe me, it’s out there. And right now, the big thing is Chinese dwarves.”

Marty thought about it. How large could that particular market segment possibly be?

Drew read his thoughts. “What’s going on is, somehow these flicks have become all the rage at fraternity parties. It’s like this big joke, having this funny little skin flick running in the background. And man, it’s spreading all across the country. Sales are booming, buddy, and I’m getting in on it.”

Drew described the situation. He and some of his “associates” wanted in on the new craze. They had decided to open their own production company, and they needed a director. Marty had never directed before, but, as Drew had said, how hard could it be? “It’s not like you’re shooting
Gone With The Wind
or anything. It’s just your standard porn. Well, on a smaller scale. Besides, you’ve always had a knack for showmanship, Mart. Just like on
Nuts.
I think you’re the man for the job.”

Marty didn’t know what to say. So he said yes.

Since then, Marty had directed some of the highest-grossing adult films ever made. He was quickly becoming a seriously wealthy man. Everything, on every film, had gone as smoothly as possible—until this morning’s fiasco with Mike. Now, though, the entire operation was in jeopardy. And Marty would have to tell Drew all about it.

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