Bone Dry (Blanco County Mysteries) (21 page)
Read Bone Dry (Blanco County Mysteries) Online
Authors: Ben Rehder
Marlin groaned and changed the channel. A rerun of
Andy Griffith,
with Barney doing something idiotic, as usual. Marlin could relate.
The ringing of the phone pulled him out of Mayberry.
Answer it or no? Probably a reporter.
He let the machine get it.
“This is Marlin. Leave a message.”
After a pause: “John, you there? It’s Becky.”
His heart leapt at the familiar voice and he rose to pick up the handset. “Hey, I’m here.”
“God, John, what in the world is going on down there?” she asked, concern in her voice. She said that Vicky—a nurse she had worked with at Blanco County Hospital—had been watching the news, including the earlier report of Peabody’s escape. Vicky had heard Marlin’s name and called Becky to let her know.
Marlin shook his head in disgust. “I can nail a dozen poachers in one night, but does that ever make the news?”
“You’re okay, though?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He told her a little about the murder of Bert Gammel and the hostage situation. From what Marlin had seen, the news report didn’t mention that he had been inside with Corey. He decided not to worry Becky with it. The conversation swung back around to Thomas Peabody. “Little bastard’s runnin’ around with cuffs on,” Marlin said, “so how far can he get?”
Becky giggled. “I remember those cuffs.”
Marlin smiled, but felt sad at the same time.
Becky noticed the silence and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Hey, no big deal. How are things going up there? How’s Margaret?”
“About the same. She hates the chemo, and I think she’s wondering whether it’s worth it at this point.”
“What do
you
think?”
“If she wants to stop treatment, that’s what we’ll do.”
“I’m sure y’all will make the right decision.”
“Thanks, John. Listen, I better go. I’m calling from work right now. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“A bruised ego, as they say, but fine otherwise. Give your mom a hug for me.”
“I’ll do it. Talk to you later.”
The first thing Vinnie did when he got home was strip off all his clothes, including his shoes, and put them in a garbage bag. He’d get rid of it all tomorrow, maybe dump it in a trash barrel out on the highway. Couldn’t be too careful about shit like that. Sure, if it came down to it, he could argue that he had been in T.J.’s boat dozens of times, and that was why the fibers were there. But why let them find a specific shirt or pair of jeans that matches a specific fiber? Say maybe one of his fibers was wrapped up with one of the fibers from the clothes T.J. was wearing today. Then maybe they could link him to being in the boat when T.J. died.
And he
had
died, just like Vinnie thought he would.
Poor guy came sputtering to the surface, frothy blood spilling out of his mouth, trying to speak. Vinnie had had to stifle a fucking giggle, he was so pleased with himself, how his plan had worked out. A few minutes later, T.J.’s eyes rolled back and he floated facedown.
Now the Gibbs family boat was floating unmanned, T.J. bobbing in the water nearby, waiting to be discovered. Could be days, though. The reservoir wasn’t busy this time of year.
Vinnie had swum to shore in the chilly water, hopped in his car, then crushed the LoJack and scattered it along the roadside.
“It’s your own fault, ya know. You’re always pissing people off with your smart mouth. Why ya have to piss people off like that?”
Angela had been going on like that for about ten minutes. Or maybe it just seemed that way—who the hell knew? Sal was so stoned on painkillers, he really didn’t give a fuck about Angela, the doctors, the hospital, or his damn broken leg. The only thing he really felt—the one emotion that was eating away at the tattered edge of his slippery consciousness—was rage. That fucking tree-hugger. Smart-ass little bastard thought he was gonna shut Sal Mameli down? That’d be the day. Son of a bitch was lucky Sal hadn’t gotten a good hold of him. Goddamn cop—what was he, a game warden or some shit?—had stuck his nose in the middle of it.
Where the hell did that little tree-hugging jamook come from, anyway?—and that blonde broad, the one stirring up all the trouble. What a pain in the ass those two were. How’s a man supposed to go about his business with people like that breaking your balls all the time?
“You listening to me?” Angela whined. “Can you even hear me, Sal? Sal?” She leaned over his hospital bed to peer into his half-open eyes.
Well, if they wanted to play hardball, then Sal’d show ’em the heat, the ninety-mile-per-hour fastball right under their chins. Nobody fucks with Roberto Ragusa... oh, wait, that’s not the right name. Sal something. Boy, these drugs really sneak up on ya. Sal Mameli, that’s it. Nobody fucks with Sal Mameli and gets away with it. That old rancher—Emmett something—he had tried, and look where it got him.
“Are you asleep? Because if you’re asleep, I’m going home.”
Christ, why won’t she shut the hell up? Let a guy have a little peace and quiet for once. Sal had important things to figure out and he had to concentrate. What had he been thinking about? Yeah, the old man. Sal had taken care of that little problem, him and Vinnie. Vinnie was a good boy. Learning quick. It was a good thing, too, because Vinnie would have to take care of this situation, too.
“Okay, I’m going home.” Angela stood and grabbed her purse off the floor. In a surprisingly gentle voice, she said, “You get some rest now, Sal. The doctors’ll take good care of ya.” She leaned and gave Sal a light kiss on the forehead, then left the room.
Yeah, Vinnie was turning into quite a soldier. Sal would have a long talk with him tomorrow, when he had a clearer head. Vinnie could handle it.
Marlin must have dozed off for a few minutes, and now something was nagging at him, telling him to wake up. He lifted his heavy eyelids and looked around in a daze, wondering why his bedroom looked so much like his living room. The phone rang again, and he pulled himself out of the chair in front of the television. He noticed that KHIL was still broadcasting live from the courthouse. Apparently, the standoff was ongoing, and Marlin figured it might be Bobby Garza calling.
“This is Marlin.”
It wasn’t the sheriff. It was a man who lived off Sandy Road, a photographer who had bought a couple hundred acres west of Johnson City a few years ago. According to the man, there had been half a dozen shots in the last half hour on the place east of his. He suspected poachers and wanted Marlin to check it out. Marlin glanced at his watch. Two-seventeen A.M. He told the caller he was on his way.
Normally, Marlin wasn’t thrilled with middle-of-the-night phone calls. Half the time, there was a reasonable explanation for the gunfire: someone shooting raccoons or scaring a fox away from their chickens. The rest of the time, the shooters were gone before Marlin arrived.
But tonight, Marlin was kind of glad the call had come in. This was just a plain old “shots fired” call, no dead bodies lying in cedar thickets, no suspected murderers to negotiate with. Now he could forget about the Jack Corey mess and get back to business as usual.
Ten minutes later, he was pulling through an open gate off Sandy Road. He quickly came to a large pasture, where he saw a truck with its tailgate down, three men standing behind it. Marlin gave the truck a quick blast with his spotlight, letting the hunters know who he was, then bounced across the pasture toward the truck.
As he parked, he aimed his headlights at the three men: all locals, men he recognized, each with a beer in hand.
Marlin climbed out and said, “’Evenin’, Joe.”
The owner of the property was Joe Biggs—a tall, slender man with black hair, an insurance agent in Johnson City. Joe said, “Hey, John. Soon as I saw your truck, I figured somebody musta called in.”
“One of your neighbors.”
Joe grimaced. “Sorry about that. We woulda called and let you know we were huntin’, but it was kinda late and it was a spur-of-the-moment kind of deal.”
Marlin played his flashlight across the truck bed. Three dead hogs lay inside. Due to their devastating impact on the environment, feral hogs could be legally hunted at night in Texas, but hunters were encouraged to contact the game warden first and make their intentions known.
“No big deal. Looks like you had some luck.”
“Hell yeah. I been seeing about a dozen every night. Figured it was time to thin ’em out a little. They been runnin’ all the deer away from my feeders.”
The men chatted for a few minutes about the current deer season. One of the men had taken a ten-point on opening day.
“All right, then,” Marlin said. “Guess you’re done for the night? I’m sure your neighbors could use a break.”
Joe gave an embarrassed smile. “Yeah, sorry ’bout that. Didn’t think the shots’d bother ’em. We’re all done.”
Marlin waved and turned to leave.
“Hey,” Joe called out. “Heard you were the big hero tonight.”
Marlin was always amazed at how fast news traveled through the county. “I wouldn’t say ‘hero’ is the right word,” Marlin replied.
“Well, hell, you walked right in there with Corey holding a gun. Pretty damn brave, if you ask me. So what do you think, John? Think Corey done it? Killed Bert?”
“Can’t really talk about that, Joe.” Marlin said, opening the door to his cruiser. “He’ll get his day in court”
“Well, tell me this, then: Have the deputies figured out where Bert got all that cash?”
Marlin paused for a moment, then closed his truck door and walked back over to Joe.
“What cash are you talking about?”
Marlin and Joe were in the cab of the cruiser now, out of earshot of the other two hunters.
Joe’s eyes were wide. “I figured y’all knew all about that. You hadn’t heard?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
Joe rubbed his chin. “Well, I didn’t know Bert real well, but he was a friend of Virgil Talkington’s, and Virgil is a friend of mine. Virgil has this poker game every Friday night, and Bert would sometimes show up over there. Anyway, he was always a penny-ante kind of guy. Never brought much money with him, usually just a big jar of change, and he’d fold every hand unless he knew for sure he had a winner. Man, I’ve seen him throw away three of kind, if you can believe it. To hear Virgil tell it, Bert didn’t have much money to spare. Barely made his mortgage.”
“When did he first join the game?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Coupla years ago. And he didn’t play every time, maybe once every month or two. But then, maybe a year ago, he started showing up with a lot more cash. He’d pull out this big roll of bills and flash it all around, and man, would that get our attention! See, he wasn’t that good of a player and, well...”
Marlin smiled. “Y’all would try to separate him from his money.”
“Well, yeah. He seemed to have plenty of it all of a sudden. Brought expensive cigars for everybody, too. Lots of liquor.”
This didn’t sound like much to Marlin. Maybe Bert got a raise, or an inheritance, or won a few bucks on scratch-off lottery cards. Could be anything.
“But then here’s the other thing,” Joe continued. “One day I was over at Kyle’s place”—Kyle Parker owned a small car lot next to Joe’s office—“and Bert comes in to pick up that Explorer he’s been driving for the last eight or ten months. So I’m sitting there eating lunch, shootin’ the shit with Kyle, while Bert fills out the paperwork. Finally, Bert gets done with the forms, Kyle totals up the price on the car, and—get this—Bert hands it all over in cash. Kyle didn’t even bat an eye, like they had already talked about it or something. Sure, that Explorer was three or four years old, but the price was still something like twelve grand. I mean, shee-yit. You know anybody who carries around that kind of cash?”
Marlin agreed that he didn’t—but, thinking it through, he wasn’t sure it meant anything. Some people have strange saving habits, tucking cash away in a Mason jar or, literally, under the mattress. He’d heard about one little old lady in Blanco who lived as if she were one step above the poorhouse. Then the lady died and the heirs discovered she had been a millionaire, hiding huge sums of cash in coffee cans in her attic.
“Did Bert ever say anything about the money—like where he got it? I mean, you’re all sitting around, drinking a few cold ones, somebody’s bound to ask, right?”
Joe nodded his head vigorously. “Damn right, we asked, but he was all tight-lipped about it. One time, he said he made it on one of those dot-com companies, but he wouldn’t never name which one. None of us believed him. Shoot, Bert didn’t know nothing about no stock that wasn’t runnin’ around on four legs.”
Marlin sat in silence for moment, pondering this new information. Joe tipped his beer can and sucked out the last few drops. “Think that’ll help you any?” he asked.
Marlin had no idea. “I don’t know, Joe. I really don’t know.”