Cutter's Run (19 page)

I nodded, and we pulled the ladder away from the house and let it topple backward. It crashed onto the ground.

Arnold Hood was frowning down at us. “What in hell’re you doin’?”

“Just want to know where we can find you,” said the sheriff. “You go ahead and finish up your work. We’ll be back.”

“Put that goddam ladder back where it was. You can’t do this.”

Dickman grabbed my arm and said, “Come on, Deputy. We’ve got work to do.”

We turned and began to stroll toward the sheriff’s Explorer.

“Okay,” yelled Hood. “Okay. I’ll come down. For Christ’s sake, put that ladder back.”

Without turning, Dickman raised his hand and wiggled his fingers. “We’ll be back, Mr. Hood,” he said. “You just sit tight.”

He opened his car door, then looked at me. “Well, Deputy. Don’t just stand there with your face hanging out. Let’s go.”

I shrugged and slid into the front seat. Dickman got in, started up the car, and pulled away.

I smiled at him. “Can you do that?”

“I guess I could’ve pulled my nine-millimeter on him, or threatened to come back with a warrant or to bring him downtown, the way they do on TV.” He grinned. “Sometimes I love this job.” He turned the corner, then pulled to the side in the shade of a big oak tree and stopped. He reached over and patted my shirt pocket. “Gimme another smoke, Deputy Coyne.”

W
E FINISHED OUR CIGARETTES
and continued to sit there in the shade of the oak. The car windows were open, and a dry breeze blew through, bringing with it the mingled scent of moss and ferns and pine needles and road dust. The breeze felt cool on my face.

Dickman mentioned that he was a Pirates fan, and I said that as long as it wasn’t any team from New York such as the Mets, whom I’d never forgiven for 1986, or the Yankees, whom I had hated long before 1978, we could still work together, although we probably should’ve clarified those vital matters of compatibility before I got deputized.

“Bill Buckner,” he said.

“Yes. And Bob Stanley. That was ’86. In ’78 it was Mike Torrez. He gave up the home run to Bucky Dent. The villains were the New York teams, but we Red Sox fans always blame our own guys. We’re kind of masochistic that way.”

He smiled and changed the subject to gardening, and then I talked about fly fishing, and after a while he glanced at his watch. “What time did you say you had to be in Portland?”

“Six. I don’t want to be late.”

He nodded. “Okay. Maybe Mr. Hood is ready to come down, talk with us now.”

So we drove back, stopped in front, and got out. Arnold Hood was squatting up there on the roof where we’d left him, staring down at us. Dickman leaned his elbows on top of his car and called, “What do you say, Mr. Hood?”

“I’m about done up here,” he said. “So if you’ll kindly put that ladder back for me, I’ll fetch us some iced tea. It gets hot up on this here roof in the afternoon.”

Dickman and I wrestled the ladder up against the gutter and steadied it for Arnold Hood while he backed his way down.

When he got to the bottom, he hitched up his jeans, looked first at me and then at Dickman, and said, “I’ll be right with you. Gotta take a leak, then I’ll bring some tea.”

He disappeared around the side of the house. Dickman and I sat on the front steps.

“I don’t think I mentioned that he’s got a Confederate flag hanging in his kitchen,” I said.

Dickman turned and nodded. “That fits,” he said.

“I don’t know as the Klan uses the swastika for one of its symbols,” I said. “I thought they were mainly into crosses, preferably fiery ones.”

Dickman shrugged. “You might be right about that,” he said. “But from everything I’ve read, your neo-Nazis and your Klan share a lot of ideology. Either of them would serve a bigot’s psychological needs the same way. They call a swastika a twisted cross, don’t they?”

I nodded and was about to ask him how he wanted to proceed with our interview with Hood when his eyes widened slightly. Suddenly, he grabbed my arm and yanked me sideways. We both toppled off the side of the steps into the shrubbery just as a loud explosion sounded, and at the same moment I felt something hot and sharp jab into my right calf.

My first thought was that a wasp had nailed me. But then I realized that Dickman was pushing against my back, holding me down flat on my belly, and that the explosion had to have been a gunshot.

I twisted away from Dickman’s grip and got up onto my knees.

“Stay down,” he hissed. “He’s got a shotgun.”

“He got me,” I said.

“You all right?”

“My leg. It smarts.”

“Good,” he said. “It’s when you can’t feel it that we worry.” He cleared his throat, then called conversationally, “Come on now, Arnold. Throw down that old pumpgun before you do something really dumb. We just want to have a conversation here, and I was kind of thirsting for some of your iced tea.”

“Nobody leaves Arnold Hood up on a roof without a ladder,” came Hood’s voice.

I peeked over the steps but couldn’t see him.

“Keep your head down,” said Dickman. He had his 9mm automatic in his hand.

“Where is he?”

“Around the corner of the house. If we stop hearing his voice, you turn around and watch our backs, in case he circles around.” Then he called, “I guess we’re even, Arnold. Throw that gun out on the lawn where I can see it, and then you come on out here where I can see you.”

“I don’t want no trouble,” Hood said. “I was mindin’ my own business, just shinglin’ my roof.”

“Yes, that’s a fact,” said Dickman. “And if you’d come on down when I asked you the first time, nothing would’ve happened. So like I said, we each got in a poke, and now we’re even.”

“You gonna arrest me?”

“What for?”

“Well, shit,” said Hood. “Nothin’, I guess.”

A moment later I saw a shotgun clatter onto the ground by the corner of the house. “Okay?” said Hood.

“Okay,” said Dickman. “You just come on out here where I can see you, and I’d feel a whole lot better if you had both your hands clasped together behind your neck.”

Hood appeared. He stood there with his hands pressed against the sides of his face as if he had a double toothache. He was looking at the ground.

The sheriff stood up and moved toward him, his automatic in his hand. I followed close behind.

“You’re not carrying another weapon, are you, Arnold?” said Dickman.

Hood shook his head. “No, sir,” he mumbled.

Dickman went behind him and patted him down quickly, then holstered his gun and said, “Well, put your hands down, then. You look silly.”

Hood dropped his hands. They dangled there awkwardly at the ends of his arms, as if he didn’t know what to do with them.

The sheriff picked up Hood’s shotgun from where he had tossed it onto the ground. A band of duct tape was wound around the stock, and the barrel was shiny where the bluing had worn off. Dickman ejected three shells onto the ground. He bent down, picked them up, squinted at them for a minute, then dropped them into his pocket. He looked up at Hood, gave him a smile, and swung the gun by its barrel, smashing the heavy wooden stock against the side of Hood’s knee.

Hood muttered, “Shit,” and went to the ground. He sat there rubbing his leg and frowning up at the sheriff. “What’d you do that for?” he said. “You coulda busted my leg.”

“I should arrest you,” said Dickman softly. “That’s a pretty serious thing, shooting at police officers.”

Hood managed a lopsided grin. “Well, shit, Sheriff. A man’s got the right to protect his own property. Anyways, it was just birdshot. Guess I shouldn’t’ve done it, but I was pissed at you. Didn’t mean nothing by it. You didn’t have to hit me.”

“You could’ve put out somebody’s eye.”

Hood shook his head. “I wasn’t aimin’ for your eyes. If I’da been, I guess I would’ve put out more’n one of ’em. I was just shootin’ at the ground.”

“You got me in the leg,” I said.

He shrugged. “Sorry. It musta ricocheted.”

“Why don’t you go fetch us some of your iced tea,” said Dickman. “I don’t want to see any more guns. I’d hate to have to plug you.”

“That old pump’s my only gun. It useta be my daddy’s.” Hood pushed himself to his feet. He bent over and rubbed his knee where Dickman had whacked it. “You boys want sugar in your tea?”

“No,” said Dickman. “Brady?”

I shook my head, and Hood turned and limped back toward the kitchen.

“I think that was a mistake,” I said.

“What? Letting him go?”

“No,” I said. “Declining the sugar. His tea’s pretty bitter.”

Dickman cocked his head and peered at me. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“You do?”

“Yep. You’re thinking I shouldn’t have whacked him. You’re thinking the Klan thing made me lose my cool. You’re thinking I’m a brutal policeman.”

“Actually,” I said, “I was wondering why you don’t arrest him.”

“I might yet do that,” he said. “If it serves our purpose. We’ll see.”

Hood was back a couple of minutes later with three glasses and the same blue plastic jug he’d used when I’d been there with Susannah and Alex. We sat on the front steps, and he poured each glass full.

“Your leg okay, there, Mr. Coyne?” he asked.

I rolled up my pantleg. The pellet was actually visible, a little black dot just under the skin. A tiny droplet of blood had oozed out, and the area had reddened.

“Lemme take care of that,” said Hood. He pulled a folding knife from his pocket, opened it up, wiped the blade on his jeans, and used its tip to pry out the pellet. He held it in the palm of his hand. It was about the size of a pin-head. “See?” he said. “Number nine birdshot. It’s what I keep in that old gun for scarin’ off the kids when they come around drunk, throwin’ beer cans on my lawn, yellin’ names at me.”

Dickman took a sip of his iced tea, then put his glass on the step. “Arnold,” he said, “I’m afraid we’ve got a problem. I’m hoping you can clear some things up for us.”

Hood shrugged. He was holding his glass in both hands and looking at Dickman over its rim. “I figure this has somethin’ to do with Miz Gillespie.” He glanced quickly at me, then back at the sheriff. “I told Mr. Coyne here everything.”

“You didn’t tell him about the Klan, Arnold.”

“That ain’t—” He stopped himself, took a sip of tea, then shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Dickman pushed his face close to Hood’s. “Don’t fuck with me, Arnold. You fuck with me, I’m gonna cuff you and take you in for shooting at us. I’m gonna call it attempted murder, and Mr. Coyne here is a damned honorable witness to it, with a wound in his leg to prove it. I should remind you that unless you’ve got a couple hundred thousand dollars laying around so’s you can hire yourself a real lawyer, you’re gonna end up with young Johnny Boynton for your PD, and that boy hasn’t won a case in three years. That what you want, Arnold?”

“You fuckin’ hit me, man,” he mumbled. “I can bring charges.”

“I don’t remember hitting you,” said Dickman. “Do you remember anything like that, Mr. Coyne?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t see anything.”

Hood frowned at me for a minute, then shook his head. “Yeah, okay. I joined up.”

“The Klan, you mean,” said Dickman.

Hood shrugged. “But I changed my mind, so I quit.”

“Why’d you join?” said Dickman.

He shrugged. “You know.”

“No. Tell me.”

Hood glanced at me, then looked out toward the woods. “Niggers,” he mumbled.

“I didn’t hear you,” said Dickman.

Hood turned to him. “Niggers, for Christ’s sake. Why would anybody join the Klan?”

“That,” said Dickman, “is a question I’ve often asked myself. Never could come up with a good answer. So tell me. Who else around here belongs?”

Hood shook his head. “I don’t know nothin’ about it. I told you, I quit.”

I touched Dickman’s arm, and he glanced at me and gave me a little nod. “Mr. Hood,” I said, “when we talked the other day, you told me that Charlotte Gillespie’s color didn’t bother you.”

“I told you,” he said, “that I didn’t know what color she was when I rented my cabin to her. I told you we did the deal over the phone and she mailed me a check.”

“Actually,” I said, “you told me it didn’t matter to you whether she was green or purple—I believe those were the colors you mentioned—as long as you got your check.”

Hood shrugged. “Maybe I said that.”

“Now you’re saying it did matter?”

He shrugged and looked down into his glass.

“So when you saw her and realized she was—”

He looked up at me. “A nigger?”

“When you realized that,” I said, “how did you feel?”

“Stupid,” he said.

“Angry?”

He shrugged. “I guess I felt like I’d been tricked.”

“She made you look like a fool.”

He nodded. “Maybe.”

“She should have mentioned it to you.”

He nodded again.

“That she was black.”

“That she was a nigger.”

“So when you saw her…”

“I didn’t do nothin’,” he said. He turned to Dickman. “I ain’t done nothin’, Sheriff. So, okay, I went to a couple meetings and they give me a hood. Big laugh, right? Ol’ Hoodie’s got his own hood? But I ain’t broken any laws. First Amendment says I can join whatever I want to join, and then I can quit if I want. And that’s just what I done.”

“And you want us to believe that you never laid eyes on Charlotte Gillespie until after she moved into your cabin?” I said.

“I guess you’ll believe what you want to believe, Mr. Coyne. But that’s the way it was. When I seen her on the road, seen that she was a—a colored lady, I said to myself that she’d be outa there in six months, and meantime, I didn’t need to have nothing to do with her. I was waitin’ for her to complain about that old water pump, which don’t work right, or the propane hot water heater, which ain’t too good either, or the fact that there’s no place to plug in the TV, or maybe the mice or the porcupines. Then I’d tell her she could shove off if she wanted to. But she never complained.”

“So you tried to scare her away,” said Dickman.

“What, them swastikas?” Hood shook his head. “I didn’t do that.”

“You didn’t.”