Cutter's Run (23 page)

“She’s doing pretty well,” I said.

“Yeah, well, she might not be doing so well when I get done with her. Gimme a smoke.”

I gave my pack to him. He fumbled out a cigarette and then I held my lighter for him. He lit up, blew out a long plume of smoke, and peered at me through narrowed eyes. “See,” he said, “I’m the one who’s got to tell Susannah that it looks like her father was murdered.”

D
ICKMAN SAT HEAVILY ON
the front steps, and I sat beside him. “The EMTs screwed up big-time,” he said. “Noah was dead when they got here. They should’ve left him there, called my office or the state police. Unattended death. Standard procedure.” He took a drag off his cigarette, then waved his hand at the smoke. “Whatever. It was dark, middle of the night. Old guy who keeled over.” He shrugged. “Still, inexcusable. Anyway, when they got him to the hospital, they needed a doctor to pronounce him dead. Doc Blanchard was there, and when he took a look at Noah he called me, woke me up—it was about four
A.M
.—told me I better haul my ass on over there. Taciturn old coot wouldn’t tell me anything more on the telephone. When I got there, he took me to where they had Noah’s body and peeled back the sheet. It wasn’t that apparent until Blanchard pointed it out to me.” The sheriff dropped his half-smoked cigarette on the ground and ground it under his heel. “There were red marks on his throat.”

I frowned. “You telling me he was strangled?”

He nodded. “We need an autopsy to make it official, of course. But I can’t wait around. I’ve got to talk to Susannah.”

“That’ll be hard for her to hear,” I said.

Dickman sighed. “No harder for her than for me,” he said. “I’m the guy who’s got to ask her the questions.”

“If he was strangled,” I said, “wouldn’t Susannah have noticed? I mean, wouldn’t his face be purple or his eyes and tongue bulging out or something?”

Dickman shook his head. “Doc Blanchard thinks he actually died of a heart attack or stroke.”

“Induced by being strangled,” I said.

“Something like that.” He stood up. “It’s still murder. I gotta talk to her.”

“Want me to sit in on it?”

“Play lawyer for her, you mean?”

I shrugged. Noah had asked me to help Susannah with legal matters after he died. “Play friend for her,” I said.

“How’s about you play deputy sheriff for me,” said Dickman. “Pay attention and keep your mouth shut.”

We walked around to the back of the house. Alex and Susannah were sitting at the table. They turned to watch us as we approached. Dickman went up onto the deck, nodded and smiled at Alex, then turned to Susannah, took off his hat, and said, “I’m very sorry about your father, Susannah.”

He held out his hand, and she took it. “You came to extend your sympathies?” she said. “That’s very nice.”

“Noah could be an irascible old goat. Opinionated, hard-headed, and I don’t think I ever knew a man tighter with a dollar.” Dickman smiled. “I liked him a lot.” He pulled out a chair, sat at the table, and looked at Alex. “Any more coffee?”

“Sure. I’ll get it.” She glanced at me, then picked up the empty carafe and went into the kitchen.

I sat beside Susannah. Dickman leaned forward. “Susannah,” he said, “I’ve known your father for many years.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “You’d drop by on some pretext or other and Daddy would give you a bag of apples.”

“I always tried to pay for them. He’d never let me. I kept telling him I couldn’t accept handouts. Against my ethics. He told me not to be stupid.” Dickman smiled. “I ate a lot of apples while I was driving around York County.” He reached across the table and put his hand over Susannah’s. “Noah was murdered,” he said quietly.

Her eyes widened. “What did you say?”

“Somebody killed him.”

She hugged herself. Her eyes kept shifting between Dickman and me as if she was waiting for one of us to admit it was a joke. Then she shook her head. “But I saw him,” she said. “There was no …”

“He was strangled,” said Dickman. “There were marks on his throat.”

“I didn’t see any marks.”

He nodded. He was gazing kindly at her. Studying her, it seemed to me.

Susannah turned to me, then shifted her gaze to the sheriff. “Who…?”

“We don’t know,” he said.

“It was the middle of the night,” she said. “I was the only one here. I would’ve heard something.”

“You didn’t? Voices? A car door slamming?”

She shook her head. “No. Nothing. My bedroom’s in the front of the house. I heard him get up and go out back, like he does every night. I—I didn’t hear him come back in, so I went down there. And—I found him.”

“Tell me what happened,” he said.

She told Dickman exactly what she had told Alex and me. In the middle of her recitation, Alex came out with coffee. She put the carafe on the table and went back inside.

When Susannah finished her story, Dickman said, “So who would want to kill your father?”

Susannah shook her head. “Nobody. That’s crazy. He knew everybody in York County. Not everybody loved him, I know. But my father had no enemies. Certainly not the kind who’d want to kill him.” She narrowed her eyes at Dickman for a moment, then turned and looked at me. “He thinks I did it,” she said.

“Now, Susannah,” he said softly. “I think no such thing. Somebody did kill him, and since we have no suspects, everybody is a suspect, and the more information we can get, the easier it will be to eliminate some of them.”

“Right,” she said. “And did anything I told you eliminate me from your list?”

He shook his head. “I guess not. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe you. I want you to give more thought to who his enemies were and who might stand to gain from his being dead.”

“Besides me,” she said.

Dickman lifted his mug and took a sip. “Anything you can think of, you tell me.”

She shrugged. “What happens next?”

“The state boys’ll be along soon,” he said. “I’m afraid this crime scene’s pretty messed up, but they’ll do their forensics, maybe get lucky and find a bootprint or cigarette butt that doesn’t match any of ours. They’ll want to question you all over again. They’ll talk to the neighbors, folks in town. People Noah did business with, who owed him money, who he owed money to, anything like that.” He took another sip of coffee, then put down his mug, picked up his hat from the table, and stood. He looked from Susannah to me. “Anybody you talk to, just leave it that he died. It’s not much, but right now me fact that only us and the one who did it know he was strangled gives us a little edge.” He hooked his sunglasses over his ears. “I am sorry, Susannah. Sorry about Noah, and sorry to have to ask you these questions. But you want to know something?”

Susannah was looking up at him without expression. “What?” she said softly.

“Somebody
did
kill him,” said Dickman. “And I’m going to figure out who.” He turned to me. “Want to walk me back to my vehicle, Deputy?”

I got up and followed him. When we got to his truck, he leaned against the fender and squinted at me. “Did she talk to you about it before I got here?”

I nodded. “She told it the same way to you as she did to me.”

“No contradictions?”

“None.”

“Like she’d rehearsed it?” he said.

“No. Like it was the truth.”

He gave his head a little shake. “She
is
the most logical one, Brady.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “She took care of him. I can tell you, she loved him. She’s heartbroken.”

He shrugged and held up his left hand with three fingers extended. “Means,” he said, bending down his left forefinger with his other one. “She’s a strong girl, he was a weak, spindly old man. It’d be simple enough for her to do it.” He folded down another finger. “Opportunity. She was there. As far as we know, the only one who was. And—” he bent down the third finger—“motive. Well, who knows? Insurance? His property? An argument? A family thing?” He shrugged. “Usually, of course, it’s money. He was a widower, she’s an only child.”

I shook my head. “Christ, Sheriff.”

He gazed off into the distance. “It’s hard to imagine that Susannah did this,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean she’s not a good suspect.” Then he narrowed his eyes at me and shook his head. “Hell, Brady. You’re a lawyer. You know how it goes. Anyway, we got something to ponder, you and I.”

“I know,” I said. “We’ve got to ponder whether there’s a connection between Noah’s murder and Charlotte Gillespie’s disappearance.”

He grinned. “Wish to hell my regular deputies were as quick as you. Look. We got swastikas and we got a member of the KKK who shoots at people with his shotgun and we got a missing woman and a poisoned dog, and now we got a murdered old man, and any one of them is a once-in-a-decade sort of thing for a quiet little town like Garrison. I’m not much for coincidence, Brady. I believe in reasons and explanations and connections.”

“We’ve also got two threatening phone calls,” I said.

He looked at me. “Two?”

I nodded. “Alex got another one last night while I was away. He said I should turn in my badge.”

“Well, I’m damn sorry about the phone calls. But on the other hand, it sounds like we’re getting to somebody.”

“Arnold Hood?” I said.

He shrugged. “Could be. Somebody’s spooked. It sure seems to confirm that something did happen to Ms. Gillespie, all right.”

“And now Noah.”

Dickman nodded. “Okay, Deputy, give me a scenario.”

I gazed up at the sky. “Noah and Charlotte?” I looked at him and smiled. “Maybe…?”

He shrugged. “He was a widower. Lived alone, except when his daughter visited. Charlotte was living alone, too, and right next door, practically. A pair of lonely people. She was good-looking, you said. He was—well, maybe a woman would’ve found Noah attractive. Hardly the world’s most bizarre scenario. Then what?”

“Somebody found out about it,” I said. “And didn’t like it. Killed them both.”

He arched his eyebrows.

“Like Susannah, you’re thinking,” I said.

“It’s possible.”

“Charlotte was divorced,” I said. “There’s an ex-husband somewhere. Alex thinks Charlotte had been abused. There’s an ex-boyfriend, too. Maybe more than one.”

Dickman sighed. “See? The world is full of suspects.”

“Maybe Noah intended to marry Charlotte, make her his heir, deprive Susannah of her rightful patrimony…” I shook my head. “That’s dumb. Susannah didn’t do this.”

Dickman was smiling at me. “Go ahead,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “maybe somebody didn’t like what was going on between them, and killed them both.”

“Someone who didn’t approve of a white man and a black woman.”

“Sure,” I said. “Or maybe Noah…”

Dickman nodded. “Maybe Noah killed Charlotte.”

“But why?”

He shrugged. “Who knows?”

“And then somebody else, avenging her death, went after Noah.” I shook my head. “Jesus, Sheriff. It must be terrible to have to think this way for a living.”

“You’re the one doing the thinking here,” he said. “And you’re doing a damn good job of it, for a city lawyer. But listen. If it’s not Susannah, whoever it was must’ve known that Noah went out on the deck to take a piss in the middle of the night. He—or she—was waiting for him. He was old and weak. He’d be easy to kill.”

“I’ve got the feeling that everybody in Garrison knows everything about everybody else,” I said.

Dickman smiled. “True enough.”

“Why didn’t you ask Susannah about Noah and Charlotte?” I said.

He shook his head. “That seemed… indelicate, under the circumstances. I gave her the chance to volunteer Charlotte’s name, and she didn’t.” He put his hat on, turned, and climbed into his car: He squinted up at me through the open window. “Now you listen to me, Deputy Coyne.”

“What?”

“Noah Hollingsworth’s murder is not your case. You understand?”

“Even if it’s connected to Charlotte’s disappearance, and those phone calls we’re getting?”

He nodded. “Absolutely. Remember, we still don’t know she’s disappeared. There’s no evidence whatsoever that she’s the victim of anything except somebody spray-painting a vile symbol on her outhouse door. Your case is about swastikas, and that’s all it’s about. This one here’s about murder.”

“What if we find out Charlotte was murdered?”

“If we learn she was, then that won’t be your case, either. Don’t forget. I am the sheriff around here, and you are my deputy. I give the orders, and I order you to keep your nose out of murder cases.” He slid on his sunglasses and adjusted them around his ears. “And stay away from Arnold Hood.”

“What if I quit?”

“You can’t quit unless I say you can. I’m the boss.”

I smiled. “What if I don’t tell you what’s on the floppy disk Ellen Sanderson gave me last night? What if I decide not to tell you who got Charlotte fired because she refused to fudge some numbers, cover up something for them?”

Dickman reached out through his car window and grabbed my wrist. “You better tell me, pal. Right now.”

“Right now, I don’t know,” I said. “Want me to try to find out?”

“Bet your ass I do.”

“Then,” I said, “you’d better be nice to me.”

A
FTER SHERIFF DICKMAN DROVE
away, I went around to the back of the house. Through the glass doors I could see Alex and Susannah in the kitchen cleaning up the breakfast mess. Mostly it was my mess. I’m a sloppy and inefficient cook. I use more utensils than I need to, I tend to spill things, and I hate to clean up.

Alex was at the sink rinsing dishes and loading them into the dishwasher. Susannah was gathering them from the table and counters and piling them beside her. They worked slowly with frequent pauses, and I could see that they were talking about serious matters.

I sat on the steps and lit a cigarette, and a few minutes later Alex came out and sat beside me. “I’m going to stay with Susannah for a while,” she said.

I shook my head. “I don’t—”

“Not you,” she said quickly. “I think it would be best if it was just me. She’s got a lot on her mind. I think it would be easier for her…”

“Sure,” I said. “A girl thing.”