Murder in the Choir (The Jazz Phillips Mystery Series) (17 page)

“Yeah,” I told him. “DiRado started a serial number trace last night. So it’s in the system.”

Kruger took out his notebook. “Well, just for luck, let me check it against my notes. The way things seem to be going....” He left the thought unfinished and I watched as he took out his notebook and carefully double checked it. “That’s the number I have, too,” he said, looking very troubled.

We looked around a bit more and were headed back to join the others when Kruger’s phone chirped. He answered, then handed it to me. It was the sheriff calling back. “Go on in,” he told me. “Cut the chain. We have the warrant. I’ll have it there in thirty minutes.”

“That was fast. Even for Arkansas.”

Sheriff Tanner laughed. “I got lucky. I ran into his honor right after I talked to you, and he was in a good mood. The Razorbacks are in first place, and his daughter was elected homecoming queen.”

“Let’s hear it for the coach,” I said. “You don’t want us to wait until the warrant is here?”

“No, I have a bad feeling about this. That lock and chain doesn’t sound like Luther Adams to me.” I had the impression he wanted to say more but didn’t.

I hung up and asked Kruger if he had a chain cutter in his car. He didn’t, nor did Robert’s dad, but when we asked Albert Jones who might have one, one of the men helping search told us he did. When he met us with it at Luther’s shack, it turned out to be an industrial bolt cutter, so old and rusty it took two men and some oil to get it to work. Even then, it was designed for cutting steel bars and was almost too big for the chain on the door. The harder they tried to get it to cut the worse things got, and by the time we got the chain cut, a Cub Scout could have sawed through it with a nail file.

When we opened the door, Kruger and I slipped on latex gloves. I asked the men gathered outside to wait there while we went in to look. By then most of the men in town had joined the search and were standing around watching. I asked the pastor to keep everyone out until we were done.

We looked around for a few minutes, but I could not see anything different from the night before. There was no blood and no signs of a struggle, but I did see a shelf full of pulp westerns I had not noticed by the bed. They were old and worn with use, stained from many readings. Yet, what surprised me even more was a worn hardback copy of Hamlet standing by them. The name written in the front was not Luther Adam’s name, so either he, or someone else, had picked this up at a garage sale or from a used book store. I wondered whose fingers had marked the edge of the pages with a dark stain.

We checked the books, but there was nothing there. People sometimes use books to hide things, but there was no money and no papers. The exception was the Bible by the bed which had Adams’ name written in the front and contained a black and white snapshot of a young man. I went to the door and showed the photo to Albert Jones. He told me it was Luther Goodman and looked like it was taken about a year before he was shot. When he asked me where I found it, I told him, and he nodded and turned away.

Kruger and I looked around some more, but we didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Luther Adams didn’t have many earthly possessions, so it didn’t take us long. When we were done I asked the pastor to come in and see if he saw anything unusual or out of place. He looked around quickly and told us that was the way Luther kept it. He looked around again, then mentioned something I had noticed, too. The commando knife Luther prized so much was gone.

“Would Luther have taken it with him?” I asked.

Jones shook his head. “I guess he might have, but I can’t think why. He has a good locking blade knife he carries in his pocket. Mostly he uses the other one around the house like a butcher knife.”

I wondered what the makers of the commando knife would think of that for an endorsement. I doubted they would have been amused by their fine weapon being used in the kitchen. Cuts throats and dices potatoes well. “Luther seems to be quite a reader,” I said. “Do you have any idea where this came from?” I held up the copy of Hamlet.

Albert Jones smiled. “Yes, I gave it to him. He asked to borrow it so many times I finally just gave it to him. Next to his Bible, it was his favorite book.” I must have looked surprised because he added, “Luther is a well read man, Jazz. He is not formally educated, but he is much wider read than I am.” He pointed to the pulp westerns. “Those are like favorite television shows to him. He reads them to fall asleep.”

“That surprises me,” Kruger said. “What else can you tell us about him, Reverend?”

“Well, he can fix just about anything. That’s the way he earns the little money he needs to live—by fixing things. All he has to do is see someone else do something once and he has it down.”

“You mean like appliances and cars?” Kruger asked.

“Yes, he fixes that kind of thing. Where he is really good, though, is with farm machinery. He could work for just about any implement dealer around here when he wanted. All you have to do is show him a piece of machinery, and he can tell you exactly what it came from, not only the kind of machine, but the maker and model.”

“So he was able to work regularly?” I asked.

“Well, yes and no both,” Albert Jones told us. “He’s able to do the work, and he’s a hard worker when he can work, but he has these spells from time to time. When he does, it’s about all he can do to get out of bed and cook for himself. Sometimes he’ll be like that for a week and sometimes longer. So you can’t always count on him.”

“These spells are related to the Luther Goodman shooting?” I asked.

“To that and some other things that have happened over the years. But, yes, the spells began with that. This time he’s been in one ever since Wilbur was killed two weeks ago.” He looked at Kruger. “That’s why I was so upset when the other agent arrested Luther. I was afraid

it would make him worse.”

Kruger nodded. “I’m sorry I couldn’t head that off.”

“You tried,” Wilbur Jones told him. “I know you had to support him, but you did try, and I appreciate it.”

“Thank, you,” Kruger replied. He as clearly uncomfortable with the way the conversation was moving. “You mentioned some other things that happened to make Luther the way he is. What other things were you talking about?”

“The usual things that happened in Arkansas forty years ago,” the pastor told him. “Racial incidents. There was a lot of trouble around here over all the things that were going on in Little Rock. Luther was the target of a couple of vicious attacks. He got beaten pretty badly.”

“You don’t think he’s having a flashback, do you?” I asked. “That might account for his being gone like this. Post traumatic stress.”

Pastor Jones thought this over a moment before answering. “I am not sure I can make an intelligent response to that. I suppose it is possible but I don’t know enough about such things to dare to guess. I did see a lot of it after Vietnam and also with some of the folks here. What I have read fits Luther pretty well. Yet, I’m not comfortable saying more than that. I’m not a doctor.”

There was the sound of someone arriving outside the shack and a moment later one of Tanner’s deputies stuck his head in the door. “I have the warrant for you, Dr. Phillips,” he said, handing me a folded legal document.

“What warrant?” Wilbur Jones asked. His voice was like ice.

“We didn’t know what we were going to find here, Pastor,” I told him, folding the warrant again and tucking it in my hip pocket. “Luther had a rifle here last night that might turn out to be the murder weapon. He had some ammunition, too. So I asked the sheriff for a warrant in case we needed one.”

Jones was angry. “You mean that rusty old rifle he had leaning up next to the door? That’s ridiculous. The whole thing’s rusted shut. Luther didn’t shoot Wilbur. We straightened that all out last night.”

“Then Luther must have fixed it,” I told him. “It was working fine when I showed it to Kruger this morning. There were some shells missing out of the box of ammunition Luther had, too.”

“Pastor, we are not looking for evidence against Luther,” Kruger asserted. “The only reason we searched this place was because we thought something might have happened to him. We didn’t call for the warrant until we were sure he was not around here somewhere.”

Albert Jones wasn’t mollified and I couldn’t blame him. I probably wouldn’t have been as calm as he was in his position. I made a decision to bend the rules. We needed his cooperation. “Did Luther ever tell you where he found the rifle and the knife?” I asked him. He shook his head. “He told me he found it in the old blacksmith shop,” I said. “That’s where we think the killer shot from to kill Wilbur Jones. It was that caliber rifle.”

Suddenly the logic of what I was saying got through Jones’ anger. I could see the next question forming. “So why didn’t you arrest Luther last night?”

“I don’t think he’s the shooter,” I replied. “I didn’t last night and I don’t today. DiRado and Kruger agree.” Kruger nodded. “He didn’t act guilty when I talked to him about the gun, so I let it rest. I thought he had been through more than enough yesterday. I wish now I had taken him in.”

Albert Jones nodded. Then the implication hit full force. His face lost all its color. “So you think ... you think the killer....” He choked.

Kruger nodded. “We’re not sure. Hopefully, Luther will come wandering in on his own, and we’ll be wrong. Yet, it’s possible the killer came after Luther. He may think Luther saw something and kidnapped him.”

Albert Jones looked around wildly. “There’s no blood!” he protested.

“That’s a good sign,” Kruger assured him. “There isn’t sign of a struggle, either, which is good, too. On the other hand, from what you told us, it looked like someone else locked up here.”

“I’m almost positive of that,” Jones whispered. All the fire had gone out of him now. He turned away, his shoulders quaking.

Kruger and I waited until he turned back to us. When he did, it looked like he had aged years in those few moments. “So what do we do now?” he asked.

I looked at Kruger. When it comes to kidnapping, the FBI has the experts and the experience. “First, we organize a wider search around here,” Kruger said. “We also put out an all points bulletin for Luther as missing and a possible kidnapping victim. Then we wait. While we do, Jazz and I will continue work on the homicide. That’s all we can do.”

“What can I do?” Albert Jones wanted to know. “I can’t just sit here. I need to do something.”

“You can help the search by calling around to see if anyone you know has seen him,” Kruger said. “You can also write down a list of places he might have gone on his own, and check those out. Is there anyone he might have gone to visit. Any friends or relatives?”

“Not really,” Jones told us. “The only people left he was close to from the old days was me and Luther Jones. Most everyone knows him as Slide.”

“We’ll talk to Slide,” I said, trying to keep my voice casual. “We needed to see him about something else, anyway.”

“He might not be at home yet,” the pastor said. “You might want to call first. After the funeral, he told me he was going to spend a couple of weeks with a friend of his in Texarkana.”

“You don’t happen to have the name and number of the friend, do you?”

Jones shook his head. “The fellow’s name is Early. At least, that’s what he’s called. I can check with my wife. She might know.” He thought for a moment and added, “I bet the police down there would know. Early was a friend of Slide’s from his bootlegging days.”

I borrowed Kruger’s phone again and made the call while Kruger and the pastor went to talk to Emma Jones. I was in luck. One of the people I knew from way back when was still on the police force on the Texas side—Denny Slade—and he knew exactly who I was talking about. It turned out he knew Slide Jones, too. Early Andrews was one of those people police keep an eye on, and his connection with Slide was well known. So when Slide turned up and the police caught wind of it, they were interested. Even though both men were believed to have retired from bootlegging and drug running, the department on the Arkansas side of Texarkana kept them under casual surveillance.

When I told him Slide was at the top of our suspect list, Denny offered to pick him up. I explained why we didn’t want to do that just yet and asked if he knew of another, older man with Jones. I explained what was happening with Luther Adams, and Denny promised to call me back right away and let me know if Slide was still in Texarkana.

Kruger was happy with the news when he got back to his car. While she didn’t know his last name, Emma Jones did tell him that Luther knew the man through Slide in the old days. On one occasion, Luther had been one of Slide’s drivers making the liquor run into Texas from Louisiana.