The Blight Way (25 page)

“Thank you. By the way, I was looking at those watercolors on the courthouse walls again. They're very good. I had no idea you were such a good painter.”

“Thanks. Many of the Blight folks who see the paintings still don't think I'm a painter at all.”

“Well, I am impressed.”

“There's one,” said Tully. “By the way, I guess you made it into town all right with the Wrangler.”

“Yes, and I loved it. I'll drive it back tonight with my stuff, if that's okay. I can leave my car in the city garage.”

Pap heaved a long sigh as he stared at some cows out the window.

“I've got to go,” Tully said. “Pap is heaving sighs.”

“Yes, I know you're busy. I just wanted to thank you, Bo. Take care.”

“You bet.”

Tully punched the Off button on the cell phone. Pap said, “That's a fine thing. You barely know the woman and already you got her moving in with you. I've made that mistake a few times myself. Means nothing but trouble. Fun, though.”

“That's you, of course. This situation is totally proper. She's moving into the guest room for one night. I was trying to remember if I left anything on the floor in my bedroom, like pants and underwear and dirty plates, in case she can't resist looking in there.”

“I remember once a lady I was staying with got up early to go to work,” Pap said. “I peeked out from under the covers, pretending I was still asleep. My pants were out in the middle of the floor, and when she walked by she kicked them clear over against the wall!”

“There's nothing lower than kicking a man's pants,” Tully said.

“That's the way I felt about it. I got up and left and never spoke to her again.”

“That probably taught her a good lesson.”

Tully turned into the long driveway that led up to the Littlefield house. He took the 9 mm Glock pistol out of the holster and laid it on the seat. Pap pulled the shotgun out of its clip on the dashboard.

“I like a shotgun,” he said.

“Slugs, ought bucks, alternated,” Tully said.

“Serious stuff. You go in the brush after wounded grizzlies with this?”

“Could,” Tully said. “Haven't yet, though.”

He pulled up in front of the house. No one stirred from inside it or from any of the other buildings. He drove the mile down the rutted road to the hotel and stopped. No sign of anyone there.

“By the way,” Pap said, “what are we looking for?”

“Don't know. But whoever I saw that night was here for some reason.”

“What makes you think the guy was tied into the killings on the Last Hope Road?”

“Would you stop asking questions!”

“Just curious,” Pap said.

They got out of the Explorer and went through the front door of the hotel. Tully carried the Glock down at his side and Pap rested the shotgun on his shoulder, the safety off and his finger resting on the side of the trigger guard.

“Try not to shoot anyone,” Tully whispered.

The old man snorted.

“I don't think what we're looking for will be on the ground floor,” Tully said. “So let's start with the second floor.”

The stairs groaned and creaked with every step they took.

“I don't think we're going to surprise anyone,” Pap said, no longer bothering to whisper.

“I guess not,” Tully said. “I don't recall the stairs making so much noise last time.”

“Maybe that's because we didn't expect somebody to jump out and shoot us.”

When they reached the second floor, Tully pointed
down the hallway. “Pap, you work your way down there. Check every room. I'll take the other way.”

“You got it, Sheriff.”

Tully watched Pap do the first few doors of his hallway. The old man would turn the doorknob, raise the shotgun to firing position and push open the door with the barrel.

Looks like he's done this before, Tully thought, moving off down the other hallway. All the rooms he tried were empty of everything but dust. Then he reached the last room. He tried the doorknob. It was locked. Pap was already moving down the hallway toward him. He motioned for him to hurry up. Pap continued at the same pace.

“What's the hurry?” he said.

“This door is locked,” Tully told him.

“So?”

“Can you pick a lock?”

“I'll give it a try.”

“Be my guest,” Tully said, stepping to one side.

Pap blew the lock away with the shotgun. He pushed the door open with the barrel.

Tully reacted to the shot with a ten-letter obscenity.

“I didn't know you knew that one,” Pap said.

“You're a crazy old man!” Tully said.

“Listen, who's going to care? This thing is going down tonight.”

Three bales of marijuana were stacked against one wall of the room. The bales were sealed with plastic sheets. Assorted tools, some scuba diving valves and regulators were piled in a cardboard box. Several air
tanks were scattered about the floor. Wet suits hung along one wall. A table had been made out of a sheet of plywood and two sawhorses. Along with assorted scuba gear, a scoped .223 Ranch Rifle and a pearl-handled .45 automatic lay on the table.

“Well, there you go,” said Tully.

“Holt's forty-five you think?”

“Don't know for sure, but I'd bet on it.”

“Look at all the scuba gear,” Pap said. “Why would someone stash scuba gear up here?”

“I can't imagine Lem Scragg as a scuba diver. Lake Blight is the only place to scuba dive around here. And there is nothing to find in Lake Blight.”

“Certainly not fish,” Pap said.

“I suppose we could leave,” Tully said, “and no one would know we had discovered this cache of grass, except some fool blew away the lock.”

“If some fool hadn't blown away the lock, we wouldn't have found the marijuana and the guns.”

“I suppose,” Tully said. “One thing it does make pretty clear is that Littlefield is involved in this. Except he's probably already dead.”

“You don't think he's hiding out?”

“Nope. I think the night of the killing he drove in over the mountains and parked up by the Last Hope Mine. He wanted to see how the ambush went down but didn't want anybody to know he had been there. He walked down the road from the mine and hid back in the woods. Holt killed him by chance.”

“So what did the ambushers do with the body?”

“Don't know. If the Scragg boys were involved, they
would have dropped it down a prospect hole back in the mountains. After the ambushers found the body, they probably figured out that Littlefield had parked his vehicle up at the mine. They sent someone up the road to drive the vehicle to Vern's hunting camp. That way his disappearance could always be explained away by saying he got lost while hunting in the mountains. Anyway, that explains the different tracks. Littlefield's were those going down and those going up belonged to whoever drove the truck away. Lurch took casts of both sets of tracks, so we shouldn't have too much trouble matching them up with the feet they belong to.”

“You seem to have this whole thing figured out,” Pap said.

“I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. But my feeling is there's probably not a single adult person in all of Famine who doesn't know more about this mess than we do.”

“Might have to arrest the whole town.”

“Don't think I'm not considering it,” Tully said.

“It's what I'd recommend,” Pap said. “Probably be doing everybody in Famine a favor. You'd be a hero.”

When they got back to the Explorer, Tully called the office on his cell phone.

Daisy answered. “Sheriff's office. How may I help you?”

Tully thought the greeting had a bit of class. He had come up with it himself.

“Hi, Daisy. Put Eliot on, will you?”

“You bet.”

She covered the mouthpiece with her hand, but he
still heard her yell, “Hey, Herb! Bo wants you on Line Two!”

Maybe, he thought, there's still some work to do. Herb came on. “What's up, Bo?”

“How are our two lady captives doing in jail?”

“Cindy Littlefield has been crying her eyes out. Probably her first time in the slammer. The other one, Dana, is tough as nails. I kind of doubt Mrs. Littlefield knows anything, and Dana simply isn't going to talk, at least until you get that mess cleaned up.”

“What I need from you, Herb, is a couple of deputies up here at the Littlefield ranch. They're to arrest anyone that shows up. There's an old hotel building about a mile down a rutted road west of the ranch house. Put two men in that hotel. Tell them I don't want them upstairs at all but to stay on the main floor. Seal off the second floor. Anyone comes into the hotel, I don't care who, put the cuffs on them and keep them there.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes. Get Lurch up to the hotel. Tell him to photograph everything in Room 28, check everything in it for prints, then pack it all up and bring it into the station.”

“Don't we need a warrant?”

“A what?”

“Never mind.”

Chapter 48

Dave closed the House of Fry early that night and sent all the help home. Tully held a meeting there with Dave, Pap, Herb and the three deputies. They sat around a table in back drinking coffee.

“Okay,” Tully said, “here's the plan. First thing I've got to tell you is that we may be outgunned and out-manned. The bad guys may have automatic weapons. We'll have pistols and shotguns. So nobody has to go who doesn't want to. Except me. Any questions so far?”

“What happens to us if we drop out?” Brian Pugh asked.

“Nothing,” Tully said. “Except I throw you down a flight of stairs and break all your bones.”

“Count me in then,” said Pugh. Everyone laughed.

Tully explained that the place they were going into was the old Last Hope Mine, the entrance to which had been dynamited shut forty years before.

“The Last Hope Road is where those three guys were shot, right?” said Ernie Thorpe.

“That's right, three, counting the guy hanging over the Scragg fence. There was probably a fourth victim, too. We could find out about the fourth guy tonight, if we're lucky.”

Chet Mason said, “I've got a question.”

Tully nodded at him.

“Whoever's in the mine, do you think they're expecting us?”

“By now I'm pretty sure they know something is going down soon, but they probably don't think it's tonight. Now here's the plan. There's a new entrance. It's a very narrow tunnel but only about twenty feet long. Dave will go in first, because he's a tracker and an Indian.”

“Wait a minute!” Dave said. “I'm a tracker, all right, but I was lying about being an Indian.”

“In that case, I'll go in first,” Tully said.

He explained that if there was a guard at the new tunnel's entrance, the raid was pretty much over. The first guy in might get killed, but the others should have all the bad guys trapped inside.

“As far as we can tell, there is only the one entrance and exit. You shouldn't have to wait too long for them to come out and surrender.”

“Why don't we just wait for them to come out and surrender?” Ernie Thorpe asked. “Catch them on the way home?”

“Because,” said Tully, “there is always the chance that
somewhere there is another exit we don't know about. The idea is we surprise them and catch them with the goods.”

Chet Mason said, “Let me see if I've got this straight, Bo. You drop down into the main mine tunnel. Aren't they going to see you?”

“They would if that was the main workplace,” Tully said. “But the main workplace should be several hundred yards inside the mine, where it's warm. Water wouldn't be a problem for them, because, at least in the mines I've been in, water is running all over the place. So they hauled in dirt, piped in some daylight from Littlefield's dam and generator and they were in the big time marijuana-growing business. The operation is so good, in fact, that some mob guys from L.A. decided they wanted in on it. Those guys are in the Blight City morgue right now. So you can expect that the folks we're going up against are pretty tough customers.”

Tully asked if there were any more questions. The deputies looked at each other and shrugged.

“How about you, Pap?”

“There's a good chance there will be blood spilled tonight,” Pap said. “Maybe quite a lot of it, maybe some of it ours. You got that contingency taken care of?”

“Yeah, I do,” Tully said. “We go in at midnight sharp. Every ambulance in Blight City will be within ten minutes of the mine by then.”

“How about the berm across the road?”

“I've got that taken care of, too. We'll also have
some backup from the State Police. They just won't be going into the mine, at least not at first.”

Tully looked at his watch. “It's nine thirty. We have a couple of hours before we take off for the mine. You got time to grab a little shuteye, sit back and relax, play cards, whatever.”