The German (11 page)

He stopped at a tent to share a glass of tea with Doc Randolph, and the doctor asked him how he was feeling, though both of them already knew the answer, and Tom expressed his frustration, but the doctor only added to it with a glare of superiority cast through a fog of pipe smoke. Rex Burns joined them and the three men exchanged ideas, all of which they had exchanged before and the futile redundancy of the exercise fueled Tom’s aggravation, because he knew that the crime would remain unsolved unless the killer walked right up to them and confessed, but of course he couldn’t say that to anyone except Estella – and only because she could never translate the admission of his failure.

Finally, Tom excused himself and returned to the sun-baked fairgrounds. He walked from tent to tent, hoping to see every face in the city. He thought on the information Doc Randolph had given him about Albert Fish and imagined that such sickness must surely cover a face like warts or boils, and if he looked hard enough, the blemishes of malevolence would show themselves. He strolled to the bandstand and crossed the grounds to the German tents and peeked inside each to find families and young couples and plump, pretty women attempting celebration as the shadow of the Ashton boy’s murder hung over them all. They regarded him sheepishly, then looked away like bashful children. In one tent, Tom saw a man sitting alone at a back table. The man wore deep scars like a line from cheekbone to cheekbone, and Tom felt a tickle of unease under the man’s gaze so he turned away.

He checked the next tent and the next, and then wandered back across the dusty field, through small groups of playing children and the parents who hovered at the edges of the games, speaking quietly and keeping close eyes on their boys and girls.

He’d shaken a hundred hands before the celebration began to break up. The forced smile had brought an ache to his face, and the greasy food and acidic drinks were working to tear a hole in his stomach. By five o’clock only a handful of people remained. The vendors packed away their supplies and disassembled their tents.

With no fireworks to look forward to, Tom imagined fewer families would gather by the lakeside, swapping flasks and stories as the moon rose over Barnard. But single men would still gather at Mitch’s Roadhouse, the Longhorn Tavern, or the Ranger’s Lodge for beers and whiskey. The German men would gather at Mueller Beer Hall to the east.

A cold beer sounded good to Tom, and maybe a few shots of whiskey as well. He hadn’t had so much as a sip since the morning they’d found the boy in Blevins’s woods, but today the call of intoxication was just too loud.

So he left the fairgrounds and drove the Packard back into town. He parked in front of his office. Gil limped across the room, carrying a short stack of papers. Rex had beaten Tom back to the station and sat in a chair, reading over a ledger and shaking his head. Don Nialls would be at home with his family; he’d become obsessive over their protection in the last few days, and Tom didn’t blame him in the least. Dick and Walter wouldn’t be in for another hour to monitor things on the night shift. Tom had given their dispatcher, Muriel Iverson, the day off so she could attend the Independence Day celebration with her family. Six officers were out on general patrol, so that left Rex and Gil.

The three men exchanged exhausted greetings and Tom nodded at the ledger in Rex’s hands.

“Anything useful come in today?”

“Not really. Same old horseshit. Mrs. Reeves over to Fredericks Street thought she saw someone prowling around her neighbor’s yard last night. Couldn’t describe the guy, except to say he wore a long gray duster and a gray Stetson.”

“A bunch of donkeys,” Tom said. He shook his head and crossed to his office. At the door he paused and said, “Once Dick and Walter get in here, I’m buying a round at the Longhorn for those law enforcement officers interested in joining me.”

The phone rang off and on for twenty minutes, but Tom let his deputies take the calls while he rested his head on his arms. Sleepless nights and a day in the sun had sapped his energy and despite the phone’s constant interruptions Tom fell into a deep sleep.

It felt as if he’d just dozed off when a strong hand shook him awake. Rex was saying his name urgently, and Tom shot upright. He rubbed the fog from his eyes and was almost startled to find himself at the office rather than at home.

“Tom,” Rex said for the third time. “You need to pick up the phone.”

“What’s going on?”

Instead of replying, Rex lifted the phone from its cradle and handed it to the still-disoriented sheriff. Tom put the device against his ear and then quickly pulled it away.

Two people were screaming: one was a man insisting Tom come at once; and the other was a woman who made no requests but rather shrieked incoherently like two saws trying to cut each other down. Tom eased the phone back to his ear.

The phone began to shake in Tom’s hand, so he pressed it tightly to his head to keep the tremors from showing and to keep the plastic cup from rattling against his ear. “At the lodge?” Tom asked, because he could think of nothing else to say.

“Hurry,” Mort insisted. The woman screamed again to punctuate the demand.

Tom slammed the phone down and leapt to his feet. “Rex, get the evidence kit.” Then he shouted into the station, “Gilbert, you find Doc Randolph and have him meet us at the Ranger’s Lodge as soon you can get him there.”

He ran around the side of his desk, through the station and into the street. The Ranger’s Lodge was a minute’s run from the sheriff’s office, and he poured on all of his steam in an attempt to cut that time in half.

~ ~ ~

Thirty years ago, Theodore Bixby, then mayor of Barnard, had visited his sister in Boston. At the invitation of her husband, Bixby had joined his brother-in-law at a men’s club near the harbor. There he found white-haired men in crisp suits lounging in wingback chairs, smoking cigars and pipes, while colored men brought them cocktails on silver trays. Bixby had so enjoyed his time in this establishment that he’d thought to bring the idea with him back to Barnard. Still a man of the West, Bixby had insisted the club speak to the rich culture of Texas, and as a result the lodge owed as much to an old Houston saloon as it did to an Edwardian parlor. A polished walnut bar ran across the back of the room. Three card tables occupied the polished oak flooring on the left of the door and to the right were a number of high-backed leather chairs, which formed a series of conversation areas, leading to a stone hearth against the far wall. Over the years, the membership had remained exclusive and the lodge was frequented mostly by the male heirs of those few men who’d chipped in to have the club built. Mort Grant was not one of those heirs, but his father had managed the Ranger’s Lodge for twenty-five years before a heart attack had taken him home to Jesus. His son, who’d apprenticed under his father for eighteen of those years, had assumed the mantle.

Now Mort Grant stood in front of the lodge in his white shirt and black vest. Tom spotted him the moment he took the corner.

He wanted to believe that Mort had made a mistake. He ran with all of his might, but it was an eagerness to refute what the barman had suggested, not confirm it, that drove him.

“This way,” Mort said, waving the sheriff to the open front door.

Tom hopped onto the sidewalk and took two steps under the eaves before stopping in his tracks. The room beyond the threshold was dark and Tom was momentarily shadow blind. He blinked and the shape hanging in the middle of the room began to develop and come into focus.

A pudgy young man hung by his neck from a slender rope affixed to one of the ceiling beams. Except for a single black sock, he was naked. The boy wore the same dazed and tense death expression Harold Ashton had worn. His plump tongue stuck from between his lips like a bruised slug. Worse still, Tom knew this boy; he had spoken to his men about him less than an hour ago.

“That’s David Williams,” he muttered. “Jesus, that’s Deke’s boy.”

“Yes sir,” Mort said at his shoulder. “We found him there when we were opening the lodge for the evening.”

Once his initial shock at seeing the hanged body receded to a thudding discomfort at his temples, Tom stepped into the lodge. He took a deep breath and then instantly regretted it. The coiled scents of shit and piss stung his nostrils, and though he felt some gratitude that the stench of rot was not similarly entwined with those of waste, it came as minor consolation. Tom took further solace in noting that David hadn’t been opened up the way Harold had, but again his sense of relief amounted to a drop of dye in a rushing river. He crossed to the body, which hung high, so that David’s privates were at the level of Tom’s face.

Rex arrived with the evidence kit and cursed up a storm upon seeing the dead boy’s body. He set the kit down and stomped in a circle like a thug who’d lost a bet. Mort Grant remained outside. There was no sign of the woman who’d been screaming so frantically in the background of his call.

“Fuck. Fuck,” Rex barked.

“That’s enough,” Tom said. “Let’s get as much information as we can and then get that boy down. I want you to keep that front door closed so we don’t put on a show for the whole town, and tell Mort to stick around for questioning. He lives out back doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, he and Maggie live in an apartment behind the lodge.”

Maggie must have been the source of the screaming, Tom reasoned.

“Okay, have Mort wait for us back there, and make sure he stays away from his phone. We don’t want him telling anyone anything until we’ve had a chance to go through this place. Did Gil get Doc Randolph on the phone?”

“Didn’t stick around to find out,” Rex said.

“Fair enough. You go on and get Mort settled.”

Rex didn’t move from his place by the door. He dropped his head and spoke toward the floor. “You think it’s the same guy that killed Harold?”

“Don’t know,” Tom replied. He hoped to God not.

~ ~ ~

Tom turned on the overhead lights, bathing the room and the corpse in illumination. He checked the beam above and noted the looping rope and thick knot that secured the cord. This struck him as important. The killer hadn’t hauled David into the air, using the beam like a pulley, but rather had prepared the noose and somehow managed to get the boy into it – probably at gunpoint. Tom’s gaze swung toward the polished walnut bar, and he began to get an impression of what had happened: the killer had made his gallows and then forced the Williams boy onto the bar. He put the rope around the kid’s neck and then pushed him off. Gravity and hemp had done the rest.

Satisfied with this explanation, Tom moved through the room, searched for evidence. Except for the waste that had escaped from the corpse, the floor and the bar were spotless, a testament to Mort Grant’s dedication to the lodge. The sheriff went to the front door and checked the locks, opening the door only wide enough to get some idea of the jamb’s condition. It appeared undamaged, and the locks were in good working order. He continued to the service entrance off of the lodge’s kitchen and found the jamb splintered and the hinges bent.

Tom stepped into the sweltering alley. The reek of heated garbage accosted him as he slowly walked between the wood-sided buildings, back to front and back again. He continued on past the building’s extension – Mort and Maggie’s apartment – and through the alley between Rainey’s Tack and Saddle and Purcel’s Boots to find himself standing on Santa Anna Avenue. Tom checked both directions, noting the German-owned businesses across the street. There were only two – Gerta’s Café, where Tom had on occasion stopped for lunch, and Weigle’s Butcher Shop next door.

He returned to the lodge and found Doc Randolph standing beside the hanged boy. Gilbert, who looked about as sick as any man could, stood by the door with a pad and pencil in his hand. Doc Randolph was dictating his observations.

“Both bowel and bladder voided at death,” he said calmly. “Which means the hanging was not post mortem – this is further confirmed by the discoloration of the victim’s face and the swelling of his tongue. No secondary abrasions about the throat in partner with no signs of restraint at the wrists seem to indicate the victim did not struggle. This could be attributed to a broken neck, or to other factors that may have left the victim incapacitated. Further, this could indicate the victim had no will to struggle.” The doctor turned toward Tom and said, “This may be nothing more than a suicide.”

The possibility had not occurred to Tom. He took the news as encouraging and then struggled with his sense of relief.

“He came in through the back,” Tom said, checking on Gil to make sure the deputy wrote that bit down. “The door is jimmied.”

“Why did you think this was connected to the Ashton boy?” Doc Randolph asked, still circling the body, peering upward at the boy’s head.