The Huckleberry Murders: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (21 page)

Orville, who had followed Tully, said, “Surely you have a search warrant, Bo.”

“Of course I have a search warrant.” He pulled a warrant from his inside jacket pocket and started to hand it to Orville. “Oh, wrong one. This one’s for your body.”

“For my body?”

“Never mind. Here’s the one to search for marijuana.”

Angie walked in the back door, showing her FBI identification. “Looks as if you have everything under control, Bo.”

“I hope,” he said weakly. He introduced her to Orville.

“The FBI!” cried the old man.

“Orville!” Angie cried. She shook her head and said to Tully, “Pugh got the names of the guys in the pickup, Stanley Kruger and Rupert Quince, both from Los Angeles.”

Tully said, “Orville, it’s a long story, and I can’t tell you
the whole thing now. But as soon as we have time, we’ll be able to explain everything to you, right, Angie?”

“I hope so.”

Pugh stepped in behind Angie. “I’m loading up our two murder suspects, Bo. What do you say I swing by the motel and see if Bev can identify Stanley Kruger and Rupert Quince as the guys at Slade’s? That will tie them to Stark and the swamp.”

Angie said, “Those two are mine, Deputy. Take them to jail. I’ll interview them tomorrow.”

Pugh looked at Tully for confirmation.

“Yeah, take them to jail, but let Bev look at them first. Don’t let them see her, though. Right at the moment I’m not sure if we can hold them.”

“Maybe they’ll make a break for it,” Pugh said.

“We’re not that lucky, Brian. Lock them up in separate cells, far apart so they can’t communicate.”

“Jeez, boss, all the cells are already full.”

“Well, stack some of the regulars and put each of these guys in a cell by himself.”

Angie said, “And Sheriff, I don’t want you talking to either of them unless I’m there.”

“Perish the thought, Angie. Since the huckleberry murders were in your domain, why don’t you ride in with Pugh, just to make sure they arrive at the jail safely?”

“Actually, I think it would be a better idea if Dave followed Pugh in. I’ll ride shotgun with him.”

I guess you have to be a tracker, Tully thought. “Fine. Just remember, I want them to arrive at the jail alive. Tell Dave that.”

Tully and Orville walked back into the living room. Ray was sitting on the couch with his head in his hands. He looked up. “Sheriff, I didn’t have anything to do with the killings up on Scotchman.”

“Killings?” Orville said. “What killings?”

Tully said, “Three young guys were murdered up in a huckleberry patch. We think they were used all summer to cultivate a marijuana crop out on islands in the swamp. When their bosses didn’t need them anymore, they executed them.”

“Executed them! Why on earth . . . ”

“I’m not sure, Orville. Maybe only because they didn’t need them anymore. Pap thinks it was because of either money or silence or maybe both. I do have a question for you, Orville.”

“What’s that?”

“How did you get around down in Mexico? You drive, or what?”

“Drive! In Mexico? No way! Even if my eyesight and nerves were that good, I don’t think I could manage it. No, I fly down and take cabs and buses and trains. It’s a lot safer for the Mexicans.”

“So you didn’t need your driver’s license?”

“No, I’ve got my passport. That’s all the identification I need.”

“So your driver’s license is here someplace.”

“Right. I left it in a drawer in my bedroom. Why all the interest in my driver’s license?”

Tully looked over at Ray, who seemed to be shrinking into the cushions of the sofa. “I’ll tell you later, Orville.”

Tully heard a vehicle roar into the backyard and stop. He glanced out a window. Ernie Thorpe got out of a department Explorer and ran in through the back door.

“We got them, boss! The barn in the meadow is chock-full of weed. I left two deputies to guard it with their lives. Dave Perkins checked out the boat and found some marijuana seed there. I had two deputies search the boat before him, and they came up with nothing. Dave is something else. We’ve got them!”

Tully wondered for a moment if Dave’s boat search involved something of the Blight way. Naw.

Dave came in. He was dressed in jeans, a gray suede jacket, and a black turtleneck. He looked terrific. Tully thought maybe that was his secret, high fashion. Dave said, “Bo, we’re about to head in. Angie and I will follow Pugh, just to make sure the bad guys don’t escape. Or try to escape. Pugh is still upset about the huckleberry murders.”

“Yeah, it won’t hurt to keep an extra eye on Pugh.”

Tully turned to Ernie. “Good work, Thorpe! We’re back in business. Round up the van driver and anybody else you find in the neighborhood and have some deputies haul them to jail.”

He walked back into the living room. “Daisy, put your cuffs on Crockett and take him in. You need a backup?”

“What do you think, boss?”

Tully looked at Crockett. “Naw.”

She cuffed Crockett behind his back and herded him out to her patrol car.

Tully went out in the backyard and found Thorpe. “Ernie, I’m leaving you in charge here. You and some of the deputies will have to spend the night. I’m headed home to bed. I’m wiped out.”

“Looks like we got them nailed, boss.”

“For the weed, at least. I’m not sure about the murders. But those are Angie’s problem, come to think of it.”

Dave walked up. “Looks like your case is coming together, Bo.”

“Yeah, we can charge them with possession and intent to sell a couple tons of weed. But mostly I want them for the three murders up on Scotchman.”

“Me too,” said a voice behind him.

Tully turned. Angie was standing there. “I have to tell you, Bo, Dave is a terrific shot but I don’t think he’s an Indian.”

Dave laughed. “And Angie, you don’t look like any FBI agent I ever imagined.”

Tully said, “While you two are chatting, I’m headed off to bed.”

Dave said, “You sure you won’t join Angie and me for a celebratory drink, Bo?”

“Too tired.”

“What celebratory drink is that?” Angie asked.

Dave smiled. “The one you and I are having.”

“And what are we celebrating?”

“Remains to be seen.”

Tully stumbled off toward his Explorer.

TULLY SLEPT UNTIL noon the next day. Still lying in bed, peering up at his paintings, he thought about his next move. For one thing, he would send Lurch out to the island in the swamp to collect the watering cans and any tools he could find that might contain fingerprints. Next, he needed to find the guns used in the killings at the huckleberry patch. He would check with Pugh to see if he found any guns in the rigs at the ranch. Some silencers wouldn’t be bad either. He needed to grill the driver of the moving van, who no doubt was connected to the buyer of the weed. He obviously intended to haul it somewhere. The big white pickup needed to be hauled into the shop and have the front bumper tested for paint matching that on Marge Poulson’s car. His head whirled. He turned over and went back to sleep.

An hour later, he got up, showered and dressed, and drove down to McDonald’s for his Egg McMuffin and coffee but had to settle for a Big Mac. Then he drove over to Etta’s. She beamed at him. “Oh, Bo, I’m so glad you stopped by. You’ve been so busy lately I didn’t know if I’d get to see you before I left.”

He looked around the living room. Several suitcases were scattered about in various stages of being packed.

“You’re leaving?”

“Yes, but I’ll come back sometime. Moody, Simms and Cline has offered me a nice sum to do a little job for them. It’s such a terrific offer I couldn’t turn it down.”

Tully shook his head. “I can’t say I’m happy about it, Etta. We’ve been getting along so well. But I understand. When a big chance comes, you have to go for it.”

“Oh, I’ll be back in Idaho before the snow flies. Maybe we’ll still have time for that trip up through Idaho. At least we’ll be able to do our lunches at Crabbs.”

Tully said, “What I came to tell you, Etta—the guy we thought was buried in the crawl space under the ranch house, well, he turned up alive.”

“Wonderful! I told you I wasn’t a fortune-teller, Bo.”

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed Tully on the mouth. He felt it all the way to his toes. A few years older and he would have died from it. “Good-bye, Bo.”

Tully stumbled out the door and, grasping both handrails, made his way slowly down the steps.

He drove the Explorer over to the hotel to pick up Angie.
She appeared exhausted. She pointed at the sun. “Doesn’t that bright orb up there realize it’s September? This heat is killing me.”

“Something’s gone wrong, all right. I blame it on the Weather Channel. If those weather people would stop fooling around with their satellites and stuff, we probably could get back to normal.”

Angie smiled at him. “I didn’t realize you were such a science buff.”

Tully nodded his head. “Oh, yes. Except for algebra in high school, I probably would have been a scientist instead of an artist. I also had a problem with fractions. Every time I divided one half by one half, I ended up with one. It was crazy!”

Angie smiled. “What did your teacher say?”

“Miss Busbee? She said it beat the heck out of her too. She was also the volleyball coach. I was dynamite at volleyball so she gave me good grades in math.”

Angie slid over closer to him and rested her hand on his leg. He noticed she wasn’t wearing her seat belt but decided to ignore the infraction. “I guess it all works out in the end,” she said. “Sometimes, though, I wish I’d become a teacher. Of all the worthwhile professions, I think teaching is best.”

“Better than catching criminals?”

“Sure. Maybe a good teacher prevents a lot of criminals, if she teaches them the right stuff. I bet half the guys in prison can’t read. You ever notice how few smart criminals there are?”

Tully nodded. “I’ve told a lot of them, ‘You can’t be
dumb,’ but they never listen. Then they turn up dead or in prison.”

Angie said, “So you think you can choose not to be dumb?”

“Hey, look at me. I tell myself all the time not to be dumb. How else do you think I got to be this smart?”

“I’ve wondered about that.”

Tully came to an intersection, checked for traffic, and then drove through a red light.

“Do you realize you just drove through a red light?”

“Yeah, but I’m sheriff, remember.”

Angie shook her head.

“So what’s the plan here, FBI?” Tully asked.

“You’re the smart one. You tell me.”

Tully tugged thoughtfully on the droopy corner of his mustache. “I’m absolutely certain we have the bad guys locked up.”

“By ‘the bad guys’ you mean the genteel chaps we picked up last night.”

“Yes, beginning with Ray Porter, alias Crockett.”

“You think Crockett is the mastermind?”

“Yeah, I think he’s running the whole show. He probably ordered the huckleberry murders, not that his partners needed any encouragement. Whatever the reason for the killing of those three young guys, I don’t think he had the stomach for doing the thing himself.”

Angie nodded. “I was thinking about what Pap said, that there are only two reasons for murder—silence and money.
It’s pretty obvious the young guys didn’t have any money. So what kept them working like slaves on those islands? They could have figured out some way to get out of there.”

Tully thought about this. “You’re right. Their bosses couldn’t have had a gun on them twenty-four hours a day. They had to be there voluntarily.”

“Right. And it wasn’t their silence the killers were worried about, at least not entirely. The victims had to be complicit in the marijuana project.”

Tully glanced at her. “And why would that be?”

“Because they were supposed to get a cut of the profits. They worked like slaves for nothing all summer, because there was going to be a big payoff for them come the harvest.”

Tully turned this over in his mind. “You think so?”

“It’s a theory. In the end, it’s cheaper to kill them than pay them. They couldn’t very well not pay them and let them go. They would have tipped us off, maybe just spilled the beans over the phone and then beat it.”

Tully gave his mustache another tug. “You wouldn’t think they’d fall for a scam like going out to pick huckleberries.”

“Nobody said they were smart.”

“At least one of them was smart enough to hit the ground running. That’s Craig Wilson. He’s still out there someplace.”

“Without Wilson, we really don’t have all that much,” Angie said. “It would be tough even tying them to the marijuana.”

“How about the moving van?”

“The driver could claim he pulled into the ranch to ask directions to somewhere.”

Tully sighed. “Maybe Lurch will be able to match some of the bullets to their guns.”

“Did you find any guns?”

“No! Why do you keep harping on details!”

Angie said, “Crockett would be the easiest to break, don’t you think?”

Tully shook his head. “I doubt it. That would be a death sentence for him in prison, and he knows it. The other guys seem scarcely smart enough to tie their own shoelaces.”

Tully pulled into his parking space behind the courthouse, and he and Angie went down to the jail. He introduced Angie to Lulu and then asked the matron to bring Ray Porter, alias Crockett, into the interrogation room. “You need any help with him, Lulu?”

She laughed. “He’ll be right in, boss.”

Angie said, “How do you want to handle this, Bo?”

“I suggest we start with the rubber hose and then go to the electric wires and battery.”

“I’m serious!”

“I suggest we try to scare him.”

“I’ll let you lead,” Angie said.

“No, you!”

Lulu brought Porter into the interrogation room. He was dressed in the standard orange jumpsuit. True to his sociopathic character, he was still quite amiable.

“Have a seat, Ray,” Tully said, pointing to a chair across from him and Angie.

“Thanks, Sheriff.”

“You’re welcome.”

Angie said, “You know, Mr. Porter, you’re involved in five murders here.”