The Huckleberry Murders: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (22 page)

Ray went white. “Murders! I never hurt anyone in my life! I need my lawyer!”

Angie went on. “Listen, Ray, you can have a lawyer anytime you want. You don’t have to say one word to us. It might be helpful to your case if you do talk to us right now, but I’m not promising anything. It does seem at this point that you were involved in a plot that resulted in the murders of five individuals.”

Ray looked as if he was about to pass out.

Tully said, “You see, Ray, you started a sequence of events that ultimately led to the deaths of six individuals, counting Marge Poulson and a guy named Stark. It really doesn’t make much difference you weren’t holding a gun. We know we can nail your associates, and once we do that, they’ll give you up in a split second.”

Ray put his face in both hands. “I have a splitting headache. Do we have to do this right now, Sheriff?”

Angie said, “We can wait until you’re feeling better, Mr. Porter. But any help you give us will be helpful to you at your trial, which, by the way, won’t take place here in Blight but in a federal courthouse.”

“A federal courthouse!”

“Yes, the murders up on Scotchman occurred in a national
forest, so the FBI has jurisdiction. You are involved in a federal crime.”

Ray groaned.

“I know how you feel, Ray,” Tully said. “Blight laws are fairly flexible. They might give you a little wiggle room. And if every defense fails, there’s always graft. Alas, I’m afraid you will be at the mercy of hard-nosed Feds like Agent Phelps here. Play-by-the-book types.”

Ray jumped up. “I feel sick!”

Tully nodded to Lulu and she took him back to his cell.

Tully sighed and leaned his chair back against the wall and asked, “Which of the other guys do you think runs the operation?”

Angie thought for a moment. “Well, we know it wasn’t Stark. Bosses don’t stand guard at night in a swamp. Of the other two, I’d say the bigger one, Kruger, Stanley Kruger. I suppose it could be the other one, Rupert Quince.”

Tully shook his head. “No, not Quince. Nobody named Quince ever gets to be boss, to say nothing of Rupert.”

“You’re probably right, Bo. I say let’s grill Rupert first.”

They had Lulu bring in Quince. Tully thought the orange jumpsuit looked like natural attire for him.

Quince sat down in the chair across from Angie. She said, “Mr. Quince, this is Sheriff Bo Tully. He has some questions for you.”

Tully said, “Actually, Rupert, I get you because I’m not all that smart. The lady here gets to question the leader of the bunch.”

Quince sneered. “What makes you think I’m not the leader?”

“Well, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

“You think I’m dumb, hunh! You should have left the cuffs on me, because for two cents I could grab you by the neck and squeeze the life out of you!”

“I know. That’s why I’ve instructed our jail matron here to shoot you dead if you make the slightest move toward me.”

Quince turned and looked at Lulu. She had her hands behind her back. One of the nice things about Lulu, she looked as if she wouldn’t hesitate to shoot a person dead.

“So what do you want to know?” Quince asked.

“For starters, did you shoot the kid with the blue door on the red pickup?”

“What is this? A trick question? I was home watching TV when that dope was killed. Who drives a red pickup with a blue door anyway? That’s enough to get anybody killed. Maybe you should ask Stark.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Stark is dead.”

Quince was quiet while he mulled this over. “How did he get dead?”

Tully wanted to say, “He refused to answer our questions,” but he thought Angie would raise a fuss.

Angie said, “He was standing guard out in the swamp and made the mistake of shooting at law enforcement. What was he guarding, Mr. Quince?”

Quince sighed. “I don’t know anything about that. Since Stark is dead, I can tell you he’s the one gunned down the kid in the pickup. I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that. But I ain’t saying anything more.”

“In that case, Lulu,” Angie said, “you can return Mr. Quince to his cell and bring in Mr. Kruger.”

Lulu took Quince out.

Angie switched off the tape recorder. “What do you think, Bo?”

“That we got zip. What do you think?”

She shook her head. “Zip is a bit excessive. He did indicate Stark gunned down Lennie Frick. Why kill Lennie if he didn’t see them up on Scotchman right before the murders?”

Tully sighed. “How can we prove Lennie was even up on Scotchman? He told me he was and we have a fingerprint on a beer bottle. What more could you ask? They shot him because they recognized his vehicle, the blue door on the red truck.”

“How do you know that?”

“Angie, you can be a real pain.”

“Hush! Here comes Kruger.”

Quince was big but Kruger would tower over him, big chest, big belly, big everything. He pulled out a chair, spun it around, and sat down astraddle it, his big arms resting on the back.

“It doesn’t look like my lawyer is here yet,” he said. “So I suppose the reason for this meeting is to tell me I’m about to be released.”

“Not quite yet, Mr. Kruger,” Tully said. “We just had a very interesting talk with Mr. Quince.”

Kruger laughed. “Quince is an idiot. He blabs all day long. Nothing he says makes sense, which you must know by now.” He looked relaxed but wary.

“Actually, he was quite informative,” Tully said.

“You’ve got nothing on us, Sheriff, and you know it. Nothing! Nada! We happened to stop by a place where some jerk stored marijuana. And you try to pin it on us!”

“Suppose I tell you we have an eyewitness?”

Kruger’s eyes turned into hard, mean slits. “You don’t have any eyewitness because there wasn’t anything to eyewitness.”

Tully laughed. “You forget. One of your intended victims got away.”

Kruger appeared about to leap over the table. “There were no intended victims! Nobody got away!”

Tully nodded at Lulu, who instantly stepped forward and tapped Kruger on the back. “C’mon, big guy,” she said. “Back to your cell.”

“I’ll settle with you later!” Kruger growled, pointing a finger at Tully.

“Take a ticket. There’s a long line.”

After Lulu had returned Kruger to his cell, Tully shut his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and rested his head on the wall behind him.

“What now, Bo?”

“How do you feel about camping, Angie?”

THE TIME TULLY liked best in the mountains was early morning, with the sun rising through the trees. It had taken them two days just to find the trail to Scotchman Lake. The trail hadn’t been touched by the Forest Service in years. Trees had grown up in the middle of it. Other trees had blown down and crisscrossed it from every direction. Scotchman Lake obviously hadn’t been a popular destination for many decades. The scars of blazes that originally marked the route for Civilian Conservation Corps crews back in the thirties could still be seen on a few trees.

Tully had fired up his tiny backpacking stove before Angie had even opened her eyes. She poked her head out of the small green mountain tent. “Breakfast ready?”

“Almost. I’ve got the bacon nice and crisp and the potatoes and onions sizzling.”

“Great. Let’s see, for the past two days we’ve had bacon, potatoes, and onions for every meal.”

Tully grinned at her. “I’m also cooking pancakes this morning. I’ll spread peanut butter and jelly on them and roll them up for our lunch. Doesn’t that sound good?”

“It sounds delicious! And you better not be lying, Bo!”

“Would I lie to you?”

Angie laughed and then groaned. “I’m a single great ache from one end to the other. And I haven’t been out of these clothes for three days!”

“I know.”

Angie pulled her shirt up to her nose and sniffed. “Do I really smell that bad?”

“I wasn’t thinking of smell.”

“I’ll tell you this, Bo. When we finally get to that lake, I’m going skinny-dipping and you better keep your back turned. The only thing I’ll be wearing is a gun.”

“Ha! From the sound of it, you’d think I’d waited my whole life to catch a glimpse of a naked FBI agent.”

Angie stepped over behind Tully. “Hey, someone’s coming down the trail.”

He stood up and squinted against the sun. He could just make out a figure stopped on the trail. Twice the man looked back over his shoulder, as if trying to decide whether to run back up the trail or continue down.

Angie stepped out on the trail and gestured for him to come down. “Come on, Craig! It’s okay! You’re safe now. Nobody is going to hurt you!”

The hiker stared at Angie for a long moment. Perhaps because she was a woman, he plodded on down.

Tully flipped the skillet. The pancake rose a good three feet in the air, gradually turned over, and landed back in the skillet. Perhaps this artful maneuver also had a calming effect on the hiker. Nobody flips a pancake and then tries to kill you.

“That’s the first time I’ve seen anyone do that,” Craig said, walking into their camp.

“First time it’s ever worked for me,” Tully said. “So you’re Craig Wilson.”

“Yeah, and you must be Sheriff Bo Tully. I suppose you’ve come to arrest me.”

“No, as a matter of fact we came because we need your help to keep three bad guys in jail.”

“You have them all locked up—Kruger, Quince, and Stark?”

“Stark is dead.”

“Wow!” Craig said. “That’s a surprise. Not that I mind.”

“We have Kruger and Quince in jail, along with another fellow by the name of Ray Porter, aka Crockett, who may be the brains behind the operation. We need you to testify about what you know, in order to keep them there.”

Craig slipped off his backpack and squatted down alongside Tully. “I saw Porter only once but I heard them talk about him sometimes. They’d kill me if they could. They already tried it once. I told the guys on the way up to pick huckleberries this was a setup but they didn’t believe me. So when we
started down toward the patch I was ready to take off. I was on the right-hand end of the line of us pickers. The instant I heard the shots I hunched over and ran like crazy. As I rounded the brush, something stung my arm but I hardly felt it. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. There was a thick grove of evergreens down a couple hundred yards and I hid there. They sent Stark down to find me but after a while he gave up and went back. Then I worked my way down farther and hid by the road until I saw the white pickup go by. I must have hid for another hour until I stepped out and waved down a logging truck.”

Tully said, “That’s about the way we thought it went down. I don’t understand why all you guys didn’t take off earlier. You could have built a raft and paddled off the island.”

“Yeah, we could have, but they had promised us each ten thousand in cash at the end of the summer. All we had to do was cultivate the weed. We knew it was illegal, but I figured for ten thousand dollars I could take the chance. They were nice enough to us, except for Stark. Once Kruger slapped Stark senseless for punching one of the guys. They brought in great food—pizzas, tacos, burgers, milk shakes, anything we asked for. Used a big white boat to haul the stuff in and the grass out.”

“Porter ever come out to the island?” Tully asked.

“Yeah, he came out just the one time. He was pretty slick. You could tell he was the boss of the operation, that he was the one with all the connections.”

Tully smeared raspberry jam on a pancake, rolled it up,
and handed it to Craig. The kid ate it as if it was the best food he had ever tasted.

Angie said, “Make me one of those, Bo!”

Tully picked up another pancake, smeared it with raspberry jam, and handed it to her. Apparently it was also the best food
she
had ever tasted. “So, Craig, why did you get suspicious about the trip to pick huckleberries?”

Craig licked some jam off his fingers. “For one thing, it was the day we were supposed to get paid our ten thousand apiece. It was something about their attitude. Suddenly they had all turned stone cold. I’m pretty sure they’d been discussing why they should pay these four guys forty thousand dollars and then have them running around bragging about it. It was probably Stark who came up with the solution.”

So Pap was right, Tully thought. This time it was both the money and the silence.

It suddenly occurred to Tully to introduce Angie.

“Craig, this is Angela Phelps, with the FBI.”

“Hi, Craig,” Angie said. “I’ve talked to your uncle. He’s the one who told us how to find you. You can’t believe how happy I am to see you.”

“The FBI!” Craig choked out.

Tully said, “Yeah, the FBI, Craig. The FBI will be looking after you from now on. The murders were committed on federal land. As far as your part in growing the marijuana, that occurred in Blight County, so we get a piece of you for that. If Angie and her FBI bosses agree, I think we can work out some community service right there in the sheriff’s office.”

Angie said, “You help us convict the bad guys, Craig, and we’ll look out for you.”

“As a matter of fact, Craig,” Tully said, “I just thought of a community service project for you. I need a new well dug.”

Angie rolled her eyes. “So the Blight way kicks in!”

“Yes, indeed.”

Craig looked back up the trail. “Just about anywhere is better than that lake. No wonder nobody goes there anymore. It’s one scary place.”

“So I’ve been told.”

THREE WEEKS AFTER Etta Gorsich left town, human remains were found buried in the crawl space of a house being demolished two blocks away from hers to make way for yet another strip mall. So Tully had a new mystery to solve and a culprit to find. He thought he should phone Etta and tell her. Her vision or whatever it was had proven correct after all. Daisy found the number for Moody, Simms & Cline in New York.

When the receptionist learned he was a sheriff calling from Idaho, she put him through to a vice president.

“Etta Gorsich!” the man said. “Why, she’s just down the hall. You don’t happen to be the Sheriff Bo Tully Etta’s been telling us about?”

“Depends on what she’s been telling.”