The Huckleberry Murders: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (3 page)

He set his cup back on the tray and pushed himself up from the couch. “I’d better not take up any more of your time, Mrs. Gorsich. Thank you very much for the tea.”

“Please, call me Etta,” she said, smiling, pouring him another cup of tea. “And is it all right if I call you Bo?”

“Sure,” he said, settling back on the couch. “Everybody does, even my criminals.”

“I hope you don’t think of me as one of your criminals.”

“Not at all.” He sipped his tea.

•  •  •

Etta said, “I’ve traveled all over the world, Bo, and met hundreds of interesting people, but I have to say, you are the most interesting man I’ve come across in a long while.”

Tully didn’t know what to say. Finally, he managed to get out a modest “Well, uh, thank you. No one has ever said that to me before. I suppose maybe they didn’t notice.”

“Oh, I’m sure they noticed.”

After a bit more conversation, he picked up his teacup, only to notice she had refilled it again. He set the cup back on the tray and stood up. “I really shouldn’t take up any more of your time.”

Etta stood and walked him to the door. “Please come again, Bo.”

“You can count on that, Etta.”

He turned to thank her again for her time. She came up close and put her hand on his chest. Tully thought she had stopped his heart.

“Next time, Bo,” she said, “don’t forget the handcuffs.”

Tully fumbled with the doorknob, finally got it to turn in the right direction. He went out onto the porch and started down the steps. He knew Rose would be disappointed that he hadn’t asked Mrs. Gorsich about Orville’s body.

“Oh, Sheriff!” Etta called after him.

Tully stopped and turned.

“Look under the house!”

Tully gave her a brief smile and continued on down the steps. It was only at the bottom he realized he had been using both handrails.

For the first time in his life, he had met a woman he didn’t think he could manage. She was like some kind of space alien, dropped into Blight City to spy on the populace. She would no doubt report back to her managers, some form of reptiles who would at some point descend on Blight and eat all the residents. To investigate her more thoroughly, he
should invite Etta to lunch. He might even throw some really tough grammar at her. His tough grammar bounced undetected off local women, but Etta would be different.

He went back to the courthouse and down to the jail in the basement to check on his usual suspects. Sometimes the criminals got a little rowdy and had to be settled down. A riot or anything seriously dangerous he left to his jail matron, Lulu Cobb. Lulu’s reputation was such that she had to do nothing more than open the cell-block door and yell, “All right, you idiots, knock it off—you don’t want me down there with my stick!”

Tully had never seen her down there with her stick, and it was a sight he seriously wished to avoid. Tully himself took a much softer line toward the inmates. Most of them were young and stupid, and he thought maybe Lulu reminded them of their mothers.

He found her at her desk outside the cell-block door. A partially played hand of solitaire was spread out on the wood top of the battered desk. “How are our critters, Lulu?”

She shoved herself up. “Oh, they get a little restless along about feeding time, but they been quiet enough. You want to go in and visit with them, Bo?”

“I guess not, Lulu. My stomach is a little queasy today. Maybe tomorrow. Be careful.”

“I’m always careful, Bo, always careful.”

He tromped up the two sets of stairs and down the hall toward his office. The daytime shift had already left the briefing room, Herb and Daisy among them, but Lurch was still
hard at work in his corner. Tully sometimes thought maybe Lurch had no other life, but then it would occur to him that the Unit had the beautiful Sarah. And Sarah was a major something.

“Hey, Lurch!” he yelled.

“Hey, Bo!”

“You get any prints off that paper?”

“Yeah, I got a match, too.”

“So don’t keep me in suspense.”

Lurch thumbed through a notepad next to his computer.

“To begin with, his name isn’t Ray Crockett.”

“Big surprise.”

“His name is Ray Porter. He did two years for possession with intent to sell. Got out in 2002. Since then he’s been clean, at least as far as law enforcement knows.”

“Right. As far as we know.”

Lurch smiled. “I hear you checked on Mrs. Gorsich. How did that go?”

“Daisy has a big mouth. Yes, I went up and met Etta Gorsich. She’s a very nice lady—attractive, too. And sophisticated. Not at all what I expected. Her so-called fortune-telling is nothing more than business advice. She’s an investment consultant, not a fortune-teller.”

“How good-looking is she?”

“I’m inviting her to lunch.”

“That good, huh?”

“Almost up to Sarah’s level, but a few years older.”

Lurch feigned amazement. “Wow, that’s dynamite, boss. I
was wondering what it might be like to date a fortune-teller. She would always know what you’re thinking.”

“Women always know what we’re thinking, Lurch. But one last time, she’s not a fortune-teller.”

“Right, boss.” The Unit gave him one of his snaggletoothed grins and went back to his computer.

Tully stepped into his office to look at some papers Daisy had left for him. He flopped into his chair and began aimlessly tapping his fingers on the desk. Suddenly he stopped.
Look under the house!
What on earth had she meant by that? The hair stirred on the back of his neck.

TULLY TOOK THE next day off. It was getting late in the season for huckleberries but he wanted to get some digital photos of them for his files and maybe a gallon or so for huckleberry pie and pancakes. He had picked and eaten huckleberries all his life. Lately it had occurred to him that he actually didn’t like huckleberries all that much. What motivated him to pick them every year? Maybe it was because they were free and all you had to do was go out in the woods and pick them.

He had been working on a painting of a chipmunk perched on a weathered log and had decided some huckleberries in the foreground would lend a nice touch. He had picked and eaten many thousands of huckleberries, but when it came to painting rather than eating, he couldn’t seem to get
them right. Besides, he felt like a long drive in the mountains. This late in the season, he knew if he were to find berries, it would have to be in the high country. With the economy scraping bottom, there were so many commercial pickers they cleaned out just about every berry, so there was hardly anything left for the ordinary picker. He hoped they hadn’t found his secret patch, up on the back of Scotchman Peak. He didn’t need many huckleberries for his photograph, but it would be nice if he could take Rose back enough for a couple of pies.

Having donned his lucky picking clothes, still stained with blotches of faded purple from many seasons and many washings, he added a khaki vest to conceal his Colt Commander. There had been a time when it never would have occurred to him to take a gun with him to pick huckleberries. But this was a different world, a different time.

He drove his battered 1985 blue pickup truck up along Scotchman Peak Road, his metal berry pickers and two gallon-size pails rattling in a cardboard box next to him. Finally he came to the steep grade that went up over Henrys Pass. Nearing the top of the grade, his rear tires began to spin on loose shale and gravel. When he reached the little road leading to his secret patch, he parked and turned the hubs on the front wheels, engaging the four-wheel drive. As he climbed back into the truck a faint chorus of screams reached him. The old logging road ran along the slope of the mountain off to his left. He walked over and peered in the direction of the screams. A green Chevy Suburban was parked a couple
of hundred yards down the road. A dead tree lay in front of it. He got into his truck, drove down to the Suburban, and got out. The screams were moving toward him. He could tell they came from women, no doubt huckleberry pickers who had run into a bear. The bear was probably racing for his life over the top of the mountain. The ladies came around a curve in the road and were now huffing and puffing toward him, their huckleberry pails bouncing about from belts tied loosely around their waists. He leaned against the Suburban and waited.

There were five of them, three matronly types and two younger ones. They gathered around him, all too breathless to talk. They kept pointing back down the logging road. He scanned the woods on both sides of the road, hoping not to see an irritable grizzly charging in his direction.

“Oh, Sheriff Tully!” gasped a plump gray-haired lady with a red bandanna tied loosely around her neck. “Are we ever glad to see you!”

Tully smiled at her. “What seems to be the trouble, Blanche?”

“Bodies!” blurted out a younger blond woman, perspiration streaming down her reddened face.

“Bodies?” Tully said. “What kind of bodies?”

“Dead bodies!” blurted another one.

“Dead bodies all over the place!” cried another woman, who looked as if she were about to be sick. The women were now all leaning against the Suburban. He hoped none of them was going to faint.

He peered off down the road. “Exactly where are these bodies?”

One of the ladies pointed. “Down around that bend.”

Tully studied the group. They looked relatively sane. “Okay, ladies, you all get in your vehicle and rest, but don’t leave. I may need your names, addresses, and phone numbers.” He took a pen and small notebook from his shirt pocket. “You can write them in here while you’re waiting.”

He walked down the road, watching for any movement ahead of him. Reaching under his vest as he moved around the bend, he unsnapped the strap retaining the Colt Commander. The dry grass along the edge of the road had grown up knee high and he had no trouble finding where the ladies had matted it down. He stepped off the road and began working his way down the slope toward a mass of huckleberry bushes. Three bodies lay on their bellies at the edge of the patch. They had ropes around their waists, maybe to hold berry buckets they were now lying on. He sat down on a stump and studied them. All had been shot in the back of the head. Each of them wore sneakers, now barely holding together, and pants and shirts in scarcely better condition. Clearly, they hadn’t been killed for their money. He got up and lifted one of the hands. It was callused and darkened, probably from hard labor involving dirt. They appeared to be laborers of some kind, probably from a farm of some sort. None appeared older than twenty. He pulled one of the victims up slightly so he could see beneath him. As he expected, a two-pound coffee can had been outfitted with a
wire bale. A length of rope ran around the picker’s waist and through the bale.

Weird, Tully thought. All three had apparently intended to pick berries when someone shot them in the back of the head. There must have been three shooters. Otherwise at least one of the victims would have spun around at the first shot or reacted in some way. They were lying in a perfect line. He imagined himself as one of the young men headed down toward the berry patch. Why does someone haul you up in the woods to pick huckleberries? If he had been one of the intended victims, he would have sensed something funny from the start. The minute his feet hit the ground he would have run like a spooked deer down the side of the mountain. If there were three shooters, the three intended victims would have died instantly and simultaneously. On the other hand, if there was a fourth intended victim, it was possible he had managed to escape. Tully got up and walked down through an opening in the brush, examining leaves as he went. On the lower side of the berry patch he found what he was looking for. A tiny spot of dried blood glistened on a leaf. Maybe the fourth intended victim was lying dead somewhere down on the steep slope of the mountain. Or maybe, somehow, miraculously, he had gotten away. Tully worked his way back to the road. This was the worst case of cold-blooded murder he had encountered in his entire career in law enforcement. He noticed that his hands were shaking. He squeezed them into fists as he walked back to the Suburban.

Blanche, the apparent leader of the group, handed him the notebook. The ladies seemed exhausted. Tully suspected they had picked their last huckleberry. He checked the notebook to make sure they had included all the information he had asked for. They had. He walked back to his pickup and backed it out onto the main road so the Suburban could get by. After pulling back into the logging road, he stopped halfway to the dead tree, took out his cell phone, and called Lurch.

“Yeah, boss,” the Unit answered. Tully suspected Lurch received phone calls only from him.

“Lurch, I’m up here on Scotchman Peak Road, about a mile from Henrys Pass. I’ve got three dead bodies in a huckleberry patch. They’ve each been shot in the back of the head. So bring your kit and a metal detector. We might be able to find some shell casings. Call Dave Perkins at the House of Fry and tell him I need him up here, too.”

There was no reply.

“Lurch, you there?”

“Yeah. Give me a second. Three bodies. Dave? How come Dave?”

“He’s probably the best tracker in the entire country.”

“You think the killer might still be around?”

“No, but I need Dave up here.”

“How about Pap?”

Tully thought for a moment. The old man relished any chance to relive his sheriff days and would never forgive him if he were left out of a triple murder. “Yeah, tell Dave to
pick up Pap on his way.” Then he remembered the medical examiner. “Call the M.E. and tell her we need her whole outfit up here. Tell Susan we’ve got three bodies, maybe a fourth.”

“A fourth!” Lurch let a long breath sizzle through his teeth. “Right, boss.”

TULLY HAD HEARD a logging truck go by earlier, so he walked out to the main road. He sat down on a large rock to wait for the next truck. Presently he could hear it growling down a steep slope up near the pass. It soon came swaying around the bend with a massive load of logs. He got up and waved his arms. The driver started working his way down through the gears and pulled up next to Tully with a hiss and squeal of brakes.