The Huckleberry Murders: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (9 page)

“Doing some major repairs, I see.”

“Naw, nothing major. A bolt here, a nut there, that sort of thing. Where we headed today, Bo?”

“I’m trying to solve a crime. People are getting killed for no reason I can figure out. I could understand if they were bankers or lawyers or people of that ilk, but they are just poor dumb kids scarcely twenty years old, if that. Anyway, I think Scotchman Creek may hold an answer.”

Pete tossed a wrench back in his toolbox. “I haven’t fished Scotchman in years but I can tell you the lower part
of that crick is one unholy mess. The beavers run a series of dams crisscrossing each other all through there. It’s impossible even to find your way to the crick anymore. Beavers helped turn it into one giant swamp. Some places the water comes up to your armpits, and that’s if you ain’t standing in quicksand. It was that way thirty years ago and probably a lot worse now. I imagine the beavers flooded hundreds of acres since then. Some mighty fine timber locked away in there but the beavers made getting it out more expensive than it’s worth.”

“I guess beavers aren’t totally useless, then.”

“Easy for you to say, Bo.”

A few minutes later they were on the tarmac, sitting shoulder to shoulder in the plane’s cockpit. As far as Tully could tell, the plane didn’t bother to taxi but jumped into the air from a standstill, hurling him back into his seat.

“What kind of motor you got on this thing anyway, Pete?”

“The most powerful money can buy. No sense flying an underpowered aircraft, I always say. I tell you what, Bo, we’ll circle around Scotchman Peak to warm up, and then cruise back down the crick away from the mountain. You see that clearing in those trees down there? Well, I had a chopper back then and had to put it down in that very spot a couple summers ago.”

“Wow! That clearing doesn’t look anywhere big enough to land a helicopter in.”

“Shoot, until I landed, there wasn’t any clearing there at all! Flipped over and mowed down trees like tall grass.”

“I see.”

The plane swept up and around Scotchman Peak. At some points, the vertical rock slabs of the peak looked close enough for Tully to reach out and touch.

Pete pointed to the base of a sheer granite wall. “You see that little lake down there, Bo? You ever fished it?”

“No. I didn’t even know it existed.”

“Hardly anybody does. It’s haunted.”

“Haunted? I’ve never even heard of a haunted lake.”

“I hiked in there, oh, it must be twenty-five years ago now. Had my youngest son, Alan, with me. It was one heck of a hike and we planned to spend a couple of days in there, camping and relaxing. Alan was about fourteen. You see how the trees are thick as fur on a dog’s back and how they come right up to the edge of the water? Oh, shoot, we’ve gone too far. I’ll take us around again.”

Tully shook his head. “It’s okay, Pete, I saw the trees!”

The plane had already leaned over on its side as it made a sharp turn around the peak and back over the lake. Tully could now look straight down out his side window and see how close the trees came to the lake.

Pete tapped him on the shoulder. “You see, Bo? I can always take us around again.”

“I see, Pete!”

Pete seemed to scratch an itch somewhere on his back while leveling off the plane. “Well, when Alan and I got to the lake, trout was rising all over it but the trees come down so close to the water we couldn’t back-cast. There was a big
snowbank at one end of the lake, almost like a glacier. So Alan fights his way through the trees and climbs out on the snow and then he’s got plenty of room to cast, and right away he starts hauling in fish. I got a little frantic because I can’t stand for one of my sons to outfish me. But then I found this narrow log stretching out into the water and I was able to walk out three-fourths of its length. The water was shallow under the log, maybe six inches deep, crystal clear, the stones on the bottom sharp as a picture. I make three or four casts and don’t get a hit. Then I notice this little wake, like maybe a tiny, invisible shark fin traveling through the water. It starts out in the middle of the lake, makes a wide half circle, and comes right up under my feet. I’m looking straight down into that little wake, Bo, and you gotta believe there wasn’t nothing in the middle of it, nothing making it that I could see. It was like an invisible finger had drawn it through the water. Well, I stood there a couple of seconds, trying to think what might make the thing, and I look out into the lake and another little wake has formed. And this one swings around in the opposite direction of the first one and comes right up under my feet! And Bo, I ain’t makin’ this up! There was nothing in the middle of that one either!”

“So what did you do?”

“I yelled at Alan, ‘We going home, son! Grab your gear!’ He yells back, ‘How come, Pa?’ and I yells, ‘’Cause this lake is haunted!’ ”

“You’re telling me Alan didn’t even question you about the lake’s being haunted?”

“Nope, he never said a word about it, just packed up and started down the trail. Maybe it was mostly because he didn’t want to be that far back in the mountains with a lunatic, I don’t know. You’re the only other person I’ve ever told about that lake being haunted. Alan’s never mentioned it either.”

I wish you hadn’t told me, Tully thought.

“Later I heard the Indians wouldn’t go within ten miles of that lake.”

“I’m with the Indians,” Tully said. “You don’t suppose the haunt reaches this far up, do you, Pete?”

“Good point, Bo.”

Pete leveled the plane and headed down Scotchman Creek, swooping in low over the trees. Because of the wings on the plane, Tully couldn’t see much of the creek below. He pulled his camera out of his kit. “Can you tilt the plane so I can see below the wing, Pete?”

“Tell you what, Bo. I’ll circle the peak again and then turn her up on her side. That way you can photograph the whole of Scotchman Creek. You snap pictures like crazy and then you can examine them in comfort when you get back to the office.”

“Sounds like a deal.”

Pete revved up the engine, circled the peak, and brought the plane back over the creek on its side. Tully snapped pictures for all he was worth.

“You want to do that again?” Pete asked, leveling out the plane.

“No!”

“Good! My old flight instructor used to tell me never to do that. Said planes can drop right out of the air when you do. It’s never happened to me, though, except that one time.”

“I don’t want to hear about it!”

BY THE TIME Tully got to the office Monday morning, his pulse had almost returned to normal. He walked over to Lurch and handed him the memory card from the camera. “See what you can do with these photos, if there are any. I haven’t been able to make myself look at them.”

“I’ll run them through Photoshop, boss, and get them sharpened up.”

“Good. Call me when you’ve got them ready. If they don’t turn out, we may have to do the shoot over. You like to fly, Lurch?”

The Unit gave an exaggerated shudder. “You know I hate it!”

“I don’t care. If the photos don’t turn out, you’re going up!”

Lurch slid the memory card into his computer. “Take my word for it, boss, they’ll turn out.”

Lurch’s fingers began to fly over the keyboard. “And now somebody whacks Lennie Frick. No way Lennie ever did anything to anybody to get taken out like that.”

“You’re right, Lurch. I don’t know what’s going on.” Tully walked over to Daisy’s desk. She was hunched over her computer, frowning in concentration. “You believe in water spirits, Daisy?”

“Hunh?” she said, glancing up.

“Never mind.” He walked into his office.

He picked up his phone and dialed the Social Security office. A woman answered. “Social Security, Jennifer speaking.”

“Jennifer, this is Sheriff Bo Tully.”

“Hi, Sheriff. What can I do for you?”

“I’ve been thinking of switching sides and taking up crime. Now, suppose I stole my old father’s Social Security check. How would I go about cashing it?”

Jennifer went into a brief description of how the crime might be pulled off. She explained that as soon as the legal recipient of the check notified Social Security he or she hadn’t received the check, an investigation would take place to determine if and how the check had been stolen. “It would be very hard to cash the check without proper ID, Bo.”

“Suppose I killed Pap. Then he couldn’t complain. I now use his ID to cash the check at a bank drive-through. How about that?”

“In that case, you might get away with it for a while, as long as the victim couldn’t complain and you had the proper ID, say Pap’s driver’s license, that you could send into the teller.”

“Thanks, Jennifer. I’d appreciate you not mentioning this call to anybody, just in case I decide to kill Pap for reasons other than his piddling Social Security check.”

“I won’t tell a soul, Bo. So, when are you thinking of switching over to crime?”

“I’ll see how this week goes, sweetheart.”

He hung up, slid his chair back, and propped his feet on his desk. He sat there tugging on his mustache while he thought about Orville Poulson and Ray Crockett. Orville had supposedly gone off on his endless trip in January, leaving Crockett in charge of the ranch. If Crockett had killed him, he could have buried Orville anywhere on the ranch and there would be no way to find the body. The ground would be frozen in January, though—impossible to dig a grave. He supposed Crockett could have hidden the body under some hay in the barn and let it freeze. Then he could have waited for the ground to thaw in the spring. Tully thought he might follow Etta Gorsich’s suggestion and look under the house. The ground there wouldn’t have been frozen in January. It might be tough to get a search warrant for a body when you don’t even know if there is one. Still, maybe he could get a search warrant from Judge Patterson. As Daisy liked to point out, Patterson was the best possible kind of judge: old and senile and one who would give Tully anything he asked for. And some people thought the justice system had gone to hell. What did they know?

Lurch opened his door. “I’ve got those photos up on the computer, boss. You want to come take a look?”

Tully got up and walked with Lurch back to his computer. The photo on the screen was surprisingly sharp, considering the circumstances in which it had been taken.

“What’s that thing hanging down in front of the lens?” Lurch asked.

“Probably my tongue.” Tully could make out a large patch of swamp below. He switched to another photo and then worked through the series. “Perfect! Just as I suspected.”

“What did you suspect, Bo?”

Just then Daisy walked across the room and said in a low voice, “An Angela Phelps to see you, boss.”

Tully glanced across the briefing room. A woman stood there, tapping her foot in a way that suggested impatience. He vaguely wondered why Daisy hadn’t simply yelled across the room in her usual fashion. She apparently read his mind.

“FBI,” she whispered.

“You’re in for it now, boss,” the Unit said.

“Nothing I can’t handle, Lurch. The agent is a woman, after all.”

Lurch smiled and shook his head as if in disbelief.

Daisy returned to her desk and showed the agent into Tully’s office. He strolled slowly across the briefing room and stuck his head in the door.

“Be right with you, miss.”

The look on the agent’s face suggested she intended to truck no nonsense from this cracker sheriff. He walked back over to Daisy’s desk.

“Maybe I should let you handle this, Daisy,” he whispered. “The agent appears a bit piqued.”

“That’s a mild way of putting it. I would say she’s totally—”

Tully walked into his office without hearing the rest of Daisy’s assessment.

“Agent Phelps,” he said. “Very nice of you to drop by. Please have a chair. You are by far the most attractive FBI agent I’ve encountered so far.”

“I am impervious to flattery, Sheriff Tully. So it’s useless to try it on me. Furthermore, your other wiles are equally useless. I have read through the rather thick file we have on you, and even a much larger one we have on your father. Both are devoid of any evidence of your having ever given the slightest assistance to the FBI.”

He pulled up a chair and sat down next to her. Her black hair, neatly coiffed, had a bit of gray threaded through it. She wore a crisp white blouse under her black suit jacket, and there was no wedding ring on her finger. She was definitely a prospect.

“I find that hard to believe,” he said.

“That we’ve never had an iota of cooperation from either of you?”

“No, that you have a thick file on me. So, what can I do for you, Agent Phelps?”

“It’s our understanding that you have recently had three murders in a national forest and somehow neglected to inform us. As you probably know, the FBI likes to be notified whenever there’s a crime on federal land, particularly if guns are involved.”

“I was just getting to that. Yes, I kept telling myself, I must get word of the killings to the FBI. And here you are already, Agent Phelps, just as I was about to lift the phone and call.”

“I bet. All right, tell me what happened, in case all the news accounts I’ve read are incorrect.”

“I think the news accounts are surprisingly correct. Let me think. I have so many crimes going on I can hardly keep them straight. Okay, here goes. I had been working nights and days and weekends, so I decided to take Thursday of last week off and go huckleberry picking up on Scotchman Peak. That’s when I discovered the three dead bodies in the huckleberry patch. All three had been shot in the back of the head. Young fellows, probably not even twenty yet. They appeared to have been farmworkers, guys who spent a lot of time working in the dirt. We have a few leads we’re following up, but that’s about it.”

Agent Phelps scribbled furiously in her notepad. Tully could see she knew shorthand. “So, do you have any idea what the motive might have been?” she asked.

“Not a clue. It couldn’t have been robbery. These guys probably hadn’t seen a dime in the last six months. One of my associates claims it had to be money. My own guess is they knew something and were shot to shut them up.”