Another Man's Ground--A Mystery, page 13
“I don’t know no old dudes.” Lloyd rattled his cuff.
“Really? Not even in the course of doing business, with the plant delivery? You didn’t run across him?”
Lloyd folded his arms and slouched even farther down in his seat.
“I never seen him before.”
“Was anybody trying to take a piece of your business? With the tree bark?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the possum snarled.
They went back and forth for another ten minutes. Lloyd got steadily more agitated and jumpy, but wouldn’t give up a name. Hank pushed until he lapsed into sullen immobility. He knew from his innumerable interrogations of Kansas City gang members that once suspects hit that wall, they were very unlikely to cough up any more information during that interview session. He got up without a word and left the youngest Taylor sitting there.
He grinned when he saw Sam standing in front of the two-way mirror.
“You really do take a special interest in him. How much did you see?”
“Most of it, I think,” Sam said. “And I wouldn’t put it past them to try to cut out any competition for their easy-money plant thieving.”
“Yeah, but murder?” said Hank. “These brothers haven’t ever done anything that bad. They’re petty criminals. Besides, we don’t even know who Rotten Doe is. It could be someone totally unrelated to the Taylors.”
“Well, where’s Ned Bunning then?” Sam’s mouth became a thin, determined line. “Those lowlifes got it in ’em. I know they do. And I got an idea.” He spun on his heel and walked out.
Hank was pleased with the Pup’s initiative, even though he didn’t know exactly what the kid was up to. And Sam’s investigation into the missing driver left him free to pursue another line of inquiry. He buzzed for Tucker to take Lloyd back to his cell. Let the GOB deal with the youngest Taylor’s charms for a while.
CHAPTER
18
Hank went back to his office and found the yellow pages listing of the business he wanted. Then he looked it up in the department records. A 1999 Chevy Camaro had been stolen from the parking lot four years ago. And someone was stopped for speeding on the road in front of it eighteen months ago. Other than that, the location generated no hits, which was patently absurd.
He switched over to a state-government database, typed in the business again, and jotted something down. That led to much more useful information than the one lousy vehicle theft. He logged off his computer and headed out for a drink.
* * *
The bar was not busy. Only three cars sat in the gravel parking lot as Hank pulled off of LL Highway. It was only midafternoon, he thought, as he threw a quick three-point turn and parked facing the way he’d come. He got out and stretched his creaky back. It had been a long drive out here. Not really on the way to anywhere, which was—if he had to bet—what made it a very popular place later in the day.
The building sat about twenty yards back from the road, long, low, and windowless, with a shingle roof and a corrugated-metal awning over the entrance. The large, neatly lettered sign painted on the wall said he had reached the Redbone Bar. He crunched across the gravel, put his hand on the heavy wooden door, and closed his eyes to shut out the sunny sky. No need to walk into a dark room blind. He waited a moment and then pulled open the door.
Three faces turned toward him simultaneously, squinting at the blaze of light he’d let inside. He swung the door shut and optical order was restored. The two customers, who looked like down-on-their-luck construction workers, gave him a once-over and went back to their drinks. The guy behind the bar waved him closer.
“What’ll you have?”
Hank hadn’t expected this. He’d figured on hostility, threats, and quite possibly gun brandishment. He sat down half a dozen stools away from the two men nursing their beers and made a show of considering the line of taps against the wall while he got the feel of the place.
There was no one else in the long, rectangular room. The air had the lingering staleness of cigarette smoke and booze, but the place itself was spotless. The bar ran almost the whole length of the back, stopping about ten feet short of the east wall, where a small, shabby stage sat. At the opposite end were clusters of tables. The middle was clear and the wood floor shone smooth even in the dim light. Dancing? Huh.
The bartender waited politely. No matter how unexpectedly polished this place was, it was still a bar. No one was going to talk to him if he ordered a Diet Pepsi. He decided to play it safe and asked for a Budweiser. Served in practically every such establishment in Missouri. Anheuser-Busch might have sold out to foreigners, but its St. Louis roots still ran deep.
The guy banged a frosty bottle down in front of him. Hank picked it up and saw what was underneath. Grains and knots swirled and spun down the enormous length of the slab of burnished wood. It wasn’t smooth and slick and polished and uniform like a regular bar top. Instead it gloried in its bumps and whorls and color variations. It was the most beautiful piece of wood Hank had ever seen.
“Hickory.”
Hank started in surprise. The bartender laughed.
“Anybody new always asks. It’s made outta hickory.”
“It’s … wow. It’s beautiful.”
“Yup. My granddaddy cut it about a hundred years ago. Back when trees grew this size. Nowadays, you’d never see this kind of monster.…” He shrugged. Hank thought about all the forest he’d been in lately. Plenty of monsters, but no trees that looked like this. He set his beer back down very carefully.
That got a belly laugh and a flash of teeth through the guy’s salt-and-pepper beard. “No need for that. It’s tough as nails. Put my special varnish on it once a year. Nothing will hurt this thing.”
Hank stuck out his hand and gave his first name. The guy was Willie Boyd, the same man listed in the state liquor-license database. He wished he could just sit there and shoot the shit for a while—find out where the guy’s granddaddy felled that tree and how it had come to rest lengthwise in a genuinely rustic watering hole in the middle of nowhere, Branson County, Mo. But he’d learned from painful experience that establishing a rapport was one thing. Going beyond and getting friendly was another, viewed as a betrayal when it finally came out that he was there as a cop. People didn’t like to feel used, and when they did, they sure as hell didn’t feel cooperative.
The guy’s eyebrows shot up when Hank added his title to the introductions.
“I guess I do remember hearing something about Darrell Gibbons running for something else. Congress?”
“The state legislature,” Hank said.
“Eh. Just as bad,” he responded. “They’re all a bunch of assholes. I hope ol’ Darrell doesn’t go that way.”
Hank, who thought his predecessor had gone in exactly that direction, just nodded and smiled. The owner offered no further opinion, and just stood there, comfortably waiting for Hank to continue. It was his bar, and he had all day. Hank was liking him more and more.
“I need to ask you about a couple of your customers,” Hank said. Willie nodded, and waited. Hank decided to start with the low-hanging suspect fruit. “The Taylor boys—Lloyd and his brothers. They ever come in here?”
The scowl was obvious even behind the beard. “Are you kidding? That trash isn’t allowed here. Ever. None of them.” He sounded offended that Hank had even considered the notion.
“Okay,” Hank said as apologetically as he could. That wasn’t why he was here, but now he was curious. “Why’s that?”
Willie looked at him like he’d ordered that Diet Pepsi after all. “If you’re asking about ’em, then you know why.”
Good point. Hank raised his bottle in agreement and took a swig. Now for the real reason.
“What about Jasper Kinney?”
Willie’s eyes changed. Wary? Scared? Definitely cautious. “What makes you think he comes in here?”
“He carries around your matchbooks.”
“Hmmm.”
And that was it. Hank asked again. The barman got out a rag and started wiping down his bar. Hank let him for work for a bit, and then he put his beer down directly in the path of the cloth. The two men stared at each other for a good long minute. Finally, Willie shrugged.
“Sometimes. Every once in a while. Most everybody north end of this county and the next comes in every once in a while.”
“Then why’d you hesitate?”
Willie shrugged again.
“He’s not ‘most everybody,’ is he?” Hank said.
Willie turned away and went back to wiping the bar. Hank took another swig and shot a glance down the bar, where the two day drinkers were trying not to look like they were listening.
“What about you two? You know Jasper?”
One guy froze. The other one sputtered on his Bud Light. Neither said anything. Man, was he getting sick of this. He gave them his I’m-not-going-to-ask-again look. Finally, the sputterer cleared his throat.
“He’s called Mr. Kinney around here.”
“Oh, is he? And why’s that?”
The guy started to doodle a pattern on the bar with his damp beer bottle.
“Dunno. Just is. That’s how my dad always called him. That’s how everybody calls him. He’s deserving of your respect.”
That last part sounded like the guy had heard it somewhere—it definitely wasn’t a line he’d come up with on his own. Hank decided to play along.
“That’s good to know. I’m new here, so … I’m still figuring this stuff out.”
Willie had worked his way down to the far end of the bar with his rag, but Hank knew he was still listening to every word as the sputterer relaxed a little and turned toward him. It’s good to know who’s the important folks, the man said. And Mr. Kinney was sure important. He’d owned a whole lot of land, and folks still were obliged. So he was important. And respected.
He would have kept on, but his companion thawed at that point, firmly set his half-full drink down on the bar, and walked out the door. The sputterer whirled around in surprise and then hopped off his stool and scurried after his friend. The door slammed behind them, and Hank was left again in the dark. He left his barely touched Bud and walked down to the end where Willie was standing.
“You seem like a nice fellow,” the barman said.“So I’m going to tell you—don’t go there.”
Hank laid a five on the bar. “You seem like a nice guy, too. Someday, I’d like to hear more about your granddaddy. But right now, I have a job to do.”
Willie gave him the appraising look of an older, wiser man, and shrugged. “So be it.”
“Yeah,” Hank said. “So be it.” And he walked out of the comforting gloom into the hot glare of the early-summer sunshine.
* * *
He’d been told that someone who declined to give her name wanted to see him. He walked into the office lobby and stopped. A short, plump woman rose from the molded plastic seat to meet him. She had steel gray hair and a smooth face, except for the lines that radiated out from her eyes, deep and craggy ones not caused by the sun.
Hank knew immediately what she was. He glanced over at the receptionist, with her tan polo shirt and blatantly curious expression. Not here. He silently motioned the woman through the door and down the hallway leading to his office. He followed her inside and shut the door. He smiled and held out his hand. Whose mother was she?
“Thank you, Sheriff. I didn’t want to give my name out there. People still…” She gathered herself. “My name is Patty Alton. I’m here about the skeleton in the woods.”
He guided her to the seat in front of his desk and pulled his own chair around the furniture to join her. He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees.
“Melissa?”
She nodded. “I’m her mother.”
Hank very carefully explained that the bones would be sent to specially trained forensic anthropologists, where they would be analyzed and any information gleaned would then narrow down the search for an identification.
“But you’ll do the DNA, right? Ours is on file. You’ll be able to tell if it’s her. You can do that right off.”
No, he said gently, they couldn’t. That wasn’t how it worked. They first needed to know how old the child was when he or she died. That was fairly easy to determine from the teeth and the bone growth plates. Then they would try to determine the gender, but that was more difficult, because the pelvic differences that made it easy to distinguish in adults were not there in children. Then, and perhaps most key, they would try to figure out how long the skeleton had been there.
“So you mean how long ago the child died?” she said softly.
“Yes.”
She nodded slightly. This wasn’t the first time law enforcement had told her that something was more difficult than she thought it should be. She thought for a moment.
“Do you know yet how the child died?”
The skull flashed through Hank’s memory. He shook his head.
“We’re still working on that,” he hedged.
He answered a few more questions as best he could, and then said that he’d be happy to come to her next time. He jotted his cell number on a business card and pressed it into her hand.
“Just call me. You don’t have to make the drive all the way here to Forsyth from Branson.”
She gave him that little smile again. She hadn’t come from Branson. They’d moved to Springfield five years after Melissa disappeared. They couldn’t take everyone constantly asking how they were doing, or if they’d heard anything new about the case. They couldn’t take the sympathetic whispers that erupted as they left a room. They couldn’t take her empty room, and they sure couldn’t take their backyard. So they moved up to Springfield, where they could be anonymous and not get asked about it every time they turned around.
She still lived there, in the house with the second bedroom, just in case Melissa came home. Her husband had passed on eight years ago. A stroke. He’d never been really healthy again after Melissa disappeared. So now it was just her.
She shrugged and stood to go. Hank walked her out to her car and promised to keep her updated.
“And, ma’am,” he said, bending down to talk to her through the open window as she buckled herself into her little Corolla, “your daughter is an open case, so no matter what happens with this skeleton, we’re going to keep looking for her.”
Patty Alton gave him a smile so small it spoke volumes. She knew full well her daughter’s file had been pulled off a dusty shelf. And she knew that was right where it would end up again if this child in the woods wasn’t hers.
* * *
“Chief, can you meet me over on Creekbend Road?”
It was less than a mile away. And it was Ned Bunning’s duplex. Hank, wondering exactly what the Pup was up to, climbed into his cruiser and took the two-minute drive.
He arrived at the dilapidated unit to find Sam leaning over the hood of his own squad car, paperwork scattered over the flat surface. Kurt was next to him, and frowned when he saw Hank pull up.
“—preliminary identification. You should’ve waited to call him,” Kurt was saying as Hank got out of the car.
Sam was bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“You said it’s highly likely. We just have to run it through the computer to make double sure your match is right.”
“What match?” Hank asked as he picked his way along the weedy dirt shoulder of the road in front of Bunning’s front yard.
“Lloyd Taylor,” Sam said.
Hank stared at the fingerprint sheets on the hood of the car and then at his deputy.
“Sammy, you didn’t go into the house, did you?”
“No, no,” he said quickly. “I know we don’t have probable cause for a warrant, cuz nobody’s reported Bunning missing. I did try the landlord, but he said Bunning is paid up on the rent, so he doesn’t much care where he is. He also said he doesn’t like cops, so he wouldn’t give me permission to go inside. But he did say we could go in the yard.”
Hank raised a skeptical eyebrow, which made Sam dig a notebook out of his back pocket.
“‘You want to walk around in weeds and a bunch of dog shit, go ahead, you moron.’ That’s a quote.” He shoved the notebook back in his pocket. “So I started thinking.”
“And then he called me,” said Kurt. “And we dusted the front doorframe.”
Hank had a feeling he was about to be very happy. Kurt saw the look on his face and held up his hands in a “slow down” gesture.
“You’re as bad as Sam is,” Kurt said. “I’ve eyeballed it, but I’m not going to give you a definite yes—or no—until I get back to the office and run it proper.”
“But you think it is, right?” Hank said. He had to refrain from bouncing the way Sam was doing. Kurt rolled his eyes.
“I’ll go do it right now, before you all explode.” He started to pack up his gear. “And I did all the windowsills, too, and the back door, so don’t go calling me back here thinking I forgot something.”
He trundled off, and Hank took a turn around the house. The other half of the duplex was in the same bad repair, but whoever lived there at least took some care. The small concrete pad in front of the door was swept, and neat yellow curtains were visible through the windows. Bunning’s half was nothing but ripped window screens and a glimpse of a messy kitchen through a dirty window.
And the landlord hadn’t been wrong about the yard, which had plenty of evidence of dog habitation. Hank managed not to step in any of it as he made his way back to the street. He and Sam were starting to head to their cruisers when a beat-up Ford Escort lurched to a stop in front of the tidier half of the duplex. They immediately changed course and met the poor woman as she hefted herself out of the car.
“Uh, hi?” she said.
Sam introduced them both and pointed to the duplex’s lesser half. She nodded emphatically and started talking. Her name was Tracy Dugan, she worked at the Ozarker Lodge Motel in Branson, she’d lived here for three years, and she hated her neighbor.
