Another Man's Ground--A Mystery, page 25
He held out two buccal swab kits. Vern wiped at the inside of his cheek without getting up from the couch. Donna, crying now, took her kit into the bathroom. Sheila went with her. Once they left the room, Vern leaned across toward Hank.
“What … what do you think happened? Why would my folks lie?” He looked like a little boy hoping someone would explain his bad dream.
Hank steeled himself. “Did they ever abuse you?”
“God, no.” He sat back as if Hank had slapped him. “No way. They were old school, sure. Strict. But they never raised a hand except a switch when we done wrong. And even that was a tap, more like. Nothing that really hurt.”
“What about sexual abuse?”
Now Vern was on his feet, swearing. “How dare you? My parents were God-fearing Christians. They would never … you bastard. You—”
Hank suggested, quite firmly, that he sit down again. These were routine questions in any case involving an unexplained child death, he said. They went round and round until Donna and Sheila came back from the bathroom. It was obvious the same conversation had taken place in there. Donna was sobbing. Sheila’s face was carefully blank.
Hank asked a few more questions and then rose to his feet. They had no warrant, but it was worth a shot. “I’m going to need to take all of your guns.”
Both siblings stiffened.
“Why?” Vern asked in a tone that said he’d already made up his mind to agree.
“You said they were all your daddy’s,” Hank said. “That means we need to take them in. You’ll get them back.”
Vern nodded and sagged down into the cushions. Donna slumped a little, too, against the arm of the sofa. They all watched silently as Sheila left the room and started emptying the foyer gun racks. She made six trips out to the squad car, then searched the rest of the house. There were no others. Hank promised to have them back to Vern as soon as possible. He couldn’t promise the DNA results as quickly, but said he would let them know the minute he himself found out.
He and Sheila showed themselves out. They got in the cruiser and drove off down the driveway in a cloud of dust. They stopped just out of sight of the farmhouse.
“What’d you get?”
Sheila turned toward him. “A flat-out arsenal. Five shotguns, two Winchester 94 rifles, three Marlin rifles, two revolvers, and one semiautomatic Smith and Wesson. Half of ’em don’t look like they work, though. Haven’t been cleaned in years. And … his .22 isn’t there.”
“What? The one he always carts through the woods?”
“Yep. Not there. I even searched his truck while you all were waiting inside. Nothing.”
“If he didn’t know anything about how that skeleton got dead, he’d have no reason to hide that rifle,” Hank said.
“Exactly.”
Hank thought about that, rubbing the stubble that was starting to adorn his chin. Then a flash of something in the rearview mirror caught his eye. A dark figure was running from the direction of the house toward the woods. It appeared to be carrying a gun.
CHAPTER
35
Hank spun the cruiser around and raced back up the long driveway as Sheila unfastened the Remington 870 from its storage slot. They both leapt out of the car as a second figure, shorter and slimmer, ran across the grassy expanse and followed the first into the woods.
Hank broke into a run after them.
“Wait.”
He froze. Sheila was back at the squad car. She dug in the trunk and then ran to him.
“This is the best one of the lot, and it’s loaded.” She handed him a Browning shotgun from Vern’s confiscated collection. “That pinging sound”—she jerked her head back toward the house—“must be his motion-detector alarm.”
Damn.
They moved forward quickly and then slowed when they reached the tree line. The day was fading, and they could see a bobbing flashlight up ahead. It was unclear whether it was Vern or Donna. They gained ground rapidly, following the light toward the creek and God knew what else.
They got close enough to see that it was Donna with the flashlight. She heard them and stopped. “I lost him,” she whispered angrily.
Hank motioned for Sheila to fan out to the left. He took a few steps to the right, pantomiming that Donna was to stay next to him with her flashlight off. He wanted to send her back to the house, but at this point had no idea whether someone was now behind them. Or whether Vern would mistake her for an intruder and start shooting. Safer for her to stay close.
They all crept forward and had covered about a hundred yards when they heard the rack of a shotgun. Vern’s voice carried through the still-warm air just as clearly.
“You’re trespassing, you murderin’ son of a bitch. Stand up.”
Sheila immediately peeled off so she could circle around and approach Vern from the opposite direction. Hank pushed Donna up against the protection of a sizable oak and ordered her to stay put. Then he headed toward what he prayed wasn’t the last battle of a border war.
He stopped at a last screen of trees and brush and saw Vern aiming his shotgun at Jasper Kinney, who still knelt on the ground. A bulging cloth sack and small shovel lay next to him. He held an uprooted plant in his hands.
“You stupid, ignorant bastard. You got no idea what you have,” Kinney said. “This should still be Kinney land.”
Vern took a step forward, so Hank did, too. He emerged from the cover of the trees aiming Vern’s own gun at him. Both men froze.
“Put the gun down, Vern.”
“Hell, no. He’s trespassing.”
“And I’m going to arrest him for that,” Hank said. “So put down your gun.”
Vern hadn’t taken his eyes off Kinney. “You going to arrest him for murder, too?”
Kinney’s eyes widened a millimeter, but he remained otherwise perfectly still. Hank moved forward, treading carefully.
“Why do you say that, Vern?”
“He killed my brother.”
“What?” The surprise on Kinney’s face was genuine. It was the most reaction Hank had ever seen from the man.
“How else,” Vern said, his voice shaking, “do you explain Charlie being dead on his land? And it must be murder, if you’re taking guns as evidence. So he shot my little brother to death.”
“We don’t even know for sure yet that it is Charlie,” said Hank. “So you are not going to take the law into your own hands. Put. Down. The. Gun.”
Vern finally looked over at Hank, and slowly lowered the gun. Hank had him lay it down and kneel with his hands on his head. Then he turned his gun on Kinney and told him to do the same. Creosote didn’t move.
“Put down the Purple Pass, Jasper, and put your hands on your head.”
A smirk tugged at the side of his mouth that normally held a cigarette. “Very good, newbie. You figure that out all by yourself?”
It was going to be such a pleasure to cuff this guy. Hank said it again and took a step forward. Kinney whipped around fast as a striking snake, lunging toward the far trees and, beyond them, the creek. He got six paces.
And then he met the stock of Sheila’s own shotgun, right in the gut. He folded with a grunt, and Sheila kicked him the rest of the way over.
Hank watched as she cuffed his hands behind his back, thinking that was even more satisfying than doing it himself. She settled him flat on his stomach in the dirt and walked the short distance to Hank as she shook the feeling back into her right hand.
“That was like ramming into a concrete wall,” she muttered. “I can’t believe a guy that old is that solid.”
Hank handed her his pair of handcuffs and she walked over to Vern Miles.
“What the hell? I didn’t do anything. This is my land.” The last words came as a shout. He started to get up but stopped at the icy look from Sheila. She cuffed him and patted him on the head.
“We’ve got a few more questions for you before we’re done tonight,” she said.
Vern swore under his breath. Kinney shifted in the dirt and tried to sit up until a prod from Sheila’s shotgun made him reconsider. Hank looked at his two trussed-up landowners and sighed. They’d have to march them out of the woods—Kinney at gunpoint, the slippery bastard—and call for another squad car. No way he was putting them in the backseat of the cruiser together.
And then there was Donna. Great. He muttered an explanation in Sheila’s ear and left her to stand guard as he went looking for the younger Miles sibling. He found her exactly where he’d left her, only now she looked worried enough to be close to getting sick.
“You going to be okay?” Hank asked.
“I just can’t take this anymore. These stupid men and their stupid feuds. I just want to go back to my kids.” She pushed off from the tree she was leaning against. “I just want to go. Please, Sheriff, can I just go home?”
Hank told her she could go back to the farmhouse, but she couldn’t return to St. Louis quite yet. Her shoulders slumped, and she turned back the way they’d come. Hank watched her go, the bounce of her flashlight no longer urgent as it cut through the gathering darkness.
He returned to the men just as Sheila finished snapping photos of the herb-pilfering crime scene. They hauled Creosote to his feet and set out after Donna. Hank had Vern go first. With his hands cuffed in the front, he was able to walk fairly easily. Kinney, hands cuffed behind him, was less steady. Hank kept hold of his elbow as they made their way through the trees. Sheila brought up the rear with her shotgun at the ready and the sack of Purple Pass slung over her shoulder along with Vern’s rusty old double-barreled Ithaca.
They walked in silence. Kinney hadn’t said a word since getting felled by Sheila, which didn’t surprise Hank in the least. Vern’s silence, on the other hand, was quite out of character. They made it about four hundred yards before he reverted to form.
“I just don’t understand here, Sheriff, why you got me cuffed. I’m on my own land, defending my own property.”
Hank told him they would discuss it once they were back at the house. Beside him, Kinney’s lip curled in contempt.
“A man’s got a right to protect his property. You ought to know that, Sheriff, even if you are from the city.” Vern stomped on and talked on, irritating Kinney more with every step. A comment about the sanctity of Miles land finally did it. The older man let out a hiss and took too long a stride forward.
Hank yanked back on Creosote’s elbow, hard. He leaned in and whispered, “Maybe you’ll get lucky and have a prison cellmate who talks this much. You can spend the rest of your life listening to him.”
Kinney pulled away as much as he could and reverted to his chemically preserved stoicism, but Hank could tell it took effort. Good. Maybe once they got him to the station, he’d be mad enough—and need a cigarette badly enough—that he’d start talking.
Vern had moved on from property rights and was now complaining about the tightness of his handcuffs. Hank would have seriously considered gagging him if he hadn’t been annoying Creosote so much. They finally reached the clearing and approached the house, and Kinney seemed almost relieved when Hank shut him in the squad car. The night wasn’t cooling off any, so Hank started the car and turned on the air-conditioning. He wasn’t going to give Kinney any reason to claim poor treatment at the hands of the sheriff’s department. He gave the man a cheery wave through the metal grating separating the front from the back and locked him inside.
Now that the more dangerous of their suspects was contained, Sheila lowered her shotgun and swung the sack off her shoulder. It dropped with a thud at her feet. Hank chuckled.
“You look like a backwoods—”
“If you say Santa Claus, I will hit you.”
He bit back another laugh and turned toward Vern, who was now complaining about local zoning laws. He needed to put a stop to the torrent of words before Sheila decided to use the stock of her twelve-gauge for the second time that evening.
“C’mon,” he said, grabbing Vern’s arm. “We’re going to go inside and have a conversation. Until I start it, you are going to stay quiet. Got it?”
Vern mumbled something in response and allowed Hank to lead him into the farmhouse. As they approached, the guy’s motion-activated floodlights clicked on, shooting brightness throughout the whole area and causing both men to squint painfully as they walked up the porch steps. Sheila followed after stowing Vern’s old shotgun with the rest of his armory in the cruiser’s trunk. The front room was empty. Hank noticed that dust had started to collect on the smooth wood surfaces. The clock in the corner had wound down. The curtains remained wide open and the windows, turned opaque by the night, reflected the little group.
Vern bellowed for his sister. She came down the stairs at a mockingly slow pace, carrying a suitcase.
“I’m leaving.”
“Not quite yet.” Hank extended a hand toward the stiff sofa. “Sit.”
She blinked back tears and complied, carefully setting her suitcase next to her. Sheila put Vern as far away as possible, in a wingback chair by the fireplace. Then she gave him a look that about melted the brick hearth.
“Where was the gun hidden? The one you took into the woods? You knew we wanted them all.” Sheila leaned in.
He gulped. “The shed. Out back the house. With the shovels and such.”
Sheila demanded to know why.
“Daddy always kept one out there.” Vern shrugged haplessly. “He just did.”
Hank stepped forward, and Sheila moved to the side to give him a clear sight line. He bored into Vern.
“What about the rifle? Where’s the .22?”
Vern blinked at the change of subject. Then he rounded on Donna.
“Her…” he practically growled. “She destroyed it. She stole it, and she had it melted down. Just to spite me. My favorite gun.”
CHAPTER
36
Hank stared at the older Miles, then slowly turned to the younger one.
There was only one explanation.
“Why would you do that, Donna?” he asked softly.
She knit her fingers together in her lap and took a deep breath.
“He was too attached to it. It was dangerous. You can’t be taking a rifle everywhere you go like that. He was going to hurt somebody. He’s so careless with things. It was … it was for the best.”
She kept her gaze fastened on her brother and did not meet Hank’s eyes. Hank took a step toward her. “But why would you choose that one? The one he’s had forever? Why didn’t you just ask him to put the gun away? Why didn’t you ask him to put all the guns away?
“You didn’t do that, did you?” Hank continued.“You only cared about the one.”
“Yeah, why didn’t you—” Vern stopped as he saw Hank’s face. He looked to his right and saw the same expression on Sheila.
But neither of them were looking at him. Hank stepped over and sat down on the coffee table, inches from Donna’s knees.
“What made that rifle so special, Donna?”
She shook her head. “Only that it was the one he carried around all the time.”
“Ever since he was, what, twelve?” Hank said.
She nodded.
“And that would have made you nine, and Charlie would have been four, right?”
Another nod. Behind him, Vern was mercifully silent.
“So this gun was around when Charlie died.” It was not a question. Neither was this. “You never expected him to be found.”
The effort to keep from flinching made Donna’s knuckles turn white. She managed it, though.
“That gun was never a threat,” Hank said, “because Charlie was supposed to have died from cancer when he was seven. But then his skeleton turned up in the woods. And you couldn’t be sure of exactly what else we’d found.”
He leaned in.
“Why didn’t you destroy that rifle months ago when Vern moved in here and started taking it everywhere? Why destroy it only now? Because the skeleton had just been discovered. And because you knew he had been killed by a .22.”
A confused moan came from the wingback chair. Hank did not turn around.
Donna drew in several quick breaths.
“Our parents must have killed Charlie. Then they said he died of cancer. Ask anybody. They told everyone he died in the hospital in Springfield. They lied to us and to everyone—that’s obvious.”
“That makes them accessories. Not murderers,” Hank said.
Donna unwound her fingers and smoothed her slacks. Then she looked Hank in the eye for the first time in the conversation. She was about to play her only card. And it was a good one.
“It would be impossible to find the gun that killed him. That was more than forty years ago.”
And there it was. By destroying the rifle, she showed consciousness of guilt. But if they couldn’t prove that Vern’s rifle was the murder weapon, there was no link between its destruction and the skeleton, and their case would fall apart before it even got to court.
He felt more than saw Sheila move forward.
“Oh, no, honey. Not impossible at all,” she said. “Because Vern was dangerous with it. Shot it off at the least provocation. Including right in front of me. So I have a bullet. In evidence. Properly logged and everything. And you do know what ballistics are, don’t you, honey?”
My God. She was a genius. He had no idea she’d saved that. He fought back a gleeful grin and refrained from looking over at her, afraid that he would give in to the urge to go for a high-five. He kept his gaze pinned on Donna. The little color left in her face was draining slowly away as she stared up at Sheila. She reached up and tucked a blond tress behind her ear. Her hand was shaking. Hank leaned farther forward. Their knees were practically touching.
“Tell us.”
She dropped her hand back into her lap, and her gaze wandered around the room. She had always been the baby, you see. And then Charlie had come along, unexpectedly. At least for her. It hadn’t been a big deal at first. But as he got older, it turned into “the boys” and then her. Left out. She didn’t get a gun when she turned twelve. She didn’t get the camping trips or the hunting lessons like she did before Charlie got older and took her place. And he’d rub it in.
