Chapter 9

1:20 AM Saturday: My vision of the scene of the crime, if there has been a crime, was limited to the dim flashing of the blue pursuit lights on the patrol cars behind me. There were other lights, and closer to the body, but, standing behind the official sawhorses as I was, they were both facing the wrong way and too far away, and so were of no use to me. About all I could see was Gas ordering his two deputies around, the vague outline of a large, distant house, and Bob standing next to me pale-blue and rigid.

He had accompanied me, ostensibly to give me directions, but they were so simple he could have spared himself. From town, all you would have to do is head toward my house except, at the fork, take the left dirt road, not the right. In fact, according to Bob, Lawson’s house is right behind mine, about a mile back. We could have walked faster than we drove, except for the small matter of half a mountain in the way.

"It don’t seem like much," Bob had said on the way over, "not when you drive it, but we’re a good four hundred feet higher at the house than we would be if we had bottom land, like Lawson. The edge of the mountain looks almost sheer, but I used to climb up and down it, when I was a kid, on paths I could hardly see. A bunch of us kids played all the time, right where Lawson’s house is now." He paused. "When he came back to Testament, about fifteen years ago, and started to build that house, he ran us all off with a shotgun." Bob didn’t say another thing the rest of the trip but directions.

I made out a figure in the house’s doorway. It approached the body slowly, staring intently at the ground. As it got closer to the portable lights set up around the body, I saw it was Gas, the sheriff. He suddenly stopped, very close to the body, and called to one of the deputies. The deputy, who was taking pictures from every angle imaginable, stopped and crossed to Gas. Gas began waving his arms and pointing to the ground, obviously mad, but keeping his voice down too low to be heard from where I was. The deputy shrugged, and held his arms outstretched, and, in a voice louder than Gas’s tried to explain. "But sheriff," was as far as he got each time before Gas interrupted him.

Seeing that that was going to go on for while, I turned my eyes to other sights. Although Bob and I were the first spectators - which, incidentally, reinforced my opinions about the quality of Cheri’s grapevine - other murder debutantes had joined the ball. There was a group of them, farmers by their dress, huddled together about thirty feet away. I started toward them, thinking I might add something to their conversation, and, to be fair, take something away in return. About halfway there, though, one farmer, a young one with sharp eyes, nudged his neighbor and pointed to me. In a flash the whole group was looking toward me. Some of them started to edge away, but I stepped it up and managed to catch the bulk of them still together

"Terrible, ain’t it?" I asked, jabbing my thumb in the direction of the body. None of the faces before me showed any appreciation of that brilliant opening. Then the biggest one, scratching his brown mop of hair took a step toward me. I took one back.

"You know, we don’t like trouble ‘round here," he informed me. He lifted one huge arm straight out, bent it at the elbow, and ran a forefinger down the side of his nose. "Don’t you think you caused enough trouble?"

I nodded. "I see. Sorry to have bothered you," I said, and backed away four or five steps, then turned and walked with all deliberate speed back to Bob, who hadn’t even noticed I was gone. I nudged him.

"Where’s Gas?" I asked. Bob lifted a finger to point behind us, but before he could say a word, there was a voice in my ear.

"Stack, will you come with me?" It was Gas. He didn’t pause, just walked between Bob and me, hoisted himself over the saw horse and went toward the body. I looked at Bob, shrugged, and followed Gas. He stopped and waited for me about ten feet from the mortal remains of Lawson. I started closer, but he waved me back. "Footprints," he said.

Lawson, stretched out in the mud of his front yard, was quite a sight. From the bald patch on his head, visible as he lay face down, and the gray hair on his back, he must have been fifty, sixty, or older, but his body simply didn’t look it. Though powerfully built through the shoulders and torso, it was his hips and legs that gave the impression of youth most strongly. His legs looked like the legs of a ballet dancer, or sprinter. Of course I wouldn’t have had such a good view if he had been wearing clothes.

Another thing: I could see that he was red, as though sun- or wind-burned, from, to be completely accurate, the top of the back of his neck to the back of the heels of his feet.

Gas started off, and I followed. I caught him about halfway to the house.

"Did he usually run around naked?" I asked. Gas shook his head. His lips were pressed into a thin line. If he was having trouble talking about it, I was determined to help him out. "What killed him?" I asked. He shrugged. "Was he always red like that?" He shook his head. "Who found him?" Gas just climbed the steps to the house and went inside. It was dark, but I followed.

Inside, I stood alone: Gas was out of sight. I stooped over and began to grope my way inside, but before I got three steps, the lights came on. When my eyes adjusted, I could make out the room. Somebody could afford the best, it seemed to me. The rug, a large Oriental, must have cost thousands. The furniture looked very solid and well made, the chairs comfortable and well made, the leather-bound books filling the wall-long bookshelf expensive and well made. Gas, standing beside the light switch beside the bookshelf watched me look around.

I felt it my duty to break the silence. I waved a hand at it all. "Social Security, right?"

Gas scowled, then turned around and went through the doorway on his right. By the time I got there, he had the light on. This room was an office, as expensively decorated as the other. Only two things stood out above the opulence: they were both shoes, heavy walking shoes, lying tossed to one side of the room. They looked burnt. I reached to pick one up.

"Leave it alone," said Gas. I straightened up. He looked me over. "I’d like to know which of my men told you ‘bout this." I didn’t reply. "Don’t matter," he said at last. "Since you’re here, and are such an all-fired hotshot, maybe you can tell me something."

"Sure, what do you want to know?"

Gas sat on the corner of the desk. "I better explain. Last night, ‘tween 10 and 11:30, we had a pretty hard rain. At around midnight, Old Man Lawson came runnin’ out o’ his house to die in the resultin’ mud." He stood back up, and went to the window beside the file cabinet. "The ground all around this place is mud. A cat couldn’t get near here without leaving a print. There’s only one door, and all the windows are fastened shut, anyway. Nobody could have got out of here without tracking across the front." He turned to me. "There ain’t but one set of tracks out there coming from this house. His. Lawson’s." He looked back out the window. "The strides were long, like he was running." A laugh. "Lawson running. That I’d liked to a’seed." Back to me. "Old Man Lawson weren’t scared of nothin’." He crossed to me, and shook a finger in my face. "That’s what I want to know. What killed Lawson? How was it done? Who could have done it?"

I shook my head. "How about his heart? What about a stroke? For all I know, he could have taken poison, or swallowed glass. Why did somebody have to kill him? Anyway, how do you know it was near midnight that he died? Who found him? What does he have to say?"

"I found him, if you gotta know," snarled Gas. "I called him around 11:30, and found him, dead, around 12:30. Damn it, I should have known you’d be no help."

"What’d you come here for?" I asked. "Was it about that Mary Cole girl?"

"It had nothing to do with her. I don’t go around beating dead dogs. Now, I can’t stop you from messing with that, but you keep away from this, or I’ll pull the rug from under you fast."

"What, you don’t think the two deaths are related? It might be the same guy, if it’s murder."

Gas looked thoughtful. "Yeah," he admitted slowly. "Yeah, maybe," he got business-like again, "but you go at it from your end, I’ll go from mine. Now get out of here, I got work to do."

I started out, but thought of something. "Oh, since I’ve got your blessing, how ‘bout telling me where I can look through Mary’s effects?

"What?" Gas looked startled.

"Her effects," I repeated. "I might go through them, just for a laugh."

"Oh—um, I guess the owner’s of the house she was renting are storing them somewhere."

It was my turn to be startled. "Renting?" I turned to go. "Sorry I couldn’t help. See you." My mind was awhirl.

When I returned to Bob, he was ready to go home. The ambulance from Knoxville had come and gone, in no real hurry, and most of the crowd had gone as well.

"He sure is taking this seriously, for the death of an outlaw, a bootlegger." I said on the way to the car.

"It is serious," Bob intoned.

I stopped. "Say Bob, how long was Mary here?"

"I don’t know, maybe four years."

"Would you say she was a success?"

"Like I said, nearly everybody tried her on once. Lots of ‘em must have found her fit."

I started walking again. "Yeah. Listen, are there any others in town?"

"Not that I know. I mean, of course there are some loose women, but nobody else does it for a living." We reached the car. "Now, before she came…" he began, but I cut him off.

"Thanks, but that’s all right. I’ve got me some thinking to do." He shut up and got in the car.

I thought all right - all the way back, while getting undressed, and even, for a while, lying in bed in the dark. But none of the pieces wanted to fit. Exhausted, I closed my eyes and drifted into sleep.