Evasion

 

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

            Nelson woke the next morning to faint sounds from the kitchen. He eased from bed and opened his bedroom door two inches and listened. Charlie and Angela were engaging in a spirited conversion. He smiled and listened.

            “So there I was,” Angela said, “eighteen and ready for anything. Maureen and I had worn our short little skirts and loose blouses—we called them our easy-access outfits—and we were like a couple of A-10 Thunderbolts, all warmed up on the runway with our engines throbbing and ready for action. Look out world, here we come.”

            Nelson eased the door closed and went into his bathroom. He showered quickly, then dressed in jeans, a black pullover shirt and hiking shoes. He picked up a spare shoe from inside his closet and held it aloft. Easing to the door again, he opened it a crack. Angela was still talking, more animated now. Nelson listened.

            “So I looked again,” she said. “Oh my god … that thing was a big around as a tomato-juice can and long as a stick of salami.” She stopped, “You believe me, don’t you?”

            Nelson heard Charlie make a muffled reply.

            “Then stop laughing, goddamit,” Angela said. Charlie said something and Angela said, “What the hell do you think I did? I jerked my panties up and went hopping out of there, pulling up my easy-access skirt best I could with one hand and holding my shoes in the other. I banged on the other door and, luckily, Maureen and her old goot hadn’t been as far along as we were, so she ran out to where I was and we went into escape and evasion-mode.” She stopped and said. “And if you laugh one more time, I’m going to bitch-slap you into the next county. She laughed, herself.

            Nelson put a hand to his mouth. Charlie said something Nelson couldn’t understand, and Angela said, “He didn’t do nothing at first, just stood there with his tongue and his whatever both hanging out. Then he ran to the door and stood there like an old buzzard yelling, ‘Baby, come back. Come back baby.’ He was still standing there, buck-assed naked, when we backed the car down toward the lake. And you know what he did just before we swung around.? He took that thing in his hand and started waving it at us. The son of a bitch was crazy.”

            “Did you learn anything from it?” Nelson could hear Charlie now.

            “I learned to leave old men alone,” Angela said. “Wrinkled-up trouble is what they are. Those fuckers had spent a couple hundred bucks apiece on us that night, meals, drinks, shows, Viagra, and all. I’ve always suspected they would have spent a thousand more apiece to get what they wanted.” She stopped. “Old men, … shit,” she said. “Young girls make them crazy as loons, and they’ve had way too long for their imaginations and, uh, other things to mature, if you know what I mean. I’ll stick to the young ones like you. You haven’t enough sense to buy a piece of ass, so you have to charm your way into it.” There followed a short silence. “You do know how to charm your way into it, don’t you? And no, you don’t just put your lips together and blow.”

            With that, Nelson dropped the spare shoe on the floor and cursed with a vengeance. The then opened the door and emerged in the hallway with good deal of racket. He made a show of pretending surprise when he saw them. “Hello,” he said, mildly.

            “Hey sailor,” Angela said. “You still sleeping alone?”

            “Looks that way.”

            “Sleep well? And don’t say ‘Sound as a whore on Sunday.’ That Navy crap can be sexist.”

            “I slept,” Nelson said. “What’s up?”

            “Angela brought you something on her way to a meeting with the feds,” Charlie said.

            “A present?” Nelson said.

            “And if anyone finds out about it, I had an extra copy for Agent Benson’s personal use and you stole it from my briefcase. Agreed?”

            “Agreed,” Nelson said.

            “Have some coffee and let’s talk,” Angela said. “I’ll tell you what I know about it.”

            Charlie fixed Nelson some breakfast while he and Angela talked. Afterwards, Nelson left Little Rock and drove east. Before reaching Armistead, he stopped at Barker’s. Elvis was resting from the morning rush, and was reading a newspaper. It was The Armistead Announcer, and the front page was visible. A glaring headline read, “Clues expand in search for killers.”

            “Big news?” Nelson asked, sitting himself across from Elvis.

            “Ace reporter says the inquiry into the mysterious deaths of two young girls includes possible leads in Little Rock,” Elvis said. “Ain’t that something?”

            Nelson started to say something but stood instead. He walked to a nearby stand where he poured himself a cup of coffee and returned to his seat. “How’ your brother?” he said. “The one with the FBI in Washington.”

            “The only one I have,” Elvis said. “Funny you should ask, I talked to him just last night.”

            “And.”

            “He’s doing fine,” Elvis said. “Seems like some folks in Little Rock are getting nervous about all the crazy rumors going around.”

            “Rumors?”

            “About gangs in Little Rock dumping bodies out in white America.”

            “Imagine that,” Nelson said.

            “Yeah,” Elvis said. “Imagine that.”

            An hour later, Nelson was in Sheriff Love’s office and the two were studying photographs spread out on the Sheriff’s desk.”

            “This is some “righteous shit” as my jarhead buddies used to say. How do they do this? All we can get is the tops of buildings.”

            “Miracles of modern technology,” Nelson said. “And you haven’t seen them and know nothing about them.”

            “Gotcha,” the Sheriff said. “Now tell me something. Why do buildings in a hunting club need concrete block walls? It ain’t like the deer are going to counterattack.”

            Nelson stroked his chin. “Maybe they are keeping something valuable there.”

            “Redneck cocaine?”

            “Don’t know,” Nelson said. “But these indicate that there is a lot more going on there than fellowship.” He pointed at the photographs. “Too bad we can’t officially use these. Would they be enough to obtain a search warrant?”

            “Probably not,” the Sheriff said, “or the Feds would already have one.” He leaned back his desk. “We may not have time left to get a search warrant.”

            Nelson didn’t respond. He started to gather the photos. He placed them back in their envelope and gestured toward the locker where the Sheriff kept badges and things. Sheriff Love nodded. “We may have worked our way into a jam,” he said. “Right now, we must have the Soul watchmacallits confused. On the one hand, they think we are off chasing the gang members in Little Rock, although that’s probably not what they call them.”

            Nelson leaned back and listened. “On the other hand,” the sheriff said, “They know we’ve been fucking with them. I imagine the Police Chief has told everyone in Connorville that I’ve asked him to be on the lookout for something big.”

            “So what now?”

            “Now, we let them make a mistake. In fact, we help them make a mistake.” He made a note with a pencil on a yellow legal pad and tapped the pencil against his desk several times. He looked at Nelson and sighed. “I feel though, that I’m taking you away from your intended purpose for being here in the first place.”

            Nelson looked puzzled. “Oh?”

            “Finding your young girl’s murderer. I’m about to split our forces, so to speak, and go on a search and destroy mission against what may be a sizable drug operation.”

            Nelson stood walked to the wall of the office on the far left of Sheriff Love. He looked through a window that opened onto the town square. It was a pleasant day and the sheriff had raised the blinds. He studied the bustle of activity outside for a moment and turned to Sheriff Love. “Do you know what I did in the Navy?” he asked.

            “Everyone in Armistead County knows what you were trained to do in the Navy,” he said. “The big mystery is what the fuck you did. Most of the yahoos that would love to know probably don’t really want to.”

            Nelson laughed. “It’s not that mysterious,” he said. “First, I followed orders, that’s all.”

            “And things worked out?”

            “If the orders were good.”

            “And if they weren’t?”          

            “Then our team had to start making shit up.”

            “That was bad?”

            “No, that was usually good, for we were well-trained to make shit up. You know that American military warriors are known for that, and the advantage it gives them.”

            “And?”

            “We sort of enjoyed it, and most of the time the shit we made up matched what the higher-ups wanted all along. They just didn’t know it. I’ve found that things are often connected in ways we never expected. Take that old oak tree there.” He pointed to large tree in the town outside the window.”

            “A tree?”

            “One of the most important functions it performs is in creating the oxygen we breath.”

            “So I’ve read.”

            “But the first inhabitants of the land around here felt certain, I’ll bet, that trees were put here to provide shade in the summer and firewood in the winter.”

            “Your point?”

            Nelson turned away from the window toward the sheriff. “Let’s make up some shit. You never know where it might lead. I’m coming to the belief that everything that happens in this county is connected to everything else that happens.”

            The two stood silent for more than a minute, Nelson watching the tree and the sheriff watching the far wall with his head cocked in thought. He moved it with a slight jerk and spun his chair around so he faced Nelson. Nelson turned and looked at the sheriff, who broke the silence

            “You may not believe it,” he said, “but my first job in this county wasn’t with the Sheriff’s Department.”

            “Oh?”

            “No,” I was a game warden for a while. You ever deer hunt?”

            “Not seriously.”

            “Then you’ve never poached deer?”

            “Not that I recall.”

            “There’s a trick they pull when they want to get an illegal deer out of the woods and into a safe place.”

            “Let me guess. They don’t just drive it out?”

            “Kinda sorta. But first they send out a ‘nervous-nelly decoy’ to fool any law that might be watching. It would usually be the dumbest sumbitch in the group, and that’s saying a lot. He would sail out of the woods with a tarp visible that was hiding something and he would be looking every which a way like the hounds of hell might be after him.”

            “A decoy, no doubt.”

            “Correct. Then the truck with one or more illegal carcasses would drive out slow and easy like it was going to Sunday school.”

           Nelson looked confused. “You thought we were talking about crime,” Sheriff Love said. “Didn’t you?” Before Nelson could answer, the sheriff continued, “Then you thought we were talking about methods of solving crimes. Right? Then we shifted into deer hunting.”

            Nelson nodded. “All three,” the sheriff said. “We’re talking about all three. So sit back my nautical friend and let me ‘splain’ this all to you.”

            “I trust,” Nelson said, “that you may, in the process, tell me how it all may apply to this place.” He tapped a forefinger on one of the photographs.

            “Patience, young deputy.” The sheriff leaned back in his chair. “Do you know that place on the old highway where they store the materials for road repair?”

            Nelson nodded.

            “Then you know that it is at the intersection of the road leading out from this so-called ‘hunting club’ I would imagine.”

            Nelson nodded again.

            “What you don’t know, since you haven’t been an officer of the law in this department long, is that is a favorite resting place for our deputies when there isn’t much major malfeasance going on.”

            Nelson said nothing.

            “What would you think if I told you the deputies observe vehicles leaving from the hunting club playing the ‘deer hunting trick’ right in front of our deputies? We don’t act, since it isn’t any of our business.”

            Nelson leaned forward and said, “That they are transporting illegal deer?”

            “In season, yes,” the sheriff said. “But the season ended a few months back.”

“And?”

“And they are still doing it about once a week or so. In fact, tomorrow is the usual day.”

e“They do it Even though there shouldn’t be any deer to transport?’

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t I ever tell you that Armistead County rednecks are not what you would call real smart?

“No, but I’ve sorta figured that out on my own.”

“Then you might figure that they are up to something when they pull a deer season ploy when it ain’t deer season?”

“Maybe they are killing them out of season?”

“Did I mention that out Game Warden lives in Connerville? He could care less.”

“So what can we do? Is stopping deer poaching poaching part of our mission?”

“No, but doing a ‘California Roll’ through one of our four-way stops is. We need to crack down on that, wouldn’t you say?”

“If you say so.”

"I say let's go screw with some folks."