Shadow Man (4 page)

Cocked and loaded, Scott Parris gave him both barrels. A name. A telephone number.

The orthodontist jotted the information onto a blank page. “Taking on the services of a PIC seems a rather drastic course of action.” He stowed the notebook and pen in his shirt pocket. “I will have to give it some thought.”

Parris stared at the dead woman’s big toe. The obscene little hole in her stocking was beginning to annoy him.
Please, please, let some of my uniforms show up.

Blue and red lights flashing, the first black-and-white pulled into Phillipe’s parking lot, screeched to a rocking halt. It was, as might be expected, the dependable Captain Leggett. Parris was on his way to meet his second in command when he heard a sound.

“Hsssst.”

He turned. “Who’s there?”

A head appeared just above a mulberry bush. “Just Old Willie, the groundskeeper.”

The chief of police smiled at the scarecrow-man who emerged.

“Old Willie” was worthy of his nickname. Tattered gray overalls hung on the aged man’s skinny frame. He was hunched forward, walked with a cane. He removed a long-stemmed pipe from a mouth that bristled with untrimmed whiskers, stuck it into the pocket of the OshKosh B’Gosh bib, offered a skeletal hand to the lawman.

Parris shook the bony paw, stole a sideways glance at the squad car, where Leggett was closing the door. “So you work for Phillipe?”

“For almost three months, now.” Willie chuckled. “But I wouldn’t exactly call it work. I mostly potter around. Mow the grass once a week, keep the weeds from taking over the place.” He tapped the cane against Parris’s boot toe. “I knew you’d be getting around to asking me sooner or later, so I thought I should let you know right now—I heard that shot.”

Parris forgot about Leggett. “Where were you?”

He pointed the knobby cane. “Sitting up yonder in my rocking chair, right in front of the storage building where we keep all the gardening equipment and fertilizer.”

Parris squinted in the darkness, could barely make out a peak-roofed, slab-walled shed that was almost hidden in a cluster of willows.

Anticipating the next question, the old man said: “That Phillipe is an okay fella; he lets me bunk in there. After I’m through with my chores, I kinda settle in for the night. Sometimes I listen to my battery radio, other times I go for a walk down by the creek. But this evening, the radio was fulla static and it looked like rain, so I came outside to watch the thunderstorm build up over the mountains. When the shot was fired—I was smoking my pipe.” Having reminded himself of this small pleasure, he retrieved the device from his pocket and restarted it with a kitchen match.

The chief of police put his hand behind his back, crossed his fingers. “Did you see the shooter?”

A slow shake of the gray head. “Didn’t see a soul. Not when I heard the shot, and not later. What I mean is, I didn’t see no one running away.” He leaned heavily on the cane. “Which is kinda interesting, when you think about it. From where I was I could see the whole parking lot and most of the patio, where that poor woman got killed.” He made a sweeping gesture with the pipe. “And you can see that both places are lit up almost bright as day.”

Parris nodded.
Which means the shooter left by some other way. Across the river and through the woods
…Another GCPD unit was pulling up, and Leggett had spotted the chief of police. Parris’s right-hand man was headed toward his boss. “I have to go have a word with one of my men. But stay put; I’ll have someone take your statement.”

The groundskeeper smiled. “Always glad to help the Law.” He shook his cane at the cop. “But there is one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t want my name to show up in the newspaper—this is just between me and the police.”

“Not looking for publicity, eh?”

“I’m not looking to be the next person who gets shot at.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it—you didn’t actually get a look at the shooter, so—”

“You know that, and I know that.” The groundskeeper took a long, thoughtful puff on his pipe. “But what if the bad guy don’t know that?” He pointed the smoking instrument at the chief of police. “The killer might think I’m one of those witnesses that know a lot more than the newspaper is lettin’ on.” He clamped the stem hard between his teeth. “Chew on that for a while.”

When Manfred Blinkoe stepped into the bookstore, it had been almost three days since the unfortunate incident at Phillipe’s. Having selected a used volume (
Classic Bowie Knives
) and rendered up a crisp new twenty-dollar bill for his purchase, the orthodontist stood at the counter while the owner of Harriet’s Rare Books completed the transaction. As she fumbled with the coins, the customer consulted his obscenely expensive wristwatch, which kept perfect time.
Eleven fifty-nine and thirty-two seconds.
He raised his gaze to the mirror on the wall behind her, liked what he saw. In an effort to make the reflection perfect, the vain fellow proceeded to straighten his red bow tie. He had barely managed to complete the small task when—staring at the silvered glass with an expression of astonished horror—he muttered: “Oh, no—he has returned. And so soon.” Precisely, in fact, at high noon.

The book slipped from his hands, hit the counter with a heavy
thunk.

This seismic event derailed the woman’s rickety little train of thought. “Don’t make so much racket while I’m making change!” When her customer did not respond, she gave him a dirty look. And saw it. Out there on the sidewalk. Looking straight at her.

Harriet dropped nickels and dimes all over the floor.

With the chill of last night’s rain hanging heavy in the morning air, Daisy Perika pulled the woolen shawl more tightly around her shoulders. The tribal elder leaned on her oak staff, scowled at the pair of legs protruding from underneath her trailer home.
If it ain’t one awful thing it’s something worse. Yesterday, the television went on the blink. Week ago Sunday, the well pump popped a gasket. Last month, a spotted skunk crawled up under my house and died. And now this
. The more recent stink was, if possible, even more disturbing. She heaved a sigh, lifted a prayer to heaven.
God have mercy on a poor old woman
.

A raven sitting on a juniper snag spread its wings. And laughed at her.

Using the Ute tongue, Daisy mumbled a vulgar response to the foul bird. It squawked a raucous reply, departed in a huff and whuff of feathers. The shaman was watching the impudent creature wing its way toward Snake Canyon when she heard the low rumble of an automobile engine, the protesting squeak of springs on the rutted road. She got a tight grip on her walking stick.
If that’s somebody bringing me more trouble, I will whack ’em right between the eyeballs!

Manfred Wilhelm Blinkoe saw a spot of sunlight flashing off something metallic. He elbowed the attorney he had pressed into service as his chauffeur and pointed. “Right over there, Spencer—that must be the place.”

“I should hope so,” the ill-tempered driver snapped. “Aside from a single chipmunk, we have not encountered a sign of life for these last ten hellish miles.” Spencer Trottman turned off the bumpy dirt road onto the hint of a lane that wound its crooked way through a thirsty grove of piñon and juniper.

“Don’t park too close to the Indian woman’s home—it is considered impolite.” Blinkoe used the pedantic tone of one who has a superior knowledge of such matters.

“As you say.”
I would have preferred to park thirty miles away
. The driver braked the white Mercedes SUV to a stop, shut off the ignition, turned to give his client a stony look. “Manfred, as your legal counsel and investment adviser, I am compelled to say it again—this is a fool’s errand.”

Blinkoe laughed. “Hah—that is why I brought you along!” Noting the hurt look hanging on Spencer Trottman’s long face, he added quickly: “To keep a close watch over me, I mean. I expect you to deter me from doing some foolish thing that I might deeply regret for two or three seconds.”

Daisy Perika pretended to be unaware of the arrival of the massive automobile and oblivious to the pair of white men in suits who emerged—as the attorney might have put it—
there-from
. But there from the corner of her dark eye, she watched them approach in mincing steps, as if getting a little spot of dirt on their polished shoes would be a catastrophe. When they were within a dozen paces of her trailer, she turned abruptly—raised a hand to signal that they should come no closer.

The visitors stopped in their tracks.

Pegging at the ground with her walking stick, Daisy went to meet them. She paused a few steps away, blinked. Something was very odd. The taller, clean-shaven man was easy enough to see, crisp and clear as could be. But the bearded fellow was out of focus, sort of jittery at the edges. In the shaman’s fertile imagination, there were two images of the man, one laid over the other—but slightly out of alignment. She blinked and the fuzzy twins merged into one. She heaved a little sigh.
Must’ve been something in my eye.

The funny-looking fellow with the forked beard tipped his spiffy black homberg in a theatrical gesture. “Ah, excuse me, madam—would you be Ms. Daisy Perika?” He stared at her through thick spectacles.

She eyed the strangers with open suspicion. “I would if it’d be doing me any good.”

Blinkoe was somewhat taken aback by this response. “How do you do, I am—”

“How do I
do
?” She pointed at the legs sticking out from under her trailer. “How would you be doing if first thing in the morning, you come outside for a breath of fresh air—and found a
dead body
under your house?”

The visitors stiffened, seemed about to bolt. It was the attorney who spoke. “Dead? Are you quite certain?”

“Well,” Daisy admitted, “I haven’t actually
touched
it to see if it’s still warm. But this one sure looks stone-cold to me.”

Rebounding from this unexpected revelation, Blinkoe displayed a morbid fascination. “But how did this unfortunate person expire?” He rubbed his hands together in happy expectation. “Might it have been an act of mindless violence?”

Daisy aimed a sullen glare at the man. “Well I didn’t do ’im in if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Oh, I assure you, I did not mean to suggest—”

“Excuse me.” Spencer Trottman cleared his throat. “But I feel compelled to make an observation. It strikes me as distinctly noteworthy that the corpse is not
entirely
under your trailer. What I mean to say is that it is only
partially
under your home.” His tone suggested that perhaps they had caught the old woman in the very act of concealing the body.

Daisy nodded. “Yeah, I guess you town people would think it’s kinda strange. But when they’re dying, people are a lot like skunks or dogs—they get this urge to crawl into some dark place, like caves or hollow logs. Or under a person’s floor.” She squinted up at the clouds and continued. “Last night was awfully cold and rainy. After I drifted off to sleep, it’s possible the poor fella come by looking for help. Maybe he pounded on my door, but I was sleeping like a stone and he wasn’t able to rouse me up. So he tried to scoot up under the trailer to get out of the weather—but before he got all the way, he gave up the ghost.”

His gaze fixed on the dead man’s boots, Blinkoe stubbornly returned to his question. “But what was the cause of death?”

Daisy turned her considerable imagination to the various possibilities. “Some awful disease, maybe. There’s always black plague amongst the prairie dogs, and those gray jumping mice carry the falling-down fever and there ain’t no cure for that. Then there’s the six-eyed bloodsucking ticks and the hairy-faced flesh-eating wolf spiders.” Her grim expression made it clear that they did not want to hear the grisly details of how the ticks and spiders went about their gruesome business. “Now I’m not saying it couldn’t have been a gunshot wound or a knife in the back. Around here, bad things happen every other day.” She leaned on the walking stick. “But that’s not for me to figure out. I guess I’d better call the tribal police, tell them there’s a dead man up under my trailer.”

Trottman directed a whisper into his client’s ear. “A loony old woman and a dead body. I
told
you we should not have come out here.”

Blinkoe was unfazed. “Oh posh, Spencer—all this worry over a mere corpse. Why, I would not have missed it for all the world.”

The Ute woman eyed the newcomers. “What brings you two out here—you make a wrong turn somewhere?”

In all the excitement, they had almost forgotten.

“Hmm. Let me see.” Blinkoe pulled at the left fork of his meticulously clipped beard. “Oh yes. We have come in search of a Mr. Charles Moon. His foreman at the Columbine Ranch—a Mr. Bushman—informed us that Mr. Moon might be on his way here to pay a visit to his aunt, which is presumably yourself. Oh, by the way”—he nodded to indicate the stiff-lipped man—“this is my legal counsel, Mr. Spencer Trottman. I am Dr. Manfred Wilhelm Blinkoe.”

The shaman, famous for her herbal cures, raised an eyebrow. “What kind of doctor?”

“I am an orthodontist.” He had taken note of her teeth, which could use a bit of work, and added hastily: “Though I am no longer in active practice.”

“It’s just as well,” the old woman said with a nod toward the presumed corpse. “I don’t think you could do this one any good. I’d say his chompers is the least of his problems.”

Trottman’s spine jerked as if he had received an electrical shock. He pointed a trembling finger at the body under Daisy’s trailer. “One of the legs just moved.”

The old woman pinned him with her gimlet-eye stare. “You sure about that?”

He seemed suddenly to doubt himself. “Well, I suppose it wasn’t all that much—merely a twitch.”

“Possibly the onset of rigor mortis,” the orthodontist suggested.
That would help establish the time of death.

“Yeah, could be the body’s starting to stiffen up.” Daisy turned to see whether the leg might twitch again. “Or it could be it’s somebody that’s playing possum. This wilderness is full of crazies.” The old woman set her jaw in the manner of one who is not about to put up with any nonsense from a would-be corpse. “Well I’ll sure find out.” She marched back to the trailer, yelled: “Hey! Are you a live one or a dead one?” Without waiting for a response, she kicked at a boot.

A big voice boomed out from beneath the trailer. “What?”

Daisy turned to grin at her visitors. “Just like I thought—he was faking. And I’ll bet you a dollar the yahoo’s up to no good. He was probably stealing the root crops and canned goods I store under there, then played dead when I came outside.” She made another kick at the boot. “You come outta there, you thievin’ rascal.”

The man under the trailer gave the wrench a final twist.
I’ll stop a quarter turn before I strip the threads.

As the visitors approached the woman’s home, the orthodontist noted a rain-spotted Expedition parked in a clump of junipers. A pretty blue-and-white flower had been painted on the door. Blinkoe pointed at the automobile bearing the Columbine logo. “Excuse me, Ms. Perika. But the fellow under your home—might he possibly be Mr. Moon?”

Daisy pretended to be startled at the suggestion. “Well, now—why didn’t I think of that.” The old woman raised a hand to her mouth, snickered.

“Hah.” Blinkoe elbowed his legal counsel. “The aged auntie has pulled our legs!”

Spencer Trottman was as far from being amused as is east from west. He glared at the Ute woman. “What is Mr. Moon doing underneath your home?”

“God only knows,” she said with a shake of her head. “From time to time, my nephew does some strange things.”

Having pulled himself out into the daylight, Charlie Moon jammed a pair of wrenches into his hip pocket, squinted up at the visitors. The uptight fellow looked like either a lawyer or a mortician. The man with the double-pointed beard was another matter altogether.
Where have I seen that face?

Manfred W. Blinkoe introduced himself and Spencer Trottman to the tribal investigator.

Charlie Moon had heard the Mercedes engine a full nine minutes before the sounds had been detected by his aunt’s old eardrums, but he had been too busy to take an interest in either their arrival or their conversation with his mischievous relative. “Sorry I couldn’t come out to meet you. My aunt smelled something sour last night, thought another skunk had crawled up under her floor. It turned out to be the odorant they put in the propane. I was busy fixing a leak in her gas line.”

Outraged by the Indian woman’s contemptible shenanigans and her nephew’s amiable explanations, the attorney was in a mood to take scalps and burn tipis. “Gas apparatus can be quite dangerous.” He looked down his long nose at the sitting Indian. “I assume you are well qualified to make the necessary repairs.” It was apparent that Spencer Trottman assumed no such thing. Indeed, he appeared to be eager to sue if he could find a client.

“I’m just your run-of-the mill handyman.” The Ute grinned at his aunt. “She hires me because I work for nothing.” He got up off the ground.

The attorney and the orthodontist watched the lanky figure unfold like a carpenter’s segmented ruler—up to a height of seven feet above the top of his boot heels.

Moon brushed some dust off the seat of his jeans. “Anything I can do for you fellas?”

“Quite possibly.” Blinkoe gave his attorney a look that brooked no argument. “Spencer, why don’t you have a pleasant visit with this charming little lady while Mr. Moon and I go for a walk-and-talk.”

“First, I got to get my hat.” Charlie Moon headed for the Columbine flagship.

Blinkoe followed.

As he watched them go, blood vessels throbbed in Trottman’s neck.

Daisy smiled at the irate attorney as if he were her closest friend. “C’mon inside. I’ll brew us up a fresh pot of coffee.”
This should be fun.