Smoke and Mirrors

16

The house that Alphonse Jefferson had listed as his address when he’d been arrested three months earlier had long since surrendered to the elements. Several of the paint-starved clapboards were missing and shocks of faded-pink fiberglass shot out from several open spaces like clown hair.

The yard was bare dirt except for scattered clumps of stiff rust-colored weeds, a dead washing machine, a child’s bicycle without wheels, a flattened shoe, and an emaciated and shivering pit bull whose head was much wider than his shoulders. The animal, standing in front of a wood-crate shelter with a floral plastic shower liner weighted down by brickbats on top of it, was anchored to a stake by a short section of swing-set chain. The dog growled as though he was saving his barks for more worthy customers than the two strangers he watched approach his master’s front door.

Brad stood and loudly rapped on the jamb. The interior door opened a few inches. The unmistakable sounds of a fist-flying talk show boomed from the living room.

“Yeah, what?” a scrappy voice rumbled from inside.

“Mrs. Jefferson, it’s Sheriff Barnett. I’m looking for Alphonse,” Brad said through an aluminum door whose fabric screening hung like a mainsail from a corner of it. A mangy cat shot out and flew around the corner of the house. The watchdog eyed the fleeing feline without comment.

“What you wants wif my grandbaby?” the old woman asked, her rheumy brown eyes floating in a cocoa lake of skin, her gaze moving between Brad and Winter like a drunk counting fish in an aquarium. “He ain’t been here for two, three days. You the sheriff, you say?” she asked, warily.

Brad opened his jacket to show her the badge on his shirt. “Yes, ma’am. Does Alphonse live here?” Brad asked her. “He used this address the last time he was arrested.”

“When he want to, he stay here. When he don’t, he don’t. What you wants him for?”

The old woman reached up to her outraged hair as if to check whether it was still there.

“Does your grandson have a rifle?” Brad asked.

“He a vetrin, so in the Army he might a’ did,” she said. “He didn’t brang one back from thur. It ain’t unlegal to have guns when you in the Army, is it?”

“No, ma’am, it isn’t. I was just wondering if he has a rifle now.”

“Not that I ever seen around here, he don’t.” She laughed. “If he had one, he sure would of pawnded it.”

“Can I come in and look at his room?” Brad asked.

“Not without no warrants you ain’t coming in my house. I knows my sivah rights.”

“I can get a warrant, Mrs. Jefferson.”

“Then why you standing there? Go on and get it.” And she slammed the outside door closed, causing the jamb to vibrate.

Winter waited until they were almost back to the cruiser to laugh. Once inside, Brad laughed as well.

“Mrs. Jefferson was downright inhospitable,” Brad said.

“Less than cooperative,” Winter said. “How soon can you get a warrant?”

“I didn’t figure she’d cooperate, so one of my deputies is at the courthouse getting it right now. Watch the front, and I’ll cover the back.”

Ten minutes later, a beefy young deputy climbed from his still-running cruiser and when Brad came around the house, he handed the sheriff a folded search warrant. Brad and Winter moved swiftly to the porch as the deputy went around to the back.

After Mrs. Jefferson opened the door, Brad handed her the warrant and led Winter inside while she stared down at the folded paper in her hand with no expression on her face.

“You people better not make no mess you don’t put straight. And you don’t take nothing neither. I know everything what all’s in here.”

How anyone had managed to pack so much into a small house without it collapsing was an engineering feat worthy of the ancient Romans. The TV set and two mismatched recliners filled a small nest to the right of the front door. A path of sorts existed between shoulder-high walls of newspapers, old books and magazines, which allowed limited access into the rest of the home-based storage facility.

“Reminds me of a prairie dog town,” Brad said in a whisper, referring to several house cats lounging like skeletal panthers on the canyon walls. The first room, which contained a bed, held enough items of clothing and accessories to start a Salvation Army dry-goods distribution center. There were also stacks of electronic appliances, most of which looked like they had been salvaged from the side of the road. A man in his sixties sat up from the bed and blinked at the two men staring into his space.

“Huh?” he asked.

“Sheriff’s department,” Brad said. “We’re executing a search warrant.”

He ran his hands over his hair in an attempt at collecting himself. “We ain’t hiding nothing,” he said in a tone that told Winter the man wasn’t at all sure that was the case.

“We’re looking for Alphonse’s room, Mr. Jefferson,” Brad said.

“Next room, but I don’t think he’s in there.”

“Where is he?”

“Sommer else probably.”

“Mr. Jefferson,” Brad said. “How can you live like this?”

“Axe her,” the man said sadly. “City makes her keep the yard up some. You think you can git ’em to come up in here and ’complish the same thang?”

“I expect I could call the fire chief and tell him this is a fire hazard and maybe he can make her clean some of this out,” Brad said.

“At be good, if you can.”

Alphonse Jefferson’s room was by far the least cluttered room in the house. They searched the room, but there was no gun of any kind to be found, only a few pictures of a man at different ages, a wallpapering of nudes torn from magazines, and a framed less-than-honorable discharge sheet from the U.S. Army.

The clothes hanging in the closet were neatly ordered, with each of the articles in its own dry-cleaning bag. The closet floor was covered with pairs of shoes in every imaginable style and color. Chains and other items of ornamental gold-plated jewelry had been laid out on the dresser as if for display.

“No rifles,” Winter said after he’d looked under the mattress.

“I doubt he would keep it here,” Brad said, moving out of the room toward the kitchen.

A sink hung on the wall in the kitchen beside a rusted refrigerator. Three mismatched chairs surrounded a table piled with food-encrusted dishes. A gas stove, its surface covered with stacked pots and pans, was positioned below partly closed cabinets. On the floor by the back door-beside an overflowing box piled with more dried bits of feline offal than litter-several bags of trash that had been chewed open by tiny teeth waited to be put on the curb.

Winter saw the bags shift slightly-a movement so subtle he almost missed it. Pulling out the Reeder.45, Winter nudged Brad.

“I’ve seen enough,” Brad said, taking out his Python.

Winter and Brad reached down and each took the corner of a trash bag. They jerked the bag up and aimed down at the man curled into a ball on the floor.

“Okay, Alphonse,” Brad said, “It’s time to take a ride. I want you to stand up slowly. I don’t want to shoot you, but if you do anything but get up slowly and come with us, I will.”

The young man dressed in a black jogging suit turned his head up slowly, peered at the handguns, and grinned.