A Welcome Grave

6

The sheriff’s department sent the first car, driven by a deputy who looked about fourteen. He shuffled around in the parking lot nervously, talking into his radio, and when I called out to him he jumped like I’d fired a shot into his car.

“There’s a body down there,” I said, walking up out of the shadows and into the parking lot. “And a lot of blood. You processed any death scenes before?”

He shook his head and took a hesitant step backward. The damn kid was afraid of me.

“Is there anybody else on the way?”

A swallow and a nod, and then, “Yessir. State police.”

“You want to just wait on them?” I said, my voice gentle.

“Sure. Why don’t we?” He realized then how this might look to the state cops, him standing up here with me in the parking lot, having not even seen the body, and said, “Well, maybe I should . . . you know, secure the area.”

I nodded slowly. “Okay. Follow me.”

We were halfway down the path to the gazebo, the kid stumbling in the dark, when he was saved by the sound of another car pulling into the gravel lot. We both turned, and I saw that it was an unmarked car. A Taurus, just like Joe drove.

“State police?”

“Yeah.” The kid sounded relieved. He started back up to the parking lot. A cop in street clothes climbed out of the unmarked car and walked down the slope. He met us at the corner of the orchard barn, in the glow from one of the few outdoor lights.

“We got a suicide down there,” the sheriff’s deputy said, his chest filling a bit, trying to impress the varsity.

“Uh-huh,” the plainclothes guy said. “Kinda figured that, you know, when dispatch told me to come take a look at a suicide.”

The kid’s chest deflated.

“And who’re you?” the new cop asked me. He was an unremarkable man in every way—average in height and build, not handsome or ugly, just one of a thousand guys you’d pass on the street and hardly spare a glance.

“Name’s Lincoln Perry. I called it in.”

“Found the guy?”

“Saw him do it.”

“Ah.” He nodded and slipped a small tape recorder out of his pocket. “Lincoln Perry. Good name. I’m Roger Brewer, state police.”

He turned the recorder on and spoke into it, giving his name and the date and time, then stating our location and what he’d been told by dispatch and by me. That settled, he held the recorder against his leg and nodded at me.

“Lead the way.”

They followed me around the side of the barn, and when we got into the darkness, the state cop produced a flashlight. I took them up to the gazebo and then stopped.

“That’s him. I imagine you want me to hang back.”

“Uh-huh.” He walked up onto the gazebo without any sign of trepidation, the deputy following nervously. When they got a clear view of the body, Brewer let out a long, low whistle and shook his head.

“Did a pretty good job of it, didn’t he?”

I didn’t say anything. The young deputy’s face had blanched, and he stood at the far end of the gazebo, his hand tight on the railing, his eyes averted. The wind was blowing harder now, and cooler, rippling across the pond and sending a chill through me. A few leaves came tumbling down, one of them settling gently onto Matthew Jefferson’s back. Brewer flicked it off with his index finger.

The woods and the pond lit up with flashing lights as another car pulled in up at the barn, this one a state police cruiser. The two cops who got out were in full uniform, right down to the tall black boots and the full-brimmed hats.

“Wait there, would you?” Brewer said.

“Sure.”

I stood at the edge of the pond with the deputy while Brewer walked up to meet the new arrivals. I could hear him telling them to get an ambulance down to collect the body, and to make sure the hands were bagged. When he was done talking to them, Brewer called for me to come up to the top of the hill. I passed the uniformed cops in silence, both of them giving me hard, suspicious stares, and joined him on the front porch of the barn. He was speaking softly into his tape recorder.

“Well, Mr. Perry, I’m going to need to take a witness statement from you. Going to be a pretty important thing, seeing as how you’re the only person who actually saw anything.”

“Sure.”

“You ever given a statement before?” The question sounded procedural, but it was also a slick way of finding out whether I’d bumped up against a criminal investigation before.

“I’ve given them, yes, but I’ve taken a lot more.”

“Oh?” His eyebrows went up.

“I was a cop in Cleveland, Ohio, for several years. A detective at the end of it.”

“No kidding.” He nodded thoughtfully. “And now?”

“Private investigator.”

“Private investigator,” he echoed. “Well. The plot thickens, right? Were you down in our little part of the world on business or pleasure, Detective?”

“Business.”

“I see.” The recorder was still running, held loosely in his left hand. “Well, tell you what we’re going to do, Mr. Perry. We’re going to run through everything now, you tell me what you can, and then maybe I’ll have more questions later.”

“Right.”

He motioned with his hand for me to begin. I told it to him as clearly as I could, and as honestly, leaving out nothing except my personal history with Karen. It wasn’t relevant to what had happened, but I figured he might try to make it fit somehow, and I didn’t want that headache. Instead, I told him all the details that I could think of, simply presenting Karen as a routine client. That’s what she was, now. The ambulance pulled in as I was finishing, but Brewer let the uniformed cops deal with that, keeping his attention on me.

“Now that,” he said when I was done, “is one hell of a strange thing to happen. I mean, the guy finishes a day of work, gets a note that you’re in town, and goes to sit by this pond with a bottle of whiskey and a gun. He doesn’t kill himself then, in private, but waits for you to show up. When you show up, he somehow is already aware of the very news you drove six hours to share with him. He tells you this and then kills himself.”

I didn’t say anything, and Brewer made a little clucking noise with his tongue and shook his head.

“One hell of a strange thing,” he said again. “You got any theories, Mr. Perry?”

“Well, it seems pretty clear that he thought I was someone else.”

“Someone who knew his father.”

“Yes.”

“Someone who was not alone, based upon the comments you say he made.”

“That’s right. He seemed to think there’d be someone else with me.”

“And he was, what, scared of this third party?”

I thought about it and nodded. “Yes, I think he was. Well, I think he would have been, maybe.”

“Would have been?”

“Had he not already made the decision to put the barrel of that gun in his mouth. That was not a spur-of-the-moment decision. He knew what he was going to do.”

“But he waited for you to show before he did it.”

“Yes.”

“And didn’t wait for this unnamed third party to show.”

“Apparently not.”

“He didn’t know you.”

“Thought he did, though. Thought he knew who I was, or knew who I was with, at least.”

Brewer stood there and stared at me. I looked at the set of his face, at his eyes, and I knew he didn’t like my account of things. He wasn’t ready to say he didn’t believe me yet, but he definitely didn’t like what he’d heard.

“Mysterious,” he said.

“I guess.”

“No, really, it is. I mean, we’ll get a psychological profile together on this guy, and maybe that’ll tell us something. But at this point, it seems like a pretty unusual way to kill yourself.”

“Agreed.”

He shifted position, moving out of the glow of the floodlight. “That’s assuming he did kill himself.”

“He did.”

“Says the gentleman from Ohio,” Brewer said good-naturedly. “But, unfortunately, the gentleman from Ohio was the only person present. So if we say—just for the sake of argument—that he could be lying . . . well, that’s trouble. Because if he did happen to be lying, I’m looking at a homicide.”

“You’re not.”

“Gun wasn’t in the dead man’s hand.”

“It fell out when he fell forward. You worked any suicides before?” When he nodded, I said, “Then you know that you often find the gun beside the body. The instantaneous rigor grips happen, but they aren’t the rule.”

He didn’t say anything, just stood there and looked at me.

“Check his thumb,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“Check his thumb for a hammer imprint. The gun was a revolver, and he cocked it right before he fired. I know, because I heard it. Then he died damn fast. No slow process on that one. The hammer spur impressions could still be on the thumb. That happens when circulation stops abruptly.”

“That’s a fine idea.” Brewer cleared his throat and spat into the bushes beside us. “I’ll be sure that the thumbs are checked, Mr. Perry.”

“Great.”

“It’s a strange thing,” he said for the third time and shook his head. “Now, Mr. Perry, as I said, I’m going to need to get that written statement.”

“Uh-huh.”

“When was it that you were planning to head back to Ohio?”

“The plan was for tonight.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Oh, I’m afraid that’s not going to work.”

“I’ve told you everything I can possibly tell you, and I’ll give you the written statement. If you need me for anything further, you’ll have my telephone number.”

He made a face, as if he were getting ready to break some bad news and didn’t relish the task. That was a joke, though—he was enjoying it just fine.

“I’m in a position where I could really embarrass myself here,” he said. “I mean, sure, you say it was a suicide. But right now, until I’ve done a little more investigation, that’s all I’ve got to rely on. Make me look awful bad if I cut you loose only to have my evidence team tell me it looks like you killed the guy. Then we’ve got to go find your ass, and I’ve got to deal with a bunch of cops in Ohio who are going to shake their heads at me, whisper to each other about this moron in Indiana who let a killer walk right out of his county.”

He looked at me with flat eyes. “I hate to have people whisper about me.”

I met his gaze. “You’ve got my statement. Unless you’re arresting me, I’m going to go home.” Home, suddenly, was sounding very nice, indeed.

“Push comes to shove, eh?” Brewer said.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to keep you here. At least for a few hours, while we get this straightened out.”

“You arresting me for murder?”

He shook his head. “I’m considering this an equivocal death investigation, Mr. Perry. Suicide’s an option, as is murder. As is, I suppose, an accidental shooting. That’d be the gamut, right? Anyhow, I’m going to have to look at it from a few directions, make sure—”

“I get the idea. But if you intend to keep me here overnight, you’re going to have to arrest me for something. And I don’t think you’ve got probable cause to say I killed that guy, Brewer.”

He smiled sadly and nodded, as if I’d beaten him on that point.

“That private eye license of yours,” he said, “is from what state?”

Shit. I saw where this was going now and shook my head.

“Well?”

“It’s from Ohio.”

“Oops. That’s no good. Because we’re in Indiana. And that dead guy out there? He’s in Indiana. And here you are, conducting an investigation in Indiana, without an Indiana license? My, my. I hate to say this, Mr. Perry, but that sounds like a crime.”

“Not the kind you go to jail for.”

This time the smile showed his teeth. “It’ll do for a night.”