Cause of Death

8

We are at the Quick Mart at the intersection of Route 420 and Palmer Mountain Road.

Behind the counter stands the owner, a shaggy-haired fellow somewhere on the far side of middle age. He has yellow teeth and wears a perpetually put-out expression. I think of the word “coot.” This part of the county is mall-free, so I assume the place does a booming business. There’s certainly plenty to stock up on, rack after rack after rack, from medicine to flashlights to Havahart traps to every genre of junk food on the market, of which jerky seems to command the most shelf space.

Terry says, “Harv. The night of that accident, the woman killed on the mountain, were you working?”

“Working all the time, yessir. All I do. Working, working. Finding help is shit impossible. Dependable help, I mean.”

“You’ve got a good view of 420.”

“I do.” And he glances out the windows to prove it.

“You see any trucks around nine or ten? Pickups, I’m talking.”

Harv rolls his eyes. “You shittin’ me, Terry. Come on. Like I could remember?”

Terry points to the video camera behind him. “That work?”

“Does, but it’s there mostly to keep the punks on the straight and narrow. Might show a glimpse of the road. I don’t know.”

We go into the man cave that is Harv’s back office, aromatic of cigar smoke and a body odor that borders on untenable. Still, it’s worth the endurance. Harv brings up the footage, and you can see the intersection clearly. Harv scrubs the video back to the day of the accident and Terry takes over the controls. According to the time stamp, a half hour before Pax died, a white pickup drove up 420 toward the accident site. And, in the time it would take to deliver a deer’s corpse, it drove back down.

I say, “Look at the time. The driver wouldn’t be the shooter.”

“Shooter?” Harv asks.

“Did you get—” I start to ask Terry, who is writing down the tag number, rendering my question moot.

We look at the rest of the tape but there are no other cars on 420 until the emergency vehicles speed up the mountainside in response to the accident.

“The white pickup,” I say. “If it has deer blood in the back, that’s evidence — if it matches what’s on the road. DNA.”

“That part is true, but what’d be more helpful is to check out the fella who owns that truck before we push the button.”

I’m impressed at this initiative. “Good.”

“Shooter?” Harv asks again.

“It’s nothing,” Terry says. He types on his phone and a moment later frowns. “Hm.”

“What?”

“Truck’s owned by Todd Stoltz. Know him. Been a troublemaker off and on. But, will admit, man is a natural-born hunter. You want a deer out of season, which it is, he’s your go-to man. I’ll go up to his place, have a talk.”

As we walk to the door, Terry thanks the perplexed and now troubled Harv.

I say, “I’ll follow you.”

Terry blinks. “No, you will not. This’s getting just odd enough that we need to be careful.”

“I’m coming.”

“No.”

“It’s my wife who died, Terry.”

He scowls but I’m not sorry I played the card.

After a pause he says, “You carrying?”

I don’t understand.

“Your expression pretty much answers me. But to be clear: I’m asking if you’re strapped — you got a snub nose, a gun?”

“Jesus, no.”

He sighs. “Okay. But you stay in the car.”

“Deal.”

A half hour later, we are winding up an arduous hill, past roadside displays of rusting appliances, generic trash, a mattress egregiously stained and free for the taking.

He pulls onto a side road and stops. Through the brush there’s a view of Todd Stoltz’s cabin, about fifty feet away. It’s the sort of place where you’d expect a “troublemaker off and on” to live. Mismatched roof shingles. The clapboard siding is muddy and rotten and affixed with cheap iron nails, whose heads are surrounded by tiny halos of rust. In front is a porch on which sit a rocking chair, a cooler, and a double-barreled shotgun, muzzle up. In the yard are rusting metal armatures and pipes and gears, oil drums, a transmission. It’s a mini version of Evan’s Scavenge and Scrap.

One unaverage décor element: a pile of bones and antlers, large and small, sits within spitting distance of the rocker.

In front of the house is the man’s battered, white F-150, sitting in a patch of tamped-down grass that serves as a parking strip.

Terry gets out and glances my way.

I hold up my hands as if surrendering. I’ll stay put.

Terry moves cautiously, his hand close to his gun. He looks into the truck’s bed and cab and then walks to the porch. He opens the shotgun and removes and pockets the two shells. Then he approaches the door. Standing aside so, I assume, he won’t get shot through the panel, he raps. Then again. No response.

He turns to me with a shrug.

I breach the ground rules and get out of the car, and Terry seems to be okay with this.

I join him and say, “Go inside.”

“Pension. I value it.”

Oh. Warrant.

It’s then that I’m aware of the sound of running water. I walk to the side of the house and see a minor cascade flowing from between the siding and the cinderblock foundation. The water has pooled there and a brook is meandering down in a slushy mess into the scrub grass behind the house.

Terry joins me.

“That constitute something?” I ask.

“Constitute?”

“Probable cause to go inside.”

“No. It constitutes probable cause to call a plumber.”

I walk to the side window but it is too high to see through. I find a blue plastic milk crate and, upending it, drop it below the window. “This against the law?”

“I don’t think a jury’d find you guilty of peeping, Jon. But it’s against smart. Man is a deer hunter and a goddamn good shot.”

I climb onto the crate anyway.

“Jon!”

I look inside. I say, “Shit.”