Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 781 & 782, September/October 2006

Karaoke Night by David Knadler

A 2003 Department of First Stories author, David Knadler continues to write intelligent fiction, full of keen observations and with evocative settings. This is his third story for us, in a series in which crimes are solved not through the use of science but through the use of science but through the detective’s insights into character.

The body was just inside the bar, surrounded by a puddle of blood and beer. Four guys were thoughtfully regarding the dead man in the same stance they might take around the open hood of somebody’s new pickup: one hand in a jeans pocket, the other holding a drink.

“About time,” George Wick said. “Christ, I’m surprised they ain’t had the funeral yet.”

“Yeah? I’m surprised you’re not going through his pockets yet. Get back. Ever hear of a crime scene?”

Deputy Sheriff John Ennis stepped gingerly in next to the body. The bloodstain was huge, black in the bar light, blooming across the right half of Dean Jackman’s snap-button shirt, merging the vertical stripes. Jackman himself stared at the ceiling, looking slightly amazed at the way the evening had turned out. Ennis could have pronounced the big realtor dead from twenty feet away, but he checked for a pulse.

“Sandy already tried CPR,” Wick said. “I think he was dead when he hit the floor.”

Sandy West, the barmaid, was seated behind him on a barstool, rubbing at her hands with a stained handkerchief. She had been crying. The knees of her jeans were wet, and there was blood on her blouse.

Ennis leaned in and examined the bullet wound: big slug, a few inches below the left armpit. The bullet had come through the Cadillac’s door. Couldn’t have struck the heart directly or Jackman wouldn’t have made it in from the parking lot, but the bullet had definitely torn through something vital. Ennis was slightly relieved. He’d been caught on the wrong side of a Montana Rail Link freight train when the call came and it was probably better that the five-minute delay would not have made the difference between life and death.

There was a chiming sound, which resolved itself into a tune Ennis recognized as the opening bars to “La Bamba.” Startled, he looked around, then realized it was coming from the little phone clipped to the dead man’s tooled leather belt. He looked at Wick and his friends, who were looking back at him. Two more rings. He reached for the phone, but by then it had gone silent. Ennis flipped it open and made a note of the local number.

He stood, keyed his shoulder mike: “No hurry on the ambulance, Debbie. 10–55. Call Libby; coroner and crime scene.”

Wick and company had repaired to the bar to refill their glasses from a new pitcher of beer. Ennis stared at them.

“George? What I said about the crime scene? The bar is closed. Now what happened?”

Wick scowled, tilted his glass toward the body. “Only thing we saw was this dipshit diving onto our table.”

Ennis had his notebook out. “He say anything?”

Wick nodded. “Music was pretty loud, but it sounded like, ‘Bitch shot me.’ Then he kind of twisted to one side and knocked over my table. Two pitchers gone. Pissed me off. I was going to kick his ass, but then...”

“He said ‘bitch’? Who do you think he meant by that?”

Wick smirked. “Well, he’s been boinking Alana Winnett.”

“Works at Ace Hardware?”

“Used to. Heard she got her real-estate license.” Wick nodded at the dead man. “Went to work for Dean. Seen ’em in here a couple times.”

“She’s married, right?”

“Yep. So’s Dean. That ain’t considered a big obstacle to romance in these parts.”

Wick and his friends chuckled at that, but their smiles faded in the presence of Jackman’s cooling corpse. Maybe they were remembering they were married, too.

Ennis contemplated the body. He knew Dean Jackman only slightly, just as he knew Alana Winnett and most everybody else in Worland: enough to greet them by name with a nod or a smile, enough to share casual observations about the weather. This was a change from Philadelphia, where he’d worked as a beat cop for a few years before moving West. There most of the victims had been anonymous. Which was a good thing, he now knew. It was somewhat harder to deal with a shattered life when you had a recent picture of that same life whole.

Dean Jackman had a wife, Mary Ann, who sat on the school board, and a teenage daughter who had graduated high school last year at the top of her class. Alana Winnett had a husband, Roy, who was currently unemployed, and a couple of kids still in school: a little blond girl of eight or nine, and a boy who must be fifteen now — small for his age, but he’d already come to the attention of the authorities, as Ennis liked to put it.

“You see Alana around here tonight? Roy? Mary Ann?”

All four shook their heads, but again it was Wick who spoke. “Nah. Last couple weeks, they been in here. Karaoke night. Jackman and Alana, coming in at different times, trying to make like they’re just running into each other, but you know how that goes. He’d actually get up and try to sing Springsteen, ‘Dancing in the Dark.’ Didn’t see ’em tonight.”

Ennis closed his notebook. Outside, the keys were still in Jackman’s Escalade, and it was not unthinkable that at ten-thirty on a karaoke night somebody out there might now be drunk enough to take it for a spin. He shepherded Wick and friends out the door and keyed the mike as he stood in the doorway. “Where’s Twenty-nine?”

Twenty-nine was Kevin Heibein, the fresh-faced Worland city cop who looked as if he should be starting his sophomore year at Kootenai High. He was supposed to have been here by now.

“Twenty-nine has a hit-and-run,” Debbie answered. “Half-mile west on Gypsy Lake Road. One injured. I sent the ambulance there instead. Can you manage by yourself?”

Ennis guessed he’d have to. It would take the county help at least another half-hour to get here and there were no other officers in the greater Worland area.

A chill wind had come up, but the bar crowd was still milling around in the parking lot, chatting and laughing as though they were out there for a fire drill instead of a homicide. Despite Ennis’s earlier admonition, some of them were also edging closer to the Escalade: He recognized Ray Esposito and a few of his skateboard buddies, who had reached legal drinking age this year and were making the most of it. They backed away at the sound of his police radio, trying to appear casual about it. Ennis gave them a hard look.

“Nobody picked up any brass, right? Anybody see what happened?” Getting shrugs, he walked around the SUV, studying the gravel. If there had ever been evidence here, it was ruined now. He examined the bullet hole on the driver’s side. It had punched through below the window, which had been rolled down. He could picture Jackman sitting in his SUV, his elbow up on the sill. Talking to someone. Which would explain why the slug hadn’t hit his left arm. There was another bullet hole on the far side of the cab, just above the window on the passenger side. This shot had come through the open driver’s window, he guessed, maybe meant for Jackman’s head. The rising angle meant the shooter was probably a bit lower than his victim. Maybe somebody sitting in a car?

No shell casings, so the weapon was probably a revolver. Big bullet holes, so it was a large caliber — in short, the sort of weapon occupying nightstand drawers in about half the households in Worland. There wasn’t a lot of violent crime in the town, but people around here liked to be ready for anything.

“Looks like he got hit out here, you know, then went inside.” This deduction came from Esposito, who had again approached and was now standing behind Ennis. Like everybody else, he was still holding his drink. Icehouse, Ennis noted: Twice the alcohol so you could get drunk in half the time. In Ray’s circle, this was considered a significant bargain. It was maybe 35 degrees out and the kid was wearing enormous cargo shorts riding just above his crotch. Like his friends, he wore his cap backward.

“Very shrewd, Ray. You notice this before you walked through the trail of blood, or after?”

The kid’s face fell.

“I told ’em not to walk in it,” he said. “Just trying to help.”

“Yeah, thanks. You see who did it?”

He shook his head. “No, man... but I did kind of hear it.”

“Heard what?”

Ray lifted his bottle, tilted it toward the far corner of Westy’s, beyond the illumination of the bar signs.

“I was over there, taking a piss.”

“And?”

He seemed embarrassed. “Would have used the can, but it gets rank in there. There was a line, and I had to go, you know?”

“Right, Ray. What did you hear?”

“Heard the shots, man. Two of ’em, real loud.”

“You didn’t have a look?”

He shrugged. “I’m taking a leak, man. Anyway, I thought it was firecrackers.”

Everybody always thought gunshots were firecrackers, Ennis thought. And vice versa. Funny how that worked.

“Anything else?”

“Just people talking. Somebody laughed. Then, pop, pop.”

“Jackman was talking to someone? Man or woman?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Coulda been a woman. Didn’t sound like anybody was mad or scared or anything. Like I said, he laughed. That’s why I thought it was firecrackers.”

“What were they saying?”

Ray thought about it, shook his head. “I dunno. Just voices.”

“What about after? See a car leave?”

Ray studied the ground, perhaps now regretting coming forward.

“No, no car. I woulda seen that.”

The undersheriff from Libby was a guy Ennis knew only from anecdotes: Brian Hallstrom, who would also be acting as coroner tonight. He’d only been with the department a couple of months. Word was, he had been a hotshot homicide detective in San Diego. Then, like so many of Montana’s newer residents, he had sold his overpriced bungalow in California and used the proceeds to buy a twenty-acre ranchette here in Big Sky country, five-bedroom log home, outbuildings, and everything. Now he was living the dream, hunting and fly-fishing, and occasionally showing up for work at the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department. His pay would be a quarter of what he’d made in San Diego, Ennis guessed, but then the same thing could be said of the job stress.

Hallstrom strode in, followed by two deputies whose eyes widened when they beheld the dead man on the floor. Both in their twenties; they could well be encountering their first homicide. Hallstrom was arrayed in fringed buckskin jacket, big tan Stetson tilted back on his head, long blond hair flowing back past the collar of a sky-blue snap-button shirt. Ennis stared: The look was one part Ralph Lauren, two parts George Armstrong Custer — it was probably just an oversight that Hallstrom did not have a pearl-handled revolver strapped to each hip. He also sported a little gold neck chain and deep, even tan. Ennis knew of only one way to stay that brown this late in October, and it wasn’t through honest toil on a riverside ranchette.

“Nice job securing the crime scene here, deputy,” Hallstrom said. He was chewing gum, surveying the room without appearing to move his head. “What, you sell tickets or something? Half the town out there, every one of ’em probably got blood on their goddamned shoes. Jesus.”

“Karaoke night,” Ennis said. “Everybody was here when it happened, and I’m only one guy.”

Hallstrom shook his head.

“Bunch of hayseeds.”

Ennis opened his mouth, closed it, suppressed an urge to shoot the guy. Instead he reached out to touch the fringe of Hallstrom’s jacket. “Is that real leather?”

Ennis was out by the Escalade, getting useless statements from a few more of the dwindling crowd of karaoke patrons, when his radio crackled again. “Man with a gun at Last Chance Bar. Subject is very 10–51, threatening to kill somebody. Bartender requests an officer.”

It was turning into quite the festive evening. One of the Libby uniforms, Janet Salisbury, was listening. “Gun? You want me to go with you?”

Hallstrom had emerged from the bar and was talking to Wick and his friends. The other deputy had been following him around with a Nikon digital camera and was still taking pictures of everything in sight, now including a couple of laughing girls who pantomimed lifting up their tops.

Salisbury spoke with Hallstrom, who waved her off. “Go on, I’ll finish up here. If we ever get a goddamned ambulance here, I’m gonna call it a night.”

The Last Chance Bar was seven miles north, right up against the border station. There were only two vehicles in the parking lot when Ennis and Salisbury drove up. Their headlights illuminated a short, stocky woman leaning against a battered Toyota pickup, smoking a cigarette. She lifted a hand in greeting.

“He still here?” Ennis said.

She shrugged. “Yeah, but I haven’t heard anything for a while. Surprised you guys showed up, tell you the truth. Couple weeks ago I had this Canuck, went crazy and started punching the keno machines. Just beating the hell out of them. I called and couldn’t get nobody out here then.”

Janell Rector was a little shy of five feet, had short brown hair and biceps that would shame a good share of the mill workers in town. If she was nervous about the guy inside with the gun, she didn’t look it. Ennis knew she had once flattened a logger twice her size with an aluminum softball bat she kept behind the bar. He hadn’t heard about the crazy Canadian, but he felt a flash of sympathy for the guy.

He nodded at the door. “So who is it?”

“The gunslinger? One of the Winnett brothers. Roy.”

Ennis blinked. “Married to Alana?”

Janell gave him a thin smile. “You heard, too, huh? Don’t know how much longer that’s gonna last, though. Doesn’t sound like reconciliation is in the cards. He said something about shooting her.”

“When did he get here?”

She didn’t have to think about it. “Right at ten.” She looked at her watch. “He’s been here an hour, but didn’t haul out his pistol until just a little bit ago. Knew I should have cut him off of that whiskey.”

Ennis rubbed his chin. He’d gotten the call to Westy’s at ten-thirty, which couldn’t have been more than five minutes after the shooting. “He came in at ten? You sure? Had to have been a little later.”

She shook her head. “Nope. I watch Law & Order and it comes on at ten. It was just starting when Roy came in. It was one I hadn’t seen, too.”

“Janell, I think Roy shot a guy at Westy’s, couldn’t have been earlier than ten-fifteen. So you’ve gotta be wrong.”

Her eyes widened. “Shot a guy? Who? Don’t tell me...”

He nodded. “Dean Jackman. I got the call right after...”

Her brow furrowed as she took a drag on the cigarette. “Ten-fifteen? Couldn’t have been Roy, then. I told you: He was here before that and he’s been here since. Or, those numb-nuts at Westy’s took their time making the call.”

The folks at Westy’s had conflicted about a lot of things, but all agreed that the bartender had called 911 right after the shooting, and Ennis was in no doubt about when he’d heard from dispatch.

“Anyway,” Janell said, “you gonna go in and get him, or should I just call it a shift?”

Ennis surveyed the bar. Approaching drunken men with guns was one of his least favorite parts of the job, particularly if they’d already shot someone. Janet Salisbury cleared her throat, hitching up her gunbelt.

“We could call for backup.”

“We could,” he said. He pictured Hallstrom out here in his cowboy suit, the other green deputy with his camera. “Let’s see what the situation is.”

Ennis walked back out to the rear of the parking lot and around its perimeter, trying to get a look inside the tavern from a safe distance. He stopped and waved Salisbury over.

Janell had been good enough to prop the bar door open. From here, Ennis could see the guy slumped on his stool, head on the bar. Roy Winnett was a small man, balding, his worn plaid shirt untucked. He wore faded jeans and what appeared to be a pair of buckskin slippers, the kind you’d slip on to get the newspaper. On the bar next to him: a handgun the size of a leaf-blower and a half-full bottle of Bushmill’s, both within easy reach.

“Well, let’s gauge his mood,” Ennis said at last. “Get over behind the cruiser.” When Salisbury was in place, he yelled.

“Hey, Roy! Roy Winnett!”

The figure on the barstool didn’t stir.

“Roy, you awake?”

Nothing. Ennis worried briefly that the man had killed himself, but Janell would have heard the shot. He unholstered his Glock and carefully approached the open door. He positioned himself to one side and leaned over for a look. Like every bar in Montana, this one was half filled with electronic keno and poker machines, relentlessly replaying their calliope fanfares to the empty bar. Ennis understood why the Canadian might have wanted to punch them.

“Hey, Roy,” he called softly. “You doing okay, partner?”

Still no sign of movement. The pistol on the bar was a real cannon; from here, Ennis was pretty sure it was a Desert Eagle with a ten-inch barrel. Probably either .357 or .44 magnum, in either case perfectly capable of penetrating any exterior wall of this cheaply built tavern — not to mention the driver’s door of a Cadillac Escalade. He signaled Salisbury to come up, then took a deep breath and stepped forward as quickly and quietly as he could. He reached the gun and slid it down the bar. When it was safely out of reach he bent to smell the muzzle: nothing but Hoppes gun oil. It didn’t have the acrid aroma of having been fired recently — but that was no proof it hadn’t been. He released the magazine: eight fat .44-magnum bullets, full capacity for this weapon.

He touched Winnett on the shoulder and was rewarded with a loud groan.

Salisbury was at the door, looking as relieved as Ennis felt.

“Passed out, huh?”

“We timed that right,” Ennis said. “Help me get him to the car.”

“Well, that didn’t take long,” Hallstrom was saying. He had his hands on his hips again, regarding the insensate Roy Winnett, who was sprawled across the bunk in the first of the Worland Police Department’s two holding cells. “About what I figured: This Jackman guy is porking his wife, so old Roy here does a Raccoon Racoon on his rival.”

Ennis winced at this not-quite-apt reference to the Beatles tune.

Hallstrom winked, jingling his car keys. “Gotta love a small town. Get those statements typed up and fax ’em to me tomorrow. We’ll take the pistolero here back to Libby with us, get him arraigned when he’s sobered up. I’m heading home.”

“Couple problems,” Ennis said.

“What?”

“Barmaid says Roy showed up at the Last Chance a few minutes before Jackman got shot at Westy’s. She’s quite sure of the time. And that Desert Eagle: I don’t think it’s been fired tonight. We should probably check it out.” He nodded at Winnett. “Him, too.”

Hallstrom gave him a wintry smile. “That right? You got any other clues?”

Ennis shrugged. “Just saying: Sober witness puts him someplace else when Jackman was getting shot. Also, no brass at the scene, on him, or in his truck; if he got rid of it that’s pretty careful behavior for an intoxicated man.”

“Uh, Deputy,” Hallstrom’s eyes shifted to read the nameplate. “Ennis? You watch a lot of Matlock or something? Work as many of these pissant bar shootings as I have and you’ll realize there’s not a lot of mystery to puzzle out. Everything else adds up, so your barmaid is full of shit. Hell, if I had a dime for every witness got the time wrong.”

Hallstrom jerked his thumb toward the cell. “This asshole had a great reason to kill the guy. He was drunk enough to do it, he was carrying a gun big enough to do it, and he was in the vicinity to do it. Finally, our victim is sporting a .44 wound if ever I’ve seen one. And I have. We match the slug, that’ll cinch it. So, I think I’ll go ahead and pursue this avenue of investigation. That work for you?”

Ennis smiled.

“Your call. But if the barmaid is right about the time, Roy here couldn’t have killed Jackman. No mystery about that, either.”

Hallstrom shook his head, looked at his watch. “Yeah, well, thanks for the tip, Sherlock. I’m taking off. Winnett’s our guy. Maybe you ought to get out to this Jackman’s place, let his wife know her husband’s dead.”

Ennis had delivered such news before, and he supposed Mary Ann Jackman took it as well as could be expected. Now she was hunched forward on the sofa, her velour bathrobe clutched around her, turning her wedding ring on her hand and staring at what appeared to be a very expensive Navajo rug. She said nothing as Ennis recounted the basic details of the shooting. He stood hat in hand, regarding the spacious interior of the Jackman living room.

Dean Jackman might have been unlucky in love at the end, but he had done pretty well in real estate. His sprawling log home occupied a twenty-acre hillside east of town, accessible from the gravel county road by a newly paved driveway about a quarter-mile long. The home itself must have been 6,000 square feet. It still smelled new. Inside, it was all adobe and knotty pine; every painting on the wall had an elk or an Indian in it. No doubt the undersheriff, Hallstrom, would be right at home here. Flanking a big Frederick Remington print over the stone fireplace was a crossed pair of branding irons on one side and an antique gun belt with what looked to be a pair of Colt Peacemakers occupying the holsters — he hoped they were nonfunctioning replicas. There was even an old saddle on a stand in the corner. Right next to the enormous plasma TV.

Mary Ann Jackman cleared her throat. Ennis saw her jaw muscles working. Still no tears. “At this bar,” she said. “Was he alone? Was he... with anybody?”

She was the same age as her husband, Ennis guessed; he knew they had moved here maybe a dozen years ago from Chicago, where Dean had been an accountant of some sort. They’d been pretty well-off then and were really well-off now. Dean had opened his Shining Mountains brokerage just in time to catch a decade-long boom in Montana real estate: retirees and telecommuters and third-tier celebrities seeking a respite from urban cares, the sort of people who could remain aloof from the vagaries of a logging-based economy and didn’t mind paying top dollar for the space and the scenery.

There were some old photos on a table behind the leather sofa. One of them showed Dean and Mary Ann in formal regalia, each wearing a ridiculous crown: prom royalty, he supposed. They’d changed some since then. Mary Ann was blond now, and both had put on some weight.

“I don’t know,” he said. “There were no witnesses to the actual shooting. We did make an arrest, but we can’t be sure...”

“Who?”

“Did your husband know Roy Winnett? Any reason he’d have a grudge against Dean?”

Ennis knew the answer to this, but he thought it might be good to get her reaction. Her voice was flat. “His wife. Alana. She just started working at Dean’s brokerage.”

She closed her eyes, then abruptly rose and began to walk around the room, her right fist clenched. “Okay, yes, I’ve heard things. Small-town gossip... people love to talk, there’s nothing else for them to do. But I told Dean, I told him: You make damned sure there’s nothing to this. Goddamned sure, or I’ll...”

She stopped by the pair of antique six-shooters; Ennis had an alarming vision of her grabbing one and emptying it into him before turning it on herself.

“Her and her bubba husband: stupid white trash, the worst kind, this town is full of them. She’s a checkout girl and he doesn’t even have a job. Now look at what’s happened. My husband, he was trying to make something of this town, trying to help people. Now he’s dead. That bitch. This is her fault.”

Ennis noticed another photo as he was turning to go: Mary Ann in hunter’s orange, gripping the antlers of a dead buck. It was a winter day, and her cheeks were flushed with the thrill of the hunt. A rifle was slung on her back. It seemed Mary Ann had fully embraced the Montana lifestyle. The deer’s tongue lolled out as though it never knew what hit it.

The Winnetts’ estate was a little less imposing than the Jackmans’: a doublewide and a carport at the end of a steep gravel driveway about a mile on the other side of town — and the other side of the tracks. An older Ford Taurus occupied the rutted driveway. A little girl’s bike, pink with streamers from the handlebars, leaned against the unfinished deck. Alana Winnett appeared in the doorway when he drove up. She was holding a cigarette and a glass of white wine, and the way she leaned against the doorjamb suggested it was not her first drink of the evening.

“Oh Lord, the law,” she said. “It’s Roy, isn’t it? Tell me he didn’t do something stupid.”

Ennis knew her from when she worked the checkout at Ace Hardware. She had a sleepy smile and her husky voice carried the trace of a Southern accent. Someone said she had moved here from South Carolina as a teenager. Probably quite pretty then and not exactly plain-looking now, even without the benefit of makeup. Her dark brown hair, bound tightly in a ponytail, betrayed a wisp or two of gray. Some lines were visible at the corners of her large brown eyes, and others had begun to radiate faintly around her lips — he could imagine her looking at those lines each morning and calculating the cost of Botox against a single income. She was dressed for comfort much as her husband had been: the same plaid flannel shirt and faded jeans, even down to the leather slippers. He wondered if those slippers had been gifts to each other, his and hers, exchanged with a kiss on some Christmas morning before all the reasons for being married had begun to drain out of their lives.

“I had to arrest him tonight.”

She closed her eyes and sighed. “Oh God, that idiot. I was afraid of that. We had a fight; he left here like a bat out of hell. He didn’t hurt anybody, right? He’s okay?”

“He’s okay,” Ennis said.

“And he didn’t hurt anybody?”

“There was a shooting, a homicide. Do you know Dean Jackman?”

Her mouth opened, but she didn’t say anything. Just nodded, staring. Finally she asked, “Is Dean all right?”

“Dean’s dead. We picked up Roy not too long after. He had a gun.”

Alana Winnett turned away. Her hand brushed the door; the wineglass slipped from her hand and shattered on the threshold. She put her hands to her face. Ennis stepped around the glass and followed her into the cluttered living room. It smelled of dust and cigarettes. She looked around, as if finding herself surrounded by the worn furniture and dingy tan carpet for the first time. The little TV was going, The Daily Show. Jon Stewart was in good form tonight, and the audience laughter went on and on.

“You mind if I turn this off?” Without waiting for an answer, Ennis did so. He looked at her and waited.

Alana’s hands trembled as she shook a cigarette from the pack of Virginia Slims on the coffee table and lit one. When she spoke, it was with difficulty. “What happened?”

He gave her the short version. At the mention of Westy’s Tavern, she shook her head.

“Oh no. That stupid — Roy’s not a fighter. He was drunk but I never thought he’d have the guts to...” Her voice trailed off.

“Did he have a reason to shoot Dean Jackman?”

She looked at her hands. “No. Dean and I are friends. Just friends, really. Roy got this idea something was going on, and he just wouldn’t shut up about it.”

“Roy own a handgun?”

She gave a bitter laugh, waved her hand at the glass-fronted gun case next to the TV. “He has two pistols. And some rifles.” She pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “He likes guns. No paycheck for six months, no job, but he’d rather starve than sell those guns. We fought about it. You know he paid a thousand dollars for one of those pistols? That was right before he got laid off at the mill.”

Ennis checked the gun case, found it unlocked. A couple of .22s, a Winchester .30–30, and a scoped bolt-action Remington. The two leather holsters were both empty.

“When he left here, did he say he was going after Dean Jackman?”

She swallowed hard and shook her head. “He didn’t say that. He said other things, horrible things. In front of the kids.”

“Did you let Dean know?”

She nodded. “I called him on his cell phone, told him Roy was on the warpath...”

There was a phone beside the sofa; Ennis saw the number was the same one he had noticed on Jackman’s cell phone.

“What time was that?”

“I don’t know, around ten. He was just pulling into Westy’s when I called. We had talked about meeting there. He wanted to talk about a listing I’m working on. That’s all. Anyway, when Roy stormed out of here he took my keys, so I called Dean to let him know.”

“A business meeting? Westy’s on karaoke night?”

Her mouth tightened, the lines a bit more visible now.

“We both like music, okay? Where else were we going to meet? They don’t have a Starbucks in this town.”

“You called at ten, exactly?”

She stabbed out her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. “Maybe a little after, I don’t remember. He said not to worry, he was going to... he was going to come out here. Then I called back to tell him not to and there was no answer.”

Ennis decided not to mention that Jackman was staring at the bar ceiling by then, but she caught his look. Her hands went to her face. “Oh God.”

“What time did Roy leave here?”

She rubbed her face. “I don’t know; I got home at seven or so and he was already into the whiskey. He was supposed to go hunting with his brothers for the week, but for some reason he didn’t. He was so drunk; I’ve never seen him like that. The kids were here and he just started in on me, accusing me of things. Just wouldn’t quit. I tried to take the kids and leave, but he grabbed my keys and wouldn’t give them back. He must have left about nine.”

Her voice cracked and she stabbed out the cigarette.

“I hated for the kids to see that. He was shouting, swearing. Poor little Andrea... and Richie wouldn’t help, wouldn’t do anything. I screamed at him to call the cops but he wouldn’t. He’s passive, like his dad. When Roy drove off he went into his room and hasn’t been out. He won’t talk about it.”

Alana picked up the remote control on the coffee table, touched the On button, then touched it off again. She turned it over in her hands, shaking her head. “First time in our marriage Roy decides to do something, be proactive, he kills a good man. A fine, funny man. Dean laughed at everything. He was just so positive. So cheerful.”

She sobbed and turned away, fumbling for a Kleenex in the coffee-table clutter. Proactive, Ennis thought. Positive. The sort of words they’d drum into you in a real-estate marketing seminar.

“Roy’s never been there as a father,” Alana said. “He buys them new bikes we can’t afford, takes them fishing once in a while, he thinks that’s all he has to do.”

Her eyes glittered when she looked at him again. “He’s never been there as a husband, either.”

It was after midnight when Ennis left the Winnett residence. Still hours left in the shift, and he wasn’t sure what to do next. There wasn’t much to suggest Roy Winnett wasn’t the right guy, except for Janell Rector’s insistence that he’d wandered into the Last Chance right after the start of Law & Order. Well, it wasn’t inconceivable that Janell was wrong — maybe tonight’s episode had started later for some reason. He’d find a way to check on that tomorrow.

He drove up to the end of Main Street and pulled into the parking lot of the Town Pump, an all-night gas station and convenience store that also housed a keno parlor optimistically named Lucky Lil’s Casino. The name always amused Ennis: There was no luck, and no Lil, and it was not precisely a casino in the sense of roulette wheels and croupiers — but there it was. His friend Chuck Butler, who managed the place, always said it was the most profitable part of the franchise. A couple of dusty pickups were parked outside — karaoke night diehards, Ennis guessed, making sure they emptied their pockets of every last bit of cash before heading home.

Chuck had his back to the door and was watching ESPN when Ennis came in. He was still wearing that stupid “Kawasakis for Christ” biker vest; he swore it was a motorcycle club he’d belonged to at some point in the ’eighties, even though Ennis had never run across any other members and had never known the guy to own a Kawasaki.

Chuck turned at Ennis’s approach. “Yo, Adrian!” Chuck was immensely amused by this reference to the Rocky movies — and therefore to Ennis’s hometown. He had been greeting the deputy this way nearly every day for the last seven years.

“Hey, Chuck.”

“Shit, I heard about Dean Jackman.” He shook his head. “Poor bastard. Saw it coming, though.”

“Too bad he didn’t.”

Chuck rubbed the stubble on his ample chin. “Man, you just never know. Guy was in here earlier tonight. Get this: looking for white wine. All I got is pink; I don’t know why they call it white zinfandel.”

Ennis had wondered the same thing.

“By himself?”

“Acting like he was. But the Chuckerino sees all: He also bought a pack of Virginia Slims, and I don’t believe Mr. Jackman smokes. Then when he leaves the store, I notice him smiling at somebody in the front seat. Tinted glass in the Escalade, so I can’t get a positive ID. But I got a theory.”

“You and the rest of the town, I think.”

Chuck nodded. “Guess he and Alana decided to knock off early, check out each other’s real estate. Hell of it was, bunch of kids were coming across the street just when Dean was going out. Little Richie — that’s Roy’s boy — was with them. You know, laughing and grab-assin’ around, like kids do. I saw him stop when Dean opened his door. Suddenly he wasn’t laughing no more. Looked like he’d been cold-cocked.”

“That’s bad.”

Chuck shook his head sadly. “Yep. I think he saw his mom in there, Dean sliding in with a bottle of wine and a pack of smokes, and assumed the worst.”

They considered this in silence. Ennis could see what had set Roy Winnett off on this particular night: The boy had gotten home before his mother and told what he’d seen. Possibly it had come as a complete shock: It wouldn’t have been the first time a spouse being cheated on was the last to know. So Roy had canceled his hunting trip, probably spent the next hour or two drinking, his guts churning, waiting for the sound of his wife’s Taurus in the driveway.

Ennis and Chuck gazed out at the empty street, watching leaves and paper debris hurrying by on the wind. Back in the casino, Ennis heard the dreary bleating of a keno machine — sounded as if one of the high-rollers back there was temporarily a few dollars richer.

Outside, the city police car pulled up to the pump. Kevin Heibein got out and started pumping gas, his narrow shoulders hunched against the cold. Ennis walked out to greet him.

“Hey,” the young cop said, flashing a smile. “Busy night, huh? How you make out on that Westy’s thing? Man, a homicide. Wish I could have helped.”

“Yeah, me too,” Ennis said. “What was the deal on the hit-and-run?”

“Oh, it wasn’t a hit-and-run. Mae Begley was the driver, she made the call on her cell phone, stayed right there. She was pretty shook up. Wasn’t her fault, though.”

“Who got hit?”

“Kid on a bike. He’ll live. Broken leg and a concussion. Scared the shit out of me, he was unconscious in the ditch when I got there. Thought he was dead.” Heibein replaced the nozzle in the gas pump, the fuel cap on the old Crown Vic cruiser. He was shivering and drew his sleeve across his nose. “I didn’t know him, but Keith, one of the EMTs, did. Richie Winnett, I guess his folks live up there about a mile. Dressed all in black, riding his damned mountain bike in the middle of the road...”

Heibein caught Ennis’s look. “What? You know him, too?”

The weedy ditch was bathed in the lights of Ennis’s cruiser; Heibein had parked his car at the curve with the flashers going.

“Right here, huh?”

Heibein swept a flashlight beam over a place in the barrow pit where the high weeds had been tramped down. A few bits of broken reflector gleamed in the gravel.

“See that rock? Kid lands one foot to the right and he’s a vegetable. Little shit is lucky to be alive. You should see the bike.”

Ennis produced his own flashlight and walked to the spot, playing the beam over the flattened weeds. He stopped, then moved forward slowly, studying the ground.

Heibein cleared his throat. “What you looking for? I’m pretty sure we got everything, the bike is back at the station...”

Ennis said nothing. He swept the beam carefully from side to side, advancing a half-step at a time. He was about to give up when he spied a dark shape and leaned forward.

Something about the fat checkered grips, the way they curled in the tall grass, brought to mind a rattlesnake. Ennis jerked his hand back, then leaned forward again, hoping Heibein hadn’t noticed. He parted the weeds. It was a big revolver, dirt and grass on the hammer where it had fallen: Colt Anaconda, 44 caliber. Roy Winnett’s other handgun, Ennis guessed. He was willing to bet this one had been fired a few hours earlier.

Worland only had two stoplights, and both were flashing yellow now, swaying in the north wind sweeping down from Canada. Ennis got out of the car and gazed up the street into the darkness beyond. The air smelled of wood smoke and frost; it wouldn’t be long now until the first snow. The town was unusually empty, even for this late. Normally on karaoke night there might still be a car or two cruising Main, kids waiting in vain for something to happen, or a couple of mismatched refugees from the bars looking to parlay an evening’s alcohol abuse into a night’s romance. They had all gone home. Maybe word of the homicide had finally cast a pall over things. Maybe there was hope for the town after all.

He had just returned from another trip to the Winnett residence. It seemed Heibein had not gotten around to informing Alana about the injuries to her son — being new, he assumed somebody else had. At the doorway to her son’s room, she had begun weeping uncontrollably at the sight of the empty bed. The darkened room was bitterly cold from the open window.

It was a short bike ride from the Winnett place to town, an even shorter distance north to Westy’s Tavern. Had Richie Winnett set out meaning to kill his mother’s lover, or had he just meant to threaten him? Hard to say: When loaded guns came out, sometimes motives and meanings went by the wayside. Ennis remembered what Ray Esposito had said about someone laughing, just before the shots. He had a hunch that wouldn’t have been the boy. He could picture the shivering teenager in the gravel parking lot, his family unraveling and his father’s pistol tucked into his jeans. Probably he would not have seen much humor in the situation. Dean, according to Alana, laughed at everything. Ennis had to wonder: What would have happened if Dean Jackman hadn’t laughed?

Well, he’d know more if the boy was able to talk tomorrow. He couldn’t help but feel sorry for the kid: waking up to a dozen different kinds of pain and a life forever changed. Not to mention his father. Ennis tried to remember the worst hangover he’d ever had, thought how much worse would be the one Roy Winnett had in store this morning. He thought of the damaged wives and the daughters, and finally thought of Dean Jackman himself, a man old enough to know better, getting up in front of a crowd and singing “Dancing in the Dark.”

How did the song go? “Can’t start a fire without a spark.” True enough, Ennis thought. But when you did start that fire, there was no telling how much it would burn.

Copyright © 2006 David Knadler