Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 1. Whole No. 791, July 2007

A Darkening of Flies by Brian Muir

Brian Muir’s fiction debut was in EQMM's Department of First Stories in June 2004. But he had been a Hollywood screenwriter before turning to short story and novel writing. His most recent movie project is an independent film that premiered at the South by Southwest film festival in March 2007, called Broke Sky — “a drama set in Texas,” he tells us, “about murder and dark family secrets.”

A friend of mine up the coast in Pluvius, Washington, once told me it poured there for 362 days one year. And those other three days were damn cloudy.

I know how he felt.

For twenty-five days straight the clouds have opened up down here, with nary a peek of sun. And this is supposed to be summer.

My employment situation wasn’t helping my normal sugary disposition. My last paying gig was six weeks past, hunting down a deadbeat dad for a divorce attorney. Easy job, but no windfall. Lawyers are notoriously tight with their green.

When I haven’t worked in a while it screws with my head. I begin to question my abilities, wanting a paycheck as much for validation as for putting grub on the table.

So with frogpelts in short supply and the grey clouds reflecting my self-doubt, I needed to get out of town for a few days. Sometimes taking a break from not working can do wonders.

I made sure Stomper had plenty to eat, locked up the houseboat, and stepped up the slick dock with a bag of gear slung over my shoulder. Not one of my neighbors peered out a window to wave goodbye, which was okay by me.

I pulled the elbow-length cape of my customized black greatcoat up over my head to keep my long dark tresses dry as I hiked to my parked 1952 Willys Army Jeep. A holdover from the Korean conflict, the battered relic gets me where I need to go with only minimal creaking and protesting. I put what I could afford in the tank—what I could've shelled out on a steak dinner for two at El Gaucho.

Instead of taking the dreary I-5 south to Corvallis, I headed east on Powell until it turned into Highway 26 and Portland disappeared from my rearview.

The rain downshifted to a drizzle, constant and steady, as I cut through towering lodgepole pine and canopies of old-growth fir so thick they turned the grey day nearly to night.

I passed only a few cars heading the other way as the road kept up a gradual climb around the south base of Mount Hood. The snowy peak of the Granddad was somewhere off to my left, but I couldn’t see it for the low dank clouds forming a dense fog that pressed down on the whole world. It was like driving through an old black-and-white Outer Limits episode, the one where aliens slice out a chunk of earth and transport it to their murky planet for study.

It didn’t end well, as I recall.

I finally hit 97 south and kept going, driving away from the drizzle until the patter subsided from my Jeep’s canvas winter top. The lonely highway bisected sage dotted with Ponderosa pine. After about fifty miles I hit the outskirts of Bend, the main watering hole between southern Oregon and the arid, sparsely populated eastern flatland.

I stopped at a diner at the edge of town and stretched my legs. The white clouds were breaking up, allowing patches of blue to peek through. It was warm enough that I thought about leaving my coat in the car, but that would mean unhooking my shoulder holster and leaving my piece in the glove box. Besides, I had a growling stomach to quiet.

I walked in, straight through to the restroom in back to relieve my travel-addled bladder. I took note of the light crowd as I passed: beanpole manager behind the register, an elderly couple at the counter, a nuclear family with baby in a highchair occupying a table dead center, and three burly guys laughing in a rear booth.

After cleaning up, I got a booth to myself near the front, ordered coffee and a ham and egg breakfast with an extra side of greasy ham. I chugged the coffee and opened my Lonesome Dove paperback, which I’d been thumbing for a year but hadn’t had the chance to finish. Augustus had just taken an arrow in the thigh. I knew how that turned out because I’d seen the miniseries, yet still I leaned close to the pages with dread anticipation.

After a few minutes of reading, I heard what sounded like jangling spurs. Figuring it was only a tray of clattering silverware, I looked up to see a pair of passing dark boots sporting black steel spurs with ten-point rowels.

The man in the boots was lean, clean-shaven, with a tattersall shirt and no hat. He glanced over his shoulder at me as he passed. I held the stare without giving him an opening; if he opted to make a move later, I’d decide then whether or not I was interested.

The cowboy squeezed into the rear booth with the three guys. Jerking a thumb in my direction, he said something that caused them all to snigger like third-graders. Comedy with a capital K.

“No point staring after that one.”

The waitress warmed my coffee. She wasn’t as old as she sounded, maybe late twenties, hefty with short blond hair scrunched in back, her wicked grin a cherry scimitar slash. The nametag said “Marta.”

“That’s Jack Youngblood, foreman out at the Jenkins Ranch. The old man he’s sitting with is Jenkins himself.”

Upon closer inspection of the corner booth, one man was definitely older than the other three, his posture square, full crown of slick powder-white hair and a string tie. No doubt he could still hold his own in a bar fight, if he were ever to be seen in such a joint.

Marta continued, “Word is, Jack’s been diddling Jenkins's young wife whenever the old man is out of town on business. She used to be a ‘dancer’ over in Salem.”

Marta even did the finger quotes when she said “dancer,” no small feat still holding the pot of joe.

“That tidbit’s even chewier than this ham,” I said.

“Honey, the gossip in this place is the only thing keeping me alive.”

“What about the others?” I meant the extra deuce in the booth. The short one was hunched over his food, arms gorilla-hugging the plate as he shoveled his lunch in like a backhoe.

“That’s Caulder McHenry, a wrangler out at the ranch. His brother used to work there too, but I haven’t seen him in a while. The big one with the beard is Coop Williams, and you keep clear of him; he’s the one I’m angling after.”

“You can have him. He’s too much man for me.” And he was; couldn’t be a kilo under three big ones.

The baby at the center table started bawling and the father waved to get Marta’s attention. She gave my coffee a fill-up before shuffling over.

“You need anything else, you let me know,” she said, not expecting an answer.

I surprised her. “Put a slice of Marionberry pie on deck.”

“You put all that food away and still look like that?” She pinched her face and shook her head. “I hate you.”

She moved off to help the family.

I opened my book.

That’s when two guys came through the door with machetes.

“Get the money out of the till. Now!” one of them shouted at the manager behind the register, waving his blade at Marta. “You! Get back there with him!”

She obeyed quietly, still holding the coffeepot.

The second guy slammed his blade on my table, rattling the ketchup and making my spoon hop. I stayed calm.

“Put your book down!”

Put my book down? What the hell, he was the boss. For now.

I laid the book down and put my hands palm-flat on the table. Didn’t want to give him a clue what I had under my coat, glad I’d opted not to leave it in the car.

He stared at me as if uncertain what to do, sweating and licking his lips nervously.

Both guys looked to be Hispanic or maybe Paiute, scared or hopped-up or both.

He darted off to join his partner, ordering the old couple at the counter to hand over their money, then turned to the family at the center table. The father complied, pulling out his wallet, and the mother cradled her screaming child protectively. The first guy moved to the rear booth, shouting at the top of his lungs.

“All your money, now!” Hacking a nearby chair for punctuation.

The short one, Caulder, was the first to protest. Then Youngblood joined in, whether by nature or just puffing up for my benefit, I couldn’t tell. Coop and the old man were calm in the face of the storm. In fact, Jenkins was already extracting a billfold from his breast pocket.

“It’s okay, boys. Let’s just give these fellas what they want and send them on their way.”

“But it’s not right, Mr. Jenkins!”

“Calm down, Caulder. We’ll leave these two to the police.”

“But it’s not right, I tell ya!” Caulder suddenly launched out of the booth at the heister.

The guy lifted his machete and brought the wooden handle down on the crown of Caulder’s head. I heard the thwok all the way up at my booth. It staggered Caulder but didn’t knock him out. He extended an arm to steady himself, spilling a napkin dispenser.

That’s when Coop rose, a grizzly protecting its cub, teeth bared behind his beard.

The robber held his ground, machete ready with the blade end this time.

I slowly slid a hand across my table toward my coat...

At the back booth, Youngblood took control, calming Coop and setting him down.

The robber boiled. “You four! In the back, move!” He shoved the dizzy Caulder to get him stepping and ushered the other three from the booth, prodding with machete tip.

This was taking an ugly turn.

As he herded them toward the men’s room, the robber glanced back to his partner.. “Keep an eye on them!”

The other one did as he was told, scanning us with peeled-egg eyes, waving his blade around like Attila the Hun at a piñata party.

“Hurry with the money!” he screamed, reaching an arm over the counter to assist the reluctant manager with the till stash. I’d be next.

I reached inside my coat as if for my money, quietly popping the Velcro retention strap and pulling steel free; keeping it hidden under my coat.

The nervous guy shoved the till bills in his pants, a few of them fluttering to the floor unnoticed.

He shouted toward the back, “Hurry up! Let’s go!”

He came toward my booth.

I started to draw my hand out of my coat.

Then the restroom door banged open and the first robber barreled out with a banshee wail, shouting something in English, Spanish, or Martian, I couldn’t tell.

Next to my booth, his partner spun to see what was up.

I stood and swung my gun, catching him square in the face, pulverizing his nose like a sack of dry noodles.

He fell back, blood streaming down his face. His machete went skidding across the floor, the blade wedging under a gumball stand.

The other guy kept coming, weapon raised, hollering his fool head off.

I fired once, nailing him in the fleshy part of the arm.

He sat down hard, a stunned look on his face, still clutching the machete.

I took it out of his hand as I stepped past. These two would be okay.

The mother at the center table wailed as loud as her baby. I gave her husband an irritated glance and he took over, cooing, “It’s okay, honey. It’s all done now.”

I hoped he was right.

I turned to tell Marta to call 911, but she was already on top of it, phone in mid dial.

The elderly couple was as placid as if they’d just sat through a tepid rerun of Walker, Texas Ranger.

“Nice shooting,” said the old guy.

I nodded and raced to the back.

Swinging open the restroom door, I found Coop and Caulder unconscious on the floor. Youngblood, the cowboy, was on his butt leaning against a closed stall, rubbing the back of his sore head.

On the floor next to him, Jenkins was flat on his back, peaceful in repose but for his staring marble eyes and the dark stain like a maroon bib spreading across his chest.

His throat had been slashed ear to ear.

Ten minutes later the front door was locked and the rundown in the diner was something like this:

The two bandits were in a booth, one holding an ice-packed washcloth to his busted nose, the other sitting still as Marta wrapped his arm in a towel while we waited for paramedics.

Caulder and Youngblood shared an adjoining booth, holding compresses to their aching heads.

Big Coop sat by himself in a third booth, sipping a Coke. He didn’t seem much the worse for wear.

The family was huddled with the elderly couple at the counter.

“At least let me get my money back from these a-holes!” shouted the manager, hovering behind the register. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed drily.

“Not until the police get here,” I said. By now I had my coat off, gun back in the horizontal-carry holster that crossed my form-hugging tee.

Youngblood gave me the eye again, now that my shape was in full view. Sometimes I like the attention, but most times I can do without. It comes with the territory.

Coop looked over and smiled, too. Even the elderly guy at the counter gave me the once-over. I got a kick out of that.

“I wanna see you shoot that thing again,” he said.

Apparently it was my pistol he was eyeballing and not my mother’s mammiferous genetic endowment. Ah, vanity.

“Not today, Pops. Sorry.”

“Boy, but that was nice shootin'.”

After hanging up with 911, Marta had informed us that most of Bend’s small police force was somewhere east of here, helping evacuate ranches from the path of an oncoming forest fire. A month of rain in Portland and half a state away they’re battling blazes. The closest cops were on the other side of town on a domestic-disturbance call. They’d be here in a half-hour.

But I’m not one to just sit around waiting.

“Something about this stinks like twenty pounds of you-know-what in a ten-pound bag,” I said, to anyone listening.

“Murder always stinks,” said Youngblood. He pointed at the robber with the bullet hole in his arm. “And I want to see this one fry for it!”

The robber glowered.

“But why did he leave the rest of us out here and only take you four in back?”

Youngblood shrugged. “Ask him.”

I looked to the robber. He gave another pug-ugly scowl.

“I’ve got a different idea,” I said. I crossed to the gumball machine in the corner and tugged the machete from under the metal stand. I laid it on the table in front of its owner, the robber with the crushed nose.

“What are you doing?” shouted the worried mother.

“He won’t try anything,” I offered. Then I set the other machete in front of his partner. “Neither will he. They know what I can do with this.”

I patted my holstered friend.

“You just gave that one back the murder weapon,” said Coop.

“Did I? You expect me to believe he knocked all three of you guys out by himself, killed Jenkins, and cleaned the blade? All in the little time you were in there? Nobody’s that fast.”

“What are you saying?” asked Caulder, gingerly rubbing the knot on his head.

“I told you something stinks.”

I glanced out the window. Looky-loos gathered in the parking lot, no doubt drawn by the gunfire and the Closed sign on the door.

I turned to the manager. “Could you go out and keep everybody back on the sidewalk? Tell them the police are on their way.”

Grumbling, he complied, heading out to quiet the crowd.

I leaned against a table and stared at the ranch hands. “Now. You three.”

“What about us?” asked Caulder.

“You carry blades?”

Youngblood answered, “We’d hardly be ranch hands worth a spit if we didn’t.”

“That’s what I thought. Haul them out.”

The three exchanged sly glances.

“You a cop?” asked Youngblood.

“Concerned citizen.”

“No way am I doing it,” he said.

“You think one of us killed Jenkins?” asked Caulder.

“I’m just marking time till the police get here.”

They sat silently, three monkeys speaking no evil. Marta and the patrons waited by the counter.

Finally, Coop’s face opened with a wide grin. “What the hell,” he said, pulling a small pocketknife from his back pocket. “Let’s see how this plays out.” He opened the knife and laid it on the table in front of him, took another chug of Coke.

Caulder followed, reluctantly, laying his own blade before him.

Youngblood still wasn’t budging. “This is stupid! Jenkins signed my checks, signed all of our checks. What the hell reason would I have for killing him?”

“Maybe a little dancer from Salem had something to do with it,” I said.

His face froze like he’d just gotten an eyeful of the Medusa’s serpentine do.

I didn’t dare glance at Marta because I knew she’d be smirking. Youngblood couldn’t know how I got that info. Right now I had the upper hand—he had no idea how much I knew.

When his shock wore off he reached to his belt and unsheathed a blade that made Jim Bowie’s look like a nail file. He laid it on the table, muttering a string of short but expressive old Anglo-Saxon words of four and five letters.

I looked at his knife. It gleamed. “Nice. Goes with your spurs.”

“I haven’t cut anybody’s throat with it since at least last week.”

I grinned, sidestepped to the front door, opened it. “Keep them back!” I shouted to the manager dutifully restraining curious citizenry. I propped the door open with a chair.

Marta piped up, “You’re going to let all the bugs in, honey.”

“That’s the idea,” I said.

I sauntered back, leaned my butt against a table, cocked a knee, and set a boot on a chair, striking quite a pose. I imagined I was being directed by John Ford, a town sheriff facing five suspected culprits: a couple of banditos, two ranch hands, and a cocksure foreman who was making time with his murdered boss's young filly.

“I think before the posse arrives we got time for a little story.” I realized my speech had a thick Texas twang. I dialed it back.

The old man barked from the counter, “I wanna see you shoot that gun again.”

His taciturn wife spoke up for the first time since this started. “Oh, Elbert, honestly.”

I looked at the family, mother cradling now-sleeping infant. “You folks okay?”

The couple nodded simultaneously. Both had calmed considerably.

I turned back to the five in the booths.

Coop drained the last of his soda and rattled the ice cubes in the plastic glass. “Can I have another Coke?”

I stared at him. He grinned.

Marta looked at me as if I was suddenly her boss. “Go ahead,” I told her.

She fetched Coop’s empty glass to refill it.

“You’re acting pretty casual for a guy who might be a killer,” I said. “But maybe that’s your game.”

Coop shrugged. “This is more entertaining than my average Wednesday.”

“I take it you didn’t care for Jenkins.”

His smile waned. “We never had a beef, but we weren’t exactly bosom. He didn’t deserve what he got, that’s a fact.”

Caulder spoke up, jerking a thumb at the bandits in the next booth. “So if that guy didn’t have time to knock us out, kill Jenkins, and clean his weapon, how could one of us do it?”

“One couldn’t, but two of you could. One kills Jenkins and cleans the murder weapon after the other knocks two of you out. He would've hit you from behind so the innocent guys wouldn’t see who clubbed them.”

The three exchanged glances, thinking it over, trying to remember exactly how it went down in the restroom.

“But all three of us were knocked out,” said Youngblood.

“You were awake by the time I got back there. If you’d ever actually been asleep.”

“This is stupid,” he repeated.

“You were Jenkins's foreman. Must have worked for him awhile. He trusted you, because while he was out inspecting the herd or bidding on new head, he had no idea what was going on back at the ranch between you and his dancing frau.”

Youngblood shook his head, pissed.

Caulder and Coop sly-eyed each other. They’d heard the rumors.

“Did Jenkins have some provision in his will about you running the place after he’s gone?”

“How the hell should I know?” Indignant and surly.

Marta returned with Coop’s fresh Coke, saying, “So what’s the story you were going to tell?” The lady liked stories; that’s what kept her eight hours of table-hopping fresh. She swiped a bug buzzing her head.

“These machetes got me thinking. Something I read once, about a ruler in China, near the Tianshan Mountains. This would have been during the Han period, back in early B.C. This ruler wasn’t too well liked by his subjects. Seems he was letting the wealthy slide on their taxes, leaving the merchants and peasants to pick up the slack. Anyway, one day he decided to take a tour of the countryside with his Royal Guard. He wandered off by himself to inspect some farmland and was later found in a field, hacked to death by a machete.

“There were about twenty farmers out there at the time, clearing marshland for a rice field. One of them had seen his opportunity and took it. But which one?”

“Should I order pie while I wait for you to finish?”

It was Youngblood, getting on my nerves now. “No. But Coop can have a slice if he wants.”

The big man snorted, amused.

The two bandits listened quietly, nursing wounds. Lids heavy over hard eyes.

“Anyway, the head of the ruler’s Guard gathered the farmers together, made them all stand in a row and set their machetes on the ground in front of them. All their blades were clean; whoever'd done the deed had washed his weapon in a nearby stream. But see, this guard knew something; the boy was ahead of his time. He made all those farmers stand there and wait. And it was a hot, dry day.”

“Like we’re waiting now,” said Caulder. “So what’s the point?”

Coop wiped a bead of sweat from his temple. Youngblood twitched a finger as a fly landed on it. The bug zipped away.

“The point is: Flies always find the blood. No matter how much you wash it off, they find the scent. All it takes is a few stray microbes. That’s what this guard knew. So he had all those farmers stand and wait, on that hot, sweaty day. Wait for the flies to show up and land on the murder weapon, pointing him to the killer.”

Youngblood scoffed again, “This is—”

“Stupid?” I finished. “I realize it’s not exactly CSI, but stupid it ain’t, cowboy.”

It might not have been stupid, but hell if I knew if it was actually going to work. Given my recent unemployment, I was second-guessing myself a lot lately.

“So you’re thinking that two of us teamed up to take out Jenkins?” It was Coop, getting into it.

“No, I think it was one of you,” then I nodded to the silent bandits, “and these two. I’m guessing they were hired to come in and make it look like a holdup, then do Jenkins. Or maybe only one of them was privy to the murder part. Maybe this one that went into the bathroom with you guys, the one I shot, got cold feet and backed out. There was an argument back there with whichever one of you hired him; that’s why he came racing out hollering and angry, leaving one of you to finish off Jenkins by his lonesome.”

“After the other two of us had been knocked out,” finished Coop.

I nodded.

Caulder pointed to the arm-shot bandit. “That means it was him who knocked us out?”

“Or whoever hired him. From behind, like I said.”

Coop grunted, “I was hit from behind.”

“So was I,” said Youngblood. He pointed to the bruise on the back of his neck.

“Me too,” offered Caulder, lowering his head to show off the pinkish egg sprouting from his scalp. “So did one of us club him-self?” He chuckled like he’d just delivered a punchline.

“Nope,” I said, staring Caulder down. “Not you, anyway. Because you’ve only got one bump.”

“That’s all it took. He hit me hard.”

I shook my head. “No. That bump happened out here. We all saw it. He clubbed you with the butt end of his blade for show. It staggered you, but didn’t knock you out. If he’d hit you in the bathroom, you’d have two bumps.”

Caulder’s face bunched up as if someone had just told him hippos could fly. “I’m with Youngblood. This is stupid.”

By now both Coop and Youngblood had turned to regard Caulder suspiciously.

Caulder jerked his head back and forth between the two, defensive. “Come on! I got no reason to see Jenkins dead!”

I thought of one more thing, but wasn’t sure if the bait was big enough for the fish: “Maybe it has something to do with your brother.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” He ran a hand through coarse dark hair.

“That’s right,” said Coop. “His brother Matt got canned a couple of weeks ago.”

“And for that I kill him? Come on, Coop, you know me.”

I offered something else. “Your brother gets cut, so you cut Jenkins. Poetic, in a crude sort of way. Like a Cro-Magnon chiseling a haiku on the cave wall.”

“For firing Matt?” Caulder was incredulous.

Youngblood had been cogitating for thirty seconds or so. “Maybe it’s more than that,” he said.

We waited for him to continue.

“About three months ago, Mr. Jenkins was mugged after his Thursday bank stop, by guys wearing ski masks. Normally, I went with him, but that day I was out vaccinating and ear-marking some new head with Caulder. Later, Mr. Jenkins always suspected Matt had something to do with the mugging; it'd been Matt’s day off. Hell, maybe even one of these two was in on it.” He meant the bandits.

The one with the busted nose shifted, a clear tell.

“Mr. Jenkins finally got tired of suspecting Matt and let him go.”

“And that’s why Jenkins was killed?” wondered Coop.

Youngblood shrugged. “Maybe. Think about it...”

I let the overgrown Hardy Boys keep going while Caulder sweated it out between them.

“Mr. Jenkins asked me last month if I thought Caulder could have been involved with the mugging, like maybe he’d given Matt details about the bank stop. I said no way, Caulder’s a stand-up guy. But that wasn’t good enough for Mr. Jenkins.” Youngblood stared at Caulder. “He told me he was going to start digging around about you.”

“Come to think of it,” said Coop, “Caulder’s got a brand-new pair of dancing boots and a turquoise buckle out in the bunkhouse.”

“Really?” asked Youngblood.

Caulder was finally fed up. “I bought those with last year’s bonus!”

Coop guffawed. “You never sat on a bonus more'n three days!”

“So you think I arranged that mugging and Jenkins was going to nail me for it? That’s still no reason to kill the guy!” Caulder looked from one to the other and back to me, assured.

“Unless you’re a third-striker,” I said.

Caulder blanched.

“I saw the way you were eating your food, guarding it with your arms wrapped around your plate. That’s how a convict eats. You done time, Caulder? If Jenkins snooped around about your past, he would have found out about your record and brought the cops in to question you about the mugging. And you couldn’t handle the idea of going back in for a long stretch. That’s why you killed him. Stupid, Caulder, real stupid.”

Frustrated, he swept his arm across the tabletop, sending his pocketknife flying. It bounced off a chair and clattered to the floor, spinning like a propeller. It slowed to a stop under an oil painting of Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach.

Caulder rocketed from his seat like a giant coil just sproinged his butt.

But I already had my gun out. Pointed at his chest.

“Shoot him!” said the old man, somewhere behind me.

“Honestly,” his exasperated wife replied.

The police arrived twenty minutes later and grilled everybody, taking enough notes to fill a whole file drawer. They hauled Caulder away in cuffs.

Me they kept the longest, firing questions until long after the sun went down. They didn’t take too kindly to a private citizen playing Dirty Harriet, discharging a firearm within city limits with intent to do bodily harm.

One thing convinced them to lean in my favor.

Across the room, under the painting of waves lapping at Haystack Rock, on the blade of Caulder’s pocketknife, flies gathered in a dark cloud.

Hell. It actually worked.

It surprised even me.

© 2007 by Brian Muir