Shooting at Loons

9

Ever present, truest Friend,

Ever near Thine aid to lend,

Leave us not to doubt and fear,

Groping on in darkness drear,

When the storms are raging sore,

Hearts grow faint, and hopes give o’er,

Whisper softly, “Wanderer, come!

Follow Me, I’ll guide thee home.”

—Marcus M. Wells

“This is absolutely, positively the last time,” I told Kidd Chapin as I reached for a second slice of the best pizza I’d eaten in six months. Not only did it have olives and peppers and sausage, two slices even had anchovies, an irresistible combination. “If you don’t catch somebody shooting loons tomorrow morning, you’ll have to go back under the porch or go lie out in the bushes.”

“And get my tailfeathers shot off?” he grinned. “Not!”

“Well, it won’t be here,” I warned, “because I’ll finish up tomorrow evening and drive on back to Dobbs.”

We were seated at the Formica kitchen table, shades drawn, splitting the last three beers in the refrigerator, and telling war stories.

At least Kidd Chapin was. He reminded me of Terry Wilson, my SBI buddy. I’d already heard his oystering story about the poachers he’d caught only that day—two old-timers who swore on their mothers’ graves that they’d harvested that bushel of succulent bivalves before the thirty-first of March, the day oyster season officially closed. “They said they were just bringing those two-week-old sackfuls out in their boat to wet ‘em down again.”

Next had come his bear story, two loon stories, and now we were onto spotlighting deer.

“—so we’re trying to sneak up on this abandoned house out at the edge of a soybean field where we’ve heard there’s been lights flashing around at night and the sound of gunshots. Well, just about the time we get in range, the door flings open and this powerful flashlight beam sweeps across the field and then pow-pow-pow! We dive for cover and land in a briar-covered ditch with about six inches of water. A minute later, we hear the little skinny one yell, ‘I b’lieve I got him, Cletus!’

“Ray and me, we raise up real easy like and see this man mountain come to the door—bushy red beard, carrying this humongous bowie knife and wearing a tee shirt that says ‘Kill ‘Em All And Let God Sort It Out.’ He’s one mean-looking mother. ‘Where?’ he says.

“‘Over yonder,’ says the skinny one, and he’s laughing and whooping like he’s killed a bear, and here comes that flashlight beam again.”

He savored an olive and took a deep swallow of beer.

“Now Ray and me, we’ve got these riot shotguns, so I shout, ‘State Wildlife Officer! Throw down your gun!’ The big guy runs back inside, but the little guy’s not quite sure what to do. ‘Bout that time, Ray pumps a shell into the chamber and soon as he hears that, the little guy throws down his gun and hits the dirt, yelling, ‘I ain’t done nothing.’

“I run around to the back of the house about the time the door opens and I think for sure I’m gonna see the snout of an M-16 or something. Instead, here comes Man Mountain’s nose, real cautious-like, and this little teeny voice says, ‘Who’s there?’ like he’s expecting the Avon lady.

“I tell him to come on out with his hands up and it’s `Yessir! Yessir! Don’t shoot.’

“So we get ‘em handcuffed, under arrest, down on their knees and all the time they’re swearing they ain’t done a thing. ‘Course Ray and me, we know they have, so we start gathering up the evidence and the first thing we find is this shotgun shell. Only it’s birdshot, nothing that’d bring down a deer. About twenty yards out, we finally find what the little guy was shooting at. Not a deer. A goddamned house cat!

“I mean, here we are: two officers with riot guns, two guys handcuffed and under arrest, and one mangy dead Felis domesticus, which, you being a judge, you know is not against the law to shoot.”

“So what’d you do?” I asked, licking tomato sauce from my fingers.

“Only thing I can do.” He grinned and reached for the last piece of pizza. “I pick up that dead cat and I shake it in their faces and yell, ‘You sorry piece of garbage, you see this?’

“And the little one starts whining, `Yessir, please sir, I didn’t mean to do it.’

“‘You know this is against the law, don’t you?’

“And the big one’s moaning, `Yessir, We’re sorry. We won’t never do it again. I promise you, sir!’

“‘Okay,’ I say, ‘We’ll let you off this time, but we catch you shooting cats again, you’re gonna be in a heap of trouble.’ “

Laughing, I topped his glass from the last bottle of beer and poured the rest into my own. “And cat lovers everywhere salute you, sir!”

“‘Course, we actually did see some guys spotlighting deer a couple of nights later. We eased my state-issue Bronco down into this driveway on a country road and parked facing out. No lights on in the house, people had gone to bed. And we sit there about an hour till sure ‘nuff, here comes a pickup with two jokers sitting out there on the front fenders. One’s working the spotlight and the other has the gun. Well, we scrunch way down in the seat till after they pass, then I switch on the ignition and try to follow them and all of a sudden the whole right side of my Bronco sags down. We got out and find two of our tires melted slam down on the rims. Seems that old farmer was in the habit of dumping his hot coals and ashes in the driveway before he made up the fire and went to bed at night.”

“Bet you had fun explaining that to your boss,” I said as he cleared away the box and paper plates and put the beer bottles in a recycling bag.

“Well, tell you the truth, I could never exactly find the right time to break it to him so I just stole the spares off’n a couple of other officers’ Broncos.”

While I washed our glasses and wiped down the surfaces, he swept the floor.

“You’re right handy around the house,” I commented, spreading the dish towel to dry over the drainer.

“Never been too hung up about the difference between women’s work and men’s,” he said with an easy smile. “Not since I learned about oysters.”

“What about oysters?” I asked suspiciously.

“They flip-flop back and forth on their gender, depending on who’s on top. Grow the lady on top of the gentleman, and a few months later, he’ll be female, she’ll be male and they’ll still get baby oysters.”

“You’re making that up,” I told him.

“There’s a field guide to seashells in the living room,” he said. “If you don’t believe me, go check it out.”

I went and found the book and looked up oysters. After a paragraph or two detailing how oysters grow in the marshes and mud flats of intertidal zones where water movement is gentle, the entry finally got down to their sex life. Guess what?

“You sure you don’t want to stay on down over the weekend?” he asked.

“Positive. Not that it hasn’t been fun.”

He gave me a considering look.

“Forget it,” I told him. “We’re not oysters.”

I went to bed.

Alone.

• • •

Along about two A.M., I woke up thirsty from the anchovies and tiptoed out to the kitchen for a drink of water.

And realized that thirst wasn’t what had waked me.

Kidd Chapin was a dark shape at the back window and I saw him motion for silence through the faint reflected light from up at the store. Outside, a light rain was still falling. The wet live oaks swayed in a strong southwest wind and made moving shadows everywhere. I could hear low waves breaking upon the sand; and every fifteen seconds, a faint gleam from the lighthouse swept through the window over on the east side.

I stood on tiptoe to peer over Kidd’s shoulder, past the bushes, to the road, and whispered in his ear, “What are we looking at?”

“I’m not sure. I went to the bathroom about ten minutes ago and happened to look out and see somebody coming up from the water.”

“Fishermen use the path all times of the night and day,” I told him, “depending on what’s running and how the wind’s blowing or—”

“I know about the wind and spring tides, Ms. Judge,” he reminded me.

“Sorry.”

“Besides, he didn’t walk straight on up the path and down the road like a waterman. He kept so far in the shadows I never did get a clear look. In fact if it weren’t that you never see any blacks on the island, I couldn’t know if he was black or white. He slipped through those bushes and on across the road and now I don’t see him anymore.”

“What’d he have on?”

“I don’t know. It was all dark. Probably a jacket with a hood on it.”

“Maybe you ought to call Marvin Willitt,” I said.

“What for?”

“You just said—”

“Yeah, and I tell Marvin Willitt where I am and half of Harkers Island’ll know it by daybreak. And what if it’s somebody only just out cheating on his wife, trying not to be seen by her husband?

“‘Only just out cheating on his wife?’” I couldn’t help the snide acid.

“Hey, I’m not condoning it, just recognizing the facts, ma’am.”

He stepped back from the window as I opened the refrigerator and squinted against the sudden bright light. “You want a glass of tomato juice?”

“Okay.”

We took our glasses back toward the unlit living room. A stiff April wind was pouring through the south windows straight off the water, thick with rain and salt and funky seaside odors. I shivered in my thin gown.

“Aw, don’t go back to bed yet,” said Kidd. “Is it too cold for you? I’ll put the windows down.”

“No, I like it, but I have to put on something warmer.”

“My sleeping bag zips open to a double comforter,” he offered and I saw white teeth flash in the near darkness.

“I’d hate for you to disfurnish yourself,” I said dryly and went into my room to slip on a fleecy sweatshirt and slippers and to lay hands on a comforter of my own.

As I pulled the shirt over my head, I noticed through the window a flicker of light over at Andy’s house. I quickly stuffed my gown inside a pair of warm-up pants, kicked off the slippers and pulled on sneakers, then hurried out to Kidd.

“It’s Andy Bynum’s house,” I said. “The man that was killed Sunday? Somebody’s sneaking around his house.”

“Hey, wait a minute!” he rasped as I slid open the door. “Where do you think you’re—”

“It’s okay,” I assure him, jingling my car keys. “I’ve got a gun in my trunk, remember?”

He grabbed my arm before I stepped off the porch into the rain and held me while he crammed his feet in his own shoes. “Now listen up, Ms. Judge—no guns. You stay here and I’ll go—”

I yanked my arm free with a low snarl. “I’ve got a better idea, Officer Chapin. You stay here and call Marvin Willitt and I’ll go.”

“Or,” he amended, “we can go together, only no gun, okay?”

I nodded and we set off through the bushes. Between the security light near Mark’s house and the lights up at the store, we didn’t need a flashlight to see where we were going, but we were keeping to the shadows as much as possible ourselves and there was a certain amount of stumbling so that we wound up running across the rain-slick road hand in hand, then melted into the bushes beneath the front windows of Andy Bynum’s house.

Unlike Sue and Carl’s little yellow clapboard vacation cottage, this was a year-round brick home, solid and comfortable, with blinds and drapes at all the windows. Yet the window of the front door was uncurtained and we could see the glow of a moving flashlight inside.

“Stay here,” said Kidd as he moved onto the porch. “Please?”

As I may have said before, I don’t mind letting men do my dirty work if it makes them feel good, but that doesn’t include using one as a body shield. On the other hand, this one seemed to have picked up a short piece of pipe on our way over and I certainly didn’t need to be in the middle if he started swinging it.

The front door was unlatched, but when Kidd pushed, it swung inward with a horrendous squeak and the light immediately vanished. As he stepped inside, I remembered that there was a side door I could be usefully watching, but for the moment, I blanked on which side. By the time I’d circled all the way around the house, the door was standing wide open and I saw a dark shape fleeing for the water. From the angle he was taking, I had a feeling he’d tied up at Mahlon’s landing, so I cut through the Lewis’s yard, trying not to skid on the wet grass, and sprinted down the narrow footpath the boys had worn through that overgrown vacant field, down to the shoreline. I bet I’d have made it in time to get a good look at the intruder, too, only just before I was to break through the bank, the toe of my sneaker caught in one of Mahlon’s discarded stop nets and I went sprawling into a yucca plant.

A stiff needled blade jabbed my cheek, another raked my forehead, and more impaled themselves in my head and hands. I disentangled myself as quickly as I could, but already I could hear the boat motor; and when I finally made it to the shore, all I saw were the running lights as it headed out to the channel and back toward Beaufort. Without moon or stars, I couldn’t even say if it had a cabin or an open cockpit, for it was just a gray blur against the dark water.

Discouraged, thoroughly wet and hurting like hell, I started to cross Mahlon’s rickety dock and stumbled against a bucket. It went banging against the piling and, as I set it upright, a light snapped on. Mahlon’s grizzled head appeared at the open window and he squinted out to see into the darkness.

“Who’s that out there?”

“It’s just me, Mahlon,” I called, edging away from the light. “I couldn’t sleep and was taking a walk and I kicked a bucket. Sorry. G’night.”

He was still muttering about dingbatters without enough sense to come in out of the rain as I walked hastily back to the cottage.

Kidd Chapin was there before me and as soon as I stepped inside, he drew the shades and turned on the lights. His wet hair clung flat to his head, but mine was hanging in strings.

“Sweet Jesus in the morning! Look at you. What happened?”

I touched my damp face and my torn hands came away with more blood. “I fell into a damn yucca.”

“Spanish bayonets,” he said, calling its colloquial name.

“They weren’t kidding. The way it hurts, I’m lucky I didn’t get one in the eye. I don’t suppose you got a look at him either?”

“No, by the time I got to the open side door, you were both gone and I didn’t have a clue which way. I was on my way to the water when the light came on over there and I could see you by yourself, so I decided to sneak on back in here while you were creating a diversion. Come on, shug, let’s get you cleaned up.”

I was drained into docility and obediently sat at the kitchen table while he washed the blood off my face and hands with a hot soapy washcloth, then dabbed at the cuts and punctures with peroxide.

“Hope you got a light calendar tomorrow,” he said. “You’re going to look like hell a couple of days, but I’d leave the Band-Aids off, let the air heal it.”

“Take two aspirin and call you tomorrow?” I said groggily.

“Wouldn’t hurt.”

“Which?”

“Both.”

I swallowed the aspirin he brought me, shucked off the wet sweatshirt and warm-up pants, and crawled into bed.

• • •

My head felt as if it’d barely touched the pillow when Kidd’s hand touched my bare shoulder. At first I thought it was still that hazy cusp between night and sunrise, but according to the clock it was nearly seven-thirty and I realized that the gray light was due to the gray day. The rain had stopped, though clouds still lingered. If more clouds didn’t blow in, it would probably be sunny by noon. I tried to sit up and every muscle in my body started screaming that this was really a bad idea and maybe we could all come back and try it again tomorrow.

“I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye,” said Kidd.

“No loons?”

“No. Ol’ Mahlon left at first light without a gun. Gone fishing, I’d guess.”

A hot cup of coffee steamed on the stand beside the bed. I eased up against the pillows and took a grateful sip.

“How’d you know I like it black?”

“No sugar bowl on the counter, no milk in the fridge. Made it easy. How you feeling?”

“Stiff, sore. How do I look?”

“Beautiful,” he said. “Except for the dueling scars. You’re a gutsy lady. Want to come hunting poachers with me some night?”

“Any time you’re in Dobbs,” I smiled.

“Bet you just would, too. Listen, though. You were too beat to talk, but whoever that was last night, he must have gone straight to the desk in what looked like the den ‘cause when I walked in, it was flat torn apart. Papers everywhere. I called Quig Smith and told him and he’s coming out this morning to see if he can get any fingerprints off the doors and desk. I didn’t touch anything inside and you never went in, so he’s going to tell Bynum’s family that he got an anonymous phone tip, okay?”

“Okay,” I yawned.

Very gently, he leaned over and kissed my uninjured cheek. “See you around, Ms. Judge,” and then he was gone.

• • •

A hot shower did wonders for my aching muscles, but it also brought out the bright red of my scratches. I hesitated between leaving them clean for quicker healing and covering them with makeup.

Vanity won, but I promised my face I’d take cream and face soap with me and wipe off all the makeup as soon as court was adjourned. That should be by noon or one o’clock and nothing was on the docket for next day.

And all the time I was dressing, Kidd’s words rang in my head. What sort of burglar tore apart a desk and scattered papers rather than grabbing up the nearest pawnable items? And did he want papers relating to the Alliance or papers relating to Pope Properties?

Suddenly I was reevaluating the figure I’d chased last night. Could it have been a woman? More specifically, Linville Pope? Barbara Jean’s accusations began to take on a tinge of reality.

Since it would be almost as quick to swing back past the island as to leave straight for Beaufort, I planned to wait till after court to pack and clean up. Unless Jay Hadley told (and why would she?), no one else knew I had half of Andy’s papers; but I’ve always thought it better to set the glass back on a sturdy table than cry over spilt milk, even though the cottage offered few places to hide a bundle of files. I briefly considered and rejected the linen closet with its neat stacks of sheets and towels, the oven, or between the mattresses.

In the end, I went for Poe’s solution. Neatly stacked for recycling beside the kitchen garbage basket were all the newspapers I’d read that week, both the News and Observer and the Carteret County News-Times. Quickly, I divided the files between several of the newspapers, replaced them in the stack, and convinced myself that no one would give the papers a second glance.

Outside, grinding gears announced the arrival of a large white truck in the field next to Mahlon’s. The door panel read COASTAL WASTE MANAGEMENT CORP, MOREHEAD CITY. Two muscular men stepped out, surveyed the scope of the job, then began tossing junk into the back of the truck. I saw Mickey Mantle go over and speak to them, then a few minutes later, he was tugging at those gamecock pens and moving them one at a time back nearer the house.

Looked like Linville Pope was serious about cleaning up her property. What was it she’d said yesterday? “I do not threaten. I merely state.”

No joke.

• • •

As I crossed the causeway to the mainland, I passed Quig Smith and he gave me a big wave.

At the courthouse, Chet did a double take when he saw my face. “My God, girl! You look like you ought to be standing in front of the bench instead of sitting on it.”

“Oh come on, it doesn’t look that bad, does it?” I examined my face again in the mirror. My hair half hid the scratch on my forehead and makeup almost covered the deeper one on my cheek.

He shook his head. “What happened?”

“I fell into a yucca plant.”

“Ouch!” He flinched in sympathy. “Just jumped up and bit you, huh?”

“What I get for playing Nancy Drew,” I said and told him about chasing the burglar who’d broken into Andy Bynum’s house. With some editing, of course. I didn’t need stories getting back to my family, and he didn’t need to know about the papers or Kidd Chapin either, which meant I had to fudge about what Quig Smith knew.

“I hope you won’t mention this to anybody. I didn’t want to get hung up down here, maybe have to stay over an extra day to answer dumb questions, so I didn’t give my name when I reported it,” I lied.

“You’re lucky they didn’t take a shot at you. Would you know him if you saw him again?”

I shook my head. “I’m not even sure if it was a man or a woman.”

“What about Mahlon Davis or Mickey Mantle?”

“You know them?”

“Everybody knows them. They’ve never showed up in my courtroom yet. Probably just a matter of time. Although, to give the devil his due, they’re both brilliant woodworkers, even if they are morally retarded. Mickey Mantle did some cabinet work for us last fall. Long as we could keep him sober...”

“Yeah. It wasn’t Mahlon, though, because he was home in bed. But that reminds me. Before I leave this time, I need to speak to somebody in Social Services about his grandson Guthrie. I want to know if Mahlon treats him too rough.”

“That’d be Shelby Spivey. And she probably already has a file started on him if he lives with Mahlon.”

I made a note of the name and number, as Chet glanced at his watch and stood to go to his courtroom.

“What happened to you?” I said, noticing how he favored his right leg.

“Pulled a muscle when I jogged up for my paper this morning.” He grinned. “We’re the walking wounded, aren’t we, girl? I’ll be finished by mid-morning, so in case I don’t see you ‘fore you leave—” He gave me a warm hug. “Drive careful and come back real soon, you hear?”

“Thanks, Chet. Say ’bye to Barbara Jean for me. I hope it all works out about the fishery.”

• • •

Chet may have been finished by mid-morning, but I wasn’t far behind. When the last judgment had been rendered and the last paper signed, I stopped by the Clerk of Court’s office to thank her for her courtesies and to see if there were any last-minute details I’d missed before I left.

Darlene Leonard laughed as I entered. “Well, speak of the Devil and up she jumps!”

“Somebody been taking my name in vain?” I asked.

She said she’d just hung up from talking to the chief district court judge and he’d spoken to my chief, who said, and I quote: “We’ll bring Harrison Hobart out of retirement to handle Judge Knott’s schedule here next week, so, yes, you can keep her an extra week.”

Just like that. Not “Do you want to?” Not “Would you mind?”

“What’d you do to tick off F Roger Longmire?” asked the pragmatist, who usually kept track of where I stood with my district’s chief judge.

“It must have been that smartass remark you made about his brown shoes last week,” said the preacher. “One of these days you’re gonna learn—”

Before I could work up a good head of steam, Darlene Leonard said, “Judge Longmire sent word for you to get a good rest and enjoy the beach next week. He said you’ve earned it.”

So much for pragmatism and preaching.

With the folders Jay Hadley had given me still uppermost in my mind, I asked, “You knew Andy Bynum, didn’t you?”

“I knew who he was,” she answered, “but I can’t say I really knew him.”

“Someone said he’d been digging through some old deeds and such. Would you have helped him?”

“No, that would have been over at the Register of Deeds,” she said and gave me directions to the office.

There, a helpful young clerk remembered Andy clearly. “Sure, Mr. Bynum was in and out almost every day right up till about a week before he was killed. Wasn’t it just awful? He was such a nice man.”

She had no idea what he was after specifically, “But he started with a piece of property Mrs. Pope had acquired over on Harkers Island last month and pulled most everything he could find on Pope Properties, right back to when she handled the sale of the Ritchie House.”

“Which piece of Harkers Island property?” I asked.

She very nicely pulled out the right deed book on her first try. As I’d suspected, it was the land adjacent to Chet and Barbara Jean’s daughter, formerly owned by one Gilbert Epson. So Andy had known about the sale at least a week before Linville told Barbara Jean.

Interesting, but what was the significance?

“Mr. Bynum wanted photocopies of everything,” said the clerk. “Want me to make you a copy, too?”

I thanked her but declined the offer. No point duplicating what I already had. And it looked like I’d have a nice quiet weekend to finish reading the rest of the stack.

I commandeered an unoccupied phone and left a message on Aunt Zell’s machine as to why I wouldn’t be home that weekend. I’ve had my own set of rooms in Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash’s house since Mother died; and although I come and go freely, I do try to let her know my general plans. It tickles me that a childless, un-employed woman nearing seventy is so actively in her world that she needs an answering machine.

Next I called Social Services and got through to the Shelby Spivey Chet had mentioned. She sighed when I told her who I was and why I was calling.

“I know it probably seems bad to you, Judge Knott, but we are monitoring that situation. I did the initial field investigation on that child myself, and if it’ll make you feel any better, I do believe that his grandfather really loves him. Most of the time, he’s patient. He’s teaching him how to fish and build boats, the boy does attend school and all his physical needs are being met.”

She sighed again in my ear. “There doesn’t seem to be any systematic violence, but according to the neighbors, Mr. Davis does lose it about three or four times a year and then he hauls off and smacks whoever’s closest that can’t hit back. The trouble is, the child’s old enough now to testify, but he won’t. And neither will his grandmother, so our hands are pretty much tied. Unless you’d be willing to attest that you’ve witnessed incidents of abuse yourself?”

I had to admit that I hadn’t. All I had were suspicions.

We agreed that it was a hell of way to protect our young.

“They keep making the stretch size of net mesh bigger and bigger to save the little game fish,” she said unexpectedly. “Wish they’d take another look at the size of our mesh.”