Текст книги "Dearly Departed"

Автор книги: David Housewright

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

twenty

I loved reading Jack London as a kid, loved learning the language of nature, listening to “the voices of wind and storm.” Even now I’m impressed by his violence, the violence of the unconquered wilderness, of the men and animals who call it home. Kreel County is a far cry from London’s forest primordial, of course. Honeycombed with highways, roads, and logging trails, it’s nearly impossible to escape man’s presence. Hike in a straight line long enough and you’re sure to trip upon some vestige of civilization: a snowmobile track, a power line, a Piggly Wiggly grocery store. There are no packs of starving wolves to contend with, no rampaging grizzlies. Only hunters who can’t shoot straight. It’s much the same in northern Minnesota where my family kept a hunting and fishing cabin—at least it was a hunting and fishing cabin before electricity, before TVs and VCRs and microwave ovens turned it into something else. Still, it’s infinitely superior to existence in the concrete jungles of big-city America, where a man can live a lifetime without ever setting a foot to untrampled earth.

At my insistence Deputy Gary Loushine drove to Chip Thilgen’s cabin, even though he insisted Thilgen was not at home; he’d had people watching the place for nearly two days now. The cabin was located on a small lake at the base of a heavily wooded hill and virtually surrounded by poplar, fir, and birch trees. It was difficult to see from the narrow, seldom-used gravel road that cut through the forest between the cabin and the hill. We drove past it twice. An abandoned logging trail branched off from the gravel road well above the cabin and wound its way up the hill. After our third pass we took the trail as far as we could, eventually parking the 4X4 behind another Kreel County Sheriff’s Department vehicle that was hidden well out of sight. We worked the rest of the way up the steep hill on foot. At the top of the hill I paused to look at my watch. I really didn’t care what time it was. But it gave me an excuse to rest and regain my lost breath.

“Coming?” Loushine asked. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

“Right behind you,” I told him, a false smile on my face, as I reminded myself that I was in shape, that I worked out, that I know karate and jujitsu and aikido. I just don’t make a habit of climbing steep hills in the forest, is all.

We resumed pushing ourselves through the trees and underbrush until we found a small clearing with good sight lines to Thilgen’s cabin. Hunkered down at the edge of the clearing was a sheriff’s deputy—the one who had driven my car when I was escorted to the county line. He was watching the cabin with a pair of binoculars. He must have known we were coming because he didn’t even acknowledge our presence until we knelt next to him.

“Tell me you’re here to relieve me,” he said.

“Sorry,” Loushine said, promising that another deputy would be along shortly. “Anything?”

“Nope.”

Thilgen’s cabin was about three hundred yards below us. It was tiny, one of those one-story, prefabricated jobs built on cinder blocks—from that distance the entire structure looked like it could fit inside my living room. A short flight of stairs led to a narrow deck and the cabin’s only door. Like the cabin, the deck was stained red. A fire pit surrounded by a circle of large stones had been dug in back of the cabin, about fifty feet from what looked like a crumbling outhouse. Beyond the cabin I could see a small patch of lake peeking through the trees.

We sat and watched for a long time without speaking.

In the forest, first you hear nothing. Then you hear everything: birds chirping, crickets singing, wind whipping through tree branches and sounding just like running water. If you’re not familiar with it, the racket can be downright disconcerting. Sitting, not moving, concentrating completely on the cabin below me, my imagination began to amuse itself at the expense of my nerves. Several times I heard voices and laughter and footsteps yet saw nothing. I convinced myself that I was being watched, stalked; convinced myself that there was a psychotic killer hiding behind every bush—the same guy who escaped from the lunatic asylum in the stories we told ourselves as children … the one with the hook.

A hand gripped my shoulder. I knocked it away impulsively and pivoted on my heels, my hand deep in my jacket pocket digging for the Walther PPK.

Startled, Loushine pulled away from me. Then he smiled knowingly.

“Don’t ever sneak up on me like that again,” I warned him.

Loushine chuckled. “What do you want to do?” he asked.

“Let’s go down there,” I said confidently—or at least with a voice that sounded confident. Man, I was starting to behave like the Woody Allen of private investigators, much too paranoid for this line of work.

I stood and stretched. My thought was to work our way back to the 4X4 and drive to the cabin. But Loushine was already moving down the hill. The show-off. I followed, moving gingerly, picking up the pace when Loushine did. In my haste, I tripped over a root and fell headlong into a blueberry bush. I looked up. Loushine hadn’t even slowed. He was waiting for me on the gravel road at the base of the steep hill when I broke through the last wall of brush. He shook his head at me like he pitied me.

“Poor little lamb lost in the woods,” he muttered.

Yeah? I’d like to see how he’d manage the Phillips neighborhood in Minneapolis on a Saturday night!

We went to the cabin and climbed the redwood steps leading to the deck. I peered through the windows while Loushine leaned against the railing. The cabin appeared empty.

“See anything?” he asked sarcastically.

I knocked on the door; its lock and frame were cheaply made and flimsy. I doubted they could withstand a strong wind.

“I told you, no one is home,” Loushine added.

“Shhhh!” I hushed him. “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

“It sounds like a call for help.”

“Excuse me?”

BAM!

I kicked the door in.

“Jesus Christ, Taylor!” Loushine protested. “We don’t have a warrant.”

“Oops.”

“This is breaking and entering.”

“Oh, well,” I said. “Since the door is already open …”

“This is a felony!” Loushine insisted.

The cabin consisted of three rooms, including the bathroom. The first room, a combination kitchen/dining room/living room was papered from floor to ceiling with pages that had been carefully cut from Penthouse and Playboy magazines and Victoria’s Secret catalogs (personally I preferred the lingerie models over the nudes, but that’s just me). The room also contained several bookcases filled with paperbacks with titles like Country Club Wife, Fraternity Initiation, The Girl Next Door, The Naughty Lady, and Curious Cathy. Another bookcase next to the TV and VCR contained adult videos with similar titles. I recognized one: Debbie Does Dallas, an oldie but a goodie. Nowhere did I see a publication dealing with the environment.

“Wow!” Loushine said from where he stood just inside the doorway.

“Man doesn’t get out much, does he?” I said.

“Guess not.”

“Take this room,” I told him.

“And do what?”

“Look.”

“For what?”

“Incriminating evidence.”

“What exactly does incriminating evidence look like?”

“It’s like pornography,” I told him. “You’ll know it when you see it.”

“Yeah, but even if we find some, then what? Without a warrant, a judge would never allow us to admit it into evidence.”

“Trust me,” I told him.

“Trust him,” he muttered. “Big-city homicide cop.”

“Amateur,” I muttered back.

I went into the bathroom. It was small, dirty, and stank of mildew. Thilgen had taped several suggestive photos—they were suggestive in the way a slap in the face was suggestive—to the dirty mirror fronting the medicine cabinet. I opened the cabinet. Thilgen’s toothbrush, toothpaste, electric shaver, and hairbrush were all accounted for.

“If Thilgen is running, he didn’t plan to,” I called out.

“Huh?” Loushine grunted.

I moved to Chip Thilgen’s bedroom and immediately regretted it. The small room reeked of sweat and semen, and the sordid odor made me gag. The unmade bed was soiled; its sheets looked as if they hadn’t been changed in months. More pornography hung from the walls, and several life-sized posters were stapled to the ceiling above the bed.

“You’re one strange biscuit,” I told the absent Thilgen as I went through his bureau drawers. They were filled with clothes and assorted sex aids—manual and electric. Two small suitcases, both empty, were hidden under his bed, and the tiny closest was filled with shirts, pants, and jackets. In the pocket of the jacket hung from a hook on the back side of the door I found his checkbook. Again I concluded that if Thilgen was on the run, it wasn’t something he had planned. At the bottom of the closet I discovered a cardboard box filled with his financial records: old tax returns, receipts, bank envelopes stuffed with canceled checks, and several check registers. I set the checkbook on top and carried the box back into the kitchen with me.

“Whaddaya got there?” Loushine asked, rushing to my side– anything to quit searching through Thilgen’s unsavory life. He watched over my shoulder as I examined the contents of the box, paying particular attention to the checks written most recently.

“This is interesting,” I said at last.

“What?”

“Nearly every check Thilgen wrote paid for monthly bills or purchases—groceries, gasoline, utilities, that sort of thing—except for these six that were made out to James Johannson.”

“Jimmy Johannson is an asshole,” Loushine told me. “An asshole with a record.”

“Yes, I know,” I recalled. “We met.” I studied the check amounts. “Five checks were written for five hundred dollars each over the past nine months except for this last one.” I gave Loushine a look at the carbon in the checkbook register. It was for twenty-five hundred, and it was made out the day the Buick was stolen from the Wascott fire chief.

“The day before Michael was shot,” Loushine noted.

“Uh-huh.”

“Let’s go,” the deputy said excitedly.

“Go where?” I asked.

“Go and brace Johannson, whaddaya think? Bring him in for questioning.”

“On what grounds?” I asked.

“On what—?”

“What probable cause are you going to give the judge when he asks?”

Loushine gave it two beats then began to curse bitterly.

“Dammit, Taylor. You’ve compromised the investigation.”

“Would I do a thing like that?”

“We can’t use any of this shit now,” Loushine told me as I returned the check registers to the box.

“Unlawful entry … proceeds of an illegal search … fruits of the poisonous tree …” Loushine went on like that while I took the box back to Thilgen’s bedroom. He was just finishing up when I returned.

“Is this how you do things in St. Paul?” he asked.

“Of course not,” I told him. “It’s illegal.” I smiled—and inwardly shuddered—at the thought of what Anne Scalasi would do to me if I attempted the same nonsense in her town.

“So now what do we do?” Loushine asked.

“So now I go talk with James Johannson. Alone.”

Deputy Loushine cursed some more.

twenty-one

Deputy Loushine’s directions—or my misunderstanding of them—got me all turned around. I ended up at a service station off the county road, absolutely lost. The kid manning the pumps regarded me suspiciously, and when I asked him for directions to Johnny Johannson’s place, he asked, “Why do you want to know?”

“So I can talk to the man. Is that a problem?”

“Let’s just say it’s a small county, and it’s getting smaller all the time, and I have to live in it, and I don’t want to do anything that will make living in it harder than it already is.”

“I just want to talk.”

“There’s a phone inside.”

“Swell.”

And people say I’m cynical.

A phone book was attached to the telephone stand with a chain in case someone wanted to steal it. It listed John Johannson’s address as 315 Fire Road 21. Next to the unmanned cash register was a rack filled with maps going for a buck-fifty each. I stole one labeled Kreel County and took it back to my car.

No fewer than five wrecks littered Johnny Johannson’s yard, the hood of each car opened to the elements. Most of the cars were rusted through, dead but unburied. I parked in the driveway next to them, thinking that my ’91 Dodge Colt fit right in.

The house itself—an ancient ramshackle two-story in need of paint and a new roof—was situated at the end of a dirt road in a weed-infested clearing surrounded by a wall of trees. There was no lake that I could see, only woods. I followed a worn dirt path to the front of the house and knocked on the door. Johnny Johannson answered it. He clenched his fists and went into a defensive stance at the sight of me. It had been weeks since he had seen me last, yet he still wanted to know, “You lookin’ for more?”

“Not me, sir,” I told him. “I figured I got off lucky the first time.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I’d like to speak with your son, James, if I might?”

“What for?” still on the defensive.

I showed him my photostat.

“I’m looking for someone,” I said. “Guy named Chip Thilgen. I was told James might know where I can find him.”

“James isn’t in trouble?” Johannson asked.

“Not that I know of.” I shrugged, acting oh-so-innocent. “Not with me, anyway.”

“That’s good, that’s good, ’cuz Jimmy, he’s had his share—if you know what I mean.”

I pretended that I didn’t.

“Is he around?” I asked.

“Well, now, I can’t say that he is,” Johannson replied. “He’s out”—Johannson gestured toward the trees surrounding his home—“workin’ his new dog. But I expect he’ll be back anytime now if you care to wait.”

I said I would and followed him inside.

Johannson offered me a cold beer, which I accepted, and led me to his workroom in the basement.

“You had me, you know,” he said as we descended the stairs. “Back at The Last Chance, you had me. With them moves of yours, you coulda killed me easy. A lot of them assholes be happy to see it, too.”

“Why didn’t you just stay down?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t give ’em the satisfaction.”

I watched in true awe as Johnny Johannson gave me a tour of his workbench. He was a flytier like my grandfather, and he had all his paraphernalia meticulously arranged—in direct contrast to the rest of his home. The benchtop looked like a surgical tray, filled with a scalpel, scissors, pliers, tweezers, a dubbing needle, a magnifying glass, single-edge razor blades, an emery board, an Arkansas point file, and an eyedropper. Three different-sized transparent plastic boxes labeled THREAD, FLOSS, and TINSEL were neatly stacked atop each other. Fixed to the wall above the bench was a large shadowbox with over two dozen compartments, the compartments filled with jars and paper bags, each labeled for capes, fur, hair, hackles, hooks, and so on. An English vise was mounted to the bench. It was exactly like my grandfather’s, and I told Johannson so.

“This is so cool,” I said aloud, and he smiled.

“Whaddaya think of this?” he asked after opening a large wooden box lined with foam and containing about fifty wet flies. He placed one of the flies in my palm.

“Very nice,” I said.

“What is it?” he asked, testing me.

I studied it carefully, examining the fly the way Granddad had taught me. The fly had a black wool body shrouded in deer hair and a fluffy turkey feather dyed black; the wing was extended about an inch beyond the shank, that straight part of the hook between the bend and the eye.

“I’d guess a black marabou muddler, except—”

“Except?”

“The hackle is dyed bright yellow instead of scarlet.”

“So?”

“Shouldn’t the tail be scarlet?”

“I don’t know, should it?”

“It’s how my grandfather tied them.”

“Your grandfather still with us?”

“Eighty-six and going strong.”

“Keep the fly.”

“Thanks.”

“Give it to your granddad, and tell ’im he should experiment some.”

I smiled my sincere thanks. Johannson showed me more, demonstrating with surprisingly nimble fingers the proper preparation of deer tails; advising me how to select the correct thread for winding the hair. I’d been down there for nearly an hour when we heard three muffled shotgun blasts in quick succession.

“My son,” Johannson said. He sounded disappointed.

We went upstairs. Three more shotgun blasts greeted us when we stepped outside. They were coming from the side of the house facing away from the road. We made our way around slowly. I knew I wasn’t being fired upon, but the shots activated my internal fight-or-flight response mechanism just the same, and I instinctively searched my jacket pocket for the Walther PPK.

Jimmy Johannson was facing the forest, a twelve-gauge pump resting on his shoulder. He was scolding a black Labrador puppy at his feet. Next to the puppy was a small boy, a frail, skinny little thing dressed in dirty T-shirt and sneakers held together with duct tape. When Jimmy Johannson nodded, the child tossed a dog dummy with all his might at the trees. Johannson fired three shots in the air in quick succession. The dog flinched and cowered, and Johannson kicked it, cutting loose with a string of obscenities that did not seem to shock the boy at all.

“That’s no way to train a dog,” I said.

“Jimmy don’t mean no harm,” Johnny Johannson told me, but he didn’t sound convincing.

“Who’s the boy?” I asked as we approached.

“My grandson, Angel’s kid, Tommy,” Johannson said softly; then louder he called, “Jimmy! Man here to see ya.”

Jimmy Johannson glanced at me without curiosity and yelled, “Pull.”

Little Tommy heaved another dog dummy into the woods, and Jimmy fired three times. Again the dog cowered, and again he was beaten. I shook my head. The dog wasn’t frightened by the noise of the shotgun. He was frightened because he knew the shots would soon be followed by punches, kicks, and screams. I was tempted to tell Jimmy so but held my tongue.

“Whaddaya want?” Jimmy asked after he had finished assaulting the puppy.

“I’m a private investigator,” I told him and flashed my photostat.

“Minnesota license don’t mean shit in Wisconsin,” he informed me.

“Don’t mean much more than that in Minnesota,” I replied.

“So?” he asked. I could tell he was warming toward me.

“I’m looking for a guy named Chip Thilgen.”

Jimmy didn’t even hesitate. “Who?” he asked.

“Chip Thilgen.”

“Never heard of him,” he said.

“Sure you have,” Johnny Johannson volunteered.

Jimmy turned on him. “If I say I don’t know him, old man, I don’t fucking know him,” he snarled.

“I was told you and Thilgen were seen driving together just two days ago,” I lied.

“Who the fuck told you that?” Jimmy asked angrily.

“Does it matter?” I asked in reply.

“It matters a lot if some asshole is putting me with this Thilgen guy,” he said. “It matters a fucking lot if people are lying about me.”

“It could have been an honest mistake,” I ventured, not wanting to unduly anger a man with a loaded shotgun in his hands.

“Got that fucking right,” Jimmy spat.

“Tell me, then,” I asked cautiously, “where were you around noon the day before yesterday?”

“Right here,” he said.

“Doing what?”

“Sucking on the welfare titty,” he announced almost proudly. Then, “Pull!”

Another dog dummy into the woods, another three shots. The dog laid at Jimmy’s feet and began to whimper even before the man hit him.

I had seen enough.

“That’s a piss-poor way to train a dog,” I told him.

“Who fucking asked you?” he snapped. Then, to prove who was boss, he clubbed the puppy with the stock of the gun.

“Sonuvabitch,” I muttered.

“I’ll show you how to train a dog,” Jimmy boasted.

He took two steps backward. The boy seemed to know what was coming because he dove out of the way. Jimmy pointed the shotgun and pulled the trigger. A round of six shot took the dog’s head off.

“Play dead!” Jimmy shouted at the corpse. “Play dead!” He laughed as if the sight of the headless puppy was the funniest thing he had ever seen.

“See? The dog’s trained,” he told me and laughed some more.

The scene made Johnny Johannson turn pale. The boy nudged the black Labrador’s body with his battered sneakers, staining the tips of them with blood. I gripped the butt of the handgun hidden inside my pocket.

“Ahh, fuck it,” Jimmy said, suddenly speaking in a monotone as he zipped the twelve-gauge into a leather case. “Dog was no good. Gun shy. Can’t hunt with no gun-shy dog.”

Jimmy went around to the front of the house; his father, visibly shakened but saying nothing, dragged his silent grandson inside the house through the back door. When Jimmy reappeared, he was carrying a spade. Without expression—without any emotion that I could observe—he began digging a shallow grave for the dog’s still-warm carcass. I waited. I don’t know why I waited. Maybe it was so I could tell Jimmy something when he had finished.

I gripped the Walther inside my pocket and asked, “What’s the only thing money can’t buy?”

“Huh?”

“What’s the only thing money can’t buy?” I repeated loudly.

“Shit, I dunno. Love?”

“The wag of a dog’s tail,” I answered.

Jimmy sneered at me. “Fuck that.”

He heaved the spade in the general direction of a large shed and walked slowly to the house. I did not take my hand out of my pocket until he was well inside.