Witness Rejection Page 8

  “Don’t ask me. I haven’t investigated a traffic accident in over twenty years.”

  “It looked to me,” Smoot said, “like somebody in another vehicle pushed their truck out onto the tracks so the train would hit it.”

  “What did the engineer say?”

  “Said he couldn’t be sure of anything. It all happened too fast.”

  “No help there.”

  “Nope. It’d take something pretty tough to push another truck like that. You drive a Dodge three-quarter ton Ram, don’t you, Crockett?”

  “Yep.”

  “Truck like that could do it.”

  “Probably.”

  “Just out of curiosity, where were you last evening?”

  “Out at my place with a friend most of the night after I made an emergency run to the Animal Hospital in Smithville.”

  “That pup get sick?”

  “That pup got a big gash across her shoulders. Found my cat in the woods with a hunting arrow through his hip.”

  Smoot winced.

  “Jesus! Kill him?”

  “Nope. The vet said he was real lucky. Gonna keep him for a few days. I can pick up the dog this morning. The arrow didn’t stick in her, just sliced across her withers.”

  “So somebody shot both your animals with arrows?”

  Crockett nodded. “Person or persons unknown,” he said.

  “And you have an alibi for the rest of the night?”

  Crockett smiled.

  “If I need one.”

  Smoot studied him for a moment. “Well,” he said, “guess those boys must be telling the truth. I hate to take their word for anything, but I reckon I don’t have much of a choice.” He abandoned the last of his B and G, stood up, and dropped a five-dollar bill beside his plate. “Take care, Crockett. I hope your animals’ll be okay.”

  Crockett gave the chief a two-minute head start then walked to his truck and set out to pick up Dundee. On his way out of town, he had second thoughts. He pulled off the road by the railroad right-of-way, fished a scrap of paper out of his shirt pocket, and took cell phone in hand.

  “Hello?” Her voice was scratchy.

  “Good morning, Sweet Satin. Were you sleeping?”

  “That’s okay. I had to get up and answer the phone anyway.”

  Crockett smiled. “Old joke, girlfriend,” he said.

  “Appropriate. I feel old this morning.”

  “Am I bothering you?” Crockett asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Am I annoying you?”

  “No.”

  “You dressed?”

  “What do you want, Crockett?”

  Crockett’s grin was back.

  “The pleasure of your company,” he said.

  “Jesus! It’s, like, not even eight-thirty yet!”

  “Eight twenty-one.”

  “Ah. Our first date went so well that you just can’t wait for more, huh?”

  “Bet you never had another first date like it.”

  “That’s true,” Satin said. “I hardly ever get to watch some lunatic push two small town troublemakers in front of an oncoming train.”

  “Think what delights could be in store for you today.”

  Satin’s sigh was audible.

  “Crockett,” she said, “what the hell is wrong with picking some unsuspecting victim up in the evening, taking her out for dinner and drinks, or even a movie, for crissakes, returning her home, and departing, frustrated but hopeful, into the fucking night?”

  “Anybody can do that.”

  “And what do you have in mind for today’s escapade?”

  “Terrific biscuits and gravy, a trip to the vet to pick up Dundee, a lovely hour or two sipping good coffee surrounded by mother nature, perhaps even, if things go really well, the opportunity to see how we perform together, re-hanging my No Trespassing signs.”

  Satin laughed. “Woof,” she said.

  “No homicides. I promise.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Less than a minute away.”

  “Oh, hell.”

  “Yes or no,” Crockett said. “I’m a busy man.”

  “You pull around behind the post office and you sit in that truck of yours, for as long as you need to sit in that truck of yours, until I get ready.”

  “Is that a yes?” Crockett asked.

  She hung up.

  Chuckling, Crockett put his cell phone away, made a lazy U-turn, motored back down Main Street, turned right at the corner by the post office, and right again into the alley. There, standing by the bottom of the outside stairway, wearing boots, jeans, a canvas coat, no make-up, and a ponytail, stood Satin.

  She clambered into the truck and looked at Crockett.

  “What took you so long?” she asked.

  “You decide to go with me?”

  “Aw, darlin’,” Satin said, punching him lightly on the shoulder, “you had me at good morning.”

  Less than an hour later, Crockett and Satin sat in Lowman’s Café on 169 in Smithville, shoveling down biscuits and gravy.

  “I hang around with you very much,” Satin said, “I’m gonna weigh three hundred pounds.”

  Crockett bumped his eyebrows and leered. “Exercise, my dear.”

  Satin grinned. “It means so much to me that you’re looking out for my welfare.”

  “Selfless is my middle name.”

  “Like you work out every day, huh, Crockett?”

  “Just this very morning,” he said, “I hopped all the way to the bathroom.”

  “Hopped? Oh, yeah. How’d you lose your leg, anyway?”

  “Shrapnel,” he said. “Germany. World War One. Trying to catch Kaiser Bill.”

  “Never lie to a redhead, Crockett. It’s not in your best interest.”

  “Okay. I was rescuing some nuns from a burning building and got run over by a fire truck.”

  Satin shook her fork at him. “The truth. Now.”

  “Car wreck,” Crockett said. “I was drunk at the time.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Drunk and unconscious. Some bad guys poured liquor down my throat while I was tied in a chair, then knocked me out, put me in a car, and pushed it over the edge of a gravel pit.”

  “Jesus. You’re not kidding, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “When did all this happen?”

  “Three or four years ago.”

  “What happened to the bad guys?”

  “They’re no longer with us,” Crockett said, suddenly without appetite. He put his fork down.

  Satin watched him for a moment, then sat back in her chair.

  “Aw shit, Crockett,” she said. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I don’t know when to shut the hell up.”

  “So,” Crockett said, “how’d you lose your leg?”

  “I bit it off when I had my foot in my mouth.”

  Crockett grinned. “Well, that’s one hell of an appliance you’ve got there. I’ve been looking at your legs for several days now and I can’t tell which one it is.”

  Satin’s voice dropped to a breathy whisper. “It’s very realistic,” she said.

  “It go all the way up?”

  “Until it makes an ass of itself.”

  Crockett laughed.

  “Is this a lewd conversation?” he asked.

  “C’mon,” Satin said, standing up. “There’s a little hot tub place in a shopping center just down the road. We’ll stop there on our way to get your dog. They should be open by now.”

  “But…what about your leg?”

  “You got a little gravy in your mustache there, Crockett. Don’t embarrass me.”

  By the time Crockett wiped his stash, Satin was at the counter paying for breakfast.

  Just over two hours later they were sitting in Crockett’s screen room, waiting for his new hot tub to be delivered. Dundee, still a little woozy, snored softly on a wadded up blanket beside Crockett’s chair. Even with the bus providing a windbreak, it was a little cool. Sat
in sat holding a coffee mug in both hands.

  “Beautiful out here,” she said.

  “Yeah. I like it.”

  “You gonna build or stay in the motorhome or what?”

  “I can’t stay in the bus forever,” Crockett said. “A friend’s company owns it. I’m just using it for a while.”

  “You need a log cabin or something out here,” Satin went on. “Be perfect with all the trees and stuff. How big of a place do you have to have?”

  “Not as big as I’m used to. A thousand square feet or less would be plenty.”

  “A cabin kinda thing would be a great place to live,” Satin said.

  “Speaking of living, you’re the only person I’ve ever known that lives over a post office.”

  “I like it there,” Satin said. “It’s huge. Almost twenty-five hundred square feet. A kitchen, big living area, dining area, a small den, three bedrooms, two baths, storage, lotsa closets, and a large utility room.”

  “For just you?”

  “Yep. And cheap for as big as it is. I keep two of the bedrooms closed off, and I converted the den into a work space for my other job.”

  “Your other job?”

  “I used to work full-time in Kaycee for a firm that provides actuarial information to insurance companies. You know, occurrence probabilities, group medians, incidence statistics, things like that.”

  Crockett yawned. “How interesting,” he said.

  Satin smiled. “They send me the information, and I input it into their computer system. Glorified data entry. I can work five hours a week or fifty hours a week if I want to. It’s up to me. I get paid by the entry and I’m fast. I just can’t stand doing it eight hours a day, day in and day out. I took the job at the café ‘cause it’s right across the street and slingin’ hash makes me get out into the world.”

  “So you’re either sequestered away in your lonely office or rushing around a madhouse taking orders and pouring coffee.”

  “One extreme or the other,” Satin said, looking around the screen room and into the trees. “But this, this is nice.”

  “More coffee?” Crockett asked, getting to his feet.

  “Yes, please. It’s really good.”

  When Crockett returned, Satin was standing on the drive in front of the screen room eyeballing the bus and the slab on which it sat. He put the coffees on a table and joined her.

  “Where you gonna put the tub?”

  “Over there, I think,” Crockett said, pointing to a space near Dundee’s doghouse. “Last year at Costco I saw an eight-sided metal screen house with a canvas roof that had Lexan panels that snapped in over the screens for cold weather. As small as the tub is, it would fit nicely. And something like that would keep the bugs and leaves and stuff away in summer, and the wind and snow and ice away in winter. That way you could use it anytime you wanted to.”

  Satin smiled. “I could, huh?”

  Crockett looked at her for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “You could.”

  Satin sidled up to him and slipped her arm around his waist. “I can’t figure you out,” she said.

  “Be a fool’s errand to try.”

  “I just find it hard to believe that the considerate and gentle man I’m with today is the same person who pushed two human beings out in front of a train, and then threatened both of their lives with a gun.”

  “And I,” Crockett said, “can’t figure out why an obviously bright and very capable woman like you is living above a post office and waiting tables in Mayberry, RFD.”

  Satin smiled. “You tell me your story and I’ll tell you mine.”

  “That could take some time,” Crockett said.

  “No hurry.”

  Crockett put his arm around her shoulders and they stood in silence for a few moments before Satin spoke again.

  “We’re gonna be lovers, aren’t we, Crockett.”

  “I don’t see how it can be helped,” he said.

  “Maybe not for very long, though.”

  “Oh?”

  Satin nodded. “We’re too much alike,” she said. “Eventually, being lovers could get in the way of being friends. Who knows?””

  “Friends is more important,” Crockett said.

  Again they fell into silence. Again Satin spoke up.

  “So,” she said, pulling away a step. “When are they supposed to bring the tub?”

  “Around four.”

  “What time is it now?”

  Crockett consulted his watch. “A little before noon,” he said.

  Satin nodded. “Gimme about ten minutes to take a shower,” she said, moving away toward the bus.

  Crockett watched her disappear inside the Pequod.

  He couldn’t think of one damn thing to say.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Carson

  For the next few months Crockett’s life scattered in directions to which he was unaccustomed. He found a franchise builder in Northern Arkansas that seemed to fill his needs exactly and put down a deposit on a log cabin of slightly over one thousand square feet. With a living and dining area, bedroom and full bath on the ground floor, and a lofted bedroom and half bath above the living space, the plans proposed a structure that appeared larger and more roomy than it actually was. After living in the Pequod most of the time for over a year, he found his desires to be more humble than in times past.

  With Chief Smoot’s help, he acted as his own agent, locating people from the Hartrick area to do the earth moving and dozer work involved in extending his drive and creating a building site another fifty yards back into the property. Using plans from the cabin company, he contracted to have the foundation installed, the water and electric lines run, and the myriad of other details satisfied that are required in hewing living area out of heretofore nearly virgin woods and rocky terrain. He heard no more from the Brothers Boggs, Nudge survived his injuries with only a slight limp to show for his ordeal, and Dundee grew into herself with just a strip of white hair across her withers as testimony to events past.

  After a rather urgent beginning to their relationship, Satin’s early assessment of their association proved to be prophetic, and their passion shifted to the type of friendship that only ex-lovers can share, and so few ever achieve. The two of them became true pals. They saw each other at Wager’s Café two or three times a week, hung around together whenever they could, talked on the phone at least every other day, and cemented a bond unlike any Crockett had known before. He was, if not blindingly happy, certainly quietly content. The blistering August heat curtailed his outside activity to a large extent, but September was not far away, and October’s relief was on the horizon, along with the arrival of his pre-cut cabin and the crew to assemble it on site.

  He was cleaning up the Pequod’s kitchen one morning, after spraying for weeds around the slab and doing some outside maintenance in the thick humidity before the temperature climbed enough to make the entire event a gasping ordeal, when his cell phone rang. A frantic search revealed its location under Nudge where he lay on the couch.

  “Crockett?” Female, contralto, vaguely familiar.

  “’Fraid so.”

  “Crockett, this is Carson Bailey. Ruby’s friend?”

  Crockett’s memory scrolled briefly, recalling who Carson Bailey was, the fact that Ruby had attempted to fix he and Carson up on a couple of occasions, and the only time he’d had any real contact with the woman, shortly after Ruby had been abducted to that cave on the Spring River by the late Boog Jeter.

  “Hey, Carson. This is a surprise.”

  “I hate to bother you,” Carson said, the tension in her voice palpable, “but I couldn’t think of anyone else to call.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Could I take you to lunch or something? I mean, if you’re not busy.”

  Crockett was intrigued. The woman was frightened. He could feel it. “Sure. When?”

  “Would today be okay? I know it’s short notice and all, but…”

  “To
day is fine. Where?”

  “Do you know Zona Rosa?”

  Inwardly, Crockett cringed. “Vaguely,” he said.

  “I’m just down from The Hereford House. A shop called ‘Cheese Please’. Can we meet about eleven-thirty?”

  Crockett glanced at the clock on the stove. Nine-fifteen. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

  “I know all this must seem very mysterious,” Carson said, “but I’d rather not discuss it over the phone.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “I’ll see you there and then.”

  “Thank you, Crockett. Really. Thank you so much.”

  He put the phone on the counter and heard a scratching at the door. Dundee, freshly back from unknown adventures in the wilderness and panting with the growing heat, wagged her way inside and immersed her muzzle in Nudge’s water bowl.

  “Nudge just has better water in here than you do out there, huh?” Crockett asked.

  Dripping water on the floor, the dog grinned her way to him for a pat. Crockett squatted down and rubbed her ears.

  “I’m leaving after while,” he said, “and you can’t come with me.”

  Dundee nosed under his hand for more petting.

  “Out of the question. And don’t beg. It makes you look pathetic. I have a life of my own. I don’t need you.”

  Dundee put a paw on his knee and stared into his eyes.

  “I don’t like you and I’ve never liked you. You’re a shitty dog.”

  “Boof!” Dundee said, glancing toward the kitchen counter.

  “Oh, sure,” Crockett said, rising to his feet. “I suppose you think you deserve a treat.”

  Dundee’s bottom hit the floor with an audible thump and she sat rock still, only her eyes moving to follow Crockett’s progress. He crossed to the counter in question and removed half a strip of chicken jerky from the overhead cabinet. Carefully, he laid it lengthwise from the middle of her snout to her forehead. The dog, with the exception of her eyes, was a statue.

  Crockett regarded her for a moment. “Okay,” he said.

  Dundee’s head seemed to barely twitch, and the jerky was gone. No wasted movement, just the crunching of jaws and the rapid waggling of her butt.