The Prairie Chicken Kill Read online

  "What about Abbott?" Lopez asked. "What do you think was he doing here?"

  The Big Red clanked into the little tray near the bottom of the soda machine. I managed to get hold of the can and wiggle it out. Then I popped it open and took a swallow. It was better than Ibuprofen.

  "I'll see what I can find out about Abbott," I said after two more swallows. "I don't have any idea what he was doing here, but you could have been right about Paul being suspicious of Peavy's office. There's some kind of cover-up going on. I'm sure of that."

  Lopez' news instincts came to the fore. "You'll let me know what you find out, won't you?"

  "Sure," I said, but I didn't mean it. I was going to find out for Red and Paul and Anne, not to give anyone a big story.

  I finished the Big Red and thanked Lopez for his help. Then, since I hadn't eaten all day, I went to The Toole Shed. It was time to try the Famous Jalapeno Burger.

  Twenty-One

  The jalapeno burger was even hotter than I'd imagined it would be, the bun stuffed with meat, onions, and fresh, bright green peppers. But I survived it, thanks to several large glasses of ice water and an order of French fries. After I finished eating, I drove back out to the radio station. I might have needed some rest, but I didn't think I could sleep without having talked to Ralph Evans.

  The station lobby was filled with pretty much the same group of men as before, but this time the conversation seemed to be mostly about Internet addresses for the home pages of groups like the NRA and the 2nd Amendment Foundation. From what I could overhear, it was clear that most of them were not just passive listeners to a radio show but were networked with like-minded souls all over the country and probably the world.

  I didn't bother to say "heighdy"; I just went on to the green room, and when I got there, I didn't knock.

  Bert Ware grabbed my shoulder as soon as I stepped through the door, but I shook him off and walked over to where Evans was sitting, cleaning his fingernails with a pocket knife.

  "Where's Gar Thornton?" I asked. "Does he have the night off?"

  Bert grabbed for me again, and I turned to face him, knocking his arm away. He cocked a fist, and I set myself, hoping that he'd follow through. It would feel good to take on someone who was my own size. But Evans stopped him before he could swing.

  "Never mind, Bert," he said. "Mr. Smith isn't bothering me, and he won't be here long."

  Bert sneered and tried to look threatening, but he wasn't as good at it as Gar. And Gar didn't even have to try.

  "Well?" I said. "Where's Gar?"

  Evans folded the knife blade into the handle and put the knife in his pants pocket. Then he inspected his fingernails for a second or two before looking up at me.

  "To tell you the truth," he said "I don't know where Gar is. And I don't really care."

  "Why not? He works for you, doesn't he?"

  "He used to," Evans admitted. "But I don't consider him my employee anymore. He had specific duties, and they didn't include stealing airplanes. I'm mighty disappointed in Gar. He told me that he got airsick on the second floor of a two-story building."

  Obviously Peavy or Denbow had talked to Evans earlier, and Evans had already taken steps to distance himself from Gar.

  "I'm a little disappointed in Gar, myself," I said. "Are you still going to tell me that he was having a hamburger with you when I got shot at?"

  Evans shrugged. "I said it. I'll stick by it."

  "You can stick by it if you want to," I said, "but considering that he tried to kill me. And since you seem to know all about it, what I'd like to know is what that plane was doing on your property."

  Evans smiled complacently, as if he didn't have a worry in the world.

  "That's another reason I'm disappointed in the boy," he said. "I never thought he'd get me involved in something like shooting at honest citizens from an airplane, much less that he'd hide the plane on my own land in that old barn. But then it's awful hard to get good help these days. Except for Bert there. I can trust him. Can't I, Bert?"

  I looked around. Bert was grinning and showing his teeth, which were better than Gar's, but not so much better that I enjoyed looking at them. I turned back to Evans.

  "I think you're lying," I said. "I think Gar stole that plane for you, and I think you know where he is right now."

  Evans stopped smiling and his face turned ugly. "That's a mighty dangerous accusation to make, Mr. Smith. It might even be called slanderous."

  I didn't care about slander at that point, and as long as I was making dangerous accusations, I figured that I might as well make another one.

  "Why did you have Gar kill Lloyd Abbott?" I asked.

  "Who?"

  "Lloyd Abbott, the man Gar hanged in his jail cell."

  "I believe you're really trying to go too far, Mr. Smith. I heard about Gar's little set-to with that drunk out at the Longhorn Club, but Gar didn't have anything to do with hanging the man. The sheriff investigated that whole incident and found out that the man had killed himself. A clear-cut case of suicide. That was the ruling I heard. I think all the medical evidence pointed in that direction."

  For a man who was willing to talk about all kinds of conspiracies on his radio show, Evans seemed exceptionally eager to accept that in Abbott's case there was absolutely no evidence of a cover-up.

  And there was another problem. He was so calm, so reasonable, so sure that he was right, that I was almost beginning to believe him.

  "I haven't heard about any medical evidence," I said. "Why don't you tell me about it."

  Evans shrugged. "You'd have to talk to the sheriff about that. I don't know much about forensics. I'm just a radio talk show host."

  I'd nearly forgotten that I was dealing with a talk show host, a man whose very job and career depended on how convincing he could sound. And he was good at his job. I shook off his arguments.

  "I'm going to find Gar," I told him. "And when I do, I'm going to get the truth out of him."

  "I hope you do," Evans said. "That's all any of us really want. Just the truth."

  I turned to leave the room. Bert was still grinning and showing his teeth. I resisted the urge to try shoving them down his throat.

  "So long, Smith," he said when I walked past him. "Be seein' you."

  "Not if I see you first," I said.

  Never let it be said that I'm ever at a loss for a snappy comeback.

  I was so tired that I was about to collapse, but I drove back into town to use the pay telephone. When Dino answered, I told him I wanted him to find out a few things about a couple more people.

  "Hey, what about your cat? You don't want to hear about him?"

  "Tell me," I said.

  "He's fine. Likes me more every time he sees me. He's always right there waiting for me. I think he knows the sound of my car."

  He probably did. Cats have a finely developed sense about sounds associated with food.

  "You're doing a great job," I said. "Now about those people I need to know about. Their names are Lloyd Abbott and Gar Thornton. Abbott was a P.I. in Houston, but he's dead now. Hanged himself in the jail here, or so everyone keeps telling me. Thornton is a bodyguard by profession, or he was until earlier today. As of then, he's a fugitive from justice. I want to know about what he used to be."

  "You sound like you don't like him," Dino said.

  "I don't."

  "Why not."

  "It's a long story."

  "Yeah. Well, I'll see what I can dig up. Give me a call in the morning."

  "I'll give you a call later tonight," I said.

  "I go to bed early these days."

  "I'll try not to wake you."

  "You're really pushing this, Tru. What's going on up there?"

  "I told you. It's a long story."

  "I want to hear about it, though."

  "I'll tell you all about it when I get back to Galveston."

  "You do that," he said.

  I drove to the Picketville Inn, showered, took some m
ore Ibuprofen, and lay down on the bed. I was asleep in under ten seconds, dreaming something about an airplane that was on a collision course with an active volcano. It was sort of a cross between The High and the Mighty and Airplane, with me playing both John Wayne and Leslie Nielsen. The telephone woke me as I was using my John Wayne voice to tell someone not to call me Shirley.

  I fumbled around for the receiver and finally got it off the hook. It took another few seconds for me to get it to my ear and mouth.

  "Hello?" I mumbled.

  Red Lindeman said, "Is that you, Smith?"

  I admitted that it was.

  "I didn't wake you up, did I?"

  I don't know how you answer that question. I make it a practice always to tell the truth.

  "Yeah, you did."

  "Damn. I'm sorry." He didn't sound sorry. "I just figured you hadn't heard about the visitation tonight."

  "What visitation?" I asked.

  "At the funeral home. The family's here from seven till nine for people to come by and pay their last respects to Paul."

  I looked at the clock. It was seven-thirty. I'd been asleep for about half an hour.

  "No one told me," I said.

  "Yeah, that's what I thought. I knew you'd want to come by and say something to Anne."

  I'd already said all I had to say, but I asked him for directions, and after he'd given them, I said, "I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

  It took me a little more than fifteen minutes, but not much. The short nap had made me feel somewhat better, and I wasn't as stiff as I would probably have been had I slept longer.

  The funeral home was located next to a small private cemetery shaded by large oak trees. The cemetery must have been there for quite a while.

  I parked as close to the entrance of the funeral home as I could and walked inside. The funeral director welcomed me and asked me to sign the register. When I'd written my name, he guided me to the chapel, where organ music was being piped in over an unobtrusive sound system.

  Several people were standing in the aisles, talking, while others were sitting in the pews down near the casket. I could see Red and Anne. Lance was sitting beside her. As far as I could tell, Martin York was nowhere around, and that was all right with me.

  The casket was closed, and a spray of flowers lay across the top. Near the casket an easel held an oversized color photograph of Paul and Anne, taken at their wedding. They were standing in front of a church altar. Paul wore a tuxedo, and Anne wore a white gown. They were both young and hopeful and smiling. Anne wasn't smiling now, and Paul would never smile again.

  I walked down to the front of the chapel and sat in the pew behind Red, who turned around to see who had come in.

  "Good of you to come," he said, as if it had been my own idea. "I don't guess you've seen anything of York."

  I said that I hadn't.

  Anne turned and said, "I can't imagine where he could be. He said he was going to come by."

  "He'll turn up," I said. I looked toward the casket. "That's a nice photograph."

  "An old one," Anne said. She brushed a hand at her eyes. "It's the only good one I had. Paul didn't much like having his picture taken."

  Lance put his arm around her shoulders. It was a gesture that practically implied possession, and I didn't like it. Red, however, didn't seem to mind, and I told myself that I shouldn't be jealous and stupid. Paul hadn't been dead for twenty-four hours. Lance wouldn't be making a move quite so soon.

  "When is the funeral?" I asked.

  "Tomorrow," Red said. "We don't believe in waiting long."

  I didn't blame them.

  "What about Gar Thornton?" Lance asked. "Red tells me you think he's the killer and that Ralph Evans is involved."

  I looked at Red. He looked right back.

  "That's not exactly true," I said. "All I know is that Gar has some connection to the airplane that strafed us. How that ties in to Paul's death, I don't know. It might not tie in at all."

  Lance was going to say more, but a man came into the chapel and walked quickly to where we were sitting.

  Red said, "What's the problem, Jerry?"

  Jerry, a big man with stiff brush-cut hair and a broad face, said, "I thought you'd want to hear. They've just arrested Martin York for killing Paul."

  Twenty-two

  There were two pillows on my bed at the Picketville Inn, and they couldn't have been more than an inch thick. I plumped them up as much as I could, propped them against the bed's headboard, and leaned back against them.

  The visitation had broken up with the news of York's arrest. Red had gone home with Anne, and Lance and I had come back to the Inn, where Lance had his own room, the same one he stayed in whenever he visited the town. I was willing to bet that the pillows in his room were thicker than the ones I was leaning against.

  I'd gotten a Big Red from the motel's soda machine, and I took a swallow of it, savoring its bubble-gum sweetness as I tried to make all the things that had happened in the past few days fit into some kind of coherent pattern.

  It had all started with the Prairie Chicken, and I was no closer to finding out who had killed it than I'd been when I arrived in Picketville. But the Prairie Chicken didn't seem to be important now, endangered species or not.

  Human beings were the ones in trouble now.

  It was hard to figure Martin York for a killer of either a man or a bird. The only evidence against him seemed to be that he'd been picked up by Deputy Denbow for doing forty-five miles an hour in a thirty mile zone, and Denbow had spotted a shotgun in the back of his car.

  It wasn't that there's anything particularly unusual in a Texan carrying around a shotgun that made Denbow order York out of the car. It was that York was one of the least likely Texans to be carrying one, especially within a day of Paul Lindeman having been killed with the same kind of weapon.

  I'd driven by Peavy's office on the way back to the Inn and gotten the story from Peavy himself. The gun had been fired recently, and when confronted with it, York had reacted violently, shoving Denbow down, kicking him, and trying to escape in his car.

  Denbow shot out one of the front tires, and York swerved over the curb and plowed into a tree before he'd gotten to the next cross street. He was under arrest now, and sitting in the same jail that Lloyd Abbott had been in before his unfortunate death by hanging, which was either a suicide or a murder, depending on what you wanted to believe.

  I hope that he would survive to stand trial, if he had one. Quite a few people at the funeral home seemed ready to hang him on the spot. But maybe they just didn't like him.

  I had to admit that he wasn't exactly the most likeable person around town, from my point of view. He was far too attentive to Anne than I thought was seemly, and he'd tried to show off when he shook my hand. But the fact that nobody liked him wasn't reason enough to convict him of murder.

  Even Peavy had to agree with that, but when I mentioned it, he said, "Maybe not. But I think we've got the right man. We're going to search his house, and I think we'll find some evidence that will get us a conviction."

  He seemed awfully sure of that, and I wondered if he might be going to plant the evidence himself, or have Deputy Denbow plant it.

  "What kind of evidence?" I asked.

  "That's the department's business, Smith. You can go on back to Galveston now. We don't have any reason to hold you in town now, and we sure don't need your help doing our job."

  "Speaking of doing your job, what did Denbow find up at Evans' place?"

  "The plane was there, just like you said it was."

  "So? Doesn't that implicate Evans?"

  "He says he didn't know the plane was there. He didn't even know Gar could fly a plane."

  "OK, if that's his angle, I guess you've got an all-points out on Gar. After all, he was trying to kill me and Red."

  "Maybe he was just having a little fun. He might've taken the plane for a little joyride, seen you two, and cut loose with his rifle. Just to scare yo
u."

  "He scared me. He might have done more than that to Paul Lindeman."

  "We'll ask him all about it when we catch up to him. But we've got the man who killed Lindeman already."

  I didn't think so, but there was no way I was going to convince Peavy that he was wrong.

  "Just one little tip before I go," I said.

  "What's that?"

  "Don't let Gar Thornton visit Martin York. I'd hate to see York end up hanging from the bars like your other prisoner."

  "Denbow was sure right about you, Smith. Someday your mouth's going to write a check your ass can't cash."

  "We'll see," I said.

  Snappy replies are my stock in trade.

  As I thought about Martin York now, the possibility of his guilt seemed even less likely than it had earlier. Oh, you could make a plausible argument that York was guilty of Paul's murder if you wanted to. You might even be able to argue that York had killed the Prairie Chicken.

  Say he was in love with Anne, which was a pretty good likelihood. Killing the bird might serve to bring them together, in the search for the guilty party, as indeed it seemed to have done. But that was all it had done. Paul Lindeman was still in the way. The shotgun had worked on the bird. Why not try it out on the man?

  It was plausible, all right, but that was all. It wasn't convincing, and I didn't believe a word of it. It left too much unexplained. The strafing and Gar's actions with the plane, for example. Where did they fit into things? Did York even know Gar? I'd asked Red about that before I left the funeral home, and he'd said that York had no connection with Gar as far as he knew.

  Of course, there was that shotgun in York's car. I wasn't sure how to explain that, but there were plenty of shotguns around, just as there were plenty of other candidates for Paul Lindeman's murder.

  There was Sheriff Peavy, for one. Lindeman knew something about the hanging of Lloyd Abbott. I was sure of that, just as I was sure that Abbott hadn't committed suicide.

  And Peavy knew something, too. Just what, I wasn't certain. But something. Could it be that he was protecting someone at the jail?