Dead Jitterbug Read online

  They approached the only door, which opened into a narrow porch of a room that held an ancient icebox, a wooden worktable piled with rags and tools and half-empty boxes of shotgun shells. Walking to the back, Ray knocked on the interior door. No answer. He turned the knob, pushed open the door, and stuck his head inside.

  “Darryl,” he said. No answer. He motioned to Lew and Osborne to follow him inside.

  The kitchen was separated from the living area by a wall covered with shelves and holding a miscellaneous collection of mixing bowls, pots and pans, and food supplies. A wood-burning stove and a wide table covered with a green oilcloth and hosting four rickety wooden chairs crowded the remaining space. It smelled of wood smoke and bacon.

  “Hey, Darryl,” said Ray again, “you got company.” He walked to where the kitchen opened into the next room, which was long and dark.

  The windows were so few and tiny and let in so little light that it was difficult to see. The heavy cloud cover outdoors didn’t help. Ray reached for a light switch. A single bulb went on over two bunk beds to their immediate right. Osborne could make out a rock fireplace and some furniture in the shadows to their left. A rumpled double bed at the far end made it obvious where Darryl spent most of his time. A large-screen TV rested on a dresser at the foot of the bed.

  Lew caught her breath and pointed. Osborne peered past her into the shadows. An old rocking chair and a well-worn wing chair were positioned on a dark rag rug to face the fireplace. A console from the fifties, the kind that held a twelve-inch TV and a turntable, buttressed the seating area, almost hiding two feet, toes facing upward and one foot lacking its sandal.

  As they walked across the room, an end table next to the rocking chair came into view. On it was a sawed-off shotgun. “Ever see that before?” asked Lew.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Ray. “Darryl’s had it since he was a kid. Sixteen gauge.”

  As they neared the console, Lew put her arms out as if to stop Ray and Osborne from going any farther. It was good she did. The rug was changing color.

  Edging their way around for a better view, Osborne’s first thought was there’d be no measuring Carla’s jaw now—never good what a shotgun does to the human head. Lew made an automatic move to check for a pulse. As she did so, she pointed to the revolver gripped tightly in Carla’s right hand.

  Ray turned on the floor lamp next to the rocking chair. The light illuminated more blood—a pattern leading across the wood floor and toward the door that led out of the back of the building. Bolting through the door, Ray ran down the rutted lane into the woods behind the shack, shouting, “Darryl! I’m here. Hold on, it’s Ray!” Osborne followed him, while Lew hurried to radio for assistance.

  They found the van a quarter mile down the road at the edge of the swamp. Ray yanked open the driver’s-side door. He was leaning in as Osborne caught up.

  “He’s alive, Doc. Bleeding bad, but he’s alive.”

  To kill a human being—yourself or someone else—with one shot from a .22 pistol requires excellent aim. Darryl must have jerked as he pulled the trigger because he missed his heart and shattered a shoulder blade. Nevertheless, he was in pain and bleeding.

  “Omigod, Ray,” he said with a gurgle, “I won’t make it, ‘Ol buddy. I shot the main artery to my heart.”

  “No, you didn’t, Darryl,” said Ray, ripping off his shirt and pressing it hard against the wound in Darryl’s chest.

  “I shot her—I wanna die. You gotta let me die.”

  “Help me hold him, Doc,” said Ray, wrestling Darryl out of the van seat and onto the ground. “Now you just lay quiet, the ambulance is on its way.”

  “I shot her—”

  “We know you shot her, big guy. No doubt about it. But it sure as hell looks like self-defense. So just stop talking and everything will be okay.”

  “No,” Darryl twisted his big head with an agony that didn’t come from his gunshot wound. His red eyes filled with anguish. “I didn’t understand, I didn’t know. I shot Hope. I killed Missus McDonald.” He passed out.

  Ray dropped his head, then looked up, heartbreak written across his face. Osborne knew that look. It’s the look you have when the people you love are in trouble and there’s nothing you can do to help.

  “Doc, he’s lost it. He’s in shock. We didn’t hear anything.” Ray pressed his shirt hard on Darryl’s chest, just above his heart. His face took on a grim resolve as he said, “Darryl did not shoot Hope McDonald. I’ll bet my life on that.”

  “I’d like to believe you,” said Osborne, staring down at a brown-red face gone white.

  thirty-four

  Always let your hook be hanging; where you least expect it, there will swim a fish.

  —Ovid

  “He’s still pretty shaken, but the doc said talking’s not going to do any damage,” said Ray. Lew and Osborne had arrived at the hospital an hour after the ambulance ride. They found Ray sitting in a hospital room, his chair pulled up next to Darryl’s bed.

  “That bullet wound looked worse than it was,” said Ray, standing up as they walked in. “The emergency room doc gave him a local and patched him up in less ‘n twenty minutes. But they want him overnight for observation—blood pressure’s high.”

  “That’s better than I was expecting to hear,” said Lew, glancing over to where Darryl lay propped up on pillows. He looked markedly less fierce in a lilac hospital gown with a white blanket tucking him in up to his chest. He gave a weak smile. Osborne made a mental note to arrange for some new front teeth—for free.

  “You feel good enough to talk to us, Mr. Wolniewicz?” asked Lew, pulling a chair up beside Ray’s and close to Darryl. Osborne found a chair in the hall. He set himself down on the other side of Ray.

  “Darryl,” said Darryl, wheezing. His weather-beaten face and lumbering body appeared dwarfed under the harsh light of the hospital room. “Call me Darryl. Guess you’ll put me away, for sure, huh.”

  “I don’t know. Until you tell me what happened, I can’t tell you what will happen.” Lew was brisk but friendly. “Before I spend money sending those guns of yours down to Wausau for ballistics testing, I thought we could chat, get a few things straight.”

  Darryl laid his head back on the pillow, defeat in his face. “I shot Missus McDonald, if that’s what you want to know. If only Carla hadn’t—” He raised his fists to his face, gnarled knuckles pressed hard against his eye sockets.

  Osborne looked away, expecting a sob. But, after a pause, what he heard was a whisper: “Okay, but I—I’d like you all to know that I—I—I didn’t mean to do it.”

  Halting, stuttering at times, his fingers twisting the hospital bedding, he told his story.

  “Kinda started last March when I cut some trees for Missus McDonald, y’know. She liked my work, and I didn’t charge too much, and so’s she asked me if I’d come back and cut some more. So I did, y’know. I saw she had more things needed fixin'. So’s I stained that deck of hers, too. She was not feelin’ too good some days, so’s I’d help her out with things in the house at times, y’know.”

  “Is that when she gave you a key to the front gate?” asked Lew. “No, no, I got keys to all the private gates in the township—for garbage pick-up.”

  “Ahhh,” said Lew. “You could come and go at the McDonalds’ whenever you needed. Is that right?”

  “Yep. Didn’t bother Missus McDonald, if that’s what you mean. She wanted me there.”

  He took a deep breath. “Couple a months ago, I guess it was early April, she asked me into the house, and we had a talk. She told me she was very sick, that she was likely to check out pretty soon, but she wanted to do one thing. She wanted to build herself a gazebo. She wanted to build this gazebo to sleep out there this summer like she used to sleep in the old boathouse when she was a kid—the one they had to tear down ‘cause of the shoreline regs…. I guess, well, my thinking was she wanted to die there.

  “She asked me how much it would cost for me to build it fast.” Darryl s
at up straighter. “Y’see, maybe Ray told you, I had a lotta work this spring. I had my garbage route, then I was doing painting for Carla. So, first thing, I told Carla she’d have to wait a little while I did the project for Missus Hope. That made her mad, ‘course—”

  “Of course,” said Lew.

  “But what the hell—”

  “I hear you, Darryl, ‘what the hell.’ So you were doing work for Carla in that new building of hers this past spring?”

  “Yeah, but she was only paying me five bucks an hour, and Missus Hope said if I built that gazebo fast, she’d pay me a lot more’n five bucks an hour. And she’s a hell of a lot nicer to me than that goddam daughter of mine. “So I’m started on the gazebo, see, and meanwhile Carla’s madder ‘n hell and starts calling me and swearing on the phone. Seems she met some guy, and all of a sudden she needs the work done that day, y’know. But I stuck with Missus Hope. I got all the lumber and we decided on a plan….” The hands twisted the blanket.

  “She was so excited.” Darryl smiled as he spoke. “She was like a little kid, y’know. She’d come down and talk to me while I worked. She liked to hear how I catched bluegills in this one spot in that channel that feeds into her lake. Fact, one day I drove her over there in that old van o’mine—showed her right where I put my boat in.”

  “Now, this is on her property, isn’t it?” said Lew.

  “Yeah, but didn’t seem to bother her at all.”

  “Were other people around during this time—or were you always alone with Mrs. McDonald?” asked Lew.

  “Most of the time alone. She didn’t want people around is what she told me. I know I heard her cussin’ out that daughter of hers.”

  “Any idea why?” asked Lew.

  “Hell, no. What do I know about daughters—look at the mess I made. Sure as hell not gonna bring that up.

  “All I know is Missus Hope was getting kinda dreamy. She wasn’t paying attention all the time. Just kept eating potato chips. One day last week she opened all the windows in her house and let the wind blow papers every which way. I was worried she’d lose something important, so I made sure to help her straighten up. Her office ‘specially. She had bags of potato chips everywhere and those things are greasy. She shouldn’t have that on her paperwork.”

  “Oh, that answers a question,” said Lew. “I wondered who cleaned up her office.”

  “That was me….” Darryl waited to see if Lew had another question, but she waved him on. “Yeah, so one day last month I was working on the gazebo when she walked down from the big house and told me she had a present for me. She gave me this piece of paper with her lawyer’s name and phone number on it. Told me to call because she was giving me the land right along the channel—right where I been catching bluegills.”

  “Darryl, you didn’t tell me about this,” said Ray.

  “I didn’t tell anybody ‘cept Carla. Missus Hope made me promise not to tell anyone until later—after she died. Told me she didn’t want any brouhaha, y’know.”

  “So you saw the lawyer, and what did he say?” asked Lew.

  “She. Her lawyer’s this old lady. She did the paperwork and gave me the deed, and I gave that to Carla and asked her to have it recorded.”

  “Are you kidding?” Ray broke in. “Why on earth would you give that to Carla—the way she treats you?”

  “Well … I thought … the lawyer told me I had to get it recorded and a real estate agent could help me do that. You know Carla’s got her real estate license.”

  Listening, Osborne suspected Darryl might have had the urge to show off. Demonstrate to his unappreciative offspring that he, too, was a person of property. Expensive property.

  “Yes, we know about Carla and her real estate license,” said Lew.

  “Damn it, Darryl, if you’d only told me,” said Ray. “You probably could’ve walked it into the title company and done it yourself.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Darryl. “And it was a big mistake. Carla refused to do it until I finished the painting. Then, when I did finish, she said I did a lousy job and refused to pay me. I didn’t take that real well. She made Barb cry that day, too. That’s when I decided I would fix her wagon good.”

  “Darryl,” said Ray, “stop for a second. Take a minute to tell Chief Ferris how Carla has treated you all these years.”

  Darryl dropped his head to one side as if he had been struck. “She tells me I’m disgusting. Whenever she talks to me—she has this sneer on her face. She just always treats me with … what’s that word you use, Ray?”

  “Contempt.”

  “Yeah, y’know, contempt.”

  Lew shook her head, “So you decided to fix her wagon.”

  “Yeah, I been seein’ her flash money around for over a year now. Barb told me she paid their builder in cash. He’s the one first mentioned turning her into the IRS. She cut her bill with him in half, y’know. Refused to pay him. He was cursing, told me the IRS pays bounties to hear about people with too much cash. I happen to know she bought both them cars with cash, too.”

  “And the pontoon,” said Ray.

  “Yeah, see. So I figured she wasn’t paying her taxes, and I was just mad as hell. One night after I had too many brewskies, I called the IRS’s eight-hundred number and told ‘em I thought they should check into Carla.”

  “Was this an anonymous tip?” asked Lew.

  “They said they needed my name,” said Darryl. “But they didn’t tell nobody. My own fault—I was drunk the other night and got to bragging ‘bout what I did. Ever’body in the goddam bar heard me, doncha know. Guess some one o’those folks got hold of Barb and told her what I been sayin'. So that’s how come Carla came out to my place today. She found out I was the one squealed on her. Barb called me and said she was on her way and real mad. So I pulled out my shotgun. I just meant to scare her—I knew what she would do.

  “And she did it, too. She busted right into my place and started hitting on me—”

  “Hitting you?” asked Lew. “So that’s when you shot her?”

  “No, I shot her after she told me what she did. She never registered my title—she sold my land is what she did. She stole it and sold it to somebody else.”

  “But you didn’t know that until this morning?”

  “I thought Missus McDonald had changed her mind. See, I went out there early last week to walk the property line and make my plans and stuff. And this woman shows up and kicks me off. Says it’s her place—that she just bought it.”

  “Did she say who she was?”

  “Not at first, she was real snotty, but I scared her when I wouldn’t back off. I told her it was my property, and I’d see her in court if she kept it up. That’s when she gave me her name and said I could check the records at the county clerk’s office. Woman’s name is Julia somebody.”

  “Not Julia Wendt?” asked Osborne.

  “Yeah—that’s the one!” said Darryl. “Julia Wendt. How do you know her, Doc? She’s the one Carla sold my land to—the bitch. Well, when she told me that—it was over. It was all over.”

  Darryl leveled red eyes at Lew, then Ray. “I don’t care anymore. Two weeks ago I was the happiest man in the world. Now . . . nothin'. I got nothin’ and I killed a beautiful lady who was so good to me….”

  Darryl broke down, sobbing. Deep, anguished sobs. Lew waited. Ray got up to walk over and rub his shoulders, handing him a Kleenex box from the hospital tray.

  “I need to hear from you what happened at the McDonalds',” said Lew.

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry,” said Darryl, wheezing and blowing his nose. When he could speak, he said, “It was Saturday when that Julia woman kicked me off my property. I was upset—knew I couldn’t do anything about it till Monday anyway. So I was at my place Sunday afternoon….”

  “Drinking,” said Ray. “You were pretty soused, Darryl. Do you remember me calling you?”

  “You called me, then Missus McDonald called and told me some squirrels had gotten into t
he gazebo, and she wanted me to come over and git ‘em out of there. So I got my twenty-two ‘cause I always shoot the suckers with a pistol, and I went over.

  “When I got there, I didn’t see any squirrels so I went up to the house, and she was there. About ready to eat something, I guess. I’d had enough pops that afternoon, I decided to ask her why she changed her mind on that property.

  “Maybe it was the way I said it, I dunno, but she just—she started screaming at me. Kept calling me ‘Ed.’ Then all of a sudden she came at me like my wife used to. Like Carla does. All of a sudden, it wasn’t her face in front of me. It was my wife all over again. She came at me, I shoved her back in her chair. And I emptied the goddam gun … but I swear I thought I was shooting my wife.”

  The room was quiet. “Then you drove home?”

  “I guess I did. I don’t remember. The minute she started raging at me like that, I blanked out until the next morning.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “It was Monday—I went to work. I just kept hoping it was all a bad dream. All of it, y’know. That I’d wake up and have this beautiful land by the lake … that this nice lady would keep wantin’ me to build stuff … that I could catch my bluegills….”

  thirty-five

  … And, finally, I fish not because I regard fishing as being terribly important, but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant, and not nearly so much fun.

  —John Voelker (Robert Traver)

  The morning sun helped, but it was a swath of white running along its base that made the old courthouse appear freshly painted. It wasn’t until Osborne had parked across the street and was walking toward the entrance to the police department that he could make out the details of the giant white tent.

  Television camera crews were setting up, running cable, chatting, drinking from large paper cups of coffee. Two satellite television trucks had crammed themselves into the police department’s small parking lot. Osborne was surprised not to see Ray with the stuffed trout on his head schmoozing, doing his best to con a cameraman into using him for local color.